Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemStudent views of talk interactions in learning: a case study of year 8 girls( 2013)The aim of this study is to identify student attitudes to classroom talk interactions, specifically class discussion, to ascertain whether students view these contexts as opportunities for learning. The study also sought to isolate the ways students recognise talk as helping them to learn. Further, it is aimed to inform the pedagogical practice of teachers to assist them to co-construct, with students, class discussions that are more productive. Data was collected for the study from two cohorts of Year 8 girls over consecutive years, interview data from students and also interviews with four Year 8 learning area teachers. In the embedded sequential mixed-method design employed in this research, each data set gave rise to the next which sought to explicate and expand the themes emerging from the previous data set. Relationships of significance were found between enjoyment, learning, participation, teacher style (questioning and timing) and classroom culture and a conceptual model was developed which attempted to diagrammatically represent those relationships. The results also indicate the essential role of responsibility as key to class discussion. Responsibility for the success of a class discussion, one in which learning takes place, was found to be shared jointly by students and teachers. The findings for the study recommend a whole school approach to articulating and consistently and consciously applying mechanisms identified to generate more effective class discussions.
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ItemEstablishing an online community of inquiry at the Distance Education Centre Victoria( 2013)The Distance Education Centre Victoria (DECV) is a government-funded, co-educational school, with approximately 3000 students who, for a variety of reasons, are undertaking one or more subjects at the DECV. Despite the availability of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), many students at the DECV remain physically and socially isolated from their peers. The DECV recognises that student collaboration has the potential to bridge this divide. This mixed method case study focused on two year 11 courses and one year 12 course, which were redesigned to utilise online components, including discussions and group projects, to attempt to establish an online Community of Inquiry in keeping with the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson,& Archer, 1999). This framework provides a guide for developing courses that utilise the online environment to go beyond teacher-to-student communication and establish collaboration and a sense of connectedness between students. According to Garrison et al. (1999), a successful online Community of Inquiry is one in which each student is engaged by set tasks (“cognitive presence”); feels challenged and supported by the teacher (“teaching presence”); and feels part of the community (“social presence”). A student who feels that all three forms of presence are adequately covered by an online course is more likely to perceive their educational experience as positive and worthwhile. The three teachers who participated in the study received two Professional Development sessions in May 2010, focusing on developing and delivering courses in line with the CoI framework. They were interviewed at the end of first semester (June 2010) to ascertain the degree to which they believed their students had collaborated with one another and demonstrated a sense of connectedness during six months’ worth of regular DECV work. They were interviewed again after second semester (December 2010), after teaching their adapted courses. The nine students who participated in the study were surveyed, using the CoI Survey Instrument, which has been validated in large-scale trials (Arbaugh et al., 2008), in order to assess the extent to which a Community of Inquiry (Lipman, 1991) had been established in each online course. These surveys were conducted twice: at the end of first semester (June 2010), when they had engaged in the DECV’s typical course work for six months; and at the end of second semester (December 2010), after participating in online activities designed to establish a community of inquiry within their online classroom. The second survey was followed by a half-hour interview with each student. All interview data were subjected to thematic analysis. Student surveys were analysed using descriptive strategies and the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, a non-parametric test designed for comparing pairs of results that may not represent a normal distribution or be derived from an equal-interval scale. Survey results suggested that the adaptation of these three courses in line with the CoI framework had resulted in significant improvements in students’ perception of teaching presence. When interviewed about their experience, the majority of students confirmed these survey findings, and added that they also felt a higher level of cognitive and social presence in second semester. These findings were echoed by the teachers in their post-intervention interviews, although they reported having difficulty in getting some students to collaborate with their peers due to schedule clashes, and students’ lack of experience in working as members of a team, as well as varying degrees of social phobia and illness. The greatest gains in social presence were seen in classes in which students had an opportunity to meet each other face-to-face on at least one occasion throughout the year. Because of the reported effects of a limited number of face-to-face meetings, this study suggests that courses that use a blend of online and face-to-face interaction may be most successful in realising the aims of the CoI framework and ultimately establishing an online Community of Inquiry. Further research needs to be conducted in order to demonstrate whether the experience of these students and teachers could be replicated, or improved, if a greater number of teachers were to utilise the CoI framework as a model for redeveloping their own online courses. Further research is also required to investigate whether video conferencing is an effective substitute for face-to-face contact, for students who are unwilling or unable to attend face-to-face classes/meetings.