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Category: My Work

A Most Memorable Trip to Lisbon

December 6, 2025Written by terrya

The Answerthis.io AI app looks at my Interaction Equivalency Theory

October 29, 2025Written by terrya

I’m not immune from the relentless hype (and warnings from multiple perspectives) about generalized AI, AI enhanced browsers and AI customized for specific applications.

Therefore, I couldn’t resist spending a few minutes checking out an AI app – Answerthis.io specifically aimed at researchers and students – see https://answerthis.io/

Not being overly modest (to say the least) I decided to ask a question about an idea that I had and paper I wrote over 20 years ago (Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction – International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 4(2).

The paper achieved modest success (1100 citations) which was a bit surprising as I wasn’t really sure there really was a learning equivalency between content interaction; student/teacher interaction; and student-student interaction. Moreover, I wasn’t sure how this ‘theory’ could be empirically validated nor disproved. However, over the years a number of researchers (aided in no small part by my Japanese colleague Terumi Miyazoke) have used it and seems to have been useful – perhaps most noticeably for financially pressed distance education administrators trying to create affordable (and thus accessible) learning opportunities.

So I asked Answerthis.io “What is useful about Anderson’s Interaction equivalency theory?”

It examined 93 papers in a minute or two and came back with more indicators of usefulness than I could remember. The resulting “answer” is as follows:

______________________________________________________________

“Anderson’s Interaction Equivalency Theory” (also known as the Interaction Equivalency Theorem, or EQuiv) is a significant conceptual framework in online and distance education. At its core, it states that “deep and meaningful learning is supported as long as one of three forms of interaction (student-teacher, student-student, student-content) is at a high level; the other two may be offered at minimal levels or even eliminated without degrading the educational experience.” The theory recognizes that sustaining all forms of interaction at maximum levels may not always be feasible due to constraints such as time, resources, and institutional scale, especially in online or blended environments.

Key Benefits and Usefulness of Anderson’s Theory

Flexible Course Design and Resource Allocation:
EQuiv allows educational designers and institutions to focus resources and instructional efforts where they are most impactful. If strong interaction can be established in one domain (e.g., through rich content or peer collaboration), then the other types may be comparatively minimized without a loss in learning quality. For instance, in very large courses where teacher-student interactions are limited, enhanced student-content or student-student interactions can compensate, enabling scalability without compromising outcomes[1].
Personalization and Adaptation:
The theory provides a rationale to adapt interaction according to the specific needs and circumstances of different learner groups, such as non-traditional or part-time students who may not engage frequently with instructors but can benefit from alternative interaction forms[2].
Practical Framework for Blended and Online Learning:
It offers educators a guide to make informed decisions on which instructional tools or approaches to use, justifying, for instance, the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) to enhance interaction and accessibility, allowing for key educational goals (like participation and learning engagement) to be met even if instructor interaction is limited[1].
Supports Student Satisfaction and Achievement:
Empirical and conceptual studies support the application of EQuiv in raising learner satisfaction, reducing attrition risk in distance education settings, and increasing course completion rates particularly when strong “interaction presence” is maintained in at least one channel[2].
Guides Risk Identification and Intervention:
The theory isn’t just for course designers—it can be used by institutions to develop risk profiles of students potentially at risk of dropping out, enabling targeted interventions where interaction is lacking[2].
Extends Beyond Structured Courses:
Although EQuiv originated in distance and online learning, it has potential applications in other higher education contexts, such as the master-apprentice model in doctoral education. By compensating for limited supervisor (S2T) interaction with enhanced content or peer interactions, EQuiv addresses issues of isolation and supports deeper learning[2].
Efficient Use of Learning Technologies:
By focusing on maximizing one type of interaction, it provides a rationale for the use of asynchronous content, peer forums, or automated feedback systems—tools essential for scaling and accessibility in digital education[1].
Framework for Ongoing Research and Development:
The theory has stimulated further research into interaction dynamics, informing both empirical investigations and theoretical development around how different forms of interaction contribute to learning, motivation, and retention in virtual environments[1], [2].
Facilitates Deep and Meaningful Learning:
The focus on ensuring at least one robust interaction provides conceptual and empirical support for deep cognitive engagement, even when all three modes are not maximally present. This is crucial for the design of effective massive open online courses (MOOCs) and large-scale distance education where teacher-student contact is inherently limited.
Guides Implementation of New Educational Models:
EQuiv justifies the structural design decisions in “flipped classrooms,” blended courses, and synchronous/asynchronous online programs, providing a theoretical foundation for deliberate reduction or enhancement of interaction modes based on course goals, audience, and technological affordances[1].

In summary, Anderson’s Interaction Equivalency Theory is useful because it offers a flexible, evidence-based, and scalable framework for online, blended, and distance education. By clarifying how and where to invest instructional resources, it enables educators and institutions to optimize learning outcomes, enhance satisfaction, reduce attrition, and adapt to diverse learner needs across multiple educational contexts[1], [2“

__________________________________________

My takeaways:

The tool does a credible and amazingly thorough job that seems quite accurate.
It shows that assigning tasks such as this as an assessment activity in a senior undergrad or grad course hardly seems worth either keep student learning nor the time and effort taken by a teacher trying to assess it. I have had graduate students create blog and wiki entries on major ideas in distance education in the past, but given these tools, think it is an exercise in continuously “reinventing the wheel”.
For a busy scholar (or student) trying to get up to speed on ideas from the literature that they may have missed or need a refresher, the tool is remarkably both efficient and effective.
The tool doesn’t yet have much of a revenue model- but no doubt that will come.

