Interaction Equivalency in Self-Paced Online Learning Environments

Chapter 1: Introduction

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

Introduction to the Study

It is widely accepted that learning takes place through active engagement rather than passive transmission (S. W. Brown & King, 2000; Dobrovolny, 2006; Jonassen, 1999; Mezirow, 1997). This principle of active intercourse with either concepts or agents has been commonly labeled as “interaction.” It is through such interactions that knowledge can be constructed in a meaningful and memorable fashion. The precept of interaction is perhaps one of the most documented and disputed aspects of education, serving as a foundational component for many seminal and contemporary approaches to understanding the phenomenon of learning (Anderson, 2003). Having been hailed as one of the catalysts for movement from teacher-directed to learner-centered approaches, interaction is understood to be a fundamental element for quality learning environments (Flottemesch, 2000; Garrison & Anderson, 2003; Juwah, 2006; Kearsley, 1995; Picciano, 2002; Sherry, 1996). Often conceptualized as the mechanism whereby participants in the learning environment communicate with each other and respond to each other’s needs, interaction can also be generalized to reflect a wide array of processes—whether intrapersonal, interpersonal, or even interfacing with other technology agents (Hirumi, 2006; Mayes, 2006). In the simplest context however, interaction is engagement in learning (Wanstreet, 2006). Yet, the design and support of learning interactions that are both genuinely engaging and conceptually stimulating within online learning contexts remains a significant challenge in contemporary education (Ravenscroft & McAlister, 2006).

No matter how one defines interaction, based on recent research it is clear that when the level of interaction is inadequate or nonexistent, learners often feel isolated and an overall degradation of the learning experience can take place (Bibeau, 2001; Howland & Moore, 2002; Mann, 2005; Wanstreet, 2006). Conversely, the learning experience is enriched as learners engage in interactions within the learning environment that serve to scaffold the synthesis, evaluation, and application of knowledge (Rovai & Barnum, 2003; Wiley, 2006). Interaction has been identified as a central component of such engaging learning environments and a catalyst for the development of thriving learning communities (Hodge, Bossé, Foulconer, & Fewell, 2006; Swan, 2002). The higher education establishment has been quick to recognize the value of interaction as new distance education programs are emerging that embrace a socially constructed paradigm in an attempt to foster various levels and types of interaction (M. Brown & Long, 2006). Often, the goal of such efforts is for a sense of engagement to develop as learners interact in meaningful ways with each other, the instructor, and the content of the course (Ouzts, 2006; Rovai, 2002).

The rapid advancement of communications technology continues to spawn new applications and opportunities within online education for interpersonal interaction, forcing designers and instructors to revisit the construct of interaction and make purposeful selections of the activities that will foster the most beneficial learning experience. The rise of synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication (i.e., e-mail, threaded discussion, synchronous chat) combined with the integration of a structured learning management system environment has been mistakenly hailed by some as the panacea for developing quality online learning (Koszalka & Ganesan, 2004). Reminiscent of the Clark (1994) versus Kozma (1994) debate, the battle of media versus instruction continues to rage as educators and designers make decisions concerning appropriate implementation of various media and communication technologies within the development of online learning environments. The needs and preferences of learners ought to influence such decisions.

In an effort to meet the ever-increasing needs of adult learners, educational institutions are recognizing the potential of emerging educational models that place increasing emphasis upon both formal and informal learning networks values and are seeking to develop more flexible learner-paced models that provide learners the freedom to customize aspects of the learning experience to meet their personal and educational preferences (Dron, 2007; Kahn, 2007; Twigg, 2003). These new models appear especially attractive to administration because of the potential to not only meet the needs of the rapidly growing demographic of adult learners but also to support economies of scale (Anderson, Annand, & Wark, 2005; R. A. Ellis, Jarkey, Mahony, Peat, & Sheely, 2007; Taylor, 2001). Such flexible learning environments represent a unique and still rather unexplored segment of the expansive territory of online learning. Whereas an imposed-pace model sets definitive parameters for the course stipulating that all learners engage in the same learning activities at specific time periods, the self-paced approach affords more autonomy to the learner and provides benchmarks for progress and achievement while allowing learners to proceed at an individualized pace. While an imposed-pace course lends itself to regular or occasional collaborative activities, the self-paced course presents a more challenging environment for fostering collaboration among learners as individual learners may be at different stages of the course at any given time (Anderson et al., 2005). Rather than implying a lack of guidance, the self-paced approach affords learners an increased measure of flexibility as to the pace in which they engage in the various course activities and communications with others. Emerging tools and approaches for interaction based upon the new social computing capabilities of the semantic Web now make possible a wide array of interactions not only within the specified course environment but also across learner-defined domains that span beyond the virtual “walls” of the course (Dalsgaard, 2006; Dron, 2006b). As the options for interaction within the online learning environment grow, so does the necessity for identifying the types of interactions valued most by learners.

