PowerPointprsentation

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Facilitating student collaboration through
net-mediated technology
Lars Birch Andreasen, lba_at_dpu.dk The Danish
University of Education Research programme on
Media and ICT in Education Technologies,
Publics and Power. 1-5 Feb 2004, Akaroa, New
Zealand
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Three generations of distance education

• First generation Correspondence teaching
• Technologies Mail and railway Perspective
  Autonomy
• Second generation Multimedia based distance
  education
• Technology Broadcast media Perspective
  Industrialization
• Third generation Computer based distance
  education
• Technology Internet Perspective Communication
  and interaction

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The case study online course at a Swedish
university

• The course took place entirely online
• One semester, 40 students
• Web pages with resources, descriptions of the
  course, and assignments
• Electronic bulletin boards for communication
• Course design
• Study materials Printed books
• Assignments and essays on the books,
  individually and in groups
• Group project

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Models of communication
Traditional model of communication
Meaning
Receiver
Sender
Alternative model of communication
Meaning
Utterer
Utterer
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Bakhtins understanding of communication
The word in language is half someone elses. It
becomes ones own only when the speaker
populates it with his own intention, his own
accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting
it to his own semantic and expressive intention.
(Bakhtin 1981 293-94)
Every word is directed toward an answer and
cannot escape the profound influence of the
answering word that it anticipates. (Bakhtin
1981 279-80, italics in original) (Mikhail
Bakhtin The Dialogic Imagination, 1981)
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Functionally divided collaboration
Interviewer The first group work can you
describe, how you collaborated in your
group? Student Quite simple! The assignment
was split into questions about the different
chapters, and each person took a chapter. So
there was actually no discussion, just each wrote
about his or her chapter, and one gathered it all
in one document. And then we delivered it as a
group assignment.
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Writing activity in a project group
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Discussions on the net Experiences with
asynchronous, netmediated communication

• Time for reflexivity
• Shared memory
• Several discussions at one time
• Even quiet persons can be heard
• Changes in levels of impatience
• Easy not to communicate
• Difficult to make decisions or appointments
• Difficult to recall decisions