Distance Education, interaction equivalency theory, My Work, Research Methods interaction equivalency

A Systematic Review of the EQuiv Theory

April 8, 2019Written by terrya

In this post I review an article that provides the first systematic review of the Interaction Equivalency Theory (EQuiv) that I formulated 15 years ago. The article is:

Graham, C., & Massyn, L. (2019). Interaction Equivalency Theorem: Towards Interaction Support of Non-Traditional Doctoral Students. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 14, 187-216. https://www.informingscience.org/Publications/4238?Source=%2FJournals%2FIJDS%2FArticles%3FVolume%3D0-0.

Personal Introduction

In 2003 I published an article in which I wrestled with the increased capacity for interaction that was becoming available to those of us designing online courses. I realized that synchronous, asynchronous, text, video, voice, mutli media, “smart” content and many more tools and toys were becoming available and flogged by ed tech companies. I also realized that many of these tools were expensive both in terms of money to purchase and support and in the time they took for both students and teachers to first learn to use, and then to effectively use. Perhaps I was being both simplistic and reductivist, but I speculated that though interaction is critically important in distance education, it can take many forms and further that one form can substitute for another. Building on Michael Moore’s notions of student-student, student-teacher and student-content interactions, I gave a very fancy name (Anderson’s Interaction Equivalency Theory) to the idea that if you could have a high level of one of these student interactions, you could reduce or even eliminate the other two. I further contented that adding the remaining two forms, may increase learning and persistence, but it would be more expensive (time and money).

The article was submitted and published:

Anderson, T. (2003a). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v4i2.149

I got a few comments on the article and gradually noticed that others were quoting the article (not all positively) and a few researchers were using it in their conceptual rationale for their work. I see today that Google Scholar lists 934 citations to the article. So I was pleased with its modest interest and use. But I wasn’t even convinced myself it was entirely true. Like too many educational (and theological) theories, it could be used to explain a result in hindsight, but it is very challenging to design and implement experiments that could falsify the theory.

Partially to increase the validity and value of research in education that does not necessarily use control groups and other positivist methods, systematic reviews have recently become more widely used (for example see Martin, F., Ahlgrim-Delzell, L., & Budhrani, K. (2017). Systematic Review of Two Decades (1995 to 2014) of Research on Synchronous Online Learning) Thus, I was really pleased to see the first systematic review of the Equiv. Theory.

The Graham & Massyn (2019) article comes from Connie Graham’s PhD Thesis and is authored with her supervisor Liezel Massyn from the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.

Systematic Review Methodology

Like any good research project, this one starts with the research question . “How can the EQuiv be used to enhance interaction opportunities of non-traditional doctoral students?” It then provides the selection keywords (key words like doctoral education, EQuiv, interaction, non traditional students etc.) that were used to query the major journal databases and dissertation indices. The papers were further weaned to to focus on ones in which interaction and non-traditional doctoral students were highlighted, with or without the EQuiv Theory.

The context of this research is also of considerable personal interest to me, as I helped design, taught and researched with ‘non-traditional’ EdD students, studying at a distance, at Athabasca University. The paper is really three mini-systematic reviews rolled into one. The first is a review of issues related to non-traditional doctoral students. This section reviews studies that relate to completion, supervisor- student relationships, risk factors for dropout etc. The next section reviews interaction requirements in education in general and specifically with doctoral students. The final section reviews the EQuiv theory itself.

1. Doctoral studies with non traditional students

The doctoral research hones in on the often mythical relationship between the student and the supervisor. The the teacher’s role in this relationship has been described as “mentor” “master” ‘supervisor’. Graham & Massyn use the term ‘master-apprentice’ to describe the ideal form of this relationship. This relationship originally evolved on campus-based universities. At its best the student not only acquires content knowledge but also is socialized into the profession. This is accomplished by regular planned and spontaneous interactions between master and the apprentice doctoral students. This master/apprenticeship relationship is used in the training of doctoral candidates to help them to gain a deep understanding and opportunity to participate in the culture of their discipline tribe. This model/design has hundreds of years of university replication baring evidence that it can work. However, the Internet came along and caused us learn how to use mediated communications to create Equiv learning and socialization outcomes.

If we look at a typical doctoral student in the USA and in Canada today, they are studying all or some of their program online. In addition there are a myriad student-student online support interactions using social media. These students don’t often sit around the graduate coffee room and don’t get to be personally present when the cultural activities of the discipline are presented. However, they may (or may not) be meeting regularly with their supervisor via Skype, be following each others tweets and blog posts, and be following similar research topics or developments in their respective networks and forwarding them to each other. In addition they may be networking with professors and other graduate students around the world thus creating a new form of connected doctoral student.

Neither the “sitting at the knee” master-apprentice model nor the “connected model” works out in reality. Today the master is as often not on campus and private office conversations seem hard to arrange. Doctoral students have many demands on their time from vocation, family and health and are not readily available to benefit from face-to-face encounters.