Substantial attention has been paid in the literature to focusing upon interaction within cohort-based, instructor-paced online environments characterized by specified start and end dates, limited entry points, and instructor-led discourse (Ho, 2005; Jung, Choi, Lim, & Leem, 2002; Joyce Lee, Carter-Wells, Glaeser, Ivers, & Street, 2006; Maor, 2003; Ouzts, 2006). Yet, the perspectives of students concerning their experiences regarding interactions within learner-paced education models is notably absent from the literature (Anderson et al., 2005). Online learning initiatives that incorporate a more open and self-paced approach incorporate unique learning environments differing significantly in format and structure from aforementioned instructor-led modes (Ngwenya, Annand, & Wang, 2004). This study explored the dynamics of interaction within a self-paced online learning environment utilizing both rich media and a mix of traditional and emerging asynchronous computer-mediated communication tools to determine what forms of interaction learners in a self-paced online course value most as well as what impact they perceive interaction to have on their overall online learning experience. The results of this study provide guidelines for instructional designers developing instructional strategies for online environments when neither the instructor nor course requirements impose pace upon the learners.

Background of the Study

Contemporary approaches to online learning are marked by the trend toward social constructivist learning modalities (Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy, & Perry, 1991; Driscoll, 2006). Social constructivism, first attributed to Piaget (1969), purports that the learning process is active, stemming from constructing rather than acquiring knowledge. The theory contends that individuals acquire knowledge through social interaction rather than individual exploration. It is the delicate balance between independent and collaborative educational experiences that fosters a thriving social constructivist learning environment. While recent technological advances with respect to computer-mediated communication certainly have helped make the goal of a social constructivist environment even more tangible, many early distance educators have made efforts to balance interaction with independent intellectual development (Daniel & Marquis, 1988).

The shift away from traditional instructivist practices toward more learner-centered models over the past several decades has opened the door for a resurgent emphasis on individualized learning to emerge. Such independent learning designs, commonly referred to as self-paced or learner-paced approaches, have dominated distance education research and practice for many years. The seminal research of distance education theorists such as Keegan (1996), Brockett and Hiemstra (1991), and Holmberg (1989) point to the strengths of self-paced education, including the ability to overcome time and place constraints, choices for learners concerning media content type and pace, and the economic scalability.
These flexible online learning environments, while providing learners with increased freedom and access, have been historically criticized for limiting learners’ ability to interact with peers in the learning community (Danaher, 1994). New social networking technologies, such as blogging, link sharing, collaborative authorship, and content syndication are being introduced that enable learners to collaborate in new and meaningful ways, therefore extending the theoretical and pragmatic bounds for the use of computer-mediated communication in online learning contexts. Whereas the use of traditional learning management systems creates a very organized, secure, and restricted learning environment, such emerging social technologies afford new distributed student-centered approaches to learning allowing individual learners more control of the learning experience. No longer restricted to participating in the learning activities defined by the instructor or housed within a centralized learning management system, learners can take an increasingly proactive role in the development of their own personal learning landscape through the individualized selection and development of personal tools and networks that will extend beyond the duration of the course and foster a lifelong approach to learning (Attwell, 2006; Downes, 2006; Tosh & Werdmuller, 2004).

Studies have explored the benefits of using emerging social software tools, such as wikis, blogs, and RSS, that allow individuals with little or no technical programming skills to collaborate and quickly and easily contribute to the expanding body of information online (Boulos, Marambo, & Wheeler, 2006; Schwartz, Clark, Cassarin, & Rudolph, 2004). Such studies overwhelmingly praise the strengths of these new communication tools (Beldarrain, 2006; Brescia & Miller, 2006; Cameron & Anderson, 2006; Mason, 2006; West, Wright, Gabbitas, & Graham, 2006). The aforementioned social software tools are among the many that allow individuals to easily create and share content and will be explained further in chapter 3. The horizon is promising for the implementation of such decentralized and predominantly free tools within pre-existing learning environments as they enable a level of informal interactions previously non-existent outside the confines of formal course activities. Yet, the perspectives of students and faculty concerning the effects of incorporating such learner-centered interpersonal interactions in self-paced learning environments is notably absent from the literature (Anderson et al., 2005). The continued investigation of the experiences and preferences of learners concerning the use of these new tools is essential to realizing the full pedagogical implications and best practices for implementation (Sims & Salter, 2006).

The dynamic of online learning includes interactions at numerous levels, spanning from interactions with systems to individuals. The work of Moore (1989) laid the foundation on which successive researchers have sought to explain the principles of interaction. Varying frameworks have resulted, each seeking to explain the dynamics of interaction within learning environments. For example, Garrison and Anderson (2000) focused on the structure of the teaching and learning transaction while simultaneously using the principles of interaction to form the theoretical basis of their seminal work concerning communities in inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000; Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999). These early efforts at examining interaction within online learning sought solely to analyze the substance and frequency of interpersonal interactions, with hopes of gleaning clues as to the motivation for participants and their subsequent experiences.

The effects of interaction on both the traditional and online student have been explored within the literature and researchers have consistently found that interaction is essential for a successful learning experience within either the traditional classroom or the contemporary online learning environment (Friesen & Anderson, 2004; Keenan, 2002; Su, 2006; Swan, 2002; Wallace, 2003). Yet, the functions of interaction within the educational transaction are varied. Hannafin (1989) proposed five basic purposes for computer-based interactions: confirmation, pacing, inquiry, navigation, and elaboration. Sims’ (1999) classification identified the functions as providing the learner with control, facilitating program adaptation through learner input, allowing diverse forms of participation and communication, and scaffolding the development of meaningful learning. Numerous researchers have since devised similar approaches to classifying the value of interaction while arguing the necessity for purposeful design of interaction into online instruction (e.g., Grooms, 2000; Northrup, 2001; Roblyer & Wiencke, 2003, 2004). The resulting taxonomies that have been developed to explain dynamics of interaction have been tested primarily to demonstrate the importance of the construct, not to differentiate between the varying types of interaction that have been identified.

Interaction may serve numerous purposes within the online learning environment, but the primary focus for many instructional designers and instructors centers around improving student outcomes within the online learning experience. To that end, a number of important studies examining the dynamics of interaction within the online learning ethos have been conducted. One recent study, for example, examined instructor-student interaction and found significant relationships between student-instructor interaction and student satisfaction (Restauri, 2006). Chang (2003) studied the effect of previous online learning experience on preferences for online interaction and found that learners’ preferences for interaction were affected very little by their previous level experience. Prammanee (2005) explored the nature of interaction in an online course and noted that a combination of the learner-content, learner-learner, and learner-instructor interaction, along with an instructor-led analytical model, increased the level and patterns of interaction of students. Learners typically followed the example that the instructor set in terms of modeling the frequency and substance of interaction. The findings of this study suggest that the role of the instructor within the development of interactive and engaging online community should not be marginalized.

The effects of interaction have been measured using various outcomes, such as: learner satisfaction (Stein, Wanstreet, Calvin, Overtoom, & Wheaton, 2005; Strachota, 2003), engagement (Lim, 2004), achievement (Jung et al., 2002), reflection (Roberts, 2002), and retention (Koper, 2005). Yet, questions remain largely unanswered concerning the preferences of students concerning the various interactions that they engage and the degree in which such interactions are perceived to be equivalent. The study of online learning premises from the students’ perspective certainly isn’t without precedent. Wang (2004) explored the relationship between learner presence and various communication settings within an online course to detect a correlation between visibility learning outcomes, allowing students to rank the perceived order of importance for various online activities. Willging and Johnson (2004) sought to learn from the personal accounts of students of the factors that influence students to leave an online course. First-hand accounts from learners have been shown to provide rich perspectives of online learning phenomena that have otherwise not been captured. Such insights do not serve to presuppose results to other contexts but rather to gain a holistic understanding of the specific intervention under study. As subsequent research studies are conducted, the rich accounts provided in numerous studies can form a solid foundation for future inductive or empirical studies, therefore adding great value to the body of knowledge.

Statement of the Problem

Interaction has long been identified as a key element to successful online learning programs (Beldarrain, 2006; Moore, 1993). While not the sole indicator of high-quality and effective online education programs, there is significant evidence to suggest that meaningful interaction with other students and the instructor is integral to the development of thriving learning environments (R. E. Brown, 2001; Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005; H. C. Greene, 2005; Joyce Lee et al., 2006; Swan, 2002). Such engaging interactions are integral to the development of a sense of social connectedness and has been found to enhance both the learning experience and course completion rates (Garrison, 2003; Su, Bonk, Magjuka, Liu, & Lee, 2005; Swan & Shih, 2005).

The rapidly expanding approaches to online education have given rise to varying theoretical bases for judging the appropriateness of incorporating interaction. Insufficient or ineffective interaction may lead to student isolation, while exorbitant levels may lead to overload or frustration (Berge, 1999; Willging & Johnson, 2004). This study aimed to explore the preferences of learners concerning the various interactions they engage in during a self-paced online course while questioning the presumption espoused by Anderson (2003) that a measure of equivalency exists among these commonly identified forms of interaction in an online learning environment. Anderson’s theoretical basis for judging the essential quantities of each of the various types of interaction maintains that as long as one of three primary forms of interaction (student-teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level, other forms may be minimized or eliminated without adversely affecting the learning experience. This hypothesis is increasingly attractive to institutions pursuing initiatives to rapidly expand online course offerings as it addresses the limitation that such institutions commonly face regarding the ratio of faculty to students and the amount of student-teacher interaction. This rationale is being extrapolated to support the design of learning approaches that maximize the student-content and student-student interaction while seeking to reduce the level of student-instructor interaction. Yet, little empirical evidence currently exists as to the value that learners place upon the various types of interactions in a self-paced learning environment. This mixed methods study provides a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge concerning socially constructed learning environments by examining the preferences of learners regarding the types of interaction they engage in to learn whether an attribute of interaction equivalency does in fact exist.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study was to expand upon previous research advocating for the purposeful design of interaction within the online learning experience (C.-W. Chang, 2006; Hirumi, 2002). While numerous researchers have found the construct of interaction in general to be fundamental to the success of an instructor-led and paced online learning initiative, few have either examined the individual elements of interaction within the self-paced learning context or sought to grasp the tenets of such a learning experience through first-hand accounts of learners (Anderson et al., 2005; Wallace, 2003). Such previous studies have primarily focused upon quantitative measures of interaction, but lack the rich insights possible through in-depth interviews of students concerning the substance and quality of their learning experience as well as their preferences for interaction (Ho, 2005; Rovai & Barnum, 2003). This study extends the bounds of previous research into interaction within the online learning experience by examining the relationships of learner preference to the attributes of interaction.

The extent to which various interactions are deemed equivalent by learners has not been well documented within the research literature, and the dynamics of interaction and community formation within socially-constructed self-paced learning environments is even more scarce. Each learning environment is unique based on the design elements and characteristics of the participants and it is therefore problematic to generalize findings from a few deemed “standardized” contexts to all learning venues. Further research is needed to support the intuitive assumption that interaction is necessary and provide empirical evidence for the utility of interaction fostered by emerging models within a variety of online learning environments. This study builds upon existent knowledge of online education by specifically examining the composition of the online learning experience of adult learners in a hybrid self-paced learning environment that includes numerous interactive components and instructor facilitation designed to foster an engaging and meaningful learning experience. This study sought to learn what forms of interaction learners value most and gain an understanding of their perceptions of the impact that interaction has on their self-paced online learning experience.

Rationale

New types of technologies that support the needs of students in learner-paced courses are being developed and implemented, promoting the incorporation of an increasing number of informal interaction types. For example, emerging social networking solutions allow for interaction to take place among instructors and students beyond the confines of the learning management system. Such informal learning environments provide a more open venue for learners to connect with others who may be interested in the same subject matter but are either at a different stage of the course or in an entirely different course section (Rhode, 2006). Participation in such an organic learning landscape blurs the lines that have been previously drawn between formal learning applications and informal personalized learning environments that promote lifelong learning. As these traditionally separate learning venues converge, the underlying precepts previously understood need to be re-examined.

It is reasonable to assume that the constructs of the course as well as the individual preferences of learners may influence the development of the learning environment and dynamics of interaction. This study explored the dynamics of interaction within a self-paced learning environment in which interpersonal interaction with fellow learners and the instructor is strongly encouraged but not necessarily required. Rather than mandating asynchronous communication solely within an instructor-driven threaded discussion board, emerging approaches to fostering interaction encourage the formation of online learning communities and communities of practice outside of the prescribed course boundaries that can serve to scaffold a rich and meaningful learning experience. This study examined the experiences of adult learners who participated in an online course incorporating a variety of traditional computer-mediated communication and emerging educational social software to learn what modes of interaction learners prefer and to what extent such interactions with fellow learners as well as instructor-generated multimedia are perceived as being equivalent.

Research Questions

This exploratory study sought to examine the experiences and preferences of adult learners concerning the various interactions that they encounter in a self-paced online course. The following four primary research questions guided data collection and analysis efforts:

1. What forms of interaction do adult learners engage in most in self-paced online courses?
2. What forms of interaction do adult learners value most in self-paced online courses?
3. What forms of interaction do adult learners identify as equivalent in self-paced online courses?
4. What impact do adult learners perceive interaction to have on their self-paced online learning experience?

Significance of the Study

Within distance education frameworks, interactivity is often esteemed as paramount to the development of meaningful and memorable learning experiences (Brewer & Klein, 2006; Joyce Lee et al., 2006) and yet it is a concept that has received relatively little research attention in the literature regarding self-paced learning. In an attempt to add to the body of knowledge concerning the nature and value of interaction in self-paced online learning environments, this study will explored the preferences of learners concerning the various interactions they engage in during a self-paced online course while examining Anderson’s (2003) interaction-based model of e-learning within the context of an actual self-paced online program to determine whether or not learner experiences support or refute his “Interaction Equivalency Theorem” in which he proposes,

Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the 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. High levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences (Anderson, 2003, para. 10).

While preferences may vary among learners in regards to the definition and means for evaluating interaction (Sims, 2003; Su et al., 2005), it is important to determine whether participants in online learning experiences identify the various modes of interaction as congruent or disparate. The perceived value of each available interaction modality will to a large extent determine its current and future role within the online learning experience. The findings of this study have implications for all those involved in online course design, development and instruction as it provides a rich look into the perspectives and preferences of online learners concerning the forms and frequency of interaction.

The findings of this study are important in that they are a significant contribution to the body of empirical research in the expanding field of online education. The results serve to fortify and extend the knowledge base within the field and lay the foundation for successive studies utilizing similar methods. Suggestions for future research studies are proposed within Chapter 5 under the recommendations section.

It is further noted that this study yields valuable findings concerning the online teaching and learning transaction within socially-constructed self-paced learning environments. The experiences of adult learners participating in online courses that incorporate such approaches have to this point been underrepresented in the literature and are a key component to be considered in the both expansion of existing programs as well as the design and development of future initiatives. The results may be of particular value to those seeking to develop online learning programs that promote economies of scale while integrating emerging methodologies.

It has been proposed that the achievement of the full potential of interaction and community networks is dependent upon a repositioning of instructional design roles and processes (Irlbeck, Kays, Jones, & Sims, 2006). To that end, this study and others like it provide valuable insights concerning the role of adult learners in the formation of socially-constructed learning and will serve to inform future design and development efforts seeking to incorporate such models. The results hold implications for designing and sequencing e-learning interactions to foster the achievement of instructional objectives.
Finally, the findings provide an initial look at the incorporation of informal interactions, such as blogging and educational social software, within the teaching and learning transaction. As the read/write Web continues to develop and increasing emphasis is placed upon including such emerging computer-mediated communication tools within online learning, the value of this and other similar studies focusing on the experiences of learners engaging in learning activities leveraging these promising new tools can not be overstated.

Nature of the Study

Building upon previous research in human-human interaction in online learning environments, this qualitative study documents and explores the experiences of adult learners concerning the various types of interactions they engage in throughout the duration of their participation in a self-paced course employing various levels of collaboration with peers and the instructor. This qualitative study provides a naturalistic description of the dynamics of interaction within an online learning environment through the lens of self-paced learners.

Employing a mixed methods approach to gain first-hand accounts from learners regarding their experiences, a convenience sample of learners enrolled in a self-paced online course was selected to participate in in-depth interviews to share first-hand accounts of their interaction experiences and preferences in an effort to glean a holistic understanding of the dynamics of and learner preferences for interaction within less structured online learning environments. Interviews consisted of a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions allowing participants to indicate their level of engagement in the various types of interactions in the learning environment as well as share first-hand the preferences for interaction in the self-paced online environment. Such rich learner perspectives provide an enlarged and deepened range of immediate experience, adding great value to the body of knowledge by forming a solid foundation for future inductive or empirical studies. Transcripts of the interviews with learners were analyzed and coded for emerging themes while frequencies of engagement were noted and compared.

Definition of Terms

The following terms are operationally defined for the sake of this study:

Adult learner. For the purpose of this dissertation, the adult learner is an adult older than age 22, who may or may not have already earned a postsecondary education, and who is undertaking a learning venture to expand his/her knowledge and skills.

Andragogy. The theory and process of adult learning.
Asynchronous learning. Online learning format allowing learners enrolled in a course to login to the online course room and participate in assigned learning activities at their discretion. Learners are not required to be present in the course room at specified times.

Blog, Weblog. A personal Web page or online journal consisting of a series of contributions in reverse chronological order that reflect the thoughts and perspective of an individual. Readers have the opportunity to make comments to the postings of the author. The author and readers can contribute with little to no technical skills background beyond basic Web navigation.

Course community. A network of learners interacting throughout the duration of the course without restriction to the confines of a single course section within a learning management system. Whereas learners may be placed in a small cohort with an instructor, they may also have opportunity to communicate with the larger community of all learners within an academic program who may have interest in the subject matter of the course. Learners have the opportunity to continue to participate in the ongoing dialogue after the academic term of the course ends.

Children's ministry. The act of training children about spiritual matters. While children’s ministry can happen in a variety of contexts, the local church is the most common venue. References to “children's ministry” will imply the local church setting.

Children’s ministries. The collective religious education classes and activities for children within a local church setting.

Children’s ministry workers. Individuals volunteering from within the local church congregation to serve in one or more children’s ministry classes or activities offered by the local church. Many are parents of children and often times have no previous training or experience prior to volunteering to serve. Some of these individuals may serve for a lengthy period of time and may become coordinators or directors of children’s ministry areas within a church. More commonly however, these individuals will serve for only a brief period of time.

Children’s ministry training. Efforts aimed at equipping and empowering volunteers to serve children within the local church setting. These training opportunities could include peer mentoring, training classes, worker orientations, or any other efforts to provide ministry development training for volunteers. The connotation of the term used here refers more to training of vocational children’s ministry leaders, working either full-time or part-time within a local church enrolled in either a postsecondary certificate program, associate degree, and bachelor degree program offered by a seminary or religious postsecondary institution.

Community of Inquiry (COI). A model to represent the diverse elements and yet interrelated aspects to a quality online educational experience, including: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence.

Distance education. Learning taking place when the learners and instructors are separated physically by time and space. Access to learning is not limited by geography or physical demands and may involve the use of computer technology and the Internet.

Educational social software. “Networked tools that support and encourage individuals to learn together while retaining individual control over their time, space, presence, activity, relationship, and identity” (Anderson, 2006a, p. 83).

Educational semantic Web. “The application of advanced Web tools and Web organization to education applications” (Anderson, 2006b, p. 142).

Formal interaction. Interaction purposefully designed, often by the instructor or instructional designer, to take place during and facilitate the learning experience.

Informal interaction. Extemporaneous interaction, often initiated by learners, that takes place beyond the formal learning environment.

Interaction. Process of individuals, objects, materials, or agents directly influencing each other.

Interactivity. "Those functions and/or operations made available to the learners to enable them to work with content material presented in a computer based environment" (Sims, 2000, p. 46).

Learning Management System. Web-based suite of tools for managing the delivery of instructional content and facilitating computer-mediated communication. Also commonly referred to as a course management system, examples include Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle, Sakai, Angel, and Desire2Learn.

Learning networks. Informally connected groups of learners characterized by an environment in which members are autonomous, diverse, and able to control the frequency, substance, and duration of their participation (Downes, 2006).

