44 The Handbook of Blended Learning

Evolving blended learning models provide the essential methodological scaf­folding needed to effectively combine face-to-face instruction, online instruction, and arrays of content objects and assets of all form factors. For example, in such a blended learning scenario, a student may find himself participating in a face-to-face class discussion; he may men log in and complete an online mastery exercise or two, then copy some practice exercises to a PDA to take advantage of what David Metcalf (2002) calls "stolen moments for learning"—those times between classes or meetings while on the train or waiting for an appointment. Think about sending a text message with results of your practice sessions to someone in your virtual study group using your mobile phone—and getting a voice mail with feed­back on your results when you arrive at the end of your flight.

The picture gets a little more complicated as wireless Web surfing becomes the norm rather than the exception. The always-accessible information access en­abled by wireless devices literally burst open the walls of the classroom and rocks the locus of classroom control. Being able to check on facts and figures in the mid­dle of a professor-led discussion democratizes classroom dynamics in previously unimaginable ways. It means richer and more productive online tools such as auto-generating messages in your course Web site's online calendar, reminding you to post your report on the course Web site before launching your browser for class. It also means being turbo-connected, where nobody is surprised when you receive a text message from a colleague in another state, warning you that you are being blogged—while you are in the midst of delivering that very presentation on which you are being blogged.

Why Interaction Matters

The ability to interact—with instructors, students, content interfaces, features, code, channels, and environments—is analogous to being connected. For technology-mediated learning, interaction is a key value proposition. Inter­action has been and continues to be one of the most hotly debated constructs in the realms of distance learning, instructional design, and academic trans­formation, to name three. Interaction continues to be perceived as the defin­ing attribute for quality and value in online learning experience. And while interactivity (equated with interaction) is no longer as expensive, unusual, or technologically challenging as it has been even in the recent past, interaction continues to be an essential component of a technology-mediated learning de­sign success. As more and more distributed models of learning and collabo­ration emerge, interaction increasingly serves as the so-called glue that holds together all of those variables being blended. As noted by Moore and Kearsley

On Designing Interaction Experiences for Blended teaming

45

(1996), the more distributed the teaching and learning paradigm, the more critical the need for interaction.

Schools of Thought on Interaction

For the purposes of this discussion, interactions are defined as reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two actions. Interactions occur when the objects and events mutually influence one another (Wagner, 1994). A number of schools of thought have emerged in the past two decades that explore interaction in the context of technology-mediated learning. The rationale for doing so revolves around two commonly held beliefs:

• The perceived quality of a learning experience is directly proportional to and positively correlated with the degree to which that experience is seen as interactive.

• If technology-mediated learning designs are to have any significant impact on current and future pedagogical practices, then learning design and devel­opment decisions need to maximize the benefit of interaction.

The following section reviews several perspectives on interaction to com­pare and contrast aspects of each point of view. Although they are not presented in any particular chronological order, it is telling that a number of these views on interaction predate the current wave of connected personal digital tools and communication devices. Given the following discussion, a case can certainly be made for proposing a new dimension of the interaction that focuses on the interaction experience, technology mediated or otherwise.

Interactions as Transactions

For those subscribing to Michael G. Moore's views on the subject, interactions are transactions between teacher and learner, learner and learner, and learner and content (Moore, 1989). The addition of learner-interface interactions as proposed by Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena (1994) was a nod in the direction of in­creasingly responsive computer systems and networks emerging in the early 1990s. Quests to define interaction as an expression of the relationships between and among Moore's three interaction categories have shaped much of the current un­derstanding of interaction in distance and online learning settings. In describing Moore's theory of transactional distance, Moore and Kearsley (1996) noted that transactional distance explores the relationship between structure (specifically a

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course design) and dialogue (referring to the communication between instruc­tors and learners during implementation). It focuses on shifts in understanding and perception created by the separation of teachers and learners. Moore's model considered the relationships between teachers and students (as well as learners with learners and learners with content) by examining the effect that (transac­tional) distance has on instruction and learning. This interaction schema aimed to indicate who or what was to be involved in an interaction or transaction. The agents and directions of these transactions were as important as the perceived and real distance between and among them. However, the explicit description of an interaction's purposes, intents, and outcomes was open.

While Saba and Shearer (1994) validated the relationship between dialogue and structure, later explorations by Jung (2001) added a number of dimensions to Moore's theory that responded to the evolving sophistication of content creation tools, content distribution networks, and collaboration technologies. These new dimensions include considerations related to:

Infrastructure—aimed at such issues as content expandability, content availability, and visual layout

Dialogue—aimed at such issues as academic interaction, collaborative interaction, and interpersonal interaction

Learner collaboration—aimed at issues such as the degree and quality of engagement with others

Learner autonomy—aimed at issues related to the degree and quality of learner independence

Interactions as Outcomes

I got involved (Wagner, 1994, 1997, 1999) in the interaction debate a number of years ago, originally from the perspective of an academic researcher, but later from the perspective of a working instructional designer. At that time, creating com­pelling interactive experiences was frequently the most expensive attribute of a technology-mediated learning design. Under these conditions, I found myself viewing interaction less as a theoretical construct and more as a variable that needed to be exploited, accommodated, leveraged, or managed when crafting dig­ital learning designs. From this perspective, interaction became a strategy for achieving specific learning or performance outcomes.

