Research on Online Learning

Similarities & Differences within Each Instructional Approach

Similarities	Results	Strategies
Asynchronous	Importance of role of moderator. Linear trend of changes in social interaction over time. Activity of students based on knowledge acquisition.	Use it for reflective activities.
Synchronous	Students participated more than leader. Experiences students tended to interact more.	Appropriate for social brainstorming communication. Not good for building consensus.
Interactivity

Differences	Results	Strategies
Asynchronous	Disparity in level of synthesis of content.
Synchronous
Interactivity

Results Between Instructional Approaches

Similarities	Asynchronous	Synchronous	Interactivity
Asynchronous
Synchronous
Interactivity

Differences	Asynchronous	Synchronous	Interactivity
Asynchronous		Language used in asynchronous was more formal than in synchronous. In synchronous communication was more peer-to-peer, but in asynchronous it was more teacher to student. Asynchronous discussions were deeper than synchronous.
Synchronous
Interactivity

Strategies

Similarities	Asynchronous	Synchronous	Interactivity
Asynchronous
Synchronous
Interactivity	Use reflective activities for self-questioning & rationalization.	Use synchronous activities for brainstorming

Differences	Asynchronous	Synchronous	Interactivity
Asynchronous
Synchronous
Interactivity

Research Based Recommendations for T/TAC Online

(T/TAC 1 parts)

Research Involving Online Communities (Table 4)

• While T/TAC Online’s charter is to be “An online community linking people and resources to help children and youth with disabilities”, there are legal and practical reasons why it is not an appropriate venue for an online community which is based on many-to-many communication.

• It is designed as a single point of access for information about resources for the community of people helping children and youth with disabilities. As such, it is possible for a community to develop through contacts initially made from attending an event or emailing a resource, but the sense of community would need to be facilitated outside the T/TAC site itself

Research Involving Hypermedia or Hypertext (Table 5)

• In order to provide scaffolding we will develop step-by-step tutorials to guide users through the system.

Research Involving Web-Based Instruction (WBI) (Table 6)

• The results of the research indicate that people learn better when they work in groups in a problem-solving structure.
• The research also indicated that web-based training can enhance face-to-face learning. We believe that the most effective use of the T/TAC Online training will be when learners have interaction with their T/TAC specialists before and after taking a class.
• The results also indicated that structured environments were more effective than non-structured environments. The T/TAC Online training format is highly structured so this is a good feature.
• Research also showed that the capability to take online notes enhanced effectiveness on web-based instruction. This is a feature which may enhance T/TAC Online’s training, particularly if it were structured in such a way that notes could also be sent to specialists via email.

Research Involving Student Experience and Perceptions of Online Learning (Table 7)

• There should be a facility for synchronous communications between users.
• Consider some facility for peer review of training content (allow others to see you unpublished works)
• Provide a form of technical support.

Research Involving Faculty and Instructor Perspectives (Table 8)

• Consider compensation for increased faculty time in preparing and delivering online courses.
• Provide adequate institutional support, technological infrastructure for online courses.
• Provide support in workload, release time and grant opportunities as a means to encourage faculty to use distance-learning methods.