The main theme permeating my research agenda is designing learning tasks to promote purposeful and meaningful action and interaction, or in short, task structuring.

Task structuring is typically a teacher or instructional designer’s activity involving the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of a learning task. However, task structuring can also be learner driven or initiated. For example, if the epistemological orientation of the teacher/designer is constructivist, then designing open-ended learning tasks that force learners to grapple with the issues at hand (e.g., interpret givens and define constraints) encourages learners to impose their own structure on the learning task through reflective problem solving, collaboration, and social negotiation. Therefore, task structuring is grounded in epistemological beliefs and values about teaching and learning and can range on a continuum from low to high structure.

Determining the right amount of structure can be very difficult to achieve particularly in distributed and online learning environments where there is limited face-to-face teacher-student and student-student interaction. Hence, I am particularly interested in structuring learning tasks using Internet and Web-based technologies. The following sub-themes articulate the type of task structuring research that I am pursuing in distributed and online learning contexts:

(1) Structuring ill-defined problems using hypermedia technology;
(2) Structuring online discourse using communications technology;
(3) Structuring learning tasks to support student self regulation using web-based pedagogical tools;
(4) Structuring authentic learning tasks using course management systems;
(5) Scaffolding in online learning environments; and
(6) Mapping instructional strategies to web features.

View a concept map that articulates intersections across research themes.