Types of Interaction

As an instructional designer for Web-based courses, I recommend the use of ADB as the best way to build interactivity into online courses, to replace the conversations that occur in the F2F classroom.

But the dynamics of this type of communication are different than in person. In order to identify ways to make this transition, it would be beneficial to examine how interactivity is defined in the asynchronous environment, and the different dynamics involved.

There are three types of interaction in distance learning:

learner to content interaction

learner to instructor

learner to learner (Moore & Kearsley, 1996)

Although learners can interact with the content through a variety of means online (text pages, video, audio, multimedia, graphics), learning can be limited if there is not an avenue provided for students to interact with the instructor and each other.

Asynchronous communication provides this avenue. M.D. Roblyer and L. Ekhami at the State University of West Georgia developed an Interaction Rubric that can be found at www.westga.edu/~distance/roblyer32.html that might be helpful in determining what types of interaction are used in a course and their level of interactivity.

Using a scale of 0 (no interactivity) to 5 (high interactivity) they put their findings into four categories:

Social

Instructional Design

Technology

Impact of Interaction on Learners

The measurements that apply to ADB are as follows:

Social - (High Interactivity) Instructor provides several planned or spontaneous opportunities for sharing ideas, opinions, and beliefs, in pairs or small groups.

Instructional Design - (High Interactivity) The course is designed to center around requirements for students to work together to analyze and/or solve problems in pairs or small groups and/or with outside experts; they must share results with the whole group.

Technology -(Minimum Activity) Students are required to use email, Listservs, and bulletin boards to do class assignments and communicate with the instructor and one another.*

Impact on Learners -Students usually or always initiate communications with the instructor, fellow students, and outside experts.

*Under technology, they list chat, electronic whiteboards, and two-way video-conferencing as technology that would give high interactivity to a course. These are synchronous forms of interaction (Roblyer & Ekhami, 2000).

The comments I received from my questionnaire seem to primarily fit into two of these categories: social (or interaction) and instructional design.