Class Discussion in A MOO

Certainly, we've all realized that discussion work in classes is a sound technique, one of the many ways we can get students actively engaged with the material. The MOO environment extends this approach even further--students not only have the chance to engage with one another but they can engage with students across the country as well. Or even across the world. Our students at West Texas A & M tend to come from a fairly small geographic area that extends from western Oklahoma to the northern Panhandle of Texas to the southeastern portion of Colorado. While there is some degree of diversity, it is quite limited. The opportunity for students to engage with others whose backgrounds are highly divergent from their own is something that can never be achieved in a traditional classroom. If for no other reason, MOOs are thus highly valuable educational spaces.

But while classroom discussion is one of those pedagogical strategies we never want to let go of, these discussions are perforce ephemeral, and as beneficial as they are for generating ideas and insights, they lose much of their potential value as a result. Much as I hate to admit, I suspect many of my students immediately forget most of the class discussions when they walk out the door. In MOOs, however, there is the ability to record or "log" the interactions for later reflection. After a class, students can e-mail themselves the class log or return later to the MOO to examine it more closely. I've found that students quickly appreciate this capability. They love the fact that they don't have to take notes in class. Given the speed at which MOO interactions take place, note-taking is impossible anyway. Yet by logging the session, students have access to everything that takes place in a given class and can then use higher-order critical thinking skills to organize and synthesize the material.

In addition, students can not only examine the content of a given session--the ideas expressed--but the expression of that content as well. Moreover, students can examine issues of the social construction of knowledge, can examine when consensus takes place, how it takes place, if in fact it ever does take place. Most important, with the lack of a strong, intervening teacher voice, students can examine whose views prevail--and why.

MOOs thus provide opportunities for students to expand their critical thinking and communication skills beyond what is possible in traditional classrooms by providing forums wherein students can reflect upon how situation and audience determine the ethos they choose to create. Although most directly connected with foreign language skill acquisition, Mark Warshauer has dealt with this aspect of collaborative learning in text-based environments in his article, Computer-Mediated Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice." In a section titled "Synchronous Discussion in the Composition Classroom," Warshauer cites DiMatteo's findings that

In the absence of a stable text and the authority based upon a reading of such text, my students confront a writing situation that privileges their own speech. They create intensely visible language out of what they consider to be forgettable, facile words--their own talk and conversation. They develop a sense that when they talk, they are drafting' themselves, composing their own identities through a speech that is also a writing made utterly tangible. Such a novel and important learning experience conflicts with their traditional assumption that learning is the ability to comment on and recall the teacher's words (76-77).
More dialogue Commentary on collaboration Conclusion Home

jane@wtamu.edu