Introduction to Online Learning:
Tools and Processes

Commentary

Teacher, Learner, Guide: online, offline, both

What shape did your response take? Did you create a chart or table? If so, how did you align the elements? Which were on the horizontal axis? The vertical? Did you reorder the elements (e.g. Learner, Teacher, Guide)?

Would the exercise have been easier if you had to generate one positive and one negative adjective for each role?

In one iteration of this exercise, nouns cropped up instead of adjectives, specifically "moderator" and "facilitator". It is easy to change nouns related to verbs into adjectives. You can supply the gerund form of the verb (e.g. moderating, facilitating). The move from noun to activity helps in keeping the distinction between person and role clear. For more on the malleable relation between roles and people, see Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish How to Talk So Kids Can Learn. You might wish to ponder the following formulation in terms of online settings:

a role is a relation between persons and that relation between persons is mediated by their own relations to their environment

In short, the quality of interaction in networked environments depends not only upon the technology. It may have a great deal to do with the roles that participants are willing to assume.


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