On the other end, the master is often using different tools (University versus commercial provision) or prides themselves on NOT being on social media. Thus, the amount of personal interaction and socialization is extremely varied in today’s doctoral programs. This article begs the question, If the traditional student-teacher (master-apprentice) interaction is impaired does the Equiv theory help us to design compensatory interactions?

2. Interaction in Doctoral Education- especially at a distance

The second section deals with interaction in education with a focus on non traditional doctoral students. It is a good overview of this critical role of interaction in all modes of formal education. The usual student-teacher, student-student and student-content interactions are reviewed. I especially liked the section on student-institution interactions. I’ve usually considered this a subsection of student-content interaction. Especially for doctoral students an efficient and comprehensive web site or portal is critical to answer detailed procedural questions that every student bumps into. How many people of the candidacy examination committee? Which of the Faculty members would be the best member of my supervision committee? In days past these questions could be answered by informal conversation among grad students or hints from “the master”. But today a good web site is much more effective .

3. Interaction Equivalency

The third section of the review (longest and one of most interest to me) is on interaction equivalency. The review notes the earlier work by Simonson, Schlosser, & Hanson, 1999, that describes the necessity for distance education students having the “equivalent” experience in education as their campus based colleagues. This use of the equivalency in Simonson et al’ article is not what I had in mind. Distance education is not ‘equivalent’ to campus education in the sense that some experiences both on campus and off are not experienced by those not engaged in that mode. A lecture is NOT identical to a videocast, but they may have identical outcomes. Demanding literal ‘equivalence’ denies the unique affordances of both the live performance and highly mediated interactions.

The review then does a really good job of explaining the theory with some of the diagrams created by my colleague Terumi Miyazoe.

Graham and Massyn found a total of 25 papers directly using the Equiv theory that they summarize. The authors create a table in which they categorize and give examples of 12 different characteristics of the research papers such as learning method, type of students, interactions etc. None of the studies seem to directly falsify or uniquivacably support the theory, but most give a sense that it is a useful tool to think through a problem. As expected, the results are a bit inconclusive or as they state in the conclusion “the literature on the EQuiv is contextual, relative, and inconclusive.” This is not surprising as the Equiv is perhaps best used as a diagnostic or mnemonic aide to design and learning enhancement. One of the authors noted correctly that we never really provided a precise way to measure “high” or “low” levels and thus researchers have been forced to create their own metrics. And really, this is all I really wanted from the “theory”. Equiv is a designers’ (or teacher’s tool) that can and has inspired some empirical research but perhaps is best classed and measured by its efficacy as a design tool.

In the summary, Graham and Massyn present a new graphic that illustrates the Equiv in doctoral studies.

The dotted line shows potential (or likelihood) of challenges in quantity and quality of interactions with teacher that are routinely faced by non traditional, distance students. The diagram shows how an intervention, with enhanced S2S, S2T or S2C interaction, can address this deficiency and lead to social and academic integration and thus successful educational experiences.

To conclude, congratulations to Graham and Massyn for a useful contribution to the Equiv and by extensive online learning literature. As they note its use in the important and growing area of doctoral research, at a distance, is very under researched and there is lots of interest and room for ideas on how to make this experience more effective – for students, teachers and institutions.

Distance Education, interaction equivalency theory, My Work

Teaching at Jiangnan University, Wuxi China

May 14, 2017Written by terrya

My 4 week trip to China is a week done, and I thought I would document the trip to date (you know us old guys have trouble remembering the details!).

Four years I received a request to host and sponsor a PhD student from Bejing Normal School. Zhijun Wang soon worked her way into our hearts and proved to be a very helpful and capable student. After her thesis on connectivism and her graduation, and a new baby, she accepted a faculty job at Jiangnan University. A year later she invited me to teach her Masters degree students for a month in the Department of Educational Technology, where she has just recently been appointed a very young department chair. The course I am teaching is called Advanced Research Methods – but it isn’t that advanced (which is fine, as neither am I!). We are focussing on the hot methodology of ‘design-based research’.

Satellite shot of Lake Tau with Yangtze river at top, Shanghai at mouth of the river

Wuzi is located about 70 km west of Shanghai and is one of those Chinese cities of 6.2 million people that almost nobody I know had ever heard off. This is (I think) my 6th trip to China and I have to say that Wuzi is by far the prettiest large city that I have visited. The City is located on the ancient Grand Canal on the edge of Tai Lake one of the largest lakes in China. The relatively new University campus is on the lakeshore on the Western outskirts of the City. The campus (like the old City Centre is bisected by a number of canals and small rivers – complete with lily pads, fish and the the odd scenic bridge. The day I arrived the air was pretty thick (not nearly as bad as the Beijing soup, but a bit disconcerting). However a rain fall the second day cleared away the smog and has been clear skies the rest of this week.

Student residences on the jiangnan campus

I’ve been accommodated in “foreign teacher” apartments that are quite spacious, one bedroom suites. The other teachers here are from all over the place, with maybe the largest component from Australia. Today I enjoyed a United Nations type talk over beers in our courtyard – and yes the Trumper was talked about.

I’ve been met for breakfast and most lunches by grad students who want to practice their English and it is really a treat to get to talk and ask questions about the ‘real China’. On Thursday four students took me to Three Kingdoms theme park.

