Sloan-C View

Join hundreds of your online learning colleagues at the upcoming Sloan-C conference. This year's theme focuses on The Power of Online Learning: Mobilizing to Expand Community, featuring more than 150 presentations in three exciting tracks—Growth Challenges: Access and Scale; Effective Online Instruction; and Institutional Transformation. Presentations cover ways of expanding the online learning community by considering blended, K–12, global, and corporate learning. Others will report on online learning's more mature stage of development and evaluation and how student support, library, administrative, and faculty support systems are converging. Dr. Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts, will deliver the keynote address, Reverse Engineering in Higher Education. Plenary speakers are Dr. Julian Lombardi from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. David P. Reed from MIT Media Laboratory, who will deliver a talk on the Croquet project, designed to mobilize cross-disciplinary learning networks. The conference is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in conjunction with the University of Central Florida , University of Massachusetts Lowell, SCOLE and the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC). For more information on the conference, please visit www.aln.ucf.edu.
A Review of the Recent Papers on Online Education Michael Hammond, The University of Warwick
A review of recent case studies on the use of asynchronous online discussion in higher education [1] looks at the implications for curriculum design and interaction between learners. What are the key conclusions from the review and what are the key messages for course designers?
One conclusion is to seek clarity in designing online discussion forums. The literature identifies three main approaches. First, open forums in which participants are free to contribute as and when they like and in which the agenda for discussion is only loosely guided. Second, loosely structured forums in which learners are expected to complete certain tasks on an individual basis and	~ Use clear curriculum design ~ Decide on structure and assessment ~ Show teacher presence ~ Recognize learners come with varying propensities to participate ~ Consider the software ~ Reflect and continue to innovate Listen to Hammond 's findings in a 6-minute report.
send these for group discussion. Third, cooperative/collaborative task based forums in which learners are expected to work in small teams. Whatever approach you take will influence how you think about online discussion. For example in collaborative small group work the active participation of all learners is both more likely and more important than in an open list of over, say, 100 members or more. Structure does seem important in stimulate some learners to participate in discussion; activities can be timetabled and roles and responsibilities made explicit. Further structure may be provided by timetabling guest experts. Some of the research reports on the importance of not overloading learners as online discussion is time consuming particularly if forums are to develop from the

exchange of information to higher order discussion. Formative peer assessment is built in to many of the more active forums and summative assessment inevitably has a key role to play—here it is important not just to grade products but students' contribution to group processes. Structured forums require moderators or instructors to provide administrative, pedagogic and affective support. Instructors can encourage the expression of divergent opinions within the group; they can suggest roles and introduce ‘starter' and ‘wrapper' activities. Instructors have a major role to play and need opportunities to rehearse and reflect on their role. They can prompt learners to develop discussions though this may be a dilemma for a tutor wanting learners to take responsibility for their own learning. A second conclusion is to consider the willingness of different learners to participate in discussion. Active learners will have some proficiency in using ICT, and of course access to ICT, but experience and understanding of group work are more important. Participation is likely to be related to preferred learning style, self confidence and self esteem as well as gender, cultural background and linguistic ability.

Finally, designers need to plan for using intuitive software so that participants can easily see discussion threads and send and download attachments. Interestingly, a wide range of software has been reported within case studies but discussion of different software is uncommon.

A review of the literature does appear to provide some clues to developing on line forums and to open up areas for further debate but it can not provide a fail safe guide. There are always special features for curriculum designers to consider, for example, what is the nature of the information gap within a particular course and is online discussion the most appropriate means for bridging this gap.

[1] Hammond , M. A review of recent papers on using online discussion within teaching and learning in higher education. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 9(3): October 2005, forthcoming.

Page 3

Sloan-C | Privacy |