Background Research
The following papers report the theoretical underpinnings of WebTeach's approach to online learning and collaboration. Each paper is summarised and can be downloaded in full by clicking on the PDF icon next to each.
Hewson, L. & Hughes, C. (in press). Social Processes and Pedagogy in Online Learning. Educational Technology Review, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Virginia, US. Online learning environments offer efficient ways of interconnecting group members and satisfying their communicative needs. However, learning does not proceed through shared communication alone; all groups imply social processes and learning groups demand an additional pedagogical intention. Popular online learning systems satisfactorily enable the management of students and teaching staff but offer limited tools to support familiar educational techniques and even fewer to support the essential processes of group dynamics that accompany learning. This paper draws from both the literature of learning and of interpersonal and social interaction to define those characteristics of an online group that support learning and proceeds to use these criteria as a tool to evaluate currently available systems. |
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Hughes, C. & Hewson, L. (2001) Group Dynamics and Pedagogy in Online Groups. In Mahony, Mary Jane, Roberts, David and Gofers, Arlene (Eds), 2001. Education Odyssey 2001: Continuing the journey through adaptation and innovation – Collected papers from the 15 th Biennial Forum of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia. Sydney: ODLAA A range of online learning environments now offers asynchronous discussion groups to facilitate student interaction with teachers and peers. Features, such as anonymity and delegated leadership offer new possibilities for learning processes. Few teachers and students are prepared for the processes that arise when the temporal dynamic and status relationships of the classroom are changed. Some beneficial characteristics of face-to-face groups transfer easily to the online class, while others appear to be lost. This paper suggests strategies for structuring the class interactions and setting conventions that enable effective learning to take place. A number of current systems are examined and compared for their ability to accommodate these structures. |
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| Hughes, C. & Hewson, L. (2001) Structuring Communication to Facilitate Effective Teaching and Learning Online, Computers in the Schools, "The Web in Higher Education: Assessing the Impact and Fulfilling the Potential", Vol. 17 (3/4), 147-158. This paper identifies the instructional strategies or “micro-genres” that form the essence of successful classroom teaching, and describes an online system, WebTeach™, that attempts to provide structured teacher-learner interactions that build on the familiar activities and strategies of the classroom. Through access to these “micro-genres” in an online classroom, both teacher and learner can reduce the cognitive demands of learning new processes while focussing on strategies for deep learning related to the content of the course. |
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| Hewson, L. & Hughes .C (2001) Generic Structures for Online Teaching and Learning. In Lockwood F. (Ed), Innovations in Open, Distance and Flexible Learning, Kogan Page: London. While the WWW has proved an effective medium for the dissemination of flexible learning materials, it has so far lacked the capacity to support the complex human interactions and richness of the classroom learning experience. At best, web-based learning environments have used email or proprietary bulletin boards to enable messaging between teachers and learners and relied on the pedagogical design and expertise of the teacher to build these into a meaningful instructional process. What is missing in many cases is an instructional design that goes beyond the incorporation of activities within the materials to implement a planned process of teaching and learning over time and among a group. The knowledge base and skills built over a century of classroom teaching are seldom transferred and applied to the new medium. In addition, some teachers have argued that the new medium demands new methods and in doing so, perhaps discouraged the wider diffusion of the WWW as a teaching tool. |
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Hughes, C. & Hewson L. (1998) Online Interactions: Developing a neglected aspect of the virtual classroom, Educational Technology V4, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. As teachers move to the online learning environment enabled by the Internet, they seek tools, processes and teaching methods that are equal to or better than those they use in the classroom. They may also hope that this new environment will not be too unfamiliar to themselves or their students. Teachers have acquired a reliable knowledge base and methodology for traditional classroom learning and their willingness to develop and deliver online learning will in part depend on their ability to preserve that investment. This paper looks at some of the key elements of this knowledge and skill base and considers how these might be supported in web-based instruction. The "micro-genres" that constitute the instructional events of the online class are described, and a software package is introduced to demonstrate how these interactions may be facilitated in practice. |
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Hewson L. & Hughes C. (1998) Templates for Online Teaching. 15th Annual Conference of the Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Dec 14-16, Wollongong. What is missing in many cases is an instructional design that relates the materials offered to a planned process of teaching and learning. The dynamics, flexibility and communicative richness of the face-to-face classroom are mostly not supported by these packages and hence the teacher/learner and learner/learner interactions are reduced to little more than messaging. The authors have delineated a number of common and effective teaching strategies used in classroom teaching and have developed software to support online correlates of these strategies. The software, WebTeach, was originally employed in the flexible delivery of a postgraduate program in Higher Education. It represents an attempt to model a range of sound pedagogical approaches and to ease the transition to the online learning environment for both teachers and students. |
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Hughes C. & Hewson L. (1998) WebTeach: Interactive Web-Based Teaching. HERDSA Annual International Conference, Transformation in Higher Education. Auckland, NZ, 7-10 July. Despite the economic incentive to employ a resource-based approach in flexible delivery, a 'deeper' approach to student learning can be facilitated by involving students in intense communication on their conceptions of the subject matter. However, standard Internet communication packages offer only basic levels of interaction which are inadequate for educational purposes. The authors have developed a pilot program, called WebTeach, which implements online asynchronous correlates of several educational modes of communication, including discussion, brainstorming, questioning, and task setting. To the best of our knowledge this approach is unique. The system is easy to use and, because it employs familiar strategies, it makes the transition to the online environment easy for both teachers and students. The WebTeach system will be demonstrated and its use in a range of disciplines at UNSW discussed. |
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Eric Wilson (2004) Maters of Online Collaboration Sydney Morning Herald - IT Section 27 April 2004. WebTeach replicates classroom interactions online. |
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Simon Sharwood (2004) The e-learning curve MIT Australia Magazine June 2004; pages 38-40. UNSW's Master of Business and Technology program has found innovative
ways to deliver e-learning without sending its students to sleep. |
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