Between 1992 and 1999, my colleagues and I observed that the learning in­terventions, solutions, and programs we were designing for clients tended to exhibit a range of interactions that appeared as targeted outcomes. By describing these

On Designing Interaction Experiences for Blended Learning 47

interaction categories to one another, we were better able to demonstrate how we were providing value from our technology-mediated learning designs:

• Interaction for participation provided learners with a means of engaging with one another. Participative interaction ranges from using names of partici­pants in discussions to articulating one's interest in assuming leadership respon­sibilities in a learning cohort.

• Interaction for communication offered the ability to share information and opin­ions or to influence intentionally the opinions or beliefs of others.

• Interaction for feedback referred to any information that allows learners to judge the quality of their performance. From a behaviorist perspective, feedback pro­vides reinforcement, which is intended to correct and direct performance. Cog-nitivists suggest that feedback provides learners with information about the correctness of a response so that they can determine if a response is right or wrong or a correct or an incorrect response, so that long-term retention of correct in­formation is enabled.

• Interaction for elaboration meant coming up with alternative examples to ex­plain a new idea or developing alternative explanations for why an idea may be framed in a particular way. It makes new information more meaningful for learn­ers. By expanding or even manipulating a bit of information associated with a given idea, it is easier to recognize all of the conceptual hooks, or points of conceptual similarity, that may be associated with that information.

• Interaction for learner control and self-regulation provided learners with the infor­mation needed to manage the depth of study, range of content covered, type of alternative media needed for information presentations, and time spent on a spe­cific learning task.

• Interaction for motivation suggested that curiosity, creativity, and higher-order thinking are stimulated by relevant, authentic learning tasks of optimal difficulty and novelty for each student.

• Interaction for negotiation involved the willingness of another individual to engage in a dialogue, come to consensus, or agree to conform to terms of an agreement.

• Interaction for team building was necessary to ensure that individual members of a team actively support the goals of the group. Interactions facilitate such de­sirable behaviors as recognition and acceptance of individual differences, expression of respect for the team as well as for its members, effective listening, a shared sense of responsibility, and confirmation of expectations within the group.

• Interaction for discovery referred to the cross-fertilization of ideas that occurs when people share their ideas and perspectives with one another in the pursuit of defining new constructs, concepts, and procedures.

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• Interaction/or exploration provided a vehicle for defining the scope, depth, and breadth of a new idea. Just as it is important to recognize a new idea, it is im­portant to distinguish a new idea from extant ideas and determine parameters within which a new idea will retain its unique identity.

• Interaction/or clarification related to the navigation of one's way through a sea of performance expectations that may or may not be clearly articulated (Wagner, 1999).

Interactions and Social Presence

As the numbers of World Wide Web users continues to climb (International Data Corporation, 2004) and as technology becomes the means of providing "next best thing to being there" experiences, the more users seek to leverage technology to establish, extend, and maintain bonds of interpersonal connect­edness. Whether establishing a framework for supporting distributed teams or establishing a link that provides deeper insight into the personological attributes of learners (Soles & Moller, 2001), the desire to transcend psychological distances and establish interpersonal connections has helped focus attention pn the no­tion of social presence, where interaction is the means of realizing that connectedness.

Social presence represents a context for evaluating interaction that focuses on taking advantage of the social and democratic features of technology (Gunawardena, 1995). It refers to the degree to which an individual feels real or is seen as real by colleagues working in an online context (Moller, 1998). Current interest in social presence reflects the current interest with real-time connected­ness, particularly when working with peer-to-peer and real-time collaborative tech­nologies. A learner who possesses a high degree of social presence is more likely to feel connected to the group, which leads to greater satisfaction and reduces the likelihood that the learner will leave the environment.

This view was reiterated by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2003) when describing social presence as the ability of learners to project themselves (their personal characteristics, socially and emotionally) as real people in a commu­nity of inquiry. Garrison and his colleagues' work had previously suggested that educational experiences intended to promote and encourage higher-order think­ing skills were most effective when embedded in a community of inquiry. Jelfs and Whitelock (2000) also explored the importance of perceptions of presence, making a variety of observations, including that audio feedback engenders a sense of presence. They noted that the ease of navigation within a virtual en­vironment has a positive impact on perceptions of presence. In all cases, inter­action, as social presence contributed to a stronger sense of identity with community, virtual or otherwise.

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49

One of the best places to see social presence in action is with peer-to-peer ap­plications such as Groove, with next-generation Web conferencing systems such as Macromedia Breeze Live, and with instant messaging programs such as Yahoo Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger. All include presence-sensing features in their client applications. Consider instant messaging as an interactive social environment: members of an individual's group or "buddy list" are announced on logging in with a sound such as knocking, a ringing tele­phone, or a doorbell. Chat programs routinely provide visual indicators that a respondent is keyboarding a response. As each person logs off, the exit is marked by the sound of a closing or slamming door. When accompanied by emoticoms, .wav file recordings, photographs, and avatars, real-time chat can take on many of the same attributes of a real-time, face-to-face conversation.