A Collaborative Online Learning Design - Essay Example

A Collaborative Online Learning Design Introduction Many articles have been written about collaborative online learning.One of the most commonly mentioned merit is the development of critical thinking. In addition, problem solving skills as well as skills of self-reflection and co-construction of knowledge and meaning also appears to be an advantage (Chiong, Jovanovic & Gill, 2012). Their aim is to facilitate learners to achieve more than it is possible when it is done individually (Posey & Lyons, 2011). Learners in collaborative online learning environments work together within a team or group to achieve higher levels of performance and retain information longer than would be possible for them when working individually. The idea of having collaborations done online is to allow learners to share knowledge, interact with their colleagues, and exchange thoughts through online portals (Geiss & Roman, 2013). Online learning incorporates collaborative learning, which is recognized as a greatly valued opportunity (Tsai, 2011). It not only of involves access to fellow students, but also there is the chance of working together, which makes the online learning more effective, when compared to the traditional face-to-face classroom setting Definition of Collaboration Generally, collaboration has become one of the essential skills necessary for effective functioning within the online community. It is necessary that we know how students learn and communicate and that we understand how the increasing functionality of technology is raising the bar of communication and collaboration (Sulisworo, 2012). Collaborative learning by definition refers to environments and methodologies in which learners engage in a common and authentic task wherein each peer depends on and is accountable to the others (Tsai, 2011). Bouroumi and Fajr (2014) have defined collaboration and cooperation in the light of the strategies used by teachers in making it possible for interactions among the students while working together in order to be more efficient. Cullen, Kullman & Wild (2013) explained that the practice of collaboration involves the attempt to have learning together or otherwise where two or more individuals gather for learning purposes. Some theoretical perspectives including cognition, social cohesion, and motivation should support the process. Collaborative learning has been defined as a pedagogy in which learners come together in groups and learn from each other through cooperation. Each student takes responsibility for the learning of other students in the group as well as his or her own learning, and each helps the others to be successful. The success of online collaborative learning initiatives may rely on the instructor’s ability to use new media tools to develop and enhance students’ ability to learn (Westbrook, 2012). Theoretically, activities that encourage collaborative learning make a very important component in the dynamic learning paradigm (Capdeferro & Romero, 2012). The collection of knowledge and individual thoughts allows the community to drive the discussions among learners and experts, a process that occurs in the context of the overlapping relationships among cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence (Geiss & Roman, 2013). On the other hand, collaboration presents significant challenges related to issues such as participation equity, team building, student assessment, travel difficulties, and personal schedules. In addition, other issues include student apathy and hostility toward group work, difficulties with group selection, lack of essential group-work skills, the free rider mentality, possible inequalities in student abilities, appropriate assessment of individuals within a group, effective facilitation of critical discourse, and the logistical challenges associated with separation of time and place. As such, in online learning courses, challenges that are faced or are perceived influences the choice of an instructor in adopting an online strategy. (Posey & Lyons, 2011). In this paper, we aim to study how a collaborative online learning community can be successfully designed. The challenges associated with collaborative online learning will be addressed. The main question to be asked is; What are the important difficulties regarding interpersonal issues that affect the way all group members perform their roles? Personal Theory To increase students’ perceived confidence about their ability to engage in social interaction tasks, and to support learners’ involvement in social relationships with others by initiating interactions with peers or group members, we suggest that a personal theory of collaboration learning design begin in the first phase with social cognitive development as a foundation. In this case, students are taught skills and strategies that help them manage cognitive aspects of learning. They also get to learn motivation strategies, which they can use to motivate themselves in the course of their academic engagements in order to overcome prevailing challenges. The second phase is when the learners become autonomous and support themselves as they engage in tasks and activities with other learners; in this phase, constructivism theory and community of inquiry (CoI) framework are relevant to the learner’s development. Social cognitive theory Bandura, working in social cognitive theory, has conducted an experiment to prove how social influences, including the media, have adverse effects on people, and especially children (Bandura, 2001). People continually learn and construct meaning throughout