Curtis Jay Bonk, Associate Professor
    Indiana University
    Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology
    School of Education: Room 4022
    Phone: (812) 856-8353 (work); Fax: (812) 856-8333
    E-mail: cjbonk@indiana.edu
    Smartweb: http://www.indiana.edu/~smartweb
    COW: http://education.indiana.edu/COW/ (write for password)
    Homepage: http://php.indiana.edu/~cjbonk

    Steve Malikowski, Doctoral Student
    Indiana University, Center for Excellence in Education
    Dept. of Instructional Systems Technology
    E-mail: smalikow@indiana.edu

    Charoula Angeli, Doctoral Candidate
    Indiana University, School of Education
    Dept. of Instructional Systems Technology
    E-mail: cangeli@indiana.edu

    Lauren Supplee, Doctoral Student
    Indiana University
    Dept. of Counseling and Educational Psychology
    E-mail: lsupplee@indiana.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank B. J. Eib and many others at the Center for Excellence in Education (CEE) at Indiana University for their support of this project.  We are grateful for the timely mentoring and feedback from teachers and Associate Instructors in the project such as Judy East, Marti Daily, Monica Condon, Rhonda Meyer, Robyn Osborn, Laura Dial, Lisa Yamagata Lynch, Michael Liskey, and Gary Daytner. We also thank Ted Frick, Jim Siantz, John Jacobs, and the Educational Technology Services team in the School of Education at Indiana University for maintaining the School of Education Web server during the project.  This research was supported in part by Proffitt Research Grant #29-402-01.

Paper presented at the American Educational Research Annual Meeting, April 16, 1998, San Diego, CA.

This study was the third in a series of studies of the effects of electronic case-based learning on preservice teacher education.  The first investigation revealed that asynchronous or delayed case discussions foster greater depth of dialogue and peer interaction than synchronous or real-time communication (Bonk, Hansen, Grabner, Lazar, & Mirabelli, in press). In the second study, we found that varying the amount of electronic scaffolding and feedback did not have an impact on case quality or student dialogue (Bonk, Malikowski, Angeli, & East, 1997). While students found the conferencing tools extremely easy to use and hundreds of cases were created in a just a few weeks of the semester, student electronic comments and ideas were not backed up with critical thinking and justified reasoning. In both studies, however, asynchronous feedback was extensive and students were highly focused on case resolutions and suggestions.

As with our previous work, we were curious how undergraduate educational psychology students might make use of Web conferencing tools to discuss the problems and success stories they see in public schools during their early field experiences.  Just how might electronic learning tools be used to apprentice student learning into their discipline? The more specific purpose of this third study, however, was to determine if more open ended learning environments and more encouragement to engage in critical thinking could foster a greater degree of course connections and higher quality dialogue. To begin to answer these questions, more qualitative measures, such as student interviews, were employed here.

Electronic Cases

The past decade has been an exciting period for building learning apprenticeships with electronic learning tools. As shown in our previous research (Bonk et al., 1997, in press), the power of asynchronous conferencing tools to facilitate student reflection on their field observations is without precedence.  The technology tools of today bind students, peers, mentors, instructors, practicing teachers, and experts in an array of resources, discussions, and curriculum recommendations. There are daily advances in tools to foster student generation of ideas, collaboration, and knowledge integration and evaluation. Unfortunately, there presently is minimal guidance as to their pedagogical significance and scant research to make firm claims as to how teacher educators might use such technology. In fact, there is growing recognition that the field of computer-supported collaboration learning (CSCL) lacks clear theoretical housing (Koschmann, 1994).

It is hard to discount the fact that various technologies are transforming the formats of teaching in most higher education and public school settings.  The generation of computing networks to support live and delayed group collaboration has fortuitously paralleled the emergence of models and techniques for promoting cooperative learning and collaborative work in schools (Blumenfeld, Marx, Soloway, & Krajcik, 1996). Many questions remain, however, whether such tools for collaboration and communication have increased the access to education and resulting learning (Owston, 1997). Do unique student interactions and rich discussion threads increase student learning and comprehension? Does greater access to resources and ability to browse instructional materials from multiple locations lead to more highly linked and accessible knowledge structures? Equally important, how does communication with students from other locales and countries enhance student perspective taking abilities and ensuing attitudes and beliefs about the rest of the world (Bonk, Appelman, & Hay, 1996; Windschitl, 1998)? As new learning technologies emerge, the paths for their creative use must be met by informed researchers and creative instructional designers.

Electronic Cases in Teacher Education

This particular study combines the movement toward apprenticing students in more meaningful and authentic learning environments (Lave & Wenger, 1991) with teacher education research highlighting the importance of case-based reasoning (Kowalski, Weaver, & Henson, 1994, Shulman, 1991; Silverman, Welty, & Lyon, 1992). While aspects of each area are elaborated below, more through reviews of each topic can be found in Bonk et al., 1997 and Bonk et al., in press.

Case-based learning emphasizes the importance of realistic or authentic learning settings. More authentic problems can serve to anchor instruction in complex events that rely on the application of course concepts and principles for their resolution (Williams, 1992). It is the application of concepts to real world events that make this learning format appealing. Important to this particular study, many teacher education researchers point to the utility of cases for distinguishing expert and novice teacher performance and, simultaneously, as a means for moving preservice teachers down the road to expertise (Barnett, 1991; Livingston & Borko, 1989; Westerman, 1991). Other researchers have begun to discuss and illustrate how technologies might be employed to create reusable cases that preservice teachers can reflect on, discuss, debate, and evaluate (Admiraal, Lockhorst, Wubbels, Korthagen, & Veen, 1997; Bonk et al., 1997, in press, Copeland, 1989; Merseth, 1991). Some of these technology innovations and pedagogical strategies focus on ways to eliminate the relative isolation students feel in the field by discussing field experiences in the form of electronic problem cases and success stories. Other novel technology applications in teacher education focus on typical teaching and learning environments and problems before students head to the field. In either situation, the goal is professionalization of the teacher education program and the preparation of more skilled and competent teachers.

