Eileen B. Entin
Abstract
[The following is a chapter from the upcoming book Programming for e-Learning Developers, by Jeffrey M. Rhodes (ed.). It is reprinted here with permission from the authors.] The value of peer learning is well known, especially for domains in which people will apply what they learn in collaborative settings, but it is challenging to design courses that effectively incorporate and support peer learning. When learners are co-present in the classroom, it is easier to devise exercises that facilitate peer learning. Currently most training outside of the classroom is self-paced, eliminating peer and instructor contact, due to the perceived cost reduction and the greater ease of implementation. It is a challenge to develop online training that incorporates these rich human interactions while respecting the time constraints under which learners operate, yet it can lead to deeper learning that is more memorable and more easily applicable (Neal and Miller, 2005; Notess and Neal, 2006). This chapter discusses considerations and tradeoffs in designing, developing, and evaluating online training for an instructor and students who are geographically distributed. The discussion will take readers through the development process, starting with analysis of audience and goals, to the challenges in acquiring and adapting course material to the online format, and finally the implementation and evaluation. We focus on considerations involved in supporting active engagement of learners and meaningful and thoughtful learner-learner interactions appropriate to the subject matter (Neal and Miller, 2006).
Index Terms
- Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: Best Practices and Principles for Instructors: Development of online distributed training: Practical considerations and lessons learned
Recommendations
Computer-supported example-based learning: When instructional explanations reduce self-explanations
We investigated whether the findings from worked-out example research on the effects of self-explanation prompts and on instructional explanations can be generalized to other example types - in this case: solved example problems. Whereas worked-out ...
Computer-mediated collaborative learning: an empirical evaluation
National commissions and scholarly reports on the status of contemporary higher education have frequently been critical of the college experience; the emphasis on transmitting fixed bodies of information and a failure to develop problem solving and ...
Comments