You’ve probably noticed how much Chinese people enjoy watching ancient warriors (with or without supernatural powers) battle each other and win princesses. Well, many of those movies were shot on the 86 acre or site built for that purpose and when not actively making films – the tourists descend. However Wuzi is quite far off the international tourist circuit and I think I was the only ‘big nose’ foreign tourist at the park that day. We toured the palaces (all built of stone) on the model of the Forbidden City in Bejing, the parks, castles and docks. We also watched a pitched battle between sword and various other weapon-carrying soldiers galloping around on horses. The speed and acrobats of the horseman was impressive, but the rides for visitors after the performance were pathetic by Calgary cowboy standards – the saddles all had big steel handles to hold onto while an employee took the reins and led the riders (walking) around the arena.

Last night Zhijung and a colleague took for dinner in the “ancient canal zone” which was very impressive. Lots of restaurants and bars and people out for a Friday evening stroll.

Ancient canals of Wuxi

We also saw a group of 20 or so amateur musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments and singing opera ballads. We ended the evening with a 45 minute boat ride through the central part of town and saw the usual spectacular high rise buildings (most lit up) and a new Mosque and a very old Buddhist temple – which still has monks.

My course is going well and they ended class on Friday by bringing in a birthday cake for me and singing (with not quite right tune, nor words)

I finally got it together to buy a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that allows me to use the Internet and makes the sites visited think I am located in a selection of cities around the world- one of which I choose. This allowed me

First day of Class

to watch a couple of NHL games streamed on CBC (which CBC restricts to Canadian sites). Fortunately the Oilers lost on Thursday, so I do not need to be too compulsive about watching the remainder of the playoffs. More importantly, the VPN allows me to access the numerous sites that are blocked in China – including Google, Google Scholar, Facebook, Twitter YouTube, Netflicks and many more. It is interesting to see the extensive use of WeChat and I am told many other equivalent net applications that are Chinese – no Google and Facebook domination here!

I have been delivering my classes in English(of course), but I cut and paste Google translation of the text into Chinese characters beside, the English text. And having Zhijung as a ready translator really helps as well.

This morning one of the Faculty took me to visit historic town of Dankou. Near the entrance a little boy asked my Chinese Colleague if I was a ‘real foreigner’ – I guess I must be looking more Chinese now, if he couldn’t tell. The town was nice to walk through – no cars and lots of boats on the canal. I also saw a man returning from fishing with 4 cormorants in the boat. Each of the birds went fishing with string on their leg and a ring around their neck so as not to swallow the catch.

Next weekend, we are off to China’s old capital of Nanjing for a couple of nights as a tourist and then visiting and giving a talk at Jiangsu Open University. All for now

My Work, Personal, Travel China

Is Google Scholar a Filter Bubble?

October 8, 2016Written by terrya

2 Comments

A major goal of net-based mass media is to customize the feed that is delivered to each viewer received a unique screen that matches their interest and more importantly their likelihood of purchasing some product or viewing some paid for message. This phenomenon was labeled as “filter bubble” by author Eli Pariser – meaning that certain results are filtered out creating a bubble of unawareness that surrounds each of us.

I remember my first vivid encounter with these covert filters when I was building a web site some years ago for the Westwood Unitarian Congregation. I was flattered when I noticed that a Google Search started turning my site up not only on the first page of search returns but increasingly in first or second place. I naively imagined that our site was becoming the most popular Unitarian destination in Canada. Sadly, I came to realize that this top end response was only being enjoyed by myself. Google searches filters had determined that I really liked that site (based on my subsequent keystrokes) and thus presented a filtered result of searches for Canada and Unitarian. Obviously the search engine had established a personal profile for me and was feeding me what it thought would be of most interest to me.

More recently, the use of filters by Facebook to provide customized news feeds to individual users has raised both technical and ethical issues. The diagram below by TechCrunch demonstrates a small part of the filter system used by Facebook and other media outlets.

One can argue the value of these filters (how many ads for women’s perfume do I really need or want to see?) but they come a cost of reducing the variability that exists throughout societies and may leave us blind to ideas or events that we may have both interest and expertise.

This is no more critical a problem than in academic research. When doing any quality work and especially that associated with PhD study, the candidate as an obligation to purview all of the relevant literature. Long gone are the days when this could be accomplished by a few afternoons in the periodical section of the library. Today this means searching through the academic databases – extracting and reading everything relevant to the topic. This can be done using proprietary search indexes such as Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) or rival product Scopius, however I have long argued that these indexes discriminate against both new Journals in the discipline and especially those that are Open Access.

Google Scholar is my first choice for such searches for a number of reasons. First it providing broader coverage than its competitors that includes documents from the grey literature (conference papers, reports, white papers etc.). Second it indexes far more journals in the educational discipline than either Scopius or SSCI. Third, empirical tests have shown that the results are not significantly different when using any of these indexes (see Harzing, A.-W. K., & Van der Wal, R. (2008). Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis. Ethics in science and environmental politics, 8(1), 61-73.) Finally, and critically importance for scholars in developing countries and those non affiliated with a relatively rich university, is that access to Google Scholar search is free of charge (unlike SSCI).

So tying these two threads together (choice of search engine and covert filtering), leads to an obvious and important question. Does Google Scholar filter results? Or can one expect different search results to arise when different scholars with different experiences, interests and use profiles?

I was pleased to hear that has question has been addressed and the results did not displease me (ie they made it past my filtering to be presented to you, in this blog!!). The study:

Yu, K., Mustapha, N., & Oozeer, N. (2016). Google Scholar’s Filter Bubble: An Inflated Actuality? Research 2.0 and the Impact of Digital Technologies on Scholarly Inquiry, 211.

compared Google Scholar research results using variety of default and advanced settings (see abstarct below) and it concluded “that the filter bubble phenomenon does not warrant concern.” Unfortunately the chapter and the book are not open access however the main points can be seen from the Google Book abstract or the publishers preview.

Thus, my faith in and appreciation for the service provided by Google Scholar has increased.

ABSTRACT:

This chapter investigates the allegation that popular online search engine Google applies algorithms to personalise search results therefore yielding different results for the exact same search terms. It specifically examines whether the same alleged filter bubble applies to Google’s academic product: Google Scholar. It reports the results from an exploratory experiment of nine keywords carried out for this purpose, varying variables such as disciplines (Natural Science, Social Science and Humanities), geographic locations (north/south), and levels (senior/junior researchers). It also reports a short survey on academic search behaviour. The finding suggests that while Google Scholar, together with Google, has emerged as THE dominant search engine among the participants of this study, the alleged filter bubble is only mildly observable. The Jaccard similarity of search results for all nine keywords is strikingly high, with only one keyword that exhibits a localized bubble at 95% level. This chapter therefore concludes that the filter bubble phenomenon does not warrant concern.

My Work, Open Scholarship, Unitarian Filter bubbles, Google Scholar

Quality in Online Learning Presentation

September 28, 2016Written by terrya

I was asked to do a video conferencing talk to a meeting of three Mexican Universities yesterday. They are attempting to come up with a common set of criteria to define and measure the quality of their online courses.

Perhaps I was not the best person to ask, as I have very mixed feelings about quality control systems dealing with emerging technologies and pedagogies. In particular, I hate it when quality standards impeded innovation and opportunity for experimentation. I hope I got across the complexity- if not a solution! I illustrated the challenges of defining quality by presenting the different quality measures associated with each of the Three Generations of Distance Education pedagogy from a 2011 article by Jon Dron and myself.

I did however end with a plug for one of the most respected non-profit quality consortia Quality Matters, but I fear I didn’t clearly answer my own title question – Quality Online Teaching and Learning – Is it really different than campus-based education? It Depends! – not least of which depends on the pedgaogy employed

Here are the slides I used:

Online quality Mexico from Terry Anderson

Distance Education, My Work Quality onlien learning

Order of Athabasca University

June 10, 2016Written by terrya

Yesterday at Convocation in Athabasca, I was deeply honoured by my former colleagues at Athabasca by being installed into the Order of Athabasca University. Most other members have been individuals from the community who have made exceptional contributions to the University. I was the first Faculty member (other than Dominique Abrioux, who also served as President) to be so honoured. The hupalo started with the blurb below published in the Edmonton and Calgary daily newspapers.

It continued at Convocation where Rory McGreal made a terrific and over flattering introduction to me at the beginning of the ceremonies. Rory’s introduction contained comments from Mark Brown, Alan Tait, Morten Paulsen and Wayne Macintosh – thanks to each of you. The life stream of the whole convocation ceremony is streamed at goo.gl/ZziwsG . Rory and my part begins around Minute 53

The celebrations ended with a banquet. All very moving, and I am trying hard to not leave with a swollen head! But thanks to all who have helped make my time at Athabasca very personally rewarding and recognized!!

It was also flattering to have AUPress over 40% discount on three of my authored, edited or co-authored books.

I was asked to do a 3 minute speech which I addressed to the graduates and to the wider Athabasca Community. Here is the text;

Madame Chair; Mr. President; Distinguished guests; Members of the Platform party; Graduands: Ladies and gentlemen:

Thanks to each of you!

I think I am the first faculty member (who wasn’t also a president) to win this award, and so I feel very deeply honored for your recognition—of not just my contributions—but of our work, together, here at Athabasca University.

Today is a day primarily for the graduates—and thus, I would like to use this time on the stage to congratulate each of them—and their family members and friends networks that you created —who have helped to get them here today.

All of my research has been focused on the distance learning experience. One of the most common questions is:

“Is distance education as good as campus-based education?”

Well … my colleagues and I have been asking this question for more than 30 years! And in roughly 90 per cent of studies, the results have shown that there is NO significant difference in learning outcomes.

And even when there is a difference it is likely to be in favour of distance learners. However, there is certainly more to being educated than just simply ‘learning outcomes.”

What distance education students build—and usually in larger doses than campus students—is self-efficacy. The belief in yourself and the knowledge that you can succeed in the tasks you set for yourself.

Distance learning builds knowledge and belief in yourself and an empowered understanding that you can achieve your goals.

You didn’t earn a distance education degree without being—or getting—good at creating and meeting deadlines and producing quality output—usually without the help of peers or classmates.

And so, today I celebrate your earned increase in self-efficacy!

But, to be sure, this graduation milestone does not mark the end of your learning. Technological and social change continues to happen—and more rapidly than in it changed in the past.

Luckily, I know this for sure: Because of your experience with AU, you are armed with the confidence and the knowledge that you can learn—and learn successfully.

You have self-efficacy. You can succeed—and you will succeed—as life-long learners.

