Giving life

I really enjoyed the devotional today on interactions with others that are motivated by love and by doing so we give them life. How do we do that in Distance Education?

Thoughts on a K-12 Framework

What:
Parent Presence--

• motivates students to have high cognitive presence and quality learner-content interaction. This can be done through clear expectations, incentives, adding structure to the the student's time
• sets the physical environment i.e. does the student have school supplies, other basic needs, and a place for effective learner-content interaction

Instructor Presence--

• Motivates student to have high cognitive presence and quality learner-content interaction. This is mostly done through grades, prompts, and verbal encouragement.
• Selects the content and delivery methods.
• Helps the student apply their knowledge through assignments and other assessments both formative/summative and formal/informal
• Sets the virtual environment. This is done by setting expectations of interaction and selecting communication tools (high fidelity vs low fidelity)
• Influences student social presence

Social Presence

• The ability to be seen as a real person

Cognitive Presence and other positive course outcomes

• Cognitive presence is high level thinking.
• Positive outcomes can include grades, disposition, enjoyment, perceived learning

How

• I am still working on the how. This is basically the same Garrison's framework. However, one difference is the interplay between parents and instructors. If parent presence is low instructor presence must be higher.

New Outline

Introduction

K-12 Online Learning is Growing

• 1,000,000 K-12 students are involved in online learning
• 47 states have significant K-12 programs
• Michigan and Alabama require high school students to take online courses
• Several other states including Idaho have proposed similar requirements
  

One drawback to online learning models is a lack of quality interactions which can contribute to:

• low sense of community
• sense of isolation
  
• higher dropout rates
• cheating
• others?
  

Although interactions have been correlated with positive course outcomes in a higher education setting, little research has been done on the K-12 setting. Differences in the K-12 environment make it difficult to generalize higher education finding to the K-12 setting.

• Lower self-regulation abilities
  
• less motivation
• need for more social interactions

The purpose of this study is to examine how interactions affect positive course outcomes in a K-12 setting.

Literature Review

Moore’s Three Forms of Interaction

• Forms

§ Learner-instructor

§ Learner-content

§ Learner-Learner

§ Need for two additional forms of interaction: Learner-Parent and Parent-Instructor

• Nature of Interaction
  

§ Social

§ Procedural

§ Content

Benifits of interactions (review research studies)

Gaps in the research

• K-12 context
  
• parental interactions
• account for self-regulation abilities

Research questions

• 
  

Method Table

Online vs Distance Education

Garrison wrote an article that attempted to show that online learning was distinct form distance education. He claimed that the goal of distance education was independence and the goal of online education is collaboration. he then contends that online theories and distance education theories can not be combined.

Anderson then wrote an article is in response to Garrison's article. Anderson's first contention with Garrison's article is that it "seems to have missed many important developments relating to distance education and obscures the evolution of distance education in its use of online technologies" (p. 111). Garrison tends to only view distance education in its earliest form. Anderson takes the view that distance education has evolved in include new forms of interaction, pedagogy, and support services over time as technology has evolved. Although Garrison sees independence as the goal of distance education, Anderson states that very little of today's distance education is independent study. Garrison also makes the distinction between online learning and distance education. Again, Anderson disputes this separation and considers online education as one form of distance education. Interestingly he uses Garrison's own definition of distance education as support (see page 112).

Anderson describes the evolution of distance education in three stages. The first was main correspondence. Second,was mass media or television and radio broadcast. Third, was marked by video, audio, and text conferencing--much like online learning. "Arguing that distance education is inherently about independent study is akin to arguing that operating an automobile means cranking the engine by hand-just because engine cranks were once a feature of all automobiles" (p. 113).

Anderson also takes issue with Garrison's assertion that there is a lack of theoretical development in distance education. He cites that 3.5% of articles are theory based. Next, Anserson's disagrees with Garrison's thought that Moore's theory of Transactional Distance is an Independent/distance education theory and sees this theory as having clear application to online learning. Anderson also considers Garrison's question of the possibility of a convergence of distance and online learning as meaningless because he sees online learning as part of distance education.

Industrialized Education

Last class we talked a little about Industrialized Education and Peter's theory. Now it feels like every article I read talks about it. I wouldn't mind spending some more time talking about it class. Is there a Peter's article that you recommend reading?

I have to say that I found more variety in researchers rationals then I thought I would. I can also tell that I will find a lot of variety in research methods. I found at least two studies that use grounded theory and one of the articles reads more like a novel than a typical research paper. I was also surprised that research questions were not more clearly written. In a few articles I had to go searching for them. I found a lot of good articles from some top authors in Journal of Distance Education. I will have to review that journal more closely. I don't know if it is a top journal but Garrison, Rovai, and Anderson were all publishing in it (it fact they all kind of got into a debate about CoI).