Are contextual and designed student-student interaction treatments equally effective in distance education?

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Distance Education

Publication Date

11-1-2012

Abstract

This systematic review draws from and builds upon the results of a meta-analysis of the achievement effects of three types of interaction treatments in distance education: student-student, student-teacher, and student-content (Bernard et al., Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1243-1289, 2009). This follow-up study considers two forms of student-student interaction treatments, contextual interaction and designed interaction. Typical contextual interaction treatments contain the necessary conditions for student-student interaction to occur, but are not intentionally designed to create collaborative learning environments. By contrast, designed interaction treatments are intentionally implemented collaborative instructional conditions for increasing student learning. Our meta-analysis compared the effect of these two types of interaction treatments on student achievement outcomes. The results favored designed interaction treatments over contextual interaction treatments. Examples of designed interaction treatments and a discussion of study results and their potential implications for research and instruction in distance education and online learning are presented. © 2012 Copyright Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.

ISSN

0158-7919

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Volume

33

Issue

3

First Page

311

Last Page

329

Disciplines

Education

Keywords

designed and contextual collaborative interaction treatments, distance education, meta-analysis

Scopus ID

84869432051

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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