There were several different issues that this weeks readings got me thinking about, so to try and delineate them in this post, I attempted to separate them under different titles:

Thoughts about dimensions of collaboration and communication;
For those who are pro face to face teaching, and more anti-online learning than pro-online learning, there seems to be a fundamental lack of trust in the idea that the internet really does facilitate collaboration. There seems to be a kind of dark cloud of skepticism hanging over those who resist the idea of online learning (which I found very prevalent in the Cac.o.phony post and discussion that followed) that online collaboration and communication (through blog posts, chat rooms, discussion boards, talk pages, etc) is somehow less “real” than in person communication. I found this dark cloud of skepticism most obvious as a) Skeptical that students can really, actually feel engaged with their professors and colleagues through written communication, b) Skepticism that students are actually collaborating in “productive” ways, and c) Skepticism that students can be trusted to learn anything in a self-directed manner. And I think all of this skepticism seems to be rooted in the idea that anything that happens in “meatspace” is a more real, longer lasting, and more trustworthy thing than something that happens in the virtual world.  And I think one of the biggest hurdles in understanding how successful online learning happens is that for people (whether they be students or professors) that are engaged in online dialogue or conversation, whether it be through a chat room or comment stream after a blog post, the communication is real, and people are actually engaged in it. If they were not engaged, they simply would not participate at all in the dialogue. And I think that students CAN be trusted to be self directed in their learning…I think there is an underlying assumption that if you can physically SEE a student in class every week, then you can better access their engagement than if you must rely solely on what they write on a blog. As was pointed out in the readings, the self-directed nature of many online learning models may not suite EVERY student – because ultimately, students will only get out of an online course what they put into it –and I think, based on my own experience and the readings (especially in the Ugoretz and Pelz articles) a good online learning environment, with an intentional collaborative approach from the instructor will encourage student engagement, not hinder it, and in many instances, encourage more student engagement over a longer span of time than the overage lecture-hall style course would.

The view of Collaboration in Academia:
It also seems as though the kind of collaboration the internet makes so beautifully possible is not the kind of collaboration that is always valued in academia – I think this goes back to older, top down teaching models, the whole idea that the student is an empty vessel that the teacher must fill with knowledge. In different ways, each of the readings this week showed how the internet can facilitate collaboration between students in asynchronous learning, such that the students are learning from each other in really powerful ways. And I feel like that kind of interaction and peer to peer learning is encouraged much more at the elementary and high school level, but not nearly as much in the college level, and then almost not at all in graduate level work, because so much emphasis is put on being individual, self-reliant thinkers, and collaboration is somehow seen as a weakness, or academic crutch.

Being an architect of Online Learning:
I really liked the Bill Pelz article, as he laid out (very systematically) specific ways a professor can structure online learning assignments to effectively engage students in course material, self directed projects, and collaborative learning. But it did leave me wondering two things (and this is from the mind of somehow who wants to build an online learning environment):

1)   are there any studies done in how much of a difference the actual physical/aesthetic/layout of the GUI (grapics user interface) has on people’s engagement with course/learning material?

2)   does anyone know of resources that discuss or compare successful vs. non-successful learning enviornments from a GUI point of view?