Tools like the Web, for instance, can offer an assortment of richly textured cases in accessible, expedient, visually interactive, broad, diverse, and cheap formats. In fact, there are plethora of possibilities presented to college instructors wanting to apprentice students in the teaching profession with cases (Riesbeck, 1996). Web sites we have visited and developed already contain realistic student records and images, expert commenting, personalized feedback mechanisms, and other key instructional help and task structuring.

Sociocultural Underpinnings of Electronic Environments

As such electronic learning environments emerge for apprenticing teachers and other professionals, educators have increasingly found sociocultural theory attractive for explaining how student learning and development unfolds in these environments (Bonk & Cunningham, in press). Bonk and Kim (1998) detail how sociocultural theory can be applied in adult learning settings. For instance, Vygotsky’s (1986) arguments about the benefits of learning in a social context certainly have applicability in Web-based conferencing in higher education environments. When students engage in social interaction and discourse about real world teaching and learning settings, such as electronic case conferencing about field experiences, they are exposed to the strategies and skills of peers and mentors which should help them internalize new strategies and skills. Such meaningful contexts can help students to transfer their insights and ideas in new settings  (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989).

One key sociocultural principle, the zone of proximal development (ZPD), relates to finding ways for experts and more capable peers to assist student learning and problem solving beyond their independent reach. When students debate cases they create, they are simultaneously constructing new knowledge and debating issues at the edge of their ZPDs (i.e., the area between the student's actual or unassisted performance on a task and his/her performance when provided with outside support or guidance (Wertsch, 1985). And with asynchronous electronic systems, opportunities for advice and interactive scaffolding can come from distant experts and peers as well as students within one’s cohort.

While students might debate and negotiate electronic text space, mentors, experts, and instructors can offer encouragement, modeling, feedback, questioning, and task structuring that can be adjusted based on perceived student competence (Bonk & Kim, 1998; Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Tharp, 1993). Such interactive thinking and learning in a social context is intended to expose students to alternative teaching strategies and contextual cues. In effect, with such electronic discussions, preservice teachers not only observe practicing teachers, but also reflect on their performances with electronic feedback from other teachers, adult learning guides, and their peers.

Related to these ideas about negotiation of meaning within students’ ZPDs, is the idea of an electronic cognitive apprenticeship (Levin, Kim, & Riel, 1990; Teles, 1993). In a cognitive apprenticeship, the goal is to move the learner from a newcomer status to more expert-like skills by first participating in the community periphery and then taking on a more central role in it (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990). Experts, practitioners, and mentors in this environment gradually transfer responsibility for the learning task to the novice learner as they internalize greater skill and knowledge of the discipline (Brown et al., 1989). Such scaffolded assistance is definitely the case here with electronic interaction about case problems and success stories at the beginning of teacher education programs. Consequently, some of the research questions below stem from this sociocultural perspective.

Research Questions

As indicated, this project extends our work on electronic case-based conferencing among preservice teachers about their early field experiences. It investigates whether more open-ended forums with designated case conferences for elementary, secondary, all grades, and general cases will foster more extensive greater critical thinking and social interaction than briefer time periods. It also examines whether students will engage in more of a learning community when the conference is open for two full months of discussion, instead of the previously used 2-3 week time periods. We expected that greater numbers of students in the conference will create more opportunities to see common problems across school sites and grade levels, thereby increasing possibilities for generalization. As in previous studies, depth of dialogue, peer responsiveness, case thread length, and forms of mentor assistance were key factors of interest.  More specifically, this research addresses the following questions:

Case Creation and Discussion: What conference areas and topics promote the most cases and case discussions?  What is the average amount of case feedback? What is the average length of COW post?
Dialogue Content: What is the content of case discussions comprised of (e.g., questions, social acknowledgments, justified opinions, unjustified statements, case summaries, mentor feedback, peer responsiveness, off task, etc.)?
Dialogue Depth: What is the average length of response and dialogue thread? What topics or domains spur discussion? What types of questions or prompts extend the dialogue? How does peer responsiveness affect the depth of dialogue?
Critical Thinking and Course Linkages: Will students justify or back up their electronic statements and claims with references to classroom resources? If so, how?
Scaffolding and Apprenticeship: What types of scaffolding and learning assistance (e.g., feedback) do peers and expert mentors provide in web based conferences? What are signals of effective web mentoring? How might apprenticeship be captured electronically?
Attitudes: What are students' attitudes toward using computer conferencing and this particular tool (i.e., COW) within their early field experiences? Do they feel that COW fostered mentoring and support of their ideas? Will students claim that they have learned the material better and feel less isolated when in the field? What aspects of the conference tool or task did they feel fostered their sense of learning community and general learning accomplishments?
 

