Networked Learning Conference 2004 |
NLC2004 /Proceedings / Symposia / Symposium 10/ Papers
Organised By: Sarah J Mann
OVERVIEW
The purpose of this Symposium is to present the work of the Communication and
Control in E-Learning Environments Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Equality
in E-Learning Project. The SIG has examined the inter-relationships between
on-line communication and learner and tutor experience of control over different
aspects of the e-learning process.
If education is seen as a prime site for the reproduction of reality, the interaction
of asymmetrical power relations between teachers and students, and the formation
of identities, then understanding issues of communication and control becomes
central to an understanding of educational processes. E-learning and in particular
networked, collaborative e-learning, provides a very interesting case study.
It offers, in its processes and in its philosophical approach, an understanding
of reality as constructed and an approach which supports the construction of
alternative ‘realities’ (i.e. it challenges the idea of truth as
naturalized); it aims to engage learners and teachers in collaborative and
social processes where the aim is to reduce the unequal distribution of power
between participants; and it supports subjectivity and takes account of difference
and the expression and construction of multiple identities. It is also embedded
within new forms of communication technology which may enable or constrain
these processes. The interesting question posed by this new learning process
is: what happens to communication and control within such new contexts of learning?
This SIG has taken a psycho-socio-discoursal approach to examining the issue
of communication and control within networked e-learning. The experience of
control is seen to be both psychological, and emerges as motivation; and sociological,
and related to power. It assumes that control is mediated through the tools
and technologies available, the tasks required, individual levels of competence
and motivation, social structural factors, available roles and identities,
and pedagogic design. This dynamic interaction takes place within the social
context of discourse and forms the flow of learner engagement.
The SIG has thus focused on investigating the individual learner and tutor’s
experience according to psychological, pedagogical and socio-discoursal factors.
Subgroups within the SIG have taken each of these factors and examined them
according to the following three questions:
What is the relationship between the experience of control and motivation?
What is the relationship between pedagogic design of collaborative learning processes and issues of power and control?
How do relations of power and the exercise of control reveal themselves in the discourse of collaborative networked e-learning?
The three papers presented as part of this symposium address each of these questions respectively.
Linking Perceptions of Control
and Signs of Engagement in the Process and Content of Collaborative E-Learning
Rachel Harris, Klara Bolander, Marcel Lebrun, Françoise Docq and Marie-Thérèse
Bouvy
A Critique of Participative
Discourses Adopted in Networked Learning
Michael Reynolds, Madeleine Sclater and Sue Tickner
Towards a Methodological
Approach for the Analysis of Issues of Communication and Control in Networked
E-Learning Discourse
Jenny Gustafson, Vivien Hodgson, Louise Kehler, Sarah Mann, and Sanne Fejfer
Olsen