Developing a Distributed Learning Community

Abstract

This article describes the implementation of a teaching teleapprenticeship model that involves undergraduate education majors and public school students in a series of instructional interactions that provide opportunities for reciprocal mentoring roles. This model led to the emergence of a distributed learning community composed of a college biology instructor, his undergraduate students, and teachers and students in the public schools, Grades 4–8. Undergraduate students enrolled in the introductory biology course who indicated an interest in a teaching career were invited to participate in a Teaching Teleapprenticeship Project in which they would serve as content resources to public school students as part of the instructor’s vision of an electronic classroom. In this article, surveys, interviews, and observations of the participants are summarized to describe how the electronic classroom evolved over a three year period from 1992–1994. Misconceptions can come into play in any instructional situation, and we found that misconceptions in the electronic classroom present special challenges. Suggestions are given for planning and implementing projects linking university undergraduates with students in K–12 schools, as well as suggestions for minimizing the communication of erroneous information.The instructor of an introductory biology course for nonmajors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign regularly offers a variety of extra credit options for students. In recent years, he has become aware of the prevalence of computers in public school classrooms, as well as the electronic networking possibilities available for teachers. His vision was to create an electronic classroom, a place for the education majors in his biology course to begin to learn about how computers are being used in schools and how computer networks are making content resources more accessible to classrooms. He also wanted his students to think about the kinds of science questions that children of various ages might ask and to attempt to provide appropriate responses using this new medium. This article describes the evolution of the instructor’s vision of an electronic classroom and the nature of his students’ experiences. This research was conducted as part of an NSF-supported project investigating teaching teleapprenticeships and the uses of computers and computer networks in the preparation of pre-service math and science teachers. This project also involved students and teachers in Grades 4–8 in schools all over North America during Years 1 and 2, and within a 70-mile radius of the university in Year 3.