Using the Network as an Educational Tool: A Case-Study of Education On-Line

This is a case-study of a graduate course conducted over IDEAnet, a network created by the Indiana Department of Education. This study looked at the people involved in this course during the Spring 1993 semester; using the five attributes suggested by Harasim (1990), this case-study also looked at how these five attributes shaped this course. The study found that there were many levels of interaction that occurred in this course. At the lowest level, there was the participative monologue where participants would give out their thoughts without “listening” to others on-line. There were also
instances of one-time dialogue, where an interaction occurred between two individuals once, and then stopped. At the highest level, there were instances of interactive communication where many individuals interact, discussing on a common topic. These three types of interaction were quite common on the conference space; these, however, do not promote collaborative learning. Participation is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for interaction; interaction is a necessary but not sufficient condition for collaboration. For collaboration to happen there must be a
shared and immediate goal between participations. This does not occur naturally on the conference space. Other instructional activities must be incorporated into the course to allow for collaboration to occur. In this online
course, collaborative learning occurred during one of the small group interaction. Lastly, the history of computer education and suggestions for the future of computer networking in the the researcher’s country, Malaysia,
were discussed.