Research

            In the article, "Synchronous and Asynchronous Text-Based CMC in Educational Contexts: A Review of Recent Research", Johnson (2006) mainly illustrates how interaction between students and teacher to higher education has an impact on course satisfaction in all instructional contexts, both traditional and distance education. She discusses that the classes in higher education classes divide into two kinds: Synchronous and Asynchronous. Asynchronous based education has some limitations like “lack of immediate feedback, feeling a sense of isolation”, she (2006) says “… asynchronous online discussion was reportedly useful for “encouraging in-depth, more thoughtful discussion; communicating with temporally diverse students; holding ongoing discussions where archiving is required; and allowing all students to respond to a topic” (pg.1). As for instructional applications of synchronous technology, she indicates how it is useful in audio conferencing, video-conferencing, and white boards. As known, they are gradually significant modules of online learning.  To give details she (2006) alleges synchronous chat was reportedly useful for “holding virtual office hours, team decision-making, brainstorming, community building, and dealing with technical issues”. (pg.2) I have experienced its usefulness in Web Expression 4 class and this class. During Web Expression 4 Class, a class creating a website related to an educational purpose, I faced different kinds of technical issues. Professor Lambert and I set a time to meet on Skype to solve the problems. She used the software named team viewer to see the problems and solve the problems. We discussed about the issues synchronously. This helped and encouraged me a lot. In this class, we met on Skype for our group project related to mapping and mash ups. These meetings were really helpful and encouraging for assigning the duties each of us would be responsible and understand what we will do as a team. 

            Furthermore, author (2006) states “Individuals who used both synchronous and asynchronous forms of online discussion were the most likely to complete required course activities” (pg. 3) I agree with her idea because both of forms have a different usefulness for teachers in terms of having diverse students.

            In the article, “Using Synchronous Communication to Facilitate Graduate Students’ Online Collaboration”, the authors named Nancy J. Maushak and Chaohua Ou (2008) depict how synchronous communication has an impact on graduate students in terms of their online collaboration and perceptions of instant messages. The authors say that because online courses do not provide physically present both instructors and students, they should provide a good communication between them through real-time or delayed time. The authors mostly compare the differences between real-time or delayed time instructions. Even though delayed time (asynchronous) communication form has some advantageous over real time (synchronous) communication like allowing participants to discuss in anytime and anywhere, the article mainly focus on benefits of synchronous communication.

            To give more details, authors mention where educators should use synchronous communication of instruction. One of them is for students’ group projects to collaborate them. According to the surveys mentioned in the article, real time communication has a significant effect on team based projects in positive side. 

            Besides this comparing and benefits of synchronous communication, authors also give some tips to instructors using synchronous communication in their instruction like keeping the group size small and assigning a group leader. At the end of article, authors mention about some surveys compared these two different forms of communication. They (2008) state about these surveys that “They suggested both discussion modes should be used in distance learning but for different purposes.” (pg. 2) Therefore, this article highlights the almost same thing just like first article: Educators should use both of communication forms in their instruction because both of them have characteristic benefits for different purposes of learning.

            Personally, I have experienced all examples that are mentioned in two articles during taking classes during all master period and first two semester of my doctoral study. I believe if instructors apply both synchronous and asynchronous communication in instructions based on the purposes of the instruction properly, the instruction would be enriched more than ever.

For instance, instruction might use delayed time communication for text-based assignments which is required lots of time to complete, while they might use real time communication for group projects and helping learners for the issues they faced.

            As for the last article named, “Adult Learner Participation in an Online Degree Program: A program-level study of voluntary computer-mediated communication”,  it is mostly examined which factors impact participation levels in the voluntary CMC setting mentioned in the article.  CMC (Computer-Mediated Communication) is one of the components used in distance learning environments. According to the results of the examinations, these factors are previous online course experience, course, and instructor.  Thompson and Savenye (2007) also mention about synchronous and asynchronous communication to decide which one is better in online learning. They say it depends on the learners as answer. They allege that synchronous communication is the fittest form for particular learners, while asynchronous communication is the best for other learners. Lastly, at the end of the article it is mentioned that there are some surveys to find a relationship between participation level and subsequent performance. However, a clear relationship is not found between them. Authors suggest more work to clarify the effect of participation level in online discussions on subsequent learner performance.

            To give more details, at the end of the article, Thompson and Savenye (2007) state that:

            “…our results indicate that prior experience with courses in

            the online environment does indeed impact the level of participation in CMC. The

            finding that the level of participation increased as students gained experience with the

            course environment suggests that there may be a learning curve involved in CMC

            discussion and that participation may increase as students become more expert in the

            CMC environment.” (pg. 10)

            What I understand form this result is that learners should be taught in their first online courses properly because of prior experiences are crucial in their participation in online environments later. The first thing about this issue coming to my mind is that how students could be taught in their first experiences of online environment before they reach to higher education level. Which factor does play the biggest role in integration of technology in classroom properly in primary, middle and high school? Training of teachers? Money? Limited time of teachers? Or something else?

