The Untapped Learning Potential of CMC in Higher Education

We argue for programs that support academics to develop an understanding of the relationship between technology and pedagogy. To lay the groundwork, we document how nine instructors (in biology, education, English, general studies, geography, and kinesiology) at two universities integrated a computer conferencing tool into their course design and how their students reported actually using the tool. Among our findings was that most instructors intended students to use computer conferencing for learning of course content and to meet this goal three types of interactions were written into the course design: unidirectional, bidirectional, and co-constructive online interactions. The data was further considered from the perspective of Van Aalst’s framework (2006), which provides a way to build a “communal online learning resource in terms of three notions: collaboration, learning how to learn and idea improvement” (p. 279). Implications are drawn for working with faculty to design online instruction.