A Virtual Communal Space
Tom Creed
Saint John's University
[We have set up a virtual companion for this article on the NTLF website (http://www.ntlf.com). Internet resources relevant to in this article can be found under A Virtual Communal Space. ]
Imagine yourself as a student in a course you know little about. You are one of 30 students in the course. You consider the topic interesting, and potentially valuable to you, so you are serious about learning. Before reading on, take a few minutes and describe what you think would be a good learning environment given these conditions.
When I discussed this scenario with several people, most had a similar idea -- they would want to acquire information on their own, have the opportunity to discuss it and how it relates to them personally with others, including the professor when appropriate, they would apply the information to a specific situation, then synthesize the information, abstracting out the important principles. An important issue for everyone I talked with was that all of this be done at their own pace and when they were ready. The integration of Acquisition, Personalization, Application, Synthesis and Abstraction (APASA) is a powerful pedagogical combination. A large body of research on student learning supports the importance of these principles for deep learning (cf. Astin, 1993).
This integration of APASA seems very little like what goes on in the traditional classroom, but it does seem a great deal like a learning community (cf. Angelo, 1996, Bystrom, 1997). Learning communities enhance students' classroom experiences by providing a broader context for their work. In the fullest implementation of a learning community, students take a common curriculum, taught collaboratively by a group of faculty, and share some communal space, such as a dormitory. Learning communities hold considerable promise: by providing a sense of community and structure often lacking in higher education, they enhance student learning, increase retention, and broaden acceptance of different perspectives (Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews and Smith, 1990). Unfortunately, the administrative structure of most colleges and universities makes developing and maintaining learning communities very difficult. But community is based on effective communication, and electronic communication (E-mail, electronic conferencing, and the world-wide web) can provide many of the benefits of a learning community for our individual courses. E-mail allows for private discussions, electronic conferencing allows for discussion of topics of general interest to the group, and the world-wide web can provide a common body of information for students.
As valuable as electronic communication is, it has had a major drawback -- the different forms required switching among different software packages to engage in each, and a coherent interface was lacking. Recently, however, the more comprehensive forms of groupware, especially those developed specifically for educational applications, have combined the three forms of electronic communication into a single web-based environment. The major components of the course content, as well as E-mail and conferencing, are accessible by the student from an opening page. Some of these environments, such as LearningSpace from Lotus and TopClass, are available commercially. Others, such as Nicenet's Internet Class Assistant and Madduck's Web Course in a Box, are free. (Go to links to these and other examples of groupware.)
These environments begin to approach the integration of APASA. None are there yet, but they are getting closer to being an approximation of a learning community. I think these environments can be seen as Virtual Communal Spaces (VCS). The VCS is the meeting ground for the members of the course -- students and professor. It has the advantage of being asynchronous (time independent) and asyntopic (place independent). Members of the community can come to the VCS when they are ready, and from any "real" location so long as it has Internet access.
To put these ideas into focus, consider how a student in my Principles of Learning and Behavior class would use our VCS on a typical topic, Pavlovian conditioning. (If you would like to click along, go to our virtual companion, click on VCS demo, and follow along.) In advance of our first class meeting about Pavlovian conditioning, students come to the VCS, look at the schedule, and click on Pavlovian conditioning. This brings them to my web page, which begins with a fairly condensed exposition of the basics of Pavlovian conditioning. After they have read this basic material, they are presented with an active demonstration of Pavlovian conditioning. (They hear a particularly graphic recording of a dentist drilling a cavity.) The conference section of our VCS appears in an accompanying frame, and they are asked to describe their reaction to the demonstration, using the concepts they have just read. After they have posted, they can read what other students have written. This cycle of acquisition, personalization, application and synthesis continues until they have completed the unit. When they are done, they write a fairly deep piece about Pavlovian conditioning that is e-mailed to me as a graded assignment. This deeper piece is designed to promote further synthesis and abstraction. This process of APASA is fairly seamless -- one component flows easily and relatively transparently into the next. The experience has prepared us to come together ready to talk about Pavlovian conditioning. The students have had an active, multi-level learning experience that has given them a strong background in the subject, they will be motivated to talk about it because they have personalized the material, and I have a good sense of what they know because I was able to read what they posted, both on the conference and in their E-mailed assignment.
The (relatively) seamless integration of E-mail, electronic conferencing and web-based content allows for our structuring of our students' learning in ways that would have been difficult or impossible before. I can structure the right activity (reading, experiencing, writing) at the pedagogically appropriate time. Compare this new ability to structure to what I used to do in the past. I brought the recording of the dentist into class, played it, and we talked about it. Good, but wouldn't it have been better for students to experience it as they were trying to assimilate the concepts? A quarter century of teaching Conditioning and Learning has taught me where my students encounter information that, for various reasons, they struggle with, or, perhaps worse, don't struggle with when they should. By itself, no amount of reading about the subject will produce the deep learning I want. Students need to actively engage the material at these points. With a VCS, I can structure APASA so that my students experience the material in a pedagogically sound way, yet they still retain considerable control over their work. They can spend as much time as they need with any portion of the material, and they can work when they are ready.
The VCS is a powerful approach to teaching and learning because this seamless integration of e-mail, electronic conferencing and the worldwide web produces a coherent environment, the whole of which is greater than the sum of it's parts. For example, electronic conferencing, while having considerable pedagogical potential, has always been difficult to get students to use. Students must be reminded to go to it to use it; it just isn't a part of how most of us think about working. But when it is a relatively seamless part of their interaction with the material, its use is more natural and therefore more frequent.
The Virtual Communal Space allows my students to be part of a learning community in its most important sense--there are peers with whom they can discuss the important ideas of the course. The VCS is an effective pedagogical tool whether students meet face-to-face or not. When combined with the face-to-face interaction that can occur in the collaborative classroom, we have a powerful combination to maximize our students' learning.
In the next techped column, I'll provide a point-by-point comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of various VCSs that are currently available.
References
Angelo, T. Seven Shifts and Seven Levers: Developing More Productive Learning Communities. National Teaching and Learning Forum, 1996 (December), 6 (1).
Astin, A. What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited. Jossey-Bass, 1993.
Bystrom, V. Getting It Together: Learning Communities. in Campbell, W. and Smith, K. New Paradigms for College Teaching. Interaction Books, 1997.
Gabelnick, F. MacGregor, J, Matthews, R. and Smith, B. Learning Communities: Creating Connections Among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. Jossey-Bass, #41, 1990.