Learner control and user-interface interactions in CMC courses

grantor: University of TorontoThis was a qualitative study that explored the concept of learner control in computer-mediated communications (CMC) settings, as well as the importance of the user-interface for learner control. The purpose of this study was to see how the user-interface, and the way teachers have fashioned the user-interface, interacts with the teacher's interventions, the course content, and the student's learning process to further or hold back a perceived sense of learner control in CMC courses. Garrison and Baynton's distance learning (DL) framework was the theoretical basis for this exploration, and structured the discussion around three aspects for achieving learner control--the learner, support and freedom. Interaction within the framework is between the content, the teacher and students, but a fourth mode of interaction--user-interface interactions--was proposed as an addition to the DL framework. Six teachers were interviewed, and their students were invited to complete a learner control questionnaire. Instructional materials were also analyzed to support the teachers' perceptions. The teachers in this study all described themselves as facilitators of learning, and always had a rationale for giving or not giving learners a control option. Learner control was a central theme for both teachers and students, and the user-interface was found a factor in the students' capacity to take control of their own learning. The addition of user-interface interactions to the DL framework is recommended based on my findings. Students responding to the learner control questionnaire had less confidence in the freedom aspect of the DL triad than the other two aspects. This finding is consistent with another researcher's results. A theoretical proposition based on the results of this investigation is that teachers who see themselves as facilitators of student learning demonstrate their conviction to that philosophy by being able to account for their learner control decisions. Helping learners take control of their own learning was seen as a goal, and there was a trend toward increasing learner control over time. However, the teachers described the need for balance in giving learners control options, and their reasons were aligned with the freedom, support and learner aspects of the DL framework.Ph.D