| H. Willis Means College of Education Department of Elementary and Special Education Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37132 e-mail: hmeans@mtsu.edu e-mail: |
Terence C. Ahern College of Education Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Texas Tech University Lubbock, Texas 79409 dwtca@ttacs.ttu.edu |
Current network technology represents a unique opportunity to change the way we view teaching and learning. Harasim, Hiltz, Teles and Turoff (1995) ask us to "[i]magine learning with peers, expertise, and resources that are available whenever we want them …[without the] need to leave home" (p. 3). The possibilities are endless.
Even though development of the network infrastructure has been a major theme for most schools many individual teachers are online. They use it to interact with their peers sharing information ranging from curriculum issues, problems in discipline, to lesson plans. Accordingly "learning networks help to reduce the feeling of isolation of the school" (Harasim, 1995, p.68).
This sense of community and the support of one's peers is an important issue for everyone. Most individuals move among a variety of support systems starting with the family and extending to work, school and church. Success at any endeavor is usually a matter of finding the right help at the right time. Peer support is crucial because it lets us know that we are not alone and that there are others who have the same problem, situation, or opportunity.
For most pre-service teachers the typical pattern is to limit their peer support structures at the time when they need it the most--during student teaching. Support is available in the form of their university instructor or master teacher, but their peers are no longer available as a group. What they need is peer support at the time of an event or situation but usually the best student teachers can hope for is that they will see their peers during an increasingly rare class period at the university or a student teaching seminar. By that time the event is long past. Network technology can overcome this limitation in teacher education. By using the Internet for the development and maintenance of peer interaction student teachers may feel less isolated and able to respond to various situations more positively.
Peer to Peer Interaction for Learning and Support (PuPILS), a program that uses the IdeaWeb© a unique Java web-based application, enabled six student teachers in three geographically dispersed schools (two suburban and one rural), with students from a variety of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, and representing a range of academic experiences, the opportunity to maintain peer interaction during their field placement. The problem was to design a system adhered to the nature of textual-based communication while mimicking the more dynamic aspects of real time multi-voiced small group discussion.
The IdeaWeb provides a flexible epistemological framework that can account for not only the static but also the dynamic nature of text-based computer mediated communication. According to Anderson (1974) the group discussion has 6 essential components: purpose, thought pattern, content, group, leadership, and communication. The overall process of the discussion is mediated through psycho/social and procedural filters. The IdeaWeb is designed so that a group member could easily get a sense of the global topics currently under discussion without having to sift through a variety of unrelated messages. In order to support the interactional potential of the discussion, the IdeaWeb visually maps previous messages making it easy to determine from whom a message originates, to whom a message is intended, and how the message fits into a sequence of messages. The IdeaWeb makes it easy for members to link individual messages to more than one message simultaneously simulating the "divided illocution" that istypical in most group discussion.
We are interested how well this specific software package supports and maintains the sense of group among the student teachers. The use of network technology in the field can provide the student teacher with the immediate access to peers without the necessity of being in the same place at the same time.. However what impact did the lack of some social cues have on the ability of teachers to maintain the sense of group over time. These and other questions will be discussed during this session.
Six student teachers agreed to participate in the study. Two student teachers were assigned to large urban middle school, two to a rural elementary, and two to an urban elementary school. The student teachers were to log-on to the IdeaWeb at least twice a week, read the messages left, make comments, raise questions or concerns for other members of the seminar to respond. The student teachers were trained individually in the use of the IdeaWeb and each logged on to the conference, read the sample messages left, left a message, and logged off to demonstrate their proficiency in the use of the software.
When a participant logged into the conference the initial screen asked for her name and conference identification number. After the software verified her membership in the conference the topic screen appeared (Figure 1). The seminar topics appeared and the
Participant would select the topic she wished to participate by clicking on that topic and choosing either browse--to read a short description of the content of that topic--or discussion--to go to the discussion screen. That topic’s discussion screen would then appear with the comments that had been left by other members of the seminar (Figure 2).
The participant would then click on a node to activate it and then click on the browse button to read what had been left (Figure 3). After reading one or more comments the
Figure 3: Leaving a Comment
participant could leave a comment by clicking on the comment button, typing in a comment and then click on link. Her comment, in the form of a new node would appear on the topic screen. She would click on another participant’s node, one to whom she wished to respond, and then click on Link and a line would appear linking her new comment to the other node (Figure 4). The participant could continue reading, exit to the topic screen, select another topic and repeat the process or Exit the IdeaWeb.
Five topics were selected for the seminar: sound-off, help, portfolios, planning, and classroom management. The topics corresponded to seminar topics, with the exception of help and sound-off, were to be covered in the usual face-to-face student teaching seminars during the first placement. The IdeaWeb conference was scheduled to run for a period of five weeks, but due to technical difficulties was only operable the last three weeks of the first placement.
There were several interesting interactions among the participants. One exchange, in particular, involved the two middle school student-teachers. A concern had been raised in the classroom management discussion area about how to deal with a particularly difficult student. In both cases the student was known to both student teachers, but neither was aware of the other’s familiarity with the student.
The "conversation" began with one student teacher asking a very general question about inclusion and how to deal with students with exceptionalities. The other student teacher responded, the next day, with a general response. This was immediately followed-up (within an hour of the response being posted) with a more specific question describing an incident, in some detail, that had occurred that day. By noon the next day, the second student teacher had responded (she checked the web during her planning period). The conversation went on for another two days with each commenting on the other at least once a day and sometimes more.
During a debriefing session, both student teachers expressed a high degree of satisfaction for using computer-mediated communication as a support tool. "It was easy to get help," and "It was nice knowing there was someone out there that I could ask for help" were two comments made.
Of the five topics, only two—sound-off and help--received any substantial student interaction. The attempt to conduct an on-line student teaching seminar on specific topics was not successful. In contrast to the sound-off and help conferences, the portfolios, planning, and classroom management conferences had very limited interactions (an average of one comment per participant per week). It would appear that student teachers are willing to interact and support each other, but perceive other aspects of an online seminar as just another seminar to attend as they would a face-to-face seminar.
Computer-mediated communication to support is a viable method for providing peer support to student teachers. This study, limited as it was in time and subject size, provided some interesting anecdotal evidence that student teachers are willing to seek out and provide the type of support for each other that was present during their pre-service training.
Anderson, M.P. (1974). A model of group discussion. In J. Cathcart (Eds.) Communication, (pp39-50).
Harasim, Linda, Hiltz, Roxanne, Teles, Lucio, & Turoff, Murray, Learning Networks: A field guide to teaching and learning online, MIT Press, 1995.