All students in this study were enrolled in a teacher education program at a large Midwestern university during the fall semester of 1997. There were six sections of a undergraduate educational psychology course students participating in this private conference. In these three classes, there were 157 students: 67 elementary majors, 74 secondary majors, and 16 all-grades (PE, music, Art, special education) majors. Students engaged in the case conferencing as part of their course requirements.  Mentoring on their cases was received from 5 associate instructors, 1 the course supervisor, 1 the early field experiences director, 2 conference moderators, and 2 practicing teachers. Twelve forms of electronic learning assistance was used by mentors as a guide for responding to the students (see Table 1).
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With asynchronous Web-based conferencing, students can discuss case topics and issues at their own leisure. As in the immediately previous study and semester, the Web-based conferencing tool employed here was Conferencing on the Web or “COW.”  COW is organized into three different levels. At the base level is the conference level.  In this particular semester, we had four conferences; ones for elementary education cases, secondary education cases, all-grades cases, and general cases or “cases for everybody” (e.g., assessment, behavior management, diversity, motivation, and multiple intelligences cases) (see Appendix A for details on the latter one). Our experience has shown that too often preservice teachers narrow their focus to only content and issues that explicitly is linked to their majors (Bonk et al., 1997, in press). Therefore, the general case area was created to get students to generalize case situations and resolutions across educational settings. In addition, this conference contained a cafe for more informal and social discussions. COW conferences can be public (i.e., needing only a site address or locator number) or private (i.e., needing permission of the conference moderator or "fair witness" to view). This conference was a private one.

At the second level of COW, each conference is organized into topics (e.g., lecture-based questions or issues). Topics are typically listed at the bottom of the conference main page (see Appendix A); a listing of conversations within each topic can be found by clicking on the respective topic name (see Appendix B). Topics were selected based on instructor perceived needs as well as records from previous semesters as to which fostered the most discussion. For instance, a topic called “Your Own Topics” was somewhat popular during the previous semester and was added to each of the four conferences used here. This topic was intended to foster greater student autonomy and ownership in the case discussion.

At the third level of COW are conversations. In this study, conversations were begun with a case problem or situation (see Appendix C for a sample case conversation thread). Students start conversations by clicking on the “Start New” button and entering their case problem or success story. Students reply to conversations at this third level by entering comments at the end of a discussion thread. The conversation level, naturally, is where the interaction among participants occurs.  COW fosters a sense of interactivity by enabling participants to select to read only new posts and permitting anyone in the conference to create or reply to conversations.

Students could access COW by typing in the appropriate URL (i.e., http://education.indiana.edu/COW/), username, and password, and then enter one of the four conferences listed in their “Hot List.” All four conferences were cross-linked enabling participants to easily move from one conference level to another without having to be at their Hot List page. Upon entering a conference like elementary education, they would see a list of course related topics (e.g., Topic 133: Elementary Physical Education Cases, Topic 134: Elementary Education Math Cases) awaiting their use. Any conversation started or response posted was time and date stamped along with their username, thereby providing some student accountability and system tracking of which conferences and topics were popular. In addition, online help to use the COW tool was available in any of these conferences upon demand. For instance, students might want to know how to “start new” messages, “show all” conversations posted on a topic, search for a post, hide embarrassing comments, read only unread messages, or post messages using HTML code (see Bonk et al., 1997 for more details).

Procedures

The COW conference was open from October 1, 1997 to December 6, 1997. Students accessed this conference with a personal username and password.  Students in every section were provided with a fifty minute training session in late September or early October.  At the training session, students learned about important COW conferencing features (e.g., how to use the reply button, show all conversations button, adding personal profiles, starting new conversations or cases, etc.). In addition, students had opportunities to electronically read and discuss sample cases on assessment as well as change their personal profiles.  These training sessions helped guarantee that students had clearance to access the system and knew how to do so.  During these sessions, students noted that COW was extremely easy to use.

One simple pedagogical task was utilized for COW discussions to structure the activity. Students were asked to create 2 cases during the COW project and respond to 6-8 of their peers. In addition, they were asked to summarize their case discussion thread near the end of the semester. Within their cases, students were to detail a teacher and/or student in some sort of problematic situation or instructionally interesting success story in a school they had visited and try to relate it to their educational psychology text material. In effect, they were to recount the story of what occurred, while keeping all names and places anonymous. Students were also asked to compare the instructor’s actions, if applicable, to what they might have done. Finally, they were to ask for help related to the problem situation. We asked students to do half of this work in October and half in November.

Measures

There were a four distinct measures of student learning and conference effectiveness. First of all, since all case discussions and conferencing activities were saved and archived for in-depth analyses, summary data as well as specific case discussions were printed out after the conferences ended. The summary data helped determine the raw number of cases posted to the Web within these four conferences, the number of mentor and peer responses to these cases, the average length of post, and conferences and topics of most intense commenting. From this aggregate data, a sample of 75 case discussion threads were randomly selected and analyzed for dialogue content, discussion quality, and forms of mentoring. Exemplary comments, interactions, and interaction patterns were noted during this detailed analysis. Third, at the end of the conferencing activity, most of the students completed a ten minute survey of their attitudes toward the conferencing activity (see Table 2). On this survey was basic demographic data, questions regarding when and how often they used the COW tool, 10 structured questions about the tool and activity which were rated on a 1 (low/strongly disagree) to 10 (high/strongly agree) scale (e.g., “This conferencing system (i.e., COW) was easy to use.”). Fourth, some students checked off an item on the survey that indicated their willingness to be interviewed.  From this data, eight students were later called in three months later for in-depth 30-60 minute interviews about the COW case conferencing activity (see Table 3). In summary, as evidenced by these four measures, there was a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures employed here.
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Insert Table 2 and 3 about here
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Quantitative Analyses and ResultsComputer Log Data

As with most conferencing tools, COW automatically provided extensive empirical data regarding system usage. This information included:
      the number of people who accessed the system and who actively contributed;
      the overall number of messages and average length of messages posted to COW;
      the number and length of responses;
      the average length of case threads.

The COW conference was open from October to the beginning of December, 1997 with 6 sections of undergraduate educational psychology students participating. System data indicated that the 170 student participants in this study produced 319 cases during the conference with 620 peer replies and 298 mentor replies. Students received on average about three peer or mentor comments on their cases. The average post was around 130 words.
 
