Affordances and Minimizing Constraints of the Tool

• Main Authors: A Web-based Senior High, Elizabeth Murphy, George Coffin
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.514.4588; http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emurphy/ajdeemurphy.pdf

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.