Rules of Engagement

I just read one of the latest (read: most recent redundant) rehash of the effectiveness of online learning and how to better engage students online. It suggests engagement online is to be found in such things as peer review of student work, imbedded videos with chat exercises, or interjecting real world activities like visiting live businesses into an online course.  This study (and, in fact, pretty much any similar study out there) misses the basic fact that online learning is not a simple translation of the physical classroom to a virtual environment.

The gaming industry—and the gaming generation—has been telling us this since at least 2004 in the book Got Game.  Virtual engagement is a sophisticated approach to keeping anyone—students included—connected to content, whether that content is a video game or a learning object.  In short, it begins from the recognition that sitting in a physical classroom is not the same as sitting in an online class, any more than meeting with friends at a coffee shop is the same as logging into a virtual chat room.  This difference needs to be acknowledged and higher ed needs to catch up with the rest of society.

A key to engagement in the physical classroom is the ability of instructors to match content delivery to students’ learning styles.  Classroom teaching is performance art.  Instructors must gage the audience (that would be students) and adapt classroom presentations to hold their attention and promote interaction.  Effective instruction draws students into the experience and challenges their ability to become part of the learning experience.  Elements of this approach include eye contact, body language, voice modulation, and, oh, yes, mastery of the content.

All of this happens in real time in the classroom, and as instructors learn more about their students, they refine their approach.  Not so online.  The online experience is conducted in a virtual world that has parameters quite distinct from a physical setting.  Instructors and students do not see each other as they interact, and things like eye contact and voice modulation must be supplanted by word choice and sentence structure to develop an appropriate tone.  The delivery is multi-media, but not, in most cases, face-to-face. 

Nor is the interaction conducted in real time for the most part.  Why is that a big deal?  Because in a real-time interaction, participants involve themselves in rapid-fire communication, where messages are received and responded to instantaneously.  We often call this “conversation,” “discussion,” or “debate.”  Partakers in this kind of interaction do not have time to carefully consider and craft their messages, and the messages themselves are ephemeral as the sound of the human voice dissipates and fades out. Thus there is a need for frequent clarification and reframing.

In a virtual environment, participants usually have the opportunity to consider what they say (actually, what they write) and how they respond to messages prior to making that response.  This is important because messages in an online setting remain visible and can be revisited any number of times, to be analyzed and overanalyzed.  This permanence means that word choice and tone, for instance, must be fashioned with care.  It also means that participants are engaged in different ways depending on the mode of communication.

All of this goes to engagement.  Simply put, the rules are different because the nature of the interaction is different.  There is not a one-to-one translation from the physical to the virtual.  They are different genres of performance that instructors must acknowledge and master and that students must appreciate and absorb.