While students could classify these cases at the elementary, secondary, all grade, or general levels, more than fifty percent of the cases created were at the secondary level, thirty percent at the elementary level, and ten percent at the all-grades level, thereby leaving less than ten percent of them as general cases. While specific topics were created for student conversation (i.e., motivation, special education), more than a third of the cases generated were submitted to the “Your Own Topics” category.  Thus, it was apparent that students had difficulty perceiving how what they viewed in the field related to course content. In addition to these measures, students surveys provided additional information regarding student attitudes toward the electronic conference activity.

Survey Results

A survey of 139 participating students indicated that most of them had some experience with the World Wide Web and conferencing or systems or chat tools prior to the semester. According to survey data, most students spent a couple hours per week in COW during the project and did their postings at various times, though most often between 6 pm and midnight.  Because one of the six classes was operating entirely on the Web, student survey responses were analyzed with and without their answers and opinions.  The Web class had twenty students (one failed to complete the survey); 2 elementary majors, 3 secondary majors, and 15 all-grades majors (mostly music majors).

When the 19 Web students were excluded, there were 110 remaining student surveys, representing 50 elementary, 1 all grades, and 59 secondary students. Of these students, over 70 percent were females.  In addition, 60 percent were sophomores while an additional 30 percent were juniors. Nearly three-fourths felt that COW helped them gain an appreciation for the opinion of others.

Of the ten structured survey items, only three were found to be significant. First of all, as in the previous study, on a scale of 1 (low/strongly disagree) to 10 (high/strongly agree), students found the COW conferencing system to be easy to use (t(109) = 6.02, p < .01; X = 7.13, SD = 2.83). In addition, these students felt that COW fostered dialogue and peer interaction about teaching problems they would later face (t(109)) = 5.54, p < .01; X = 6.8, SD = 2.59). However, they unfortunately did not feel less isolated and lonely when observing in the field as a result of COW (t(108) = -5.51; p < .01; X = 4.06, SD = 2.77).  These results held when the Web class students were added to these analyses. However, as a separate group, the Web class attitudes on the survey were significantly positive on 8 of the 10 measures (all at the p < .01 level, except item #2, p < .05),  only items four and five failed to reach significance.

Open-Ended Survey Questions
As indicated, this investigation combined qualitative and quantitative measures in building a chain of evidence about the collaborative formats and interaction patterns that facilitate student learning and reflection on the Web. For instance, as in the previous study, student responses to open-ended questions about experiences with COW were mixed. Two evaluators analyzed the comments and noted common themes. They discovered that the responses from the students who only used COW for the case activity were in stark contrast to those who used COW throughout the semester as part of an undergraduate Web course. While many of the students argued that they gained nothing from the experience and did not like another course requirement, those who had cases integrated into the Web course found the activity extremely interesting and worthwhile. The Web course students enjoyed additional student participation on the Web since they offered alternative points of view, extensive help in solving the problems that they witnessed in schools, and were not inhibited from boldly stating their opinions. Candid and honest feedback from peers and instructors was mentioned repeatedly by the Web students as extremely helpful and somewhat surprising.

The cases only group was more mixed. While these students argued that the COW case activity offered novel ideas for similar problems and new ways for viewing problems, many claimed that they learned nothing from reading the case threads or mentioned that they were disappointed with the minimal feedback they had received. This lack of responsiveness was also seen the quantitative data since during the prior study, students received nearly twice as much feedback per case. One student, however, made an interesting comment that while they were exposed to a diverse array of teaching styles and practices, the creation and documentation of this huge Web case database made them aware of the importance of teacher training here in the United States; “there’s lots of incompetent teachers out there!”.

There were many similarities across the two groups. For instance, both groups seemed to highly value the comments they received from the instructors and mentors. In addition, they both noted that controversial situations, unusual problems and outrageous issues (e.g., abuse, drugs, paddling), spurred the most interaction and involvement. Along these same lines, motivational and disciplinary situations were of high interest across all students surveyed.

Students mentioned some concepts from the course in their responses to whether the course fostered new expectations of teaching and learning. As indicated, many students appreciated the ease to which a wide range of ideas could be exchanged in COW. Some of the students, in fact, mentioned how they came to appreciate a more Vygotskian learning environment which incorporates the ideas of others and facilitates cooperative learning and the sharing of ideas. One students summed up this viewpoint by arguing, “The way we all respond to each other, it kind of introduced scaffolding...since we were helping each other learn in our ZPD.”

Though there was some disagreement, students generally felt that conferencing tools can contribute to the professional development of preservice teachers. Students mentioned that these tools help them expand and share ideas, find solutions, and learn from others. A couple of students hedged their comments by noting that the system may work best for those with genuine problems or were further along in their teaching careers. Among the more interesting student comments here were notions that these tools would offer a option to the teacher’s lounge or break room for discussion of typical classroom dilemmas. In addition, a couple of insightful students replied that teachers all over the world could be linked together to discuss issues beyond their own schools. Some quotes here included: “...could create a mentor or support system, especially for new teachers who lack experience.” and “I would like to see this networked for teachers all over the nation...to get more experienced teachers’ ideas and thoughts in real life situations.” and  “Computers are our future. This is a great program.” Clearly, despite the varied feedback, the surveys indicated many benefits of the COW activity.

Transcript Results

In addition to the surveys, seventy-five student electronic case transcript conversations were coded for discourse type, case components, question type, and the forms of learning assistance and mentoring. These cases, purposely representing a wide range of discussion and response depth, were chosen for content analysis. The content analysis scheme recorded the following forms of electronic discourse: (1) social acknowledgments, (2) unsupported claims and opinions, (3) justified comments, (4) questions and dialogue extension prompts raised, and (5) mentor scaffolding (see Bonk et al., 1997 for dialogue coding scheme). We were particularly interested in student justification of ideas and unique course connections.
 
The content of the dialogue was also of particular interest here. In a stratified random sample, seventy-five electronic case discussions, representing about 23.5 percent of the discussion threads, were selected for in-depth analysis. While one person familiar with conferencing scoring schemes rated all of these cases, another rater scored a random set of fifteen different cases, or about 20 percent of the total cases selected.  Interrater reliability between Rater #1 and the second rater was 80.3 percent.
 
A log of the transcript analyses clearly illustrated that peer feedback was dominated by unsupported claims (59.8 percent of the dialogue) and social acknowledgments (30.9  percent of the dialogue). Unfortunately, justified opinions and claims were embedded in only 7.2 percent of coded comments, while dialogue extension prompts and questions (e.g., "This is sure an interesting case.  What say the rest of you?") were also rare (2.1 percent). Despite these problems and the social and conversational tone of the conferences, the off-task behaviors were essentially nonexistent. Students were extremely focused on helping each other solve their particular dilemma(s).

Of course, the transcripts also contained mentor postings. As expected, the expert mentoring from instructors and practicing teachers was more pedagogically focused and diverse than the peer comments. On average, in the 75 cases analyzed as well as dozens of other cases surveyed, there was typically at least one message from mentors in each case thread.  Twenty percent of the mentor responses were in the form of indirect questioning and scaffolding (“...what does the textbook say might be a result?” “What does your text say about the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach?”), while another twenty-four percent of the commenting was devoted to feedback, praise, and social acknowledgment of the case (e.g., “Sarah, another interesting case.”).  Most of the remaining percent of the mentor dialogue was general suggestions and advice (24 percent) (e.g., "Good plans tend to help as well as...”) or modeling and providing examples (16 percent). Mentor less often relied on direct instruction (4 percent), low level or fact related questioning (8 percent; e.g., “was the student a minority student...?”), and cognitive explanations or elaborations (4 percent). Student reactions to this mentoring are discussed in the next section.

Interview Results

From a pool of sixteen volunteer students, eight students were randomly selected for  separate interviews using the questions in Table 3. Of these, five were from the Web class and three from the other five participating undergraduate classes. Of these students, seven were females and one was male. All were traditional students majoring in teacher education.  Each interview was between forty and sixty minutes.

The interviews occurred approximately three months after the subjects completed the online case discussions in COW. The interview questions were designed to discover which elements of the online discussions they would recall and consider important after a moderate period of time had passed. As noted in Table 3, subjects were asked open-ended questions about what they recalled, specific questions about the online activity, questions about the educational psychological principles they learned in the class, and questions about the technical features of COW.
 
There were several recurring themes and notable comments that resulted from the interviews. The first theme that will be described is that students were quite pragmatic in their views and uses of the system. The second theme will address how engaging discussions were a result of the drama described in the case and how others responded to it. And third, the issue of how and why students interacted in the discussions will be addressed.

The pragmatism mentioned by subjects in the interviews involved the challenges they observed in their field experience. This is not surprising considering the potency of some of the cases that were discussed—such as cocaine usage by K-12 students, whether paddling should be used in the classroom, and how to deal with ADHD students. Of course, not all cases are this dramatic, but in the hundreds of cases discussed, many pointedly addressed challenging issues students witness daily in their early field experience. When subjects answered interview questions about educational psychological concepts, most of them said they could not remember the names or details of the concepts they learned in class. Instead, these concepts seemed to manifest themselves by giving the student new ways to interpret their experiences and cases they read about in COW. Subjects even commented, “The theories made me look at the cases differently.” Vygotsky’s idea of a ZPD supports this finding.  Undergraduate students may be unable to grasp the labels or intricacies of a given theory, but they are able to enrich their classroom learning by studying theory in action and discussing it with instructors, mentors, and peers.

As the surveys indicated, dramatic or controversial cases fostered extensive student interaction. However, the majority of cases that were not overly dramatic, instead, according to the students in these interviews, the quality of comments posted tended to affect the level of interaction about a case. In particular, the subjects commented that interaction increased or decreased depending on the depth of the first few responses to the case. Some responses were described as obviously being done quickly to fulfill the assignment. These comments led to low or moderate level of student interaction about the case. Other comments were well thought out and referred back to the student who posted the case or students who had previously replied. These thoughtful comments led to higher levels of student interaction, or as one student put it:
And so, it was really interesting to see all different input people have and different viewpoints that people have that I didn't have. And I think that that really stressed [to] me how important it is to talk with your fellow teachers or your coworkers and get their opinion on a situation that you just don't know what to do with it. Your opinion is not going to be what everyone else's is.

In a regular classroom, at least a lot of times, one person will tend to talk or there will be a couple of people who are very interested in something and they'll be the ones who will talk for the majority of the class. Whereas, in an online discussion, everyone needs to participate or else you don't get a grade. And like, of course there were a couple of people who wouldn't participate for a week or would write one or two sentences but then their grade suffered because of that.

