Extending educational communication: The experience of distance learning via a distributive environment for collaboration and learning.

The exploration of new educational communication structures which make use of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) environments to support local and distance education and to allow the dispersion of learning outside of conventional contexts presents the educational community with both opportunities and dangers. The movement toward these new structures may not represent a simple switch of mechanisms but instead may represent profound change in the nature of the educational experience and the demands placed on students, instructors, and institutions. This research explores the experience of a pilot implementation of a CMC course structure called the Distributive Environment for Collaboration and Learning (DECAL). DECAL combines synchronous face-to-face classroom interaction (either conventional or technology-mediated) with asynchronous Web-based interaction and resources. In DECAL's mixed-mode, synchronous/asynchronous communication model each structure supports increased interaction in the other and applies to local as well as distance educational contexts. The DECAL pilot was studied qualitatively using a modified ethnographic evaluation methodology based on interviews, thematic analysis, and case-study style reporting. It implemented an eight-week executive education style business course taught entirely at a distance by university faculty to executives in a global corporation located in another country. The results of the pilot were unexpected and dramatic and forced the focus of the research away from the DECAL model and towards issues of cross-institutional partnership in education, integration of CMC-based education into the work environment, the personal and organizational complexities of CMC-based education, and the effects of computer mediated communication on control, authority roles, and community formation in an educational context. The learnings of the research were extremely rich and highlight the danger of assumptions in the design, development, and deployment of cross-institutional CMC-based distance education. In one sense CMC-based education is different from conventional education and needs to be approached as a new context, not as a simple change in mechanism. But in another sense the issues highlighted here are the same issues conventional education has struggled with for centuries; communication, interaction and cohort formation, productive control and authority relationships, and responsibility for learning. The results of this research support further development and testing of the DECAL model.PhDCultural anthropologyEducationEducational technologySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130899/2/9825166.pd