by
Sven Åke Bjørke. February  2014.

Many educational institutions spend huge amounts of money on developing computer-supported self-instructional courses. Various kinds of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are embraced by university administrations as  potential money-savers and maybe perceived as a potential income source. But nothing comes easy, does it? Self-instructional courses have extremely high dropout rates. Most MOOCs have discussion forums and peer interaction. Why is that? Isn’t traditional dissemination of information good enough?

What is meant by traditional forms of education?  Is collaborative learning any different?

MSc DM students collaborating in a physical as well as a virtual classroom. Photo: Å. Bjørke

When people start working in the virtual classroom, this is such a step in a new direction  that technology overshadows all other issues. Does the internet work? Electricity? Can I log in, or is the Learning Management System (LMS) in a bad mood today? What’s the difference between a “Discussion Forum” and an online “Archive”? However, you will soon get over the technology threshold, and not even think of it. There are bigger challenges ahead.

If you have ventured into an online, virtual classroom, you might have experienced that if there is little or no interaction with others, your interest in the course might drop.

Might there be a grain of truth to that interaction and dialogue with others is necessary for motivation?

Do you think it is of importance that a tutor takes a lead now and then? If so, when should the tutor intervene? How often? When should s/he wait for students to take initiative?  This does not have much to do with technology, but challenging nevertheless.

Many professors have noticed that some students do not attend lectures. They just read at home and appear for the exam. Some actually do well. It is estimated that 5-10% of all students find self-studies working fine for them.

In the 1990s many educational institutions spent huge amounts of money in developing computer-supported self-instructional courses, thinking that if some students can study all alone, why not all? The students simply received a computer programme or a CD with interactive assignments. In e.g. maths there were many auto-correcting programs, where you could repeat the tasks as many times as you wanted, with an endlessly patient machine telling you where you did wrong. You could click for a video with a “talking head” giving a lecture, a video cutting demonstrating a topic, autocorrecting quizzes, interactive maps, games etc. The courses seemed very nice, with music, graphics and animations, but these types of courses as a rule were not very successful unless they were very short and concrete. Examples are: “Teach yourself power-point” or “Teach yourself how to make web-pages”, or corporate training: “learn how to use this new machine in five steps” etc.

One of the reasons for the high interest in this mechanical way of making education might have been a hidden hope that it is cheap if you manage to achieve an economy of scale. Moreover, if you happen to perceive education as a question of transmitting “knowledge” from the teacher to the learner, self-instructional online courses should be ideal.  If learning is just a question of cramming the right information to pass an exam, there is no need for dialogue between people. You just need communication with a patient machine repeating the information you need to cram.

As these self-instructional courses were no real success, some started posing the questions: is learning really mechanical, or does learning, when it involves deeper understanding, imply something more?

The self-instructional courses are mainly based on the notion of education as transmission of information. In traditional teaching, many tend to perceive the teacher as a kind of medium for the transmission, and the idea was that a machine could do this role just as well or even better.

The traditional one-way lecture can be effective in some respects. DM students at GRID-Arendal, Norway

However, as a rule a physical teacher has many additional human qualities that the machine does not have. The teacher would manage the classroom, arrange social activities, give comfort to some, encourage others and correct those who needed it. In my opinion the teacher is always crucial over longer periods to keep up motivation. The teacher can choose different pedagogical approaches, and adapt to the situation. The teacher can be instructional at times, and when s/he finds it appropriate, alternate between one-way lecturing and more modern pedagogical forms such as problem based learning, discussions, group work and various other forms of collaborative learning.  A machine can hardly do these things. It is therefore important to be consciously aware of the difference between the traditional perception of the rather rigid role of a teacher and the much more multi-faceted reality that is typical for modern pedagogy, where emphasis is on learning processes rather than on information transmission.

On this background I propose that traditional higher education has mainly been teacher- and transmission of content centred, while modern, collaborative education is learner and learning centred and more focused on interactive processes and dialogues. Whether it is on-campus or on-line.

In face-to-face (F2F) situations, traditional and collaborative forms can be mixed without thinking too much about it. In an online environment, this must be chosen much more consciously and deliberately and meticulously planned for.

If you regard the points in the right column as important seen from a pedagogical perspective, you might agree that these are difficult to obtain in an environment where the communication is between a machine and a human being only.

Collaborative learning can be more conducive to insight and understanding. Ethiopian DM students collaborating with other students in virtual group rooms

In modern ICT supported education – in Distributed Open Collaborative Courses (DOCCs) as well as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), you will find that an essential part of the course is peer interaction in online classrooms or discussion forums. Interaction with other human beings is the key for motivation. Interaction with others and negotiation of meaning in learning communities of practice are key factors for good learning. To increase quality in an online course, you reduce the number of students and increase tutor presence. You work on the learning environment, where interaction between fellow students and tutors as a rule is the most important factors for learning.

Photos: Å. Bjørke

Collaborative ICT-supported learning for sustainable development

Transforming Higher Education with Distributed Open Collaborative Courses (DOCCs):Feminist Pedagogies and Networked Learning

H.O.T. / D.O.K.: Teaching Higher Order Thinking and Depth of Knowledge

On MOOCs, BOOCs, and DOCCs: Innovation in Open Courses

Bates, T. (2014) Comparing xMOOCs and cMOOCs: philosophy and practice 

eLearning vs Classroom Training—How Different Are They?

Over to Transformative pedagogy

Reasons and Research – Why Schools Need Collaborative Learning Spaces

Additional reading:

• Pedagogical approaches in online education
• Online education – a driving force for quality in education