Presentation
Online debating to encourage student participation in online learning communities: A case study in the Education Department of Rhodes University
Cheryl Hodgkinson & Markus Mostert
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| Paper (13 pages) |
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| Appendix A (3 pages) |
At Rhodes University (RU) the Department of Education (Grahamstown) presents a BEd (Hons) elective, Educational Computing. In 2000 this course was presented online for the first time as students were geographically dispersed and the subject matter required students to be au fait with the use of information and communication technology for education. As students were as far afield as Swakopmund and Port Elizabeth, strategies for encouraging lecturer-student and student-student interaction were utilised. One of the strategies to promote participation was the use of online debating. The case study involved the lecturer in the role of chairperson, an outside evaluator from the Academic Development Centre at RU and the two “virtual” debating teams that included Education students and invited practitioners in the field.
Asynchronous online debates have been used with this same BEd (Hons) group each since then, with the roles of the chairperson and evaluator being changed each year. This paper will discuss the underlying epistemological perspective on online debating, the informing learning theory, the pedagogical processes put in place to facilitate maximum interaction and some of the strategies used to overcome the problems encountered during the process.