Online Instruction: Interactive Strategies

Interaction in online instruction refers to student-to-student interaction, student-to-instructor interaction, and student-content interaction. This section will focus on strategies that promote online interactivity in one or more areas.

The process of building "online community" has been clearly identified as essential to online interactivity. Asynchronous and synchronous communications contribute to community-building in the online classroom. The instructor's presence as a moderator and facilitator of threaded discussions can do much to influence both the quantity and quality of online interactivity, especially if he or she takes a proactive role in encouraging and supporting interaction by e-mailing participants directly to welcome them to discussions and offer assistance. Providing learners with the rules of "netiquette" will also help create a comfortable interactive environment. http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html

Jaffee suggests that students should be asked to complete a number of tasks immediately upon connecting to a new course. For example, he finds it especially useful to have the students complete and submit a personal profile to introduce themselves to the class and discuss the reasons why they are taking the course, what concerns they have, what they expect to learn, and so forth. This should be a public document that is shared with other members of the class. This serves to promote a sense of collective community among the students and eliminates the anonymity that often characterizes computer conferencing. (http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~jmorris/asatrg/jaffee.htm)

Schweizer (1999) identified five faculty roles in online discussions:

  • community leader
  • discussion leader
  • manager or technical consultant
  • information resource person
  • combination of all roles

Here are a few tips for improving the impact of discussions from an article that appeared in the 12/1/2002 issue of "Syllabus" magazine (http://www.syllabus.com):

  • Use online discussions to build a community. Maintain an informal tone.
  • Relate online discussions to what is happening in class. Refer in class to issues raised in the discussion. Or, when many students still want to ask a question, extend the conversation online.
  • Structure the discussion topic; focus it around a problem to be solved. Consider charging a specific student to propose a solution, and expect other students (perhaps a subgroup of the entire class) to refine the idea.
  • Define roles for various discussants. Roles might be "original proposer," "idea extender," "constructive critic," "responder to critic," or "consolidator."
  • Clarify the pay off for participation in the discussion, either by enhancing one's grade or by enhancing one's understanding of material that is likely to be on a graded exam.
  • Outlaw "just opinions." Insist that points be backed by references to readings, other discussants, or other source materials.
  • Keep a discussion board as a "for fun" place where students can post anything they wish as a means of letting other students know them better.

Interactivity in a virtual learning environment is considered a necessary and fundamental mechanism for knowledge acquisition and the development of both cognitive and physical skills" (Sims, 1997). In online learning, interactivity is the real power behind the medium. A well-designed and highly interactive online lesson offers clear advantages over passive learning strategies in flexible content delivery as well as assessment.

Online instructors must understand that just clicking a mouse does not necessarily make an activity interactive. Sims (1997) identified several levels of interaction for software developers that we can use to explore the vastness of the concept:

1. object interactivity - buttons, images, or things that cause some action to take place when activated by a mouse click or some other user initiated action
2. linear interactivity - moving forward or backward within the software
3. update interactivity - feedback that occurs when the user takes an action or enters data
4. construct interactivity - learner is required to manipulate component objects to achieve specific goals
5. support interactivity - help screens or menus
6. reflective interactivity - text responses to prompts or questions
7. simulation interactivity - individual selections determine the training sequence
8. hyperlinked interactivity - provision of linked information
9. non-immersive contextual interactivity - models the existing work environment and work tasks

Many of the interactive exercises use one or more levels of interactivity to promote and enhance learning.

Suggested interactive strategies:

References:
Online Instruction
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