immediate verbals! Now!

I haven’t really worked out what to think about this session, but not knowing what I am talking about has never held me back before, so here goes.

This session was run by a psychology teacher and an instructional designer (first name: Credence) from Tarleton State U in Texas and was about some research carried out on a totally online course in linguistic psychology. A main part of their thesis is that all students do not like the lack of a physical presence, based on a theory from communications studies called psychological closeness. Hardly anyone in the room thought this relevant to DL or online students as often they are on the course because they don’t have a choice.

First call out at the conference for Chickering and Gamson didn’t take long, and Credence proceeded to apply their 7 principles to online education, so far, so warmed up Gilly Salmonella. It made me realise how complex and interesting our emerging close distance pedagogy could be, if only we had some time to devote to it.

Verbal Immediacy (VI) is from psychology and there are cues you don’t get online, such as initiating discussions, asking questions (first step to starting discussions), using humour, using self disclosure (introduce yourself) , addressing students by name, using inclusive pronouns (we will be working together), responding quickly and frequently, praising others, conveying attentiveness and engagement. Things then got a bit weird.

Credence and her chum described a study based on a WebCT course with 28 participants. They split the students into two groups, a VI verbally immediate group and a normal group. The VI course was manipulated to include VI cues – eg bits of biography and humour. The other one was “normal”. Very methodologically and ethically suspect. One course has courier font, and one has emoticons, guess which? One has photos and colour, and one has none – get the picture?

Then they measured the achievement of the two groups by comparing the MCQ exam results – and there was no significant difference. If you don’t know the resonance of the phrase “no significant difference” by now, maybe you ought to stop talking like a pirate and read up on it. Getting a bit grumpy there, sorry, Credence stretching my credibility.

Then just to annoy me even more, they had “measured interactivity” by analysing the WebCT student tracking information, total number of hits etc

Again, there was no significanct difference – though the normal people looked at more documents, as they weren’t getting the guidance from the teacher, there was no psychological closeness.

Conclusions, VI cues did not influence student achievement, use of materials or number of discussion posts, normal looked at more docs

Credence’s chum had studied at the University of Phoenix online and told us that students were grouped by time zone (weird concept of online learning) and had a requirement to be active at weekends.

I take it back about the international talk like a pirate day, we have been discussing initiating an international talk like jimmy saville day though.