            Firstly, I would like to mention about a common challenge: Money. Many districts do not have funding to purchase adequate equipment for certain types of telecommunications. Efforts to engage students in activities are limited by the lack of available technology and the funds to obtain them. I then went back to one of the teachers to get her opinion on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). This could be one way to accomplish their telecommunication goals.

            A second challenge is finding time for teachers to look critically at their teaching practices to determine their teaching philosophy and style, including methods, in order to implement technology that will support their efforts, not replace them or interfere with them. Schools (administration and teachers) have to be willing to invest the time to needed to understand their curricular goals and then integrate the technology to accomplish those goals.

            For the third challenge, I would like to share my experience. In my experience I have noticed that a huge barrier preventing advancement of technology in education is first lack of teachers' time to learn how to use the equipment and lack of adequate training to make teachers feel empowered to jump in and use the equipment. The reasons we don't have adequate training seems to be a combination of not enough money to provide dedicated paid inservices where all teachers are required to attend, and perhaps an administrative lack of understanding of the importance of including this training in the budget at the point when the technology is purchased.   

Theory

Even though I believe Social-constructivist theory should be used as a part of using the internet in the classroom especially for group project where interaction and discussion are needed to facilitate learning, my personal preference is cognitive theory.

            As known, cognitivist theory takes place in the knowledge of the classes. According to this theory, the amount of information should not be overwhelming. Therefore, if instructors think the amount of the class’ information to be able to do the assignment is too much, they might turn it to a simply practice.

To give an example in applying cognitive theory to instruction that incorporates Internet-based applications, instructions could design a class making students to watch a video to think about what they will learn and how to use this information in their last project/ assignment before each class. In this class, weekly practice based on these videos and a required text-book could be included. After all weeks, learners can have a project/assignment that is clearly aligned to the class’ educational purposes. During these practices, there might be a little part of social/constructive learning through online discussions between group members because instructions could need to make learners paired in some weeks’ assignment.

According to cognitive theory, the more deeply the information is processed, the more it will be committed to memory. Therefore, I believe there are many course works in need to be changed or modified.  In cognitive theory the idea about recalling the information is important. There is a principle about recalling information we learned before. If we cannot move information to long term memory, we are not able to keep it in our memory after 20-30 seconds. Some students need to hear or see just 2 times to hold information, whereas others need to hear 20 times to hold it, to replace it to long term memory. I experienced that while memorizing the English words 3 years ago. Repeating is not enough. Only repeating information in a particular time period is also crucial in memorizing something. During my English learning process 3 years ago, I bought a book in my language named Mega Memory. This book, its website and online practices taught me 300 new English words and their synonyms. Therefore, I have memorized totally 600 new English words. I never forget them now, even if I would like to forget them. This book, the website, and online practices are prepared by using the learning, memorizing and recalling theories of the information. There were flash cards and a story for each of word on this website. Moreover there were 2 different music CDs and the websites to visit for while memorizing and for while practicing. There were 20 words for each day. In each day I had to memorize 20 words in first 10 minutes. Right after 10 minutes, there were some practices like playing some online games about these 20 words on this website. In other days, before memorizing the new words, I had to the practice the all words I memorized until this day in practice part of this book. At the end of 15^th day, the book and the other online sources provides 300 new words and their synonyms memorized by you. After 15 days, that is 1 month later of the first day. I had to do first general practice of all words with flash cards which are on the website. Until being sure about I know every word’s meaning and their stories, I had to do this first general practice again and again. After 5 months, which is the 6 months later of first day, I had to do second general practice with an online cross puzzle. I had to solve 1 puzzle each of day that includes just 20 words as answers. After completing this online puzzle 15 days later, there was nothing to do to avoid forgetting them. I still remember all of them. I cannot forget them, even if I would like to forget them because I have learned these words with some stories about these words’ pronunciation which means different things in my native language. And these stories are meaningful for me and they present strong emotions to me.

In summary, time is really important in learning. I experienced this exactly in memorizing of the words as I mentioned above. So we need to aware of this reality in our teaching processes. 10 minutes, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, and 6 months are really crucial points especially in recalling some information. I am precisely sure about this reality should be used in foreign language classes as a teaching method in memorizing foreign words, especially in the classes used cognitivist theory. As for other classes, it can be used that this scientific reality repeating some key points about all domain each year of the specific dates like after 1 week or after 6 months for the same students through some internet-based sources. This could also be efficient for transferring their knowledge from one set of concepts to another, one school subject to another, one year of school to another, and across school and every day, non-school activities