Article Review #2
Larson, B.E., & Keiper, T.A. (2002). Classroom discussion and threaded electronic discussion: Learning in two arenas. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 2(1). Available: http://www.citejournal.org/vol2/iss1/socialstudies/article1.cfm
Rationale
First of all, I had to choose
an article from this journal because it has a forum where readers can respond to
what is written, and in a couple of cases the authors have joined in the
discussion. (Perhaps I’ll post this article review and see what happens!)
Again, my article choice
reflects my own experiences as a distance education student.
Larson and Keiper tackle the topic of discussion, both classroom and
electronic, in the social studies curriculum.
Although I am a Learning Resource and Technology teacher I have recently
learned that I may have some teaching duties in Grade Six Social Studies (due to
cutbacks) and I won’t find out for sure until we return to school in
September. I am hoping that this
article will inspire me to jump outside the box and use this teaching
opportunity to try new and exciting methods.
Description
An interesting section of
this article is the distinction between classroom discussion and classroom talk. This hits home for me because I have always thought that
although online discussion forums are very effective, something is missing.
Audioconferences do fill the gap nicely as they allow “talk”, a quick
introduction, a spontaneous exchange or the easy banter that can seem forced in
online discussion. The author’s note that although alot of anecdotal reports
support the similarities and differences in classroom and online discussion,
there is very little research on the topic (exit document topic anyone?).
Practicality
The authors thoroughly
describe the research process in great detail.
Unfortunately the participants were secondary students doing teacher
preparation courses. I would be
interested in similar studies with Primary, Elementary and Highschool students.
Not surprisingly, the
research found that both forms of discussion are beneficial as an educational
format. I concur with these results as I have had greater success and
enjoyment in courses that have had at least one audioconference.
Strengths and
Weaknesses
One major strength of this
article is that it provides samples of threaded discussion postings from the
research to highlight the findings. This
makes obvious the results of the study and provides similarities to our own
discussion postings. For example,
the samples detail the participant’s initial reluctance to reveal details
about themselves until pressed to “introduce” themselves in a section of the
forum. The students rarely
criticized each other’s writing at the beginning of the discussions but slowly
made probing comments on other student’s work forcing the discussion to
continue beyond the initial complementary postings.
The article offered four
“lessons learned” from distance discussion.
I thought they were interesting enough for everyone to enjoy:
1.
Threaded discussions provide a decent forum for students to interact
about public and controversial issues. Students' responses demonstrate that
threaded discussions allow for solid academic interactions with others.
2.
Threaded discussions require a large amount of time outside of class. The
time that is needed for these discussions is significant, because students must
read classmates' comments, select the appropriate comment(s) to which to
respond, and compose a written response.
3.
When students are not required to post a certain number of times, it was
found that less interaction among classmates occurred.
4. Threaded discussions can last an entire semester because the Internet allows the interactions to transcend the time and place of the discussion.
Sound familiar anyone??