Finally, I want to speak to my colleagues and friends in our broader Athabasca University community:

Bear with me as I don my sailor’s cap,—one of the pleasures of retirement! —obviously, as an institution, we’re continuing to sail through some rough waters. We are facing weather winds and that are very hard to predict. However, “the glass is rising”. Certainly there is value and risk in every decision we make.

But I want to continue to urge us to use the ever-increasing power of networks—and importantly, our own networking skills—to work together to build a new kind of university: A university that is not like the Athabasca University of 1970, nor that of 2016, for that matter.

But one that marries academic knowledge, collegial support and governance with cost-effective ways to study and teach. Alone, and together, we need to support and create better and more effective personal, academic, administrative and community networks.

These networks have demonstrated they produce the power to be critical components of the new ‘net-era’ university—and thus, they are a challenge for each of us to navigate—but a necessary one.

Oh, have I mentioned the Athabasca Landing yet?

Thank you very much!

Distance Education, My Work, Personal

Research–Practice Partnerships in Education

May 19, 2016Written by terrya

My Google Scholar alert notified me that one of my articles was cited in an as yet not publisher preprint in Educational Researcher. I don’t usually bother with articles hidden behind paywalls, but I was intrigued by the title:

Coburn, C. E., & Penuel, W. R. (2016). Research–Practice Partnerships in Education: Outcomes, Dynamics, and Open Questions. Educational Researcher. http://edr.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/28/0013189X16631750.abstract.

However, I was NOT prepared to pay SAGE to rent the article for 24 hours for $36 US and I didn’t really want to wait until I could access it through my University library. Luckily Mr Google found an excellent white-paper article by the same authors that was sponsored by a Foundation and so available for free download :

Coburn, C. E., Penuel, W. R., & Geil, K. E. (2013). Research-Practice Partnerships. A Strategy for Leveraging Research for Educational Improvement in School Districts. William T. Grant Foundation, New York, NY. http://rpp.wtgrantfoundation.org/library/uploads/2016/01/R-P-Partnerships-White-Paper-Jan-2013-Coburn-Penuel-Geil.pdf.

The term “research-practice partnership” was new to me, though the idea has resonated with me for some time. The term comes from many types of professional practice in which researchers and practitioners & administrative agents in the practice, develop a formal partnership to undertake research together. Coburn et al. list 5 defining characteristics of these partnerships:

The article describes and gives example of successful partnerships and goes into some detail about challenges and concludes with recommendations for researchers, practitioners and funders. The paper highlights one of the most challenging (and vexing problems) of educational research. Most educational researchers work at Universities. In these contexts some educational researchers play a double role in both professional and pre-development of teachers for the K12 world and in developing and supporting innovation and improvement in teaching and learning at their home universities. I’ve mostly been involved in the later having undertaken a number of major projects (most notably the Athabasca Landing, with Jon Dron).

The systematic problem in higher education is that innovations that are developed within education faculties have a terrible time of moving to production and systematic use outside of the pilot contexts in which they were developed. The system sort of works in that the educational researchers publish in their own research journals and compete with other social scientists in the University and nationally for research funds to continue development. However, this type of research is much more strategic and mission critical to the University, than most of the other research taking place at the University. I don’t wish to denigrate research in other disciplines, but the University itself has (or should have) a vested interest in continuously improving its educational practice – across all disciplines. However, to both colleagues and administration this educational research is usually seen as merely one more form of social science research and thus very few “practitioner-researcher partnerships” with the characteristics above result.

In the science, medicine and engineering contexts, partnerships between commercial firms and university researchers regularly arise and in Canada we have government programs to seed fund these ‘scientific’ partnerships. In addition there are programs to encourage work placements, early trials and other incentives for partnership development. In the K12 world some school divisions have also partnered with educational researchers but those that I have been involved with have had challenges related to publication rights, participant permissions and as always, funding shortages.

Some Universities are broadening their “Teaching and Learning” units to include a mandate for innovation, which could serve as a home for these partnerships. However, in most contexts that I have observed, the Teaching and Learning units are focused more on professional development, mentoring and in some cases short-term funding for projects or conferences . They usually have little interest or funding to champion the type of long-term “design-based research” that I believe is critical to both understand and then to implement and continually evaluate new educational pedagogies and technologies.

Jon Dron and my own work in building the Athabasca landing is a prime example of opportunity lost. The Landing is an Elgg-based social network, that is designed to grow “beyond the LMS” to give a networked home for the distributed university. However, to date we have been unsuccessful at building a “research-practice partnership” with the university. From the University’s perspective, the Landing is just another research project, owned and championed by two individual faculty. The University has no real strategy or desire to implement this or other educational initiatives, in a production capacity. Without this type of testing and if successful, guarantee of support and adoption across both administrative and academic units, the Landing, as social networking platform, has not and will never reach “critical mass”.

Huge opportunity lost…..

Design Based Research, educational social software, My Work research-practice partnership

The Enigma of Interaction

March 3, 2016Written by terrya

I’ve been fascinated by the role of interaction all of my career as both a student, a researcher and a teacher. Michael Moore’s famous article details the role of the ‘big three’ (student-student, student-content, student-teacher) interactions and influenced Randy Garrison and I to explore the other 3 possibilities (teacher-teacher, teacher-content and content-content interactions). I’ve written a number of summary articles, a recent article on interaction in MOOCs and note that interaction serves as the primary indicator of ‘presence’ in the Community of Inquiry (COI) Model.

