Learning in Real Time: Synchronous Teaching and Learning Online (Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning) - Softcover

Finkelstein, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 078797921X ISBN 13: 9780787979218

Verlag: Jossey-Bass, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Learning in Real Time is a concise and practical resource for education professionals teaching live and online or those wanting to humanize and improve interaction in their online courses by adding a synchronous learning component. The book offers keen insight into the world of synchronous learning tools, guides instructors in evaluating how and when to use them, and illustrates how educators can develop their own strategies and styles in implementing such tools to improve online learning.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The Author

Jonathan Finkelstein is the founder and executive producer of LearningTimes™ and the president of the LearningTimes Network. As an educator, technologist, industry expert, and producer, he focuses on creating engaging Web-based programs and practices that help reinvent collaboration and community.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Learning in Real Time

Learning in Real Time is a concise and practical resource for education professionals teaching live and online or those wanting to humanize and improve interaction in their online courses by adding a synchronous learning component. The book offers keen insight into the world of synchronous learning tools, guides instructors in evaluating how and when to use them, and illustrates how educators can develop their own strategies and styles in implementing such tools to improve online learning.

A pioneer in the development of synchronous learning theories and platforms, Finkelstein catalogs real-time learning venues, describes good practices for facilitating synchronous learning, and offers examples to demonstrate how real-time techniques can enhance student learning. While each chapter considers the academic context of faculty members looking to incorporate such interaction, the book will also be a valuable resource to instructional designers, trainers, tutors, advising staff, librarians, and anyone involved in professional development, course design, or providing student support services.

Learning in Real Time is the fourth book in the Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning series, which offers concrete and practical resources to help higher education practitioners meet the challenges of the online learning environment.

"Good instruction is all about people. Learning in Real Time focuses on people, relationships, and the power of human dialog. Instructors, learning technologists, and administrators will benefit from Finkelstein's commentary and common sense."
Diana G. Oblinger, vice president, EDUCAUSE

"Jam-packed with extremely practical strategies and well-crafted activity ideas, Learning in Real Time goes well beyond the tools and deftly focuses on the process of effective live online learning and collaboration. Anyone teaching, presenting, coaching, or collaborating online will end up with a marked-up, highlighted, and dog-eared copy of this book parked next to their computer."
Alan Levine, The New Media Consortium (NMC)

"Finkelstein's real-world guidance on real-time learning advances the cause of quality instruction online and offline. This book represents an important contribution to the field."
Deborah L.G. Hutti, associate vice president for educational services, Lake Land College

Aus dem Klappentext

Learning in Real Time

Learning in Real Time is a concise and practical resource for education professionals teaching live and online or those wanting to humanize and improve interaction in their online courses by adding a synchronous learning component. The book offers keen insight into the world of synchronous learning tools, guides instructors in evaluating how and when to use them, and illustrates how educators can develop their own strategies and styles in implementing such tools to improve online learning.

A pioneer in the development of synchronous learning theories and platforms, Finkelstein catalogs real-time learning venues, describes good practices for facilitating synchronous learning, and offers examples to demonstrate how real-time techniques can enhance student learning. While each chapter considers the academic context of faculty members looking to incorporate such interaction, the book will also be a valuable resource to instructional designers, trainers, tutors, advising staff, librarians, and anyone involved in professional development, course design, or providing student support services.

Learning in Real Time is the fourth book in the Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning series, which offers concrete and practical resources to help higher education practitioners meet the challenges of the online learning environment.

"Good instruction is all about people. Learning in Real Time focuses on people, relationships, and the power of human dialog. Instructors, learning technologists, and administrators will benefit from Finkelstein's commentary and common sense."
—Diana G. Oblinger, vice president, EDUCAUSE

"Jam-packed with extremely practical strategies and well-crafted activity ideas, Learning in Real Time goes well beyond the tools and deftly focuses on the process of effective live online learning and collaboration. Anyone teaching, presenting, coaching, or collaborating online will end up with a marked-up, highlighted, and dog-eared copy of this book parked next to their computer."
—Alan Levine, The New Media Consortium (NMC)

"Finkelstein's real-world guidance on real-time learning advances the cause of quality instruction– online and offline. This book represents an important contribution to the field."
—Deborah L.G. Hutti, associate vice president for educational services, Lake Land College

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Learning in Real Time

Synchronous Teaching and Learning OnlineBy Jonathan E. Finkelstein

Jossey-Bass

Copyright © 2006 Jonathan E. Finkelstein
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7879-7921-8

Chapter One

Learning, Live Online

With mounting experience in the online environment, an increasing number of learning professionals are now ready to find ways to add life, and the magic of real-time interaction, back into the learning process. In the vast movement to transition campus-based experiences to the online realm, the immediacy and value of live interaction have often been sacrificed to a perception that the Web is no place for anything that is not "anytime, anywhere." Though "anytime" or asynchronous modes of communication have been an empowering factor in allowing learners to transcend traditional limits of place and time, not every learning objective or need can be met in the absence of real-time human interaction.

Situations that call for proximity to others, even figuratively, are found all across the learning continuum from collaboration to skills development to community-building or just-in-time support. Learning environments that have shied away from any form of real-time interaction may be unnecessarily limiting the overall potential of what each student can learn, and what the institution can offer.

Rapid improvements in technology and Internet connectivity, coupled with increasing comfort levels and support in using basic online communication and learning tools, have impelled educators to tap back into the fostering of relationships with students in real time that have been the hallmark of their on-campus teaching experience. Most important, a renewed focus on the quality of instruction and student engagement that has followed the first wave of online learning (Palloff and Pratt, 2005) inevitably means a greater consideration of tools that humanize the learning experience, efficiently teach and gauge performance-based skills, and cultivate natural means for collaborating and learning in real time.

SYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION ACROSS THE LEARNING CONTINUUM

Perceived by many as merely a means to deliver formal instruction or lectures online, real-time or synchronous venues actually play a much broader role across the entire learning continuum. In physical settings, live conversations and real-time human interaction are the lifeblood of academic life and adult learning. Remove from the equation things such as

Unplanned chats among peers over lunch

Lively in-class discussions or debates

Student-led presentations or performances

Study group, team, or committee gatherings

Hallway conversations with classmates or colleagues

Impromptu exchanges between a student and instructor after class or during office hours

Timely and personalized guidance from a reference librarian, advisor, or coach

Serendipitous meetings on campus

and what remains are course materials, reading assignments, and isolated, independent study-none of which provide the kind of supportive, dynamic, and human environment that helps learners be engaged, motivated, or successful. If the first wave of moving courses online has taught us anything, it is that opportunities for interaction and collaboration are crucial elements of successful learning environments. Not considering opportunities to add human interaction-in any form-to online programs or courses summarily dismisses a vital form of communication for learning, skill development, support, and community-building.

NEEDS SERVED BY SYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION

Although consideration of synchronous interaction might first turn to instructor-led activities or lessons, real-time interaction and learning can take as many forms and happen in about as many different kinds of contexts online as it does in our physical learning settings. At least five major functions are served by real-time, online interaction within a learning environment:

Instruction Collaboration

Support Socialization and informal exchange Extended outreach

Instruction encompasses any of the kinds of learning that happen when faculty members, knowledge experts, or facilitators meet with learners, usually in a planned manner in a specific online venue, to guide them through the achievement of learning objectives. This is a very broad category, and there are at least as many methods and pedagogical approaches to engage in live online instruction as there are in any other setting, online or off. Nonetheless, this book places a greater emphasis on an active or constructivist (Piaget, 1969) approach to instruction within synchronous settings. People need not be present concurrently with an instructor to simply have information passed on to them, yet the active construction of knowledge by learners through a process of real-time give-and-take is well-served in a live online setting.

Collaboration is a key element to the success of an online learning environment (Conrad and Donaldson, 2004). It is also, as I discuss later, a skill that has become part of a global working environment. Although the presence of a facilitator can guide collaborative activities, these interactions tend to be more egalitarian in nature and can happen at any time, in both structured and informal settings, with two or more people present. Live online settings offer an immediacy that not only allows collaboration to begin instantaneously but also contracts the actual time spent on task.

Support is a crucial element for retaining and motivating learners, whether it is provided by just-in-time assistance from a peer, instructor, tutor, advisor, or librarian. No other form of online communication can give personalized human support faster or at the moment it is most needed than a live exchange with the right person.

Socialization and informal exchanges are activities whose contributions to the learning process are most difficult to quantify. Interactions in this realm often dispense with formality and can even be short of substance, yet without them a crucial foundation on which to build instructional activities is lacking. The proliferation of instant messengers, online chat rooms, and mobile messaging in social contexts (Shiu and Lenhart, 2004) alone affirms that live online venues are an increasingly common and comfortable form of live interaction. In learning environments, they help build community and create a friendly and safe environment in which people can feel like people.

Extended outreach is an important aspect of any institution's connection to the world beyond its gates. Admission information sessions, alumni relations, online conferences, multicampus professional development, and lifelong education programs are among the many reasons for the use of synchronous online communication outside of the formal instructional arena.

Various Purposes, Various Venues

There are almost as many online tools and venues for synchronous interaction as there are activities that call for their use. With instant messengers, chat rooms, online reference desks, interactive Webcasting platforms, and virtual classrooms, offices, and meeting rooms there is no shortage of available options to meet and interact live online. The ultimate question is what we do in these spaces that helps us achieve communication and learning objectives not realized as ideally in any other manner.

Why Live?

When it comes to instruction, course content and communication...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Jossey-Bass
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 078797921X
• ISBN 13: 9780787979218
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 174
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland