Affordances and Minimizing Constraints of the Tool
Researchers studied the use of a suite of synchronous communication tools in support of a Web-based, senior high school French course whose students were dispersed over the vast, sparsely populated prov-ince of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The objective was to de-scribe interaction according t...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.514.4588 http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emurphy/ajdeemurphy.pdf |
| Summary: | Researchers studied the use of a suite of synchronous communication tools in support of a Web-based, senior high school French course whose students were dispersed over the vast, sparsely populated prov-ince of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The objective was to de-scribe interaction according to four types: student-teacher, student-student, student-content, and student/teacher-tools. The interactions were considered in relation to the tools ' affordances and constraints. The study revealed that teachers ' decisions related to the choice of pedagogical activities and the assignment of privileges play an impor-tant role in effective use of the tools. Foreign-language instruction poses challenges in Web-based learning because of a lack of two-way interaction (Bruce and Shade, 1994; Clif-ford 1990) and limited opportunities for oral communication. Limita-tions can be overcome partially by providing students with oral practice and feedback and by using instructional strategies that encourage fre-quent student-student and teacher-student dialogue. Such interaction can be supported through reliance on synchronous communication tools. In this article we report on the simultaneous, combined use of a suite of synchronous communication tools in support of a Web-based senior high school French course. The course is designed to be delivered with 60 % synchronous communication supported by vClassTM and an asyn-chronous component supported by WebCTTM. The specific objective was to describe the types of interaction, taking into account the affor-dances and constraints of the tools. |
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