Greg Beatty writes:Yow. That's a huge question. I'm still not sold on the idea that these spaces should all be collaborative learning spaces (that's another theory that seems ahead of the reality), but if they should, I would start with training teachers in collaboration in the traditional classroom--planning group projects, project centered learning, and so on.
Now, as far as how to help instructors transform classrooms into student learning communities, I'd suggest three things that I'd like to see take place before training, and a fourth enabling condition. The three things are: experience, models, and guidance in question/assignment design.
Experience--teachers need a chance to go in and tumble around in these new environments, to play with them, and to see what works and what doesn't. Many teachers who enter the online classroom for the first time in the unenviable position of trying to teach students who have spent more time with the medium than they have. Some guided experience would go a long way towards correcting that situation. It would also go a long ways towards helping teachers negotiate the change in how authority is figured in the
virtual classroom, if we are assuming a collaborative model. Rather than simply attempting to step out of the way of their students and motioning them forward with a cry of, "Okay, collaborate! It's the natural way to interact here!" instructors would know on a more visceral level what form authority should take in the midst of collaboration.Models--I'd like to see lots of model classes, projects, and assignments integrating the web/the Internet/CBT/Computer classrooms available. Someone could provide a great resource by cataloging online successes and/or especially useful failures. (I've had some of those.)
Guidance--some classes work because of instructor ethos, or because instructors pour thrice the appropriate time into them, or because the students have no choice but to make them work. Some use more appropriate forms of question or assignment design to put students in dialogue with each other.
The enabling condition is space, which in teaching is produced by some combination of time and money. Some things don't change much.