I.T. Times
Volume 4. No 7 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis April 1996

Shaping Interactive Learners

Newsgroups Replicate Small Class Dynamics

by Anne Jackson



When Brenda Bryant found her classes becoming ever-larger and group discussions becoming more difficult, she looked around for solutions. The answer she found - using computers. Bryant, who teaches courses in human development, now requires students to participate in academic discussions with classmates through electronic newsgroups.

Her reason, she says is simple: "when you're working with others on complex problem solving, you learn more."

"The newsgroups not only make passive students into interactive learners," says Bryant, but provide a window for her on how the class is receiving the course content.

Students in Bryant's Human Development 130 class are randomly assigned to one of several newsgroups of 20-25 students to discuss topics such as the effects of long-term childhood illness, for example. Students are required to check into the newsgroup three times a week. They must make their papers available online for comment by other students and must post messages to the newsgroup regularly. Students work from home computers or from a campus computer lab.

Bryant grades the quality of the students' posted comments - one point for reiterating something the student has read or for bringing in a personal example that illustrates a concept or process presented in the text or in class; two points for relating two concepts or for bringing in new information. The online requirement supplements in-class work, which includes attending lectures and viewing videotapes illustrating therapeutic techniques. Bryant and her teaching assistants send announcements to the students through a separate newsgroup.

"The most meaningful thing I realized from reading the posted messages was that the students didn't know how to 'see' the theories being illustrated in the videos," says Bryant They didn't know how to see the framework or to conceptualize, analyze, and critique." With that feedback, Bryant says she was able to adjust classroom presentations to increase students' understanding.

Bryant, who says she considers herself a computer novice, got the idea for using electronic newsgroups by attending a workshop put on by I.T. at the Teaching Resources Center. She then worked with I. T. staff to write instructions for students explaining how to open a computer account, how to subscribe and post to newsgroups, how to send and receive e-mail, how to use Melvyl to search library databases, and how to send a paper electronically.

Bryant says the newsgroups encourage the same kind of lively class discussion she used to see taking place 5-10 years ago when her classes were only half, or even a third the size they are now.

"This technology is all very relevant to life," adds Bryant. "Students shouldn't leave college without knowing how to use the Internet."