An essential question for online course design: How important are instructor-student and student-student interactions in online learning?

A quick Google search reveals myriad websites dispensing conventional wisdom on the topic, which consistently assure us that interactivity of all kinds is key to good online course design. However, I suspect that online teachers and learners —those of us with dogs in the fight, as it were— might express more nuanced views.

It turns out that academic scholarship supports us in this.

Croxton (2014) made a useful and relatively comprehensive meta-review of the literature on this topic. Based on that and some additional reading that I’ll describe here, the evidence suggests that teacher-student interaction seems to be quite important, while for student-student interaction the case is much less clear.

First, however, it might be argued that a lot of what Croxton cites is pretty dated. The review highlights Anderson (2003), though Anderson’s views on the importance of interactivity at that point came out of the experience of what was still called “distance learning,” using only pre-21st-century technology which, as we know, was a different world entirely. Certainly Anderson’s work is important and even seminal (as is that of Daniel & Marquis, 1979, from whom he draws his grounding concepts), but to use this as a “lens” through which to review current literature (as Croxton does) could arguably end up blurring rather than sharpening the image.

Croxton also includes cases of what might be considered marginally relevant material for many circumstances. For example, Sun, Tsai, Finger, Chen, and Yeh (2008) studied MBA students in Taiwan more than a decade ago. How applicable their findings might be for undergraduates in the US today is up to the reader to decide. (The one aspect of Sun et al. that I found pertinent to my own experience in different teaching modes has to do with students’ seeming preference for electronically moderated communication, the observation that “online learning virtually eliminates the awkwardness that is often associated with F2F communication in traditional classrooms” … a finding that I think wouldn’t have seemed relevant to the US context back in 2008, but which reflects my experience in college classrooms today, where students are becoming increasingly unwilling to interact even in a F2F setting, much preferring the company of their small screens.)

Croxton ultimately discovers that much of the research sends at best mixed messages in regard to the value of student-student interaction. Thurmond et al. (2002) is cited as finding that “students who were more likely to participate in teams/groups also tended to be less satisfied” while Gunawardena et al. (2010) found that “learner-learner interaction was negatively correlated with satisfaction.” Other studies are presented as supporting student-student interaction when in reality some qualification might be indicated. For example, Ivankova and Stick (2007) found a correlation between success and peer feedback, but this was only a part of one of four major themes identified in that study, so its significance is unclear and possibly slight. Croxton further observes that “Other studies […] have raised negative aspects of student–student asynchronous communication in online courses” (p. 318).

Croxton concludes that “this online learning literature review suggest that interactivity in online courses, particularly between student–instructor, can play an important role in student satisfaction” and goes on to recommend that “Colleges and universities must take great care to create satisfying learning environments that provide opportunities for rich and meaningful interactions” (p. 320).

Going beyond Croxton, student-student interaction was also the focus of studies by Kellogg and Smith (2009) and Lane (2014), neither of which is included in Croxton. Kellogg and Smith found that adult students “reported being at best indifferent and often negative regarding [student-to-student] learning activities” and that a large majority of these students placed these activities in the “learned least from” category. Lane explored student experience in wiki-based interactive projects, and found that satisfaction with these activities was positive but not strongly so, and that some students experienced “operational issues” with the wiki platform, despite being students in the second year of a bachelor’s degree program in Information Systems.

Martin & Bolliger (2018) surveyed 155 online students and on an open-ended question asking participants to identify the “least valuable strategy,” the most-mentioned item was discussion forums. In the area of “most valuable strategies,” the top response had to do with course materials; discussions was a distant second (though mentioned slightly more often than in the “least valuable” category), followed by “instructions/guidelines” and instructor feedback. The authors conclude that “engagement strategies that support interactions with instructors were valued more than strategies that aimed at interactions with learning material and other learners. Instructor presence is very important to online learners” (p. 218).

Finally, Dixson (2010) set out to investigate “what activities and/or interaction channels might be expected to lead to more highly engaged students,” finding that “multiple communication channels may be related to higher engagement and that student-student and instructor-student communication are clearly strongly correlated with higher student engagement with the course” (p. 1). However, this study also found little evidence that the types of engagement mattered, with the researcher observing that “no significant difference in student engagement levels between those reporting active vs. passive activities indicates that a myriad of content activities can be used to engage students in online courses. However, active learning assignments, particularly discussion forums and web pages, may serve the secondary purpose of helping to develop students’ social presence.”

How can we make student-student interaction more effective?

First, in my own experience as both teacher and student in online courses, I would say that the findings outlined above square with my experience with student-student interaction, which often can seem like a going-trough-the-motions kind of thing: forced, fake, and of little value. This is especially true when students are asked to submit some kind of original work or analysis for commentary. No matter how half-assed or simply nonsensical the work produced (and even in graduate-level classes it’s sometimes amazingly slack), virtually no one will offer anything remotely critical; “faint praise” is as damning as it gets.

I find that discussions work better when people are asked to offer perspectives on a particular question or point based on their own experiences; these can generate some interesting back-and-forth. I also begin the semester with self-introductions that require students to post and explain a photo that tells us something important about them. (I start the ball rolling with one of my own.) This establishes at least a bit of contact from the outset, if not camaraderie.

Finally, a major problem with any kind of LMS-based “back-and-forth” has to do with technological limitations. Compared with the far more sophisticated commercial platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the typical “discussion board” in the typical LMS looks like a mid-1990s BBS: ugly, cluttered and clumsy to use. If interaction is important, it’s hard to understand why the LMS providers don’t put more effort into making this part of the online experience more viable. Are they trying to tell us something?

——–

Daniel, J., and Marquis, C. (1979). Interaction and independence: Getting the mixture right. Teaching at a Distance, 15, 25 – 44.

Lane, Brid. (2014). Wikis as an efficient means of student collaboration. The All Ireland Journal of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education; Summer 2014, Vol. 6 Issue 2.

Croxton, Rebecca A. (June 2014). The Role of interactivity in student satisfaction and persistence in online learning. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(2), pp. 314-325.

Dixson, M. D. (2010). Creating effective student engagement in online courses: What do students find engaging? Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1-13.

Kellogg, Deborah L., & Smith, Marlene A. (2009). Student-to-student interaction revisited: A case study of working adult business students in online courses. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 7(2), 433-456. Retrieved April 8, 2019 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/157684/.

Martin, F. & Bolliger, D.U. (2018). Engagement matters: Student perceptions on the importance of engagement strategies in the online learning environment. Online Learning 22(1), 205- 222. doi:10.24059/olj.v22i1.1092