Designing for the Virtual Interactive Classroom

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Designing for the Virtual Interactive Classroom

4/29/2005

By Judith V. Boettcher

We’ve all talked about synchronous online collaboration, but new tools may allow us to truly “know” this kind of collaboration for the first time.

Over the years, faculty have creatively adapted to the asynchronous, text-based environment of the Web and the
online classroom. As a community, we’ve learned that while e-mail and discussion boards aren’t the same as the live classroom, they have their own unique instructional effectiveness. And, indeed, for some interactions and purposes, the online space actually is better. The shy students seem to talk more; students often graciously engage and support each other; they seem to reflect and express more thoughtful ideas in online forums; and busy students can learn anytime, anywhere.

Many online courses do result in vibrant, energetic learning communities. In fact, the positive perception of online learning has grown so fast that a recent survey conducted by the Sloan Consortium (www. sloan-c.org) reports that “a majority of academic leaders believe that online learning quality is already equal to or superior to face-to-face instruction” (www.sloan-c.org/publications/books/surey04.asp). So, what more can we possibly want for online courses? We want to “be” together.

Most of us experience more satisfying interactions when we can see and hear each other in the same space and at the same time. While online interactions support flexibility and convenience, synchronicity provides for more efficient and natural interaction. It is more spontaneous, with more richness of communication information. Answers can be immediate (and not be misspelled!); questions can be clarified; and decisions requiring multiple conversational loops can be arrived at quickly. While an e-mail can take minutes to compose, a question after a real-time class can be addressed in seconds. And while planning an online group meeting requires thinking through and anticipating many variants of the experience and then preparing the directions and guidelines, planning a live discussion requires much less planning: One can adjust in real time, based on feedback and questions.

Yet, what is the outlook for synchronous tools for online learning and meeting? When we gather in the physical classroom, we bundle many types of experiences: We combine lecture demonstrations, discussions, question-and-answer sessions, and large and small group activities. And although many of the traditional synchronous tools were designed with the “lecturer” or “presenter” paradigm in mind, the newer synchronous tools are more specialized and have been designed for collaborative interactions. Most likely, then, we will want a minimum of two to three synchronous tools for the diverse uses that faculty, staff, and students will suddenly discover for synchronous, real-time interaction. The good news is that we are being overwhelmed by the choices and types of tools supporting synchronous interactions. The first generations of tools were expensive, cumbersome, and generally out of reach for normal everyday use. Nothing worked as well as picking up the phone or scheduling a phone conference. Now, that is changing.