their whole life through communications within their community and now through the Internet. Learning continually occurs through social interactions and influences from the community, media, and the internet. People determine how these influences will affect them based on their inner thoughts. Bandura indicated that in the social cognitive theory, a model of triadic reciprocity can be used to describe how human beings function socially. Through this model, he proposes that there occurs an interaction of environmental factors, behavior, and cognitive aspects interact with one another. In order to define the human nature Bandura’s perspective is essential. It helps in understanding the human nature based on the number of their basic capabilities. These include self-regulation, symbolizing, vicarious learning, and forethought (Bandura, 2001). Social cognitive theory provides a conceptual framework in which communication systems are seen to operate through two pathways. The indirect and the direct one; the direct pathway are geared towards facilitating a change through providing information, motivation, guidance, and enablement to the participants. When it comes to the pathways that have a social mediation, guidance that is customized to individuals is provided. In addition, they get to earn incentives from the social networks as well as the community based settings. An analysis of the penetration of a new social aspect is provided by the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2009). Environmental forces exert external influence on human behavior through external stimuli and reinforcements. Bandura, in his theory social cognitive theory, recognizes that in reality, the three aspects that interact in this process, internal personal characteristics, external forces, and cognitive behavior, are difficult to separate because they all work together; finding distinctions among these forces is necessary. Personal traits are viewed as changeable and not fixed. On the other hand, the traits of a person are highly influenced by the way a person behaves as well as their environment (Bandura, 2001). In the online communities, the engagements by students in developing communities based on gaming online demonstrates that the social cognitive theory is highly applicable. Bandura’s (2009) study shows that the influences of both affective commitment and social norms on community loyalty behavior are significant, whereas the influences of both exchange ideology and social support on community loyalty behavior are insignificant. Figure 1: Schematization of triadic reciprocal causation in the causal model of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2009) Each one in turn becomes an input and influences the other two, changing the situation to which the others, in turn, react. The three influences interact in ways that make the isolation of any one behavioral influencer impractical in any real way. Social cognitive theory has identified five capabilities that can mediate internal and external stimuli: generative symbolization, forethought, evaluative self-regulation, reflective self-consciousness, and symbolic communication (Bandura, 2001). These human capabilities are considered to be important in online learning environments, and may be especially important when applied to writing in online learning. These capabilities can be used as examples of human capabilities in discussions of online learning or in discussing the personal influences that affect how humans react to learning situations. Moreover, social cognitive theory highlights human capabilities both to use symbols and to learn vicariously. Two human capabilities that are especially very important in online learning situations are the ability of humans to use symbols and to learn which symbolic communication influences human thought, affect, and action. Online learning can be understood as an example of using symbols to communicate and connect. Bandura indicated that through the medium of symbols in text, learners and instructors could communicate and interact well online irrespective of the variation in time and space (Bandura, 2001). West, Rosser, Monani, and Gurak (2006) studied social cognitive theory as the background of their study; they applied social cognitive theory to an online professional and technical writing course. Their focus was the study habits and learning styles of online students compared to those of students in a traditional offering of the same course. They found that personal characteristics, behavior (for the case of students, study habits), and environment aspects such as face-to-face and classroom influence learning in various ways. According to the reciprocal determinism, it has been argued by Bandura that all other two positively affect each characteristic. He suggested that once a university offers an online option for a class, it should not be surprising that online and face-to-face courses may attract different types of students, and students may behave differently in online and offline courses. Therefore, it means that the capacity to either flop or perform well in classwork is a factor of the behavior, environment, the relationships, and abilities of an individual student. (West, Rosser, Monani & Gurak, 2006). Online learning emphasizes human interactions in learning and teaching processes, which include interactions between learners among themselves as well as interactions between learners and instructors (Cho & Jonassen, 2009). In online learning, learners as active agents are expected to create social relationships with peers and instructors, participate in group