The eClassroom used as a Teacher's Training Laboratory to Measure the Impact of Group Facilitation on Attending, Participation, Interaction, and Involvement.

Abstract

<P class=abstract>This paper describes and quantifies the role of group facilitation in an experiential, real-time, online, university level credit course entitled eAHSC/230 Interpersonal Communications and Relations. A new and unique group interaction pattern called parallel communication, as well as classical elements of group interaction are described and quantified. New measures of online group facilitation attributes with analogous face-to-face (F2F) counterparts are presented. Specifically, the impact of effective group facilitation on Attentiveness, on Interaction, on Involvement, and on Participation is explored. The paper also examines the eClassrom’s potential effectiveness as a real time teaching and training laboratory which also functions as a process observation tool that collects and feeds back interaction data, providing teachers and trainers immediate and ongoing measures of facilitation effectiveness.</P>

IRRODL Volume 6, Number 2

“…These implications are fundamental to teaching and training settings that depend on collaborative learning, no matter where it occurs. In the online class, evidence of 100 percent participation and interaction among all participants attests to this group dynamic, one which can be measured and recorded, and which supported in findings from previous studies (Lobel, Neubauer, and Swedburg, 2002b). As any teacher knows, many participants in their F2F classes may remain silent -but look at the recorded dialog of the online synchronous class, you will see an abundance of dialog.…”

“…Who are the over/ under participators? Some of the socio-metric instruments used to make sense of the data collected for this study were: Participation Pattern Diagram (Lobel, et al, 2002b) based on the Interaction Diagram (Dimock, 1985), the GUIDATA© (Lobel et al, 2002b), the Hubs of Influence Diagram (Lobel et al, 2002b), the spoken length of written words, and the elapsed time of a participant's F2F statement.…”

“…The center of the diagram is defined as the hub of authority (Lobel et al, 2002b), and represents the participants to whom most of the statements were directed. The farther the participant's name is from the center of the diagram, the fewer statements that particular participant directed toward the center hub of authority.…”

“…This can be compared with the LBD eClassroom©, which has been designed to record and gather data on how students are "attending." As such, it is possible to extrapolate the level participant's' behavior beyond that of than simply posting a comment (Lobel, Neubauer, and Swedburg, 2002b).…”

Investigating teacher presence in courses using synchronous videoconferencing

“…one of my students had an operation last week and I can't ask them about it on the screen because it is not a public kind of thing. Lobel, Neubauer, and swedburg (2002) have proposed the concept of a privacy zone in learning as the subjective experience of personal safety, the extent and reliability of which will improve an individual learning experience. The data show that this privacy zone could apply to the videoconference context as well.…”