DEVELOPING A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY OF TEACHERS: THE EFFECTS OF LIVE CONTACT AND ON-LINE CONVERSATIONAL DYNAMICS

Eric Hsu

Erichsu@math.utexas.edu

University of Texas-Austin

I was invited by an educational non-profit organization based in the southwestern United States to investigate and assess a distance-learning course they ran in spring 2000. The students were algebra teachers from various sites in Texas, who had regular, asynchronous class discussions over the Internet supplemented by two videoconferences. The subject matter was “contextual learning,” a constructivist theory of learning based on modeling and applications.

I was given access to all public and private electronic messages. I surveyed the students electronically, and I performed hour-long interviews with ten students at course end with follow-up interviews planned for six and twelve months later. After the follow-up interviews, I intend to study longer-term effects of the course on their teaching, use of technology and continuing relationships with former classmates.

Preliminary results show that live interactions have a profound effect on student dedication, on-line interactions and on recall and perceptions of the class discussions. Students with live interactions with fellow students stayed in the course despite enormous personal obstacles, whereas all isolated students dropped out of the course. All students who completed the course had a live partner. Students had nearly no recall of the ideas and postings of their fellow students unless they discussed their postings live with their partner. Even then, they remembered other students in unsubtle stereotypes. All partnered students credited the course with increasing the closeness of their relationship with their live partner, usually dramatically. We also note other factors influencing the dynamics of the virtual community, including class organization, the effectiveness of the moderators, and real-life political factors local to the students.