What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?
I began by reading the Florida TaxWatch study, and followed it with Zucker. While reading Zucker, I saw a reference to Haavind's work that caught my attention and motivated me to read Haavind as my third paper for the week's assignment. The quote (from a different study by Haavind - "A Study of Factors that Affect Content-based Student-to-Student Dialogue Online", and not the one that we were assigned to read) that piqued my interest: "Higher interactivity occurs when instructors avoid public praise or negative evaluations in the discussion area." (p.18) Haavind herself reiterated this in the Key Factors study, "Higher interactivity was associated with instructors who avoided entering public discussions primarily to praise or negatively evaluate students." (p.17)
I never had given that thought before, but it caused a few pieces of learning to come together for me, and provide another mental guideline for my own online instructional design. It seemed obvious that negative evaluations in the discussion area might discourage depth of interaction, but it hadn't occurred to me that positive praise that singles out an individual in the asynchronous discussion might be disruptive to the process. In pondering that, it occurred to me, that drawing attention to the process could be disruptive to the flow as it can make individuals too self-aware, and/or make others feel jealous or bad if they sense they don't measure up. One of the demonstrated characteristics of an instructor who was successful at encouraging effective collaborative dialogue among students therefore was one who could let it happen without drawing attention to it. I did note that another successful strategy for instructors looking to foster great asynchronous collaborative dialogue was making those positive and constructive comments to students individually but in private An instructor who joins the dialogue to help redirect, or as an earlier study we read (Garrison and Arbaugh) suggested "facilitating discourse requires the instructor to review and comment on student responses, raise questions and make observations to move discussions in a desired direction" (164), especially as suggested by Rose and Smith in yet another early reading though the use of landscape posts. (p.155). I am still pondering application of this...