Regardless of this trait of the online discussions, most of the subjects found the variety of perspectives to be one of the most valuable elements. A common response in the interviews was that the subjects read reactions and suggestions to the cases which they would not have considered. This finding speaks to the benefits of group problem solving and learning. Reading and replying to the cases posted by others was also valued by the subjects because it allowed them a chance to consider authentic experiences which they are likely to encounter when they become teachers. Nevertheless, the subjects had mixed views about what part of the assignment they valued most. Many comments were made about how subjects looked forward to getting replies to the cases they posted, but others mentioned that they were more interested in replying to other cases than interacting in the other case. Still others mentioned that they enjoyed reading a lot of the cases and interactions and were less interested in responding. One student, in fact, stated that:

I think this is a lot better than a journal because I've done a journal for a whole semester. I benefited from the feedback between... everybody. With the journal, you're just writing it down. You're making mental notes. On this, you're getting feedback and responses from other people. I think it was more beneficial...It was an interesting tool, and I think it should have been implemented it more, make it more of a requirement.

After considering the issues that emerged from the interviews, it is interesting to note that student comments here were similar or identical to the historic challenges of any teaching environment. For example, encouraging students to consider theory over pragmatism and asking them to provide thoughtful input to class discussions are age-old challenges in education. It is also common in most learning environments that students enjoy hearing about “real-world” challenges they will face when they complete their studies. Of course, online discussions offer several other unique elements. For example, students could participate in COW at their leisure, as long as they completed the assignment. In addition, the simple, text-based interactions made it easier for timid students to interact with boisterous students. The effects of the technology, however, seemed minimal based on the interviews. Students were most interested in reading and responding to issues that mattered to them. This is a familiar theme of student-centered learning environments. Based on the interviews, the way COW was implemented in this project gave us a successful means for actualizing the benefits of a student-centered learning environment. Some of these students really liked these learner-centered approaches:

I know it may sound weird, but in the online class, I felt like I knew the people better than I did in a real class...We felt like we knew everyone just because we had to interact so often. It was very cool. I still feel like when I see these people in the hall, I know who they are. I feel like I know them ten times better than anyone else I had classes with.

In our previous work on electronic case-based learning among preservice teachers, asynchronous environments proved valuable tools for authentic case creation and discussion for relatively short 2-3 week time periods. The electronic learning environment was richly flavored with hundreds of interesting case problems and issues over a two month conferencing period.  This study attempted to see if a feeling of a learning community emerged as a result by using more open ended survey questions and follow up interviews. Though the discussion peaked near assignment due dates, few problems of technology access and use were noted.
 
Despite the general conferencing success, there were a number of obvious problems. For instance, allowing students to “name their own topics” was motivating for students, but detracted from students case categorization. For whatever reason, few students found that cases such as “Motivating the unmotivated” belonged in general case conference for everybody to read.  Instead, they tended to post them in an unclassifiable “Your Own Case Topics” category in the secondary or elementary conference. Perhaps having separate conferences for elementary, secondary, and all-grades students as well as general cases for everybody proved too complicated for undergraduate students. Perhaps students just do not see how their field experiences connect to important concepts and topics from their class.

Another issue is that our previous findings that minimal student electronic case discussion is actually grounded or backed up by justified reasoning was found here too. As peer mentors, these undergraduate students, for the most part, provided surface level commenting with minimal evidence from the research literature or existing theory to ground their recommendations and opinions. While this was not unexpected, it is not without some hint of learning; students must build from their personal experiences and observations in understanding educational psychology course material. Tools for electronic conferencing, therefore, must have built-in features for designating such linkages and course connections (Duffy, Dueber, & Hawley, in press) and perhaps related concept hyperlinks to case testimonials or legacies from previous semesters. When students begin to receive confirmation of their ideas and insights, they will more fully appreciate the power of linking theory to practice. In terms of other technology enhancements, color buttons or case feedback access links would speed up access to the feedback on one’s cases and make unread comments more salient. Other features that might be built include a tool for recategorizing existing cases into different categories or an option for creating a megalist of the 100-200 most controversial or engaging cases. Retooling cases and sample responses for later use may, in fact, be the best use for these cases.

Students, too, perceived the problems with the tools available for structuring case feedback. Student surveys indicate that when participation structures are highly open-ended, many students wait until the last minute to contribute to the discussion. As a result, these procrastinating students received limited case advice and feedback and were generally disappointed. Another hindrance to student online learning is when the instructor fails to embed the activity in the course requirements (i.e., treats the activity as optional or extra work) and does not model the types and quantity of case feedback expected. When teachers ignore the discussion, so will the students; especially in a survey class with extensive readings and assignments.
 
Not all student comments were negative. Many students pointed to the usefulness of multiple or different points of view as well as the pointed feedback from instructors. In many situations, students not only are exposed to new ideas and viewpoints, but are simultaneously getting confirmation of their views and notice that they are not alone in the problems they witness in the schools. Moreover, there are commonalities in the ways in which the type of problems related to management, motivation, individual differences, etc., are handled. Some students appropriately noted that the ability of a conferencing tool to readily exchange and expand was beneficial for their learning. In a similar vein, a  number of students also mentioned that the capability to be helped by others was extremely important.

Beyond the general surveys, of course, were the eight in-depth student interviews. Since these were all volunteer students, it is not surprising that they considered the COW project to be more beneficial than the surveys indicated. Within the interviews, it was possible to begin to sort through issues of task structuring, case discussion depth, peer responsiveness, high versus low interaction, and conceptual course linkages. Apparently case controversy was not as important to peer interaction and responsiveness as peer thoughtfulness among the initial case postings. When the case and initial student feedback was thoughtful and interesting, students were more inclined to join in the discussion. Perhaps, determining what is a “thoughtful” response is one the next areas for research in online discussion. One of the biggest problems in the case format used here was that students wanted more interactive and less “choppy” discussion. It is likely that having six course sections of 170 students and four conferences to post cases caused some confusion about where to go to submit and read cases. A smaller cohort of students and a more limited number of conferences may alleviate, or at least lessen, this problem.

Despite the limited direct linkages to the textbook in these case discussions, students interviewed pointed out that the case observations facilitated their understanding of human learning and development and vice versa. Hence, while concepts were not explicitly stated, the COW project did enrich their learning. Simply reading the range of case situations and problems was critical to their apprenticeship in becoming a teacher. For some students, learning occurred in their reading and responding to cases, and for others, learning was facilitated in getting replies from a range of conference participants. Clearly, student learning was being scaffolded by peers in similar zones of proximal development as well as by more expert adult guides.

Current Steps

While we were successful, once again, in creating an environment wherein students generated and discussed hundreds of authentic based on their early field experiences, the large number of students and conferences combined with limited pedagogical task structuring, promoted a less responsive and interactive environment than anticipated during this project. While most instructors asked students to create 2 cases and respond to the cases of 4-5 of their peers, the COW project may simply have been too open-ended for undergraduate students.
 
Our research team has begun to address the above findings and issues in a number of ways in our fourth study of electronic case conferencing during the Spring of 1998. First of all, to foster more feedback, social interaction, and timely responsiveness we added four practicing teachers and three associate instructors as student mentors through grant stipends. As a result, there was more modeling and feedback from the instructors than in the past. In addition, we limited the number of students to under 90 from our university. Third, we attempted to foster student understanding of the generality of their cases issues by combining all the different grade levels and majors into one joint conference. At the same time, we purposely warned students, through training as well as conference topic labeling, to use the “Your Own Case Topics” as a last resort. Fourth, we have created and refined practice cases from a set of highly interactive cases found in previous semesters (e.g., “My student and cocaine,” Paddling,” “Channel One,” etc.). Such case legacies provided a place for students to see model case descriptions, problems, peer commenting, and potential resolutions. We also expanded our list of examples of online mentoring for practitioners and instructors to use in interacting with students. Training of students, at the same time, was more focused on backing up one’s arguments and claims as well as linking case discussion to concepts in their lectures and course readings. Finally, online help within COW was also more strategically placed for student use.

What else have we done? Well, while we limited our local participants, we added 30 teacher education students from two universities from Finland as participant mentors. Whereas these students mentored our students on the cases they generated on the Web, our students also mentored them. With the Finnish students being in teacher education programs only after an initial degree, they were an older cohort and used their greater experience and expertise to scaffold our students. There were separate case conferences for Finland and the United States which displayed the logos of the respective universities upon entrance. To foster cross cultural collaboration, an international cafe was added to create a shared space for student discussions. In these student created topics, students had an opportunity to understand each other on a personal level, thereby building intersubjectivity among participants. Such common knowledge and conference personalization was enhanced through a few videoconferences between the sites at the start and the end of the COW project.
 
Many preliminary results have emerged. For example, a cursory look at the COW cases and responses indicates that the maximum case thread length is much longer than previous semesters. Students seem to want to read what others from another country had to say. In addition, student discussion from Finland has greater linkages to the research literature and has bolstered the dialogue among students in the United States. Overall, however, the reasoning was more justified and responsive to others than in previous semesters.

Other project extensions were not as successful. For instance, we attempted to include 20 of our students in overseas cultural immersion programs or on native American reservations in their final semester of student teaching. A key purpose here was both to have some vertical mentoring from seniors to our sophomores to combine with the peer-related, horizontal mentoring in COW. A second purpose was to prove that we could reconnect students to our university no matter where they may be in the world. Unfortunately, only a couple of students used this conference, in part due to limited technology in sites such as Native American Reservations, and, in part, due to this task being optional.

Next Steps

Given these results, we plan to continue to use electronic mentoring as a means to apprentice students on the road to expertise.  To extend this project further to other universities and countries during the upcoming year, we will attempt to create “The Intraplanetary Teacher Learning Exchange” (TITLE); a place to connect teacher education experts all over the world to enhance the range of insight and advice on the Web. Instead of a local or regional project, if funded, teachers in the TITLE project will create case situations on the WWW based on their early field experiences and offer feedback to foreign peers. In addition to working with college sophomores to connect field experiences to text knowledge, we want to extend electronic mentoring to include undergraduate seniors in field placements around the world as well as recent teacher education graduates in their induction year of teaching. Further down the road to expertise, we hope to have expert teachers or TITLE fellows added to the project as mentors. In addition to this vertical mentoring, more horizontal mentoring will come from peers in teacher education programs in other countries. While such a project was not possible a decade ago, our initial case-based learning research has laid the foundation for the extensive electronic mentoring which TITLE will facilitate in the development of future teachers.
 
We want to move novice teachers down the road to expertise. If this project is successful, we will begin to understand how to provide electronic mentoring and move these teachers toward expertise, while enhancing their understanding of collaborative and interactive educational technologies. When we are done, perhaps these global networlds can serve as safe harbors for preservice teachers to try out instructional ideas and reflect on their early field experiences and be electronically apprenticed into their chosen field.

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Instructor: Judy East ( email: jaeast@indiana.edu )

Welcome to the Early Field Experience Conference! It has been created for you to exchange questions, answers, and ideas with other students, faculty and teachers
during your field experience. You can also view the discussions for All_Grades_Cases, Elementary_Education_Cases, and Secondary_Ed_Cases.

Some of the topics listed below are RESTRICTED to either students, faculty or teachers. Other topics are PUBLIC and anyone may participate. But Steve Malikowski and Judy East serve as "fair witnesses" to this conference, and they can read ALL messages.

Click on a topic to see how it works.

Topics::
 

Number	New	Topic Name
100	124	Elementary Cafe
101	165	Secondary Cafe
102	1	All Grades Cafe
104	40	Community Cafe
105	0	Field Experience Tips and Advice
110	6	Alternative Instruction Cases
111	156	Assessment and Grading Cases
112	21	Behavior/Class Management Cases
113	5	Diversity and Individual Differences Cases
114	0	Effective Teaching/Schools Cases
115	0	Learner-Centered Cases
116	0	Learning Styles and Multiple IQ Cases
117	15	Motivation Cases
125	10	General Cases
126	0	Bigger Global Issues
127	0	Other Miscellaneous Issues

by Judy East ( jaeast )
Date: Sep. 12 2:51 PM 1997
Recent Conversations for Secondary_Ed_Cases, Topic 170: [COWSearch]
 

Number	Total	New	Conversation
24	1	1	The girl who doesn't care!
13	13	13	My student and Cocaine
23	1	1	The girl who doesn't care!
7	11	11	Channel One
14	7	7	Fragile student stomped by substitute
15	3	3	Slipping through the cracks!!
17	1	1	Disciplining Students
16	1	1	Learning Disabled Students
12	1	1	Harriet Tubman is a Fictional Character
1	5	5	attention thirsty students

 

Conference: Secondary_Ed_Cases
Topic: 170. Your Own Cases--Secondary
Conversation 13

My student and Cocaine
All posts and replies

1. Author: Name Removed ( Username )
Date: Oct. 22 7:05 PM 1997
   The first day of my observing I connected with a female student. She felt comfortable talking to me and frequently asked me for help during the two class periods I was observing.  She is the sweetest girl I have in any of my classes. She is helpful, considerate, and extremely bright.
   I have been back to observe twice since then. Today 10-22-97, when I went to observe today, she was not in class. I asked the teacher if she had been absent the day before, and I asked him if she had a regular attendance problem. The answer he gave me just floored me. HE told me that she has been on house arrest since a week ago last Saturday. I asked what for and he said that she waiting on a hearing over a pending felony charge of posession, consumption, and sales of Cocaine on school grounds. I was totally appalled. But what made it even worse is the comment he made about her. HE said, you just can't help kids like that! I nodded my head in agreement, but I completely disagree. What do you think, are kids like her unreachable or unhelpable?

2. Author: Name Removed ( Username )
Date: Oct. 23 3:50 PM 1997
Wow! This is the kind of thing you hope you never have to deal with as a parent or teacher. Unfortunately, these types of things are very common in today's society. Young people are often the most impressionable, and very willing to take risks. In my personal view, I think that drug abuse and use need to be dealt with in a different manner than it is being delt with today. There should have been warning signs if this student is a chronic cocaine user. Teachers must be able to detect these signs. Often times this just means listening to the students. If the warning signs are present and a teacher has suspicions, very careful action must be taken. Punishment is not the answer, and comments like your teachers are even worse. You can help kids like this!! You cannot be afraid to reach out to this student. You could change their lives forever. You need to educate your students about what can happen when you use drugs, you don't need to tell them how to run their lives. This girl is a prime example of someone who probably didn't know what would happen to her if she used drugs. This teacher could have made the difference.
 

5. Author: Name Removed ( Username )
Date: Oct. 29 4:04 PM 1997
I can't believe your teacher said that. That's ridiculous!! Kids like these are the ones we should be trying to help the most. If your teacher thinks that the most important thing for his students is to learn what he's teaching, then he's right. I think that most often teaching our subject to students is one of the least important things we do.

6. Author: Name Removed ( Username )
Date: Oct. 30 10:38 AM 1997
I agree with #5. The kids like this are the kids that we should be trying to reach! If we as teachers don't try to help them than who will? Certainly not the judicial system. I also hope that you (Username) don't let this stop you from helping another student. I've dealt with people like that and your attention and belief in them might be the thing to turn them around whether it be now or a year down the road.

7. Author: Name Removed ( Username )
Date: Nov. 6 12:34 AM 1997
I agree with Jimmy ( Username). When you see cases like this it makes you realize that the anti-drug propaganda, pushed in our schools, is failing miserably. I am not saying that I condone the use of cocaine or any other controlled subsance. I am saying that the war on drugs is a joke and that this child is one of the many casualties of this joke. You must also consider the fact that just possesing a certain amount of a controled substance on school grounds is cause for criminal charges to be brought against a person. She may not have been selling but if she was in possesion of a certain amount she can still be charged with intent to sell. This is a very serious charge and depending on her age, if convicted, there may be very serious consequences.

If you feel that you know this person well enough, you might want
to try and contact her, give her your moral support. Something
like that would be very important to her right now. She is
probably feeling very scared and alone.
.....
9. Author: Name Removed ( Username )
Date: Nov. 13 12:14 AM 1997
WOW! Don't even think about giving up on a student like that! I was that student (Username) and I wish someone like you would have been their to wake me up!! I dated a person that influenced me heavy about drugs. At this impressionable age I fell into this life style and wasted numerous years of my life. After abusing drugs and being abused physically for five years I finally got away from it all. I got pregnant and quick using cold turkey.  Sad that it took this to make me realize that the situation I was in was not healthy, but some never get to this point so I guess I didn't fry all my cells. This is when I realized what I had done to myself and how much I had missed out on. I also hurt a lot of people in the process. I wasted my intelligence and lost all self respect. I think drug testing in the schools is a great new idea. If I had this I don't think I would have "experimented" with drugs. My son's father was ignored and his problem still exist's because no one chooses to address it. His addiction has even made him refuse to take or pass a drug screen so that he can see his child. I have seen so many people waste away because no one cares. You can't help somone until they chose to help themselves, but don't ever not offer it! As long as people like you are there to listen, things can get better! PEACE

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