Many, many research articles have shown significant and positive relationships between interaction and a host of outcomes including persistence, achievement and enjoyment. However, these studies are almost always correlational and sometimes based exclusively on student perceptions. These are useful methodologies but marred by challenges of proving causation. Did the interaction cause the positive outcomes (causation) or do motivated students both interact more and get better marks (correlation)?

Thus, I was pleased to see an interaction study in the latest issue of IRRODL that used a quasi-experimental study to examine the impact of student-teacher interaction. The article:

Cho, M., & Tobias, S. (2016). Should Instructors Require Discussion in Online Courses? Effects of Online Discussion on Community of Inquiry, Learner Time, Satisfaction, and Achievement. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning, 17(2). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v17i2.2342

The study was set in the context of a US undergraduate, fully online course with between 25-30 students in each of three sections taught by the same instructor. In the first instance there was no discussion. In the 2nd, the teacher posted a weekly discussion question and students were obliged to post at least one answer and one comment per week (typical forced participation that brought down the wrath of friend Jon Dron in a recent post). In the final section the teacher actively participated in the weekly discussions. In all cases the teacher was readily accessible via email.

A strength of the study was the multiple measures of interaction effects. These included:

completion of the COI Inventory – a Likert-scale, perception instrument derived from the original indicators of teaching, social and cognitive presence).
Student satisfaction measured by 3 lLkert questions
Time on task as represented by login time to the LMS
Student achievement as measured by final grade. The authors wisely excluded the marks for participation awarded in instance2 and 3.

Perhaps the least surprising outcome was that perceptions of social presence were significantly different with, as expected, higher perceptions of social presence in the more interactive instances. Also not surprising is that teaching presence increased in the 3rd instance, but not significantly.

The results became both interesting and surprising on the final 3 measures. In each of the three course sections, each with markedly different amounts of interaction, there were NO significant differences in terms of time on task (logged into Blackboard), student satisfaction or student achievement. There was a small (but not significant ) increase in student satisfaction in the 3rd instance with enhanced teacher participation.

The discussion section of this paper is also very good. They note that time requirements for participation required in the forums in instances 2 and 3 did not end up costing students more time – at least as measured by Blackboard logins. Finally, they note the obvious – teacher participation did not lead to increased achievement – despite the assumed time commitment required of the teacher.

These results tend to reduce support for the importance a number of the types of student and teaching presence described and promoted in the COI model. But the results provide support for the ideas I promoted in my Interaction Equivalency Theory. I proposed there that given high levels of one of the three levels of interaction, the other two could be reduced without loss of academic achievement. I also noted in my 2nd thesis of that work that likely increased satisfaction would results if more than one of the three forms were used (in this study, there was an increase but it was not significant in student satisfaction across the instances) but that it would come at increased cost (usually time to both teachers and students).

The study also did not look at attrition, perhaps because the numbers were small. I know from experience at Athabasca, when teaching and peer interaction is drastically reduced in self paced and continuous enrolment designs, that attrition almost always increases.

This excellent study concludes with recommendations for practice which include the note that student-student and student-teacher interaction are just choices and shouldn’t be considered to be hallmarks of all online (or classroom) courses. Good learning design counts!

Blended Learning, Community of Inquiry, Distance Education, interaction equivalency theory, My Work

A Fourth Presence for the Community of Inquiry Model?

January 4, 2016Written by terrya

9 Comments

A Fourth Presence for the Community of Inquiry Model?

The Community of Inquiry has emerged as the most widely referenced (the seminal 1999 article approaches 3,000 citations) and arguably the most widely used model for constructivist based e-learning design and research. I’ve always thought that it’s greatest strength is its simplicity (only 3 major, but interacting components) and the way the model can readily be used by teachers to devise and evaluate online learning courses and by researchers to guide the development of research questions and data collection strategies.

In the late 90’s we were interested in showing empirically that emerging ‘new’ forms of interactive distance education could support the type of high quality learning that is possible (though certainly not always available) in classrooms. We wanted to provide evidence for Randy Garrison’s claim that this was a new mode of teaching and learning that was education at a distance – not high tech, traditional cognitive behavioural style distance education. Thus, we focused on a key component of constructivist learning –social presence. We also picked up on Randy’s earlier work (based on Ennes, Paul and Lipman’s work) on critical thinking to devise the phases of cognitive presence. Finally, though Walter Archer, Randy and myself were all active in informal adult learning, we realized that the activity we were focusing on took place in institutional contexts with students studying in degree programs. Thus, we wanted a focus on the critical design, facilitation and subject matter expertise components of teaching presence.

Perhaps we quit too early, as this post argues next, but we had created a parsimonious model that was easily illustrated in the now famous COI Venn diagram. I also recall the fluidity with which new indicators were added to each of the presences as we poured over the transcripts from asynchronous computer conference based courses. In early days, it was easy to add, delete or reword indicators, but the three presences seemed to us then to account for all the major themes of successful online courses. A special call out here to Liam Rourke who worked as a graduate student on this project, and was responsible for much of this early identification and classification work. The COI work was especially enhanced with the development by Ben Arbaugh and colleagues of the COI survey, which made it much easier to gather perception data to measure each of the three presences.

