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Student /content (or learner/content)
“In dialogue, two or more people exchange ideas and beliefs… Dialogue therefore becomes an essential feature of their [students] making meaning and constructing knowledge… Similarly, learning from text involves a dialogical approach when learners attempt to explore the meaning the author is trying to convey” (Taylor, Marienau and Fiddler, 2000).
Student content interaction has always been an important aspect of formal education, be it in the form of library study or the reading of textbooks (Anderson, 2004, online). Learnercontent interaction therefore happens when a learner interacts with inanimate learning resources (Kesley and D’souza, 2004, online), but for effective learning to take place from this interaction, it must be more than merely reading the text itself. Hounsell (1984 as quoted by Taylor, Marienau and Fiddler),
observed the following with regard to learning from a text. “In a surface approach, what was to be leaned was interpreted as the text itself. In a deep approach, the text was seen as the means through which to grapple with the meaning which underlay it.” Ally (2004, online) takes learner/content interaction further by stating that interaction should also take place between the learner and the context (own emphasis), which allows learners to apply that which they have learnt to real life situations. Authentic learning then takes place, which enables students to link knowledge and skills to their own lives (Van der Westhuizen, Gravitt, & Geyser 2004, p. 171).
Student/student (or learner/learner)
According to Damon (1984, online), peer collaboration is useful for “facilitating intellection discovery and the acquisition of basic knowledge”, as well as for “complementing adult teaching”. “Sociocognitive theories of learning maintain that all learning is social in nature and that knowledge is constructed through social interactions” (Swan 2004, online). The third type of interaction refers to that between peers, where dialogue takes place within the student/learner body. Within this interaction, the communicating partners try to establish what has been said so as “…to reach common ground…. It is important that the members share their knowledge…” (Schweizer, Paechter and Weidenmann, 2003, p. 213).
Anderson (2004, online) goes further by stating that “The traditional lecture mode of delivery has medium levels of studentteacher interaction, usually low levels of student interaction and medium to low levels of studentcontent interaction.”
The applicability of this statement in the large classroom, where student-teacher and student-student interaction is minimal or in many cases nonexistent, needs to be questioned. Factors such as noise level, audibility of students when making comments and lack of motivation to participate may, indeed, deliver a less satisfying educational experience if this were to be attempted. Interaction, as seen by the above, is essential for good learning to take place, but given the large number of students enrolled for some courses, this cannot happen effectively in the classroom.
The problem remains that students need to work together, in order to make meaning of the content, to foster a better understanding of the material and to learn how to work together in groups.
The French sociologist, Emile Durkheim’s concept of “collective representations” refers to the “…social power of ideas stemming from their development through the interaction of many minds” (Salmon, 2000, p. 28). Different methods of collective representations exist, of which, according to literature, cooperative and collaborative learning stand out as being the most effective.
Cooperative and collaborative learning
Traditionally, learning has been an individual activity. A learner was given a task, and it was up to the individual to find information, make sense of this information and reproduce it in some way. When grouplearning approaches are followed, learners participate in groupactivities, which could be small group assignments, where the group is evaluated; it could be collaborative work on casestudies or it could be participating in discussions (Van der Westhuizen, Gravitt, & Geyser, 2004, p. 173). A subset of active learning is cooperative learning. With cooperative learning, students work on exercises in small groups. The exercises may be brief (‘Think, Pair, Share’) or the students may be required to resolve a fairly complicated exercise. The common bond among the variants is that the students uncover knowledge through smallgroup interaction, rather than by passively listening to lectures (Marburger, 2005, online).
Within the linguistic framework, the two terms, cooperation and collaboration, are used interchangeably. Within the educational environment, there is a marked difference between the two types of learning. “Cooperative learning” and “collaborative learning” refer to learners working together in groups on tasks or issues, so that individual learning takes place through interaction in groups. Both terms referred to are not about competing with fellow members, but about “…using the diverse resources available in the groups to deepen understanding, sharpen judgement and extend knowledge” (McConnell, 1994, p. 13). Johnson, Johnson, Smith and Sheppard (2005, p. 93 – 94) give a very specific slant to cooperative learning, which distinguishes it from collaborative learning. They refer to collaborative tasks as having “elements of cooperative learning”, but the former involves “…joint work, social negotiation, peer evaluation and the sharing of responsibility in a group, optimising on complementarities and instilling collaborative skills”, whilst the latter refers to having “…a mutual goal, positive interdependence, joint accountability and individual responsibility.” The degree of structure in the group has also been used as a way to differentiate between the two concepts (Strijbos, Martens and Jochems, 2004, online). For the purposes of this study, the difference thus lies in the final result that is produced by the group; with collaborative tasks the group will hand in one final product, whilst with cooperative learning, each individual in the group will hand in his/her own product. Neither one of these is necessarily superior to the other in enhancing the learning process via group learning. What is true is that collaboration is a wellused and important form of social learning (Chan, 1995, p. 114).
CHAPTER 1
ORIENTATION TO THE STUDY
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Problem statement
1.3. Research questions
1.4. Purpose of the study
1.5. Objectives
1.6. The scope and context of the study
1.7. Exclusions from this study
1.8. Limitations of the study
1.9. Significance and potential contribution of the study
1.10. Research method
1.11. Research design
1.12. Data analysis
1.13. Literature control
1.14. Ethical considerations
1.15. Role of the researcher
1.16. Outline of the study
1.17. Summary
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE IN CONTEXT
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Teaching and learning within the HE environment
2.3 Problems relating to the facetoface classroom
2.4 What is elearning
2.5 How might teacher and student roles change
2.6 Previous studies
2.7 Conceptual framework
2.8 Conclusion
CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Conceptualisation
3.3 Research paradigm
3.4 Research Strategy
3.5 Instruments, Data collection methods and Fieldwork practices
3.6 Sample design and sampling methods
3.7 Data capturing and data editing
3.8 Shortcomings and sources of error
3.9 Conclusion
CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Interaction with the lecturer or the representative of the lecturer
4.3 Interaction with one another (peer interaction
4.4 Interaction with the study material/content
4.5 Negative aspects of using the LMS
4.6 Summary
CHAPTER 5
REFLECTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Research question
5.3 Sub Questions
5.4 Answers to the subquestions
5.5 Reflection
5.6 Recommendations
5.7 Conclusion
BIBLIOGRAPHY