discussions, and initiate interactions in learning processes such as asking questions, posting messages, providing help, or seeking help (Hill et al., 2004). When learners engage in human interactions, their internal self-regulated learning SRL factors, work together with the human interaction (Cho & Jonassen, 2009). These results to production of unique online self-regulated learning, which includes the following; interactions between affect/motivation and human interactions, interactions between meta-cognition and human interactions, and interactions between cognition and human interactions as explained by Bandura’s (2001) self-efficacy theory. Learners with high self-efficacy for human interactions would participate more actively in online interactions such as seeking or providing help, asking questions, sharing information and emotions, and becoming involved in online discussions (Cho & Jonassen, 2009). Further, self-efficacy for contributing to the online community was correlated with the writing, responding, and reflection strategies. Moreover, the more self-efficacy students have for contributing to the online community, the more likely they are to use the interaction strategies. Chieh-Peng (2010) has found that students’ participation in communities of online games reveals the applicability of social cognitive theory (SCT) in virtual communities. This study shows that the influences of both affective commitment and social norms on community loyalty behavior are significant, whereas the influences of both exchange ideology and social support on community loyalty behavior are insignificant. In conclusion, in order to enhance a student’s perceived confidence about their ability to engage in social interaction tasks and to create social relationships with others by initiating interactions such as asking for or providing help, we suggest that the collaborative learning begin with social cognitive development. This should form the foundation in which students learn to be motivated in their pursuance of academics whenever things are good or bad. Also, it is important that students’ perceived self-efficacy be evaluated at the start of online courses, and the results should be used to determine which strategies should be modeled to most effectively help students mediate the identified short coming. Further, online instructors must still address students’ need for time management and motivation. Social cognitive theory helps us to focus on human capabilities in order to conceptualize aspects of online courses such as discussion boards as learning experiences that take advantage of our best human characteristics. Social cognitive theory can also be used to help us explain how connections and interaction between teachers and students might flourish in the beginning stages of online learning environments. Constructivism Theory Constructivism theory has been described as a learning process in which the learner works to construct new knowledge through active involvement. According to this theory, when a student is able to get help from their peers, they have a higher chance of performing very well so that they are able to do better than when they were alone. Social constructivism has indicated that learning takes place efficiently when there is an exchange of knowledge between the students, this is facilitated by the extent to which a student collaborates and cooperates with others. (Sthapornnanon et al., 2009). The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model is one of the well-researched frameworks since it attempts to provide an explanation on the different approaches to the aspect of online learning in COI (Kuo, et al., 2014). This framework is made up of three broad aspects that are intertwined; these are teaching presence, cognitive, and social aspects. Social presence describes the relationships and social climate in a learning community, cognitive presence covers the learning phases from the initial practical inquiry to the eventual problem resolution, and teaching presence explains the instructional role during social learning. The collection of knowledge and individual thoughts allows the community to drive the discussions among learners and experts in a process made possible by the overlapping relationships among cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence (Geiss & Roman, 2013). There appears to be incoherence between the three types of presence and interaction types as noted by swan (2003). Her findings indicated that the interactions between learners was the closely equated when compared to social presence. On the other hand, the interaction between the learner and the content as well as that between the learner and the instructor provides the best teaching presence. Student–centered learning (SCL) is rooted in the constructivist theory; in this scenario, the students are the ones that develop the content under the facilitation of the instructor. Student-centered learning online The web-based online learning environment can be defined as a space designed for educational interaction, in which students are active in constructing the virtual space (Dillenbourg, Schneider & Synteta, 2002). The learner-centered approach, or “constructivism,” focuses on the development of real-life skills, which includes developing problem-solving skills, collaboration, higher thinking, and the organization of complex information (Smart, Witt, & Scott, 2012). Students have the central role in online learning, and the notion of a learning activity relates to students’ action in contributing to and participating in the construction of this information space. The key values that a student–centered learning environment should comprise include: 1. The centrality of the learner in defining meaning as an active, autonomous learner 2. The importance of situated thinking and authentic contexts as part of authentic learning 3. The importance of prior learner experience in meaning construction as an aspect of learner relevance 4. Interpretation and negotiation of learner beliefs and multiple perspectives through student-student peer interaction or instructor-student interaction. 