ACTIVE LEARNING MANIFESTED WITHIN A SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE CLASSROOM

[摘要] The size and scope of online K-12 education is increasing rapidly.Research to develop a deeper understanding of the benefits of and barriers to delivering instruction via the Internet is limited. Traditionally research has shown that strategies of active learning, which when applied properly in K-12 classrooms, contribute to positive student attitudes towards self and learning and increase academic achievement. From a review of the literature, it was clear that there is limited research on synchronous online classrooms and on the indicators of active learning as they are manifested in synchronous online classrooms.Consequently, the aim of this study was to portray the perspectives of synchronous online teachers towards indicators of active learning.Participants for this study were teachers from a single cyber charter school. The participants responded to an online survey designed to elicit perceptions of important indicators of active learning, barriers to implementation of active learning, and strategies used to engage students in active learning strategies in synchronous online classrooms. A simple descriptive research design was applied to analyze the data. The data show that the most important indicator of effective instruction was teacher preparation required to create engaging learning activities.Teachers perceived all but two of the primary indicators of active learning identified in the literature (time on task and activities that promote collaboration) as 'very important” or 'extremely important”.Teachers’ perceptions of these primary indicators as not important contradict the literature on active learning. Teachers generally described the role of the student as the greatest barrier to implementing active learning in a synchronous online learning environment while the role of technology was viewed as only marginally distracting. The perceptions of synchronous online teachers align with what is reported in the literature on active learning in traditional classrooms. The results of this study have implications for teacher evaluation, hiring procedures, professional development and future research into active learning within the synchronous classroom.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh