Teaching the disembodied: Othering and activity systems in a blended synchronous learning situation

Una Cunningham

doi:10.19173/irrodl.v15i6.1793

Abstract

<p>This study examines what happens when online and campus students participate in real time in the same campus classroom. Before this study, postgraduate students studying online in a course intended primarily as professional development for language educators were taking the course through reading the course literature including assigned articles, writing reflective texts in the asynchronous forum and doing the course assignments. They had a very different experience than the campus students who met weekly for discussion of the reading. Some online students were not active enough in the course, and showed low levels of engagement. The online students were invited to participate in scheduled campus classes via Skype on iPads. After some hesitation, four of the six online students took up this real-time participation option. Initial difficulties with the technology were addressed after seeking input from campus and online students. A series of adjustments were made and evaluated, including a move to a model in which three online students in different locations participated in a single Skype group video call on a laptop in the campus classroom rather than on multiple individual Skype calls on iPads. After the course, the online and campus students were asked to evaluate the experience of having physical and virtual participants sharing a physical space and to relate this experience to the asynchronous channels previously available to the participants. The comments of both groups of participants were interpreted in the light of previous work on social presence and of activity theory. It appears that student beliefs and student expectations lead to hidden challenges associated with mixing these groups of students, and the study concludes that unless teaching assistance is available, it is not easy to afford online students the same right to speak as campus students.</p>

Highlights

Those who watched the UK TV-series, Doctor Who, in the 1970s may remember the Brain of Morbius, the title role in a set of episodes of the series
The aim of this study was to investigate possible ways to reduce the isolation of online students and to extend to them something of the social and educational advantages experienced by campus students who are able to interact with the teacher and with each other in real time
In the first attempt to solve the problem of the disengaged online learners, four iPads were brought into the classroom, one for each of the four online students who had expressed willingness to participate in the real-time class with some twelve campus students

Summary

Introduction

Those who watched the UK TV-series, Doctor Who, in the 1970s (or who have seen some of the countless re-runs) may remember the Brain of Morbius, the title role in a set of episodes of the series. The online participants, like Morbius, were fairly helpless, needing assistance from another student or the teacher to move to another table to take part in small-group discussion or to turn to face the talker or the screen at the front of the room. Their ability to hear and be heard was at the discretion of the physically present. These were postgraduate students, studying online on a course intended primarily as professional development for language educators. These students are referred to here as online, rather than distance students as they are often not geographically removed at all, but prefer to study online because of the flexibility of online study in this particular postgraduate course, using various permutations of synchronous and asynchronous communication as they wish

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion