The Nature of Technology-Mediated Instruction in Globalized Distance Education

The purpose of this paper is to discuss technology-mediated communication and interaction in globalized distance education. We will briefly present the context, methods, findings, and implications of a research and development program we have been running for the last five years at Western Illinois University in collaboration with other institutions in the US, Mexico, and Cyprus (Intercollege). The emphasis will be on discussing the differences between face-to-face (F2F) and technology-mediated interaction. Online interaction may be slower and ‘lacking’ in continuity, richness, and immediacy, when compared to F2F interaction; however, in some ways online interaction may be as good as or even superior to F2F interaction. We will use selected findings from our work to theorize the nature of interaction in online distance education in a globalized world. Our argument is that despite differences between F2F and online distance education, the latter should not be considered as second best, because there are significant qualities of online education that are often ignored.

[1]  John Short,et al.  The social psychology of telecommunications , 1976 .

[2]  M. Hand,et al.  On the Democratizing and De-democratizing Logics of the Internet, or, Toward a Critique of the New Technological Fetishism , 2002 .

[3]  Landra L. Rezabek,et al.  Visual Cues in Computer-Mediated Communication: Supplementing Text with Emoticons , 1998 .

[4]  D. Randy Garrison,et al.  Beyond Independence in Distance Education: The Concept of Control , 1987 .

[5]  Jennifer S. Light,et al.  Rethinking the digital divide , 2001 .

[6]  R. Stake.  The Case Study Method in Social Inquiry1 , 1978 .

[7]  M. Castells.  The rise of the network society , 1996 .

[8]  E. Dais,et al.  Consequences of modernity in contemporary legal theory , 1998 .

[9]  R. Linn,et al.  Qualitative methods in research on teaching , 1985 .

[10]  Daniel V. Eastmond.  E-Moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online , 2003 .

[11]  E. Schegloff,et al.  A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation , 1974 .

[12]  Charalambos Vrasidas,et al.  Globalization, information and communication technologies, and the prospect of a ‘global village’: promises of inclusion or electronic colonization? , 2005 .

[13]  Charalambos Vrasidas.  Making the Familiar Strange-- and Interesting-- Again : Interpretivism and Symbolic Interactionism in Educational Technology Research , 2001 .

[14]  M. Moore.  Editorial: Three types of interaction , 1989 .

[15]  C. Gunawardena.  Social Presence Theory and Implications for Interaction and Collaborative Learning in Computer Conferences , 1995 .

[16]  Rob Shields,et al.  Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies , 1996 .

[17]  S. Duncan,et al.  Some Signals and Rules for Taking Speaking Turns in Conversations , 1972 .

[18]  James A. Levin,et al.  Real and non‐real time interaction: Unraveling multiple threads of discourse∗ , 1983 .

[19]  Susan May,et al.  Collaborative learning: More is not necessarily better , 1993 .

[20]  Nicholas C. Burbules,et al.  Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives , 2000 .

[21]  Charalambos Vrasidas,et al.  Factors influencing interaction in an online course , 1999 .

[22]  N. Blake,et al.  Tutors and Students without Faces or Places , 2000 .

[23]  Robert J Sellani,et al.  Sustaining Distance Training: Integrating Learning Technologies Into the Fabric of the enterprise: By Zane L. Berge (Ed.), The Jossey-Bass Business and Management Series, First edition, 413 pages, ISBN 0-7879-5331-8, 2001, by Jossey-Bass Inc., San Francisco, California, Price: US$36.95 , 2000, Internet High. Educ..

[24]  Diane J. Hanson,et al.  E-Learning: Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Digital Age , 2003, J. Educ. Technol. Soc..

[25]  H. Blumer,et al.  Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method , 1988 .

[26]  A. Kendon.  Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters , 1990 .

[27]  M. Baynton,et al.  Dimensions of “control” in distance education: A factor analysis , 1992 .

[28]  Shirley Pendlebury,et al.  Promises of access and inclusion: Online education in Africa , 2000 .

[29]  Nicholas C. Burbules,et al.  Universities in Transition: The Promise and the Challenge of New Technologies , 2000, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[30]  A. Collins,et al.  Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning , 1989 .

[31]  Daniel C. A. Hillman,et al.  Learner-Interface Interaction in Distance Education: An Extension of Contemporary Models and Strategies for Practitioners , 1994 .