Mixed methods research. "Collecting, analyzing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study or series of studies" (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007, p. 5)

Online learning. Learning facilitated by computer, Internet, e-mail and/or Web site enabling learners separated physically by time and space to collaborate. This mode of learning can include either synchronous or asynchronous communication among students and the instructor.

Personal learning environment. Individualized set of loosely-connected tools that allows an individual to engage in a distributed environment consisting of a network of people, services, and resources.

Podcasting. Process of publishing media files to the Internet with an RSS feed, allowing users to subscribe to receive new content automatically.

Qualitative data. "Open-ended information that the researcher gathers through interviews with participants" (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007, p. 6).

Quantitative data. "Closed-ended information such as that found on attitude, behavior, or performance instruments" (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007, p. 6).

RSS. Abbreviation referring to Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, the XML-based process of distributing and aggregating new content on the Web.

Self-paced online course. An online learning experience involving a cohort of learners and an instructor, beginning at a specified date. Learners are allotted a certain period of time in which to complete all course activities but are afforded the freedom to proceed through requirements and engage in communications with members of the learning community at an individual pace. Learning community members may utilize both restricted communication tools (ie: asynchronous threaded discussion, e-mail) as well as open tools (ie: course blog, individual blog, synchronous chat) to communicate.

Social bookmarking. Web-based approach to saving, categorizing, and sharing bookmarks of favorite online resources with others.

Social computing. Open computer-mediated communication technologies enabling the masses to interact, exchange, and sort information.

Social networks. Relations or connections between people engaged in different forms of interpersonal communication.

Social presence, cognitive presence, teaching presence. While separate definitions for each of these terms may be found within the literature, for the purpose of this study these terms collectively refer to the elements of the online learning experience related to the degree in which participants in a learning environment feel effectively connected and are able to project themselves and construct meaning through sustained discourse.

Synchronous learning. Online learning format requiring learners enrolled in a course to be present online at specified times rather than at the learner's discretion.

Social software. Software applications that allow individuals to create online profiles, disseminate a wide variety of rich media, and easily share or co-create resources with members of the network.

Tringulation design. Quantitative and qualitative data are collected simultaneously and analyzed together, with results compared to see if findings are similar.

Wiki. Web site allowing users to collectively add and edit content.

Assumptions

The following assumptions are made for this study:

1. Reasonable similarity as well as diversity among the learners within the online certificate program is assumed. Students will not be selected or rejected for participation based on age, ethnicity, or gender but this data will be collected to assess potential differences in response patterns.
2. Learners enrolled in a self-paced online course have experienced the various interactive components of the course.
3. Through expressed measures of confidentiality, the participants will respond in a truthful manner.

Limitations

No matter what approach is selected when conducting scientific inquiry, limitations invariably exist and must be considered. Due to the extensive contact that the qualitative researcher has with the setting of the study and the participants, efforts must be made to address bias, reliability, and validity (McMillan & Schumacher, 2006; Merriam, 1998). While such precautions will be taken, the following limitations to this study are recognized:

1. As with any qualitative study, the researcher is afforded extensive exposure to the setting and participants of the study. This presents the opportunity for bias as well as threats to reliability and validity to exist. In this study the researcher currently teaches as adjunct faculty for the institution that the participants will be selected from and has served as the instructor for the course(s) that the interviewees will be sharing experiences from. Explicitly detailed research design and methods are therefore essential.
2. The focus of this qualitative study is specific to understanding an educational intervention from the perspective of those involved. The very nature of such inquiry is based on the premise that multiple perspectives for any given experience exist and that the significance of the experience to the participants is what comprises reality (McMillan, 2000). The rich insights gleaned from the participants are specific to that population and cannot be projected upon other classifications of individuals. This study focuses on learner preferences for interaction in a self-paced online learning environment and does not simultaneously investigate instructor-preferred or administration-preferred tenets worthy of analysis.
3. The sample of adult students is drawn from the same northeastern, private, four-year institution currently enrolled in a self-paced online course offered as part of an online certificate program for children’s ministry professionals. It is possible that this may limit the ability to generalize the findings of this study to other learning environments. The findings of this study offer an initial understanding of learner preferences for interaction that may serve as the baseline from which further studies may be conducted.