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Perceptions and reflections Using Skype chat to build a community of learners

Perceptions and reflections Using Skype chat to build a community of learners. Jenni Parker, Dani Boase-Jelinek Jan Herrington School of Education Murdoch University Western Australia. Substituting the campus experience. Four key problems in this regard:

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Perceptions and reflections Using Skype chat to build a community of learners

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  1. Perceptions and reflections Using Skype chat to build a community of learners Jenni Parker, DaniBoase-JelinekJan Herrington School of EducationMurdoch University Western Australia

  2. Substituting the campus experience Four key problems in this regard: • Students are often denied a sense of belonging that is more readily acquired on-campus • There is a perceived lack of contact and timely feedback from the instructor • Large numbers of mature aged students entering the education system have little knowledge of an institution’s culture • Many students who enrol in distance courses have little or no knowledge or experience of the mode of learning.(Lee & McLoughlin, pp. 63-64)

  3. Social presence Developing social presence,or the ability to comfortably and effectively communicate through a technical medium is important (Garrison, 1997)

  4. Online students require: • Connections and social interaction to help learners assimilate new information • Environments that make effective use of communication technologies to connect learners in meaningful • Relevant and authentic learning activities.

  5. Living & learning with technology • First year teacher education unit • 360 students • 2/3 on campus, 1/3 external • No labs, used own computers

  6. How ICT in education is often taught in teacher education • Fromtechnologies or about technologies • Not with technologies

  7. 9 elements of authentic learning • Authentic context • Authentic activity • Expert performances • Multiple perspectives • Collaboration • Reflection • Articulation • Coaching and scaffolding • Authentic assessment (Herrington, Reeves & Oliver, 2010)

  8. The task – website and blog The developing website 

  9. The study This study investigated: The use of Skype group chat to facilitate the development of a community of learners among distant and on-campus students in two courses using authentic learning principles.

  10. Data collection and analysis • Qualitative methods were used to collect first-hand evidence of participant perceptions and teacher reflections about the Skype chat tool • Data collection methods for both courses were: • an anonymous online student questionnaire, • student comments and artifacts made during the course (including the record of Skype chat), • summary statistics gathered from the learning management system (LMS) during the normal progression of the course, and • written tutor reflections

  11. Findings Research findings provided insight into: • how students used the Skype group chat • their perceptions about the effectiveness of this technology • tutor reflections about student interactions on the Skype chat

  12. Student use Figure 1: Course 1 (n60) Figure 2 Course 2 (n258)

  13. Student Skype contributions Comments made by students fell basically into one of the following categories: assessable, conceptual, procedural, technical, social, facilitative, emotional, reflective, and factual. Asynchronous discussion tended to focus on content whereas synchronous communications tended to have content, planning and social components as well.

  14. Comment category Table 1: Comparison of data results: this study (2011) and Hrastinski study (2008)

  15. Having all the students on sometimes live chat was all I needed to help understand the broad assignment topics I found that it could double up and serve same purpose of discussions on LMS to a large degree 85% agreedQ? - This unit has improved my skills to communicate using information technology. It was very helpful to chat and discuss in live time and access to the tutor was invaluable as an external student Skype was also really good, having access to our tutor at all times

  16. Showing the use of skype especially for communicating with tutors and other students Having the ability to talk/chat to others via skype was very beneficial Q? What did you think were the best aspects of this unit? Also when we did the group task having the tutor join the conversation to help get us on the right track was very useful for external students I really enjoyed skype having the tutor online

  17. Maybe incorporate some aspect of the subject to include a limited but valuable experience of Skype for all I would have liked to learn how to use this technology more Q? what improvement (if any) would you suggest for the course Skype is a great web tool and easy to download and best of all 'free'. All you have to do is Google Skype and follow the download prompts - relatively easy.

  18. Tutor 1 - Informal feedback from students who joined the Skype group chats indicated they liked this technology as they could see when I was online and get instant answers to their questions when they needed support. It also gave them the opportunity to chat with their peers about how they were progressing … Tutor 2 - External students miss out on some advantages of on-campus study, such as building a support network and discussing problems with fellow students. Chat facilities appear to enable external students to overcome some of the disadvantages they face … Tutor Reflections

  19. Conclusions • Discussion forums - content related discussions – no immediate response • Discussion forums – more time to reflect and respond to deeper questions • Chat – for immediate problems as they arise, and for facilitating group processes • Many students did not use chat at all, but these students did use discussion forums for social and planning purposes

  20. Conclusions Those students who did use chat, did not use—or had no need to use—the discussion forums for social or planning purposes. This suggests that social presence is more readily achieved through synchronous chats. Incidental evidence in our study indicates that Skype assisted students in developing self-directed learning strategies.

  21. Research Paper Parker, J., Boase-Jelinek, D., & Herrington, J. (2011). Perceptions and reflections: Using Skype chat to build a community of learners. In Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher Education 2011 (pp 1599-1604). Chesapeake, VA:AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/38947 Copy available on Murdoch repository at: http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/5570/

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