Chapter 24: Interaction Online: A Reevaluation

In order to conserve resources and provide additional options and opportunities for students, many universities provide salary or course-reduction incentives for instructors to convert at least one section of their courses for distance delivery via the Internet. The need to provide these incentives stems from the general skepticism that a computer environment can ever replicate the live class. In early conversions from live to online environments, the general consensus was that, for online courses to be successful, that is, for them to have student experiences and outcomes equivalent to those of live courses, the online environment must replicate the live class as much as possible (Coppola, 2005; Gilbert & Moore, 1998). And because classroom instructors often believe that the live class is the right way, or, as Wagner (1994) puts it, “the real thing” (p. 9), they attempt to duplicate the experience online by providing written lectures, tests, and quizzes, class discussions, in-class exercises, and collaborative projects. As a result, incorporating a variety of interactions among students and instructor has become an expected feature of the online classroom.