Two-Way Transactions: Between Teacher and StudentsIn any teaching context, but particularly in distance education, teachers must be sure that their communications are registering with students. Two-way transactions function at this level, enabling the teacher to assess the general level of attention and participation in the conversation and students' levels of engagement with and understanding of important concepts, both conceptual and procedural. Major two-way transactions include
- Eliciting student responses and answering questions
- Re-expressing principles through dialogue, clarification, and example
- Supporting multiple attempts to build meaning
Eliciting responses is especially valuable for both propagation of the immediate conversation and guiding students' learning within the project or assignment. They are frequently elicited by the teacher, or students can initiate questions with the expectation of receiving guidance quickly.
In the February 20 conference, students were trying to pick out persuasive claims and I directly probed them when they seemed to miss the mark. Sometimes they got off the topic and had to be encouraged to return (jess) and at other times they seemed to be wandering but in fact were not (Sue). With a quick and careful question that avoids a patronizing or impatient tone, I found I could usually guide students back into the flow of the conversation.
Direct questions frequently appear, and they may be sudden teaching opportunities. At one point, Sue aimed a direct question at me that was an opening to highlight a concept relevant to the lesson. Other questions may be best ignored, however, if they would shift focus away from main concepts onto minor details.
Frequently, students' responses to questions need to be followed up because they have revealed misunderstanding of a concept or example. On March 20, Jessica was trying to identify a supporting reason for the writer's claim in the article "Aiming a Cannon at a Mosquito" (Mona Charen, in Elbow and Belanoff 328). But not yet understanding the claim well (that the Americans with Disabilities Act was too broad and anti-competitive), she offered a minor point as a major supporting reason. I then clarified the point by using the same example but including the whole context.
This re-expressing and clarifying of principles is an important teacher-student transaction in teaching generally, and especially necessary with distance students who cannot engage in normal face-to-face dialogue. In another instance, the principle involved how to understand an assignment task. In preparing for the persuasion project, Angie told about her topic on the use of Ritalin to treat Attention-Deficit Disorder, and how she was basing her approach on her experience with her children, who had been diagnosed with ADD. Melissa objected that such a basis was not strong enough to convince readers, but I explained that the persuasion in this case was not required to be rigorous; that would come with more formal argumentation.
Supporting multiple attempts to build meaning occurs when teachers try to guide students through unfamiliar texts in order to help writers build meaning useful to them and their composing projects. In the "great person-Hole Cover Debate" discussion of February 20, as I was attempting to get students to come to grips with what I saw as the major persuasive elements in the reading, I had to engage repeatedly in questioning and probing along lines of meaning; fortunately, there were several apt students on-line and the process went fairly smoothly. A similar dynamic could be seen in the March 20 conference, when I aided two students in identifying emerging argumentative themes in the "Aiming a Cannon at a Mosquito" example text.