5. The use of technology to scaffold learning, which implies a demand for computer technology competence on the part of learners (KE, 2013). The learner–centered learning approach involves five key changes to performance–centered teaching practice, which are: I- Shifting the balance of power from teachers to students II- Seeing the function of content as a means of facilitating change in how learners think and understand III- Helping students develop into responsible, life-long learners IV- Providing evaluation and assessment that emphasize process and promote learning V- De-centralizing the role of the teacher (Greenberg, et al., 2009). The learner-centered model aims to create a teaching situation that includes the following aspects: Learners will take part in the setting of goals and objectives There is concern about learners’ needs, which include goals, feelings, and values There is concern about learners’ prior knowledge There is concern about learning styles and preferences Learners are active more than passive Learners take responsibility for their own learning Learners become active in shaping learning as participants in how they construct knowledge (Shehadeh, 2012). The Learner’s Role: Learner should have an understanding of the instructor’s role as a facilitator or a guide. In order to ensure that the learning environment is conducive, there should be an equal participation by both the learner as well as the instructor. In addition, learners need to be self-regulated or in the process of learning how to become self-regulated learners. Self-regulated learners use opportunities to make decisions about several aspects of their own learning. They make decisions in the goal setting, planning, monitoring, and assessment phases of the learning process. Self-regulated learners have a good understanding of how they should learn. In addition, they spend time reflecting on what they have learnt as well as the initiation of learning while managing their time well (Vonderwell, 2004). Ally (2004) indicated that there are key components of learner experience that should be considered in the designing of online learning materials. Learner preparation: In some cases, the learner needs to prepare for the lesson to get the details connected and to become motivated through being informed of the importance of taking the lesson and being shown how this will benefit them. A concept map is a tool that can be used to establish the existing cognitive structure, and the summary can be used to incorporate the details of the online lesson necessary to promote higher level processing in order to closely achieve the goals of the lesson. Learner Interaction: The learners should be interactive by engaging in a variety of interaction modes through diverse activities. The learner needs to interact in some ways; he or she must interact with the interface to sense the information for transfer to the sensory store, and for processing into short-term memory. In addition, interaction with the content is necessary if learners are to acquire the information needed. Finally, the learner should be interacting with other learners, with the instructor, and with expert learners to create collaboration and participation. Learner Transfer: Learners need opportunities to be creative through transfer of what they learn to real life applications (Ally, 2004). Instructor’s Role: It is expected that the instructor will take on some roles which include making schedule adjustments as needed to manage circumstances, serve students as a guide to facilitate learning, interact more with students, respond to their inquiries, address difficult subject matter, and engage more in discussion (Baghdadi, 2011). Content: Designing and developing online course material requires collaboration of expert faculty, who are designers, administrators, teachers, and technical specialists. Students engage with a content-based online course by organization through following the guidance available and attempting to make materials relevant to their own contexts (Baghdadi, 2011). Interaction: There are three aspects of interaction in the collaborative learning context; learner-learner, learner-instructor, and learner-content. The framework of the community of inquiry (CoI) model involves interwoven relationships for effective online learning and presents the three elements of cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence (Shackelford & Maxwell, 2012). References Baghdadi, Z. D. (2011). Best practices in online education: Online instructors, courses, and administrators. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 12(3), 109-117. Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual review of psychology, 52(1), 1-26. Bandura, A. (2009). Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication. Media Psychology, 3(3), 265-299. Bouroumi, A., & Fajr, R. (2014). Collaborative and Cooperative E-learning in Higher Education in Morocco: A Case Study. International Journal Of Emerging Technologies In Learning, 9(1), 66-72. Capdeferro, N., & Romero, M. (2012). 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