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How Can Online Pedagogy be
Better Than Face-to-face?
constructivism, collaboration, community

This question will be addressed in an online research workshop (ORW) that begins March 2 and continues through March 11, 2005.

Each summer the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation conducts an invitational, face-to-face summer research workshop (SRW) for researchers and practitioners to collaborate on issues of importance to higher education. Workshop participants write papers for an annual volume in the Sloan-C series on quality online education. Then, the SRW writers lead annual online research workshops (ORW) to collaborate with larger audiences, engaging more people in building knowledge about emerging best practices.

ORW participants will receive audio presentations and early release copies of papers to be published in the 2005 volume, Elements of Quality Online Education: Engaging Communities. In addition, participants will be able to collaborate with each other and with experts synchronously and asynchronously to answer the challenge: “How can online pedagogy be better than face-to-face?”

Generally, answers to this challenge center on greater opportunities for improving the quality, scale and breadth of learning via constructivism, collaboration and community. Gary Miller of The Pennsylvania State University has pointed out that the “The pedagogy inherent in ALN—inquiry-oriented, resource-based learning—is a natural pedagogy for the world in which we live” [1]. Because of ALN’s freedom from time and place constraints, its opportunities for reflective thinking and its reach and connectivity, online education can engage faculty and students in new interactions with content, with each other, and with the world outside the classroom.

The four papers that serve as common background for the workshop challenge give perspectives on constructivism, community and collaboration.

In “Engagement and Learning Communities,” Albert Ingram of Kent State University calls for common understanding of the terms, engagement and learning communities. He proposes that true collaboration is a fundamental part of building community and defines engagement as “the confluence of three important concepts: attention, effective cognitive processes, and a social context.” In “A Constructivist Model for Thinking About Learning Online,” Karen Swan of Kent State University’s Research Center for Educational Technology provides a primer of constructivist learning theory and its “implications for designing online learning environments that are learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered.” Giving an example of this kind of learning environment, Jim Theroux and Clare Kilbane of the University of Massachusetts explain how four universities cooperatively engage students in “The Real-time Case Method,” using ALN and the internet for studying and advising an actual company. In “A Case Study in Blended Learning: Leveraging Technology in Entrepreneurship Education,” Barry Bisson of the University of New Brunswick and colleagues describe the engagement of faculty and students at three universities in a resource rich course in entrepreneurship that uses synchronous and asynchronous technologies in addition to face-to-face meetings at the campuses. In addition, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the learning networks effectiveness research center, will join the workshop as a guest panelist.

We hope you will join us in this online research workshop. For details and to register, please visit Sloan-C’s Online Events.

[1] Miller, Gary. Message to the Sloan-C listserv, August 1, 2004.

Blending… & Barriers
Why are schools adopting blended learning? What are the challenges of these programs? Sloan-C will soon be releasing a survey report addressing these questions to all Sloan-C Premium Members. For more information on how to become a Sloan-C Premium Member, please visit the Premium Member website.

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