Colin Baskin

When Group Work Leaves the Classroom Does Group Skills Development Also Go Out the Window

In moving towards what Lemke (1996) terms the ‘interactive learning paradigm’, higher education has adopted two key principles consistent with group learning technologies: • learning is always mediated by and occurs through language (Falk, 1997; Gee, 1997); and • learning is distributed across a range of other people, sites, objects, technologies and time (Gee, 1997). A third and relatively recent principle to emerge on the higher education scene that seems to ‘contradict’ accepted views of group learning technologies is that: • many universities now choose to offer ‘learning resources’ online. This paper asks whether Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are ‘robust’ enough to support, sustain and address industry, employer and government calls for greater attention to group skills development in university graduates. Data features an examination of respondent feedback (n = 171) in an ‘ICT-rich’ group work setting, and the subsequent ratings of group skills development over a 13-week period. This discussion offers an account of learner outcomes by adopting Kirkpatricks (1996) four levels of evaluation of learning as a classification scheme for determining learner satisfaction (Level One), the effectiveness of learning transfer (Level Two), its impact on practice (Level Three) and the appropriation of learning behaviours by participants (Level Four). The contrasting patterns of ICT use between female and male users in the data are discussed in relation to building social presence and producing social categories online. Differences reported here indicate that ICT group work is moving forward, but opportunities to challenge rather than reproduce existing learning relations and differences, remain largely unresolved.

Ariadne's Thread: Using Social Presence Indices to Distinguish Learning Events in Face-to-Face and ICT-Rich Settings

Drawing on ancient Greek mythology, this article traces the learning experiences of 164 pre-service education students as they make the transition from a conventional face-to-face (f-2-f) learning environment to an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) rich setting. Influenced by Social Presence Theory (Short, Williams & Christie, 1976) the aim of this article is to critically examine the social presence weightings of nine key learning events in f-2-f and online learning environments to unravel threads of connection to the knowledge construction processes of our learners. Dimensions of social presence are defined and examined, and indices are assigned to nine f-2-f and ICT learning events for purposes of comparison. The argument concludes that attributions of social presence point to clear and very discernible differences in the ‘learning choices’ and ‘patterns’ of male and female respondents. By proxy, different learning patterns also point to substantial differences in the when, where, how and why of knowledge construction for different groups of learners. This preference for differentiation and the capacity of the ICT-supported environment to meet and extend this preference at the learning interface offers a productive model for the preparation of pre-service teachers.