One Question Interview To Professor Terry Anderson

Processos Pedagógicos em Elearning

Unit 1: Act 4 - One Question Interview 

One Question Interview  To Professor Terry Anderson 

Terry's Blog: Virtual Canuck


(One question by António Pedro Pereira e Manuel Pimentel)

Question: Most e-learning courses have an opening and ending date, equal to all students. Therefore, can we effectively talk about freedom of pace and time in that situation?
 

Answer: Athabasca University, unlike most Open universities offers continuous enrolment. We find this maximizes student freedom, but also results in lower completion rates than we would like. Sometimes students can not handle the freedom afforded by self pacing- especially since they have so little practice at lower educational levels. So it is question of freedom to choose - more or less freedom and only individual students can answer this. I like options and alternatives.

 

(One question by Ana Maria Marmeleira and Paula Silva)

Question: According to Paulsen’s Cooperative Freedom Theory, there’s a balance between cooperation and freedom. However, having work group activities isn’t a limitation of individual learning pace? How you do personally, or the institutions you are familiar with, deal with the pedagogical challenge of providing online education that combines individual freedom with meaningful cooperation?

Answer: I am struggling to convince our University that self pacing does not necessarily mean independent study. I think we should and can offer opportunities for cooperation, but this is challenging with self pacing. However I think new social software and web 2.0 tools make this more possible. We are trying to build optional activities and allow students to see and contribute artifacts of learning to ongoing user generated resources such as links, wikis, blog posts etc .

(One question by Margarida Marmeleira)

Question: In an article of yours, you talk about a seven dimension of freedom – the freedom of relationship. Do you think that the fact that some e-learning courses demand for their students to work in group is a limitation for the students freedom?

Answer: Again it is a limitation, but some people need and want the freedom to create learning relationships with others- we are social beings, so I don't like systems that are so hung up on freedom, that they do not allow cooperation and learning relationships to be formed.

I see three generations of Distance education pedagogy. The first based on behavioral/cognitive designs and focused on independent learning and delivered by books and one way mass media. The second based on constructivism with paced online learning groups using both synchronous and asynchronous technologies. And an emerging 3rd generation based on networks and connectivist designs. These allow, but do not require that relationships be formed with current and past students studying the same materials. You might want to read works by Jon Dron and myself on the difference between second generation groups and 3rd generation networks.