We have never argued that the model identifies all possible components of successful formal education – either online or in the classroom. And perhaps not surprisingly, it wasn’t long before additions (and a few deletions) were suggested. For example, David Annand, (2011) suggested that social presence wasn’t really needed for effective teaching and learning.

A number of researchers picked up on the need for the contextual or interface “presence” and in the case of distance education for the participants to master the mediating technology. Gilly Salmon (2000) in her famous 7 step e-learning moderation model sees such technical support as a key component of each of her moderation steps. I was never that impressed with these arguments as every context – including classrooms, uses some combination of asynchronous and synchronous media to support teaching and learning. Thus, the “presence” of the media and the need for and skill with which teachers and learners adapt to it is a minor factor that is unique to each teaching and context and I thought would needlessly complicate the COI model.

First came the close to convincing arguments from Peter Shea and his colleagues that the COI model lacked awareness of the critical role that the learner plays in formal education. We all realize that the same learning context and interventions can affect different students with vastly different effect. Thus, Shea and Bidjerano (2010) postulated the need for Learner Presence to account for these important learner set of variables in either online or classroom education.

Marti Cleveland-Innes, Prisca Campbell (2012) and other of Marti’s colleagues next argued that “emotional presence” was notably absent from the original COI model. My rather lame excuse that 3 males from Alberta, were very unlikely to posit the existence of emotional presence, since “real men” in Alberta, don’t do ‘emotion’. Rienties and Rivers (2014) picked up on these ideas of emotional presence in a review study – Measuring and Understanding Learner Emotions: Evidence and Prospects. They who directly added a fourth element to create what technically is now no longer a Venn diagram since it does not show all possible interactions of all 4 components. It is now a Euler model – see http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1475/why-can-a-venn-diagram-for-4-sets-not-be-constructed-using-circles).

The most recent suggestion for a fourth presence comes from Lam (2015) who validated the existence of the original three presences, and then coined a new term for the type of learner agency that resonates with Shea’s “learning presence. Unfortunately she described this new addition to the COI as “Autonomy Presence”. Wikipedia explains that Autonomy comes from Ancient Greek: αὐτονομία autonomia from αὐτόνομος autonomos from αὐτο- auto- “self” and νόμος nomos, “law”, hence when combined, is understood to mean “one who gives oneself one’s own law” (Wikipedia). The word is used largely in the context of independence and freedom to make one’s own decisions. In educational context, this “autonomy” is valued to some degree, but as all students know, is severely curtailed by the edicts and wishes of the teacher. The indicators that Lam uses to identify and classify autonomy presence are however becoming increasingly important as the Internet provides additional or supplemental resources and communities that students can use to enhance, augment and validate their learning. (see below)

Terumi Miyazoe and I (2015) discussed this empowerment and the ability for students to increase student-student and student-content interaction in the context of my interaction equivalency theory in our 2015 paper Interaction Equivalency in the OER and Informal Learning Era.

It strikes me that the critical elements of learner, interface and autonomous presence flow directly from Alberta Bandura’s (1989) work on agency in which he described three types of agency in social cognitive theory. These are autonomous, mechanical and emergent interactive agency (p. 1175). The word agency evolved from Medieval Latin agentia “active operation,” Certainly the capacity for “active operation” can include most of the elements of interface presence since being productively active implies control over the environment. Shea’s reminder of the importance of the learning presence in the control of “active operation” is also subsumed in agency.

So my own suggestion in the search for the ‘missing’ element(s) in the COI model is to add agency presence to the COI trinity. This term is simpler than autonomous, builds on the seminal work of Bandura and captures the components mentioned by both Shea and Lam.

But where does that leave emotional presence? I argue that emotion is included in social presence (for example the indicator use of affective language) elements and in agency presence in line with both Bandura’s autonomous interaction – the capacity to recognize and use the power, insights and liability of emotional responses and his emergent agency in which emotions can be used to reach insights not accessible to those denying their existence or unable to deal with them effectively.

I haven’t validated this model empirically but it would likely include and consolidate many of the elements identified by Lam in her autonomous presence and Shea in his learning presence. And hopefully this addition would bring the COI model more in line with the emergent and networked resource ideas of modern connectivist theories.

References

Annand, D. (2011). Social presence within the community of inquiry framework. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(5), 40-56.

Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American psychologist, 44(9), 1175.

Cleveland-Innes, M., & Campbell, P. (2012). Emotional presence, learning, and the online learning environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(4), 269-292.

Lam, J. (2015). Autonomy presence in the extended community of inquiry International Journal of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning, 81(1), 39-61.

Miyazoe, T., & Anderson, T. (2015). Interaction equivalency in an OER, MOOC and informal learning era. Best of Eden 2013 Issue – EURODL. http://www.eurodl.org/?p=special&sp=articles&inum=7&article=695.

Rienties, B., & Rivers, B. A. (2014). Measuring and understanding learner emotions: Evidence and prospects. Learning Analytics Community Exchange.

Salmon, G. (2000). E-moderating: The key to teaching and learning online. London: Kogan Page.

Shea, P., & Bidjerano, T. (2010). Learning presence: Towards a theory of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and the development of a communities of inquiry in online and blended learning environments. Computers & Education, 55(4), 1721-1731.

Community of Inquiry, My Work