ODU ENGL 810 PAB 2 TOPIC: New Media and Rhetoric by Discussing Media and Pedagogy

TOPIC:           Annoted Bibliography, PAB1, 2 of 2New Media and Rhetoric by Discussing Media and Pedagogy (2 of 2)

Guasch, Teresa, and Espasa, Anna. "Collaborative Writing Online: Unraveling the Feedback Process." Deane, Mary and Guasch, Teresa. Learning and teaching Online. 13-30: Brill, 2015

Keywords: Communications and Information Technology, C&IT, computer-mediated communication, CMC, new media, enhanced learning, social organization, learning orientation, work modality, emotional climate, group response, gamification of learning

Bibliography

Denning, Mike, and Davis, Kate. "Almost as helpful as good theory: some conceptual possibilities for the online classroom." Research in Learning Technology 9.2 (2001): 64-75.

Guasch, Teresa, and Espasa, Anna. "Collaborative Writing Online: Unraveling the Feedback Process." Deane, Mary and Guasch, Teresa. Learning and teaching Online. 13-30: Brill, 2015.

Ivory, James. Virtual Lives: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO, 2012.

Murray, Janet H. Hanmlet on the Holodeck. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Stefan, Livia and Moldoveanu, Florica. "Gamified 3D virtual learning environment for improved students’ motivation and learning evaluation. A case study on “3DUPB” campus." The 11th International Scientific Conference eLearning and software for Education. 2015. 94-102. Bucharest.

Annotations

“All media as extensions of ourselves serve to provide new
transforming vision and awareness.”

Marshall McLuhan (qtd from Murray)

Guasch and Espasa look at how today’s online learning “can overcome challenges that may arise in collaborative writing tasks” (Guasch). Their study shows successful online learners, but they wonder about the efficacy of feedback in the detached world of the internet and dropped connection. Today’s distance students are much better than those just fifteen years ago when Denning and Davis decided that online socialization for learners is weakened because computer-based students are limited to “the single, textual cue” and missed the benefits of face-to-face interaction (Denning). We know, from our ODU online community, that today’s camera-based classroom interactions allow participants in the room, across campus, and around the globe to simultaneously see and talk with each other in a live stream. We also have a sidebar chat stream for in-class participation to ask questions or post comments without interrupting the flow of discussion, enriching the exchange of information and ideas. At the same time, another manner of online student engagement during class is the closed group (on Facebook, Google Hangouts or other permissions-based systems), limiting entry to only course students, giving a note-under-the-desk opportunity to discuss the class, offer onions, and see if anyone else shares their views or is as lost as they are during a lecture.

James Ivory’s “Virtual Lives” supports Guasch and Espasa  by analyzing online gaming and the surrounding communities. He finds that social opportunities for growth and friendship abound online, and that educational opportunities exist both within games, such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and in the virtual classroom (Ivory). I believe that because gamers are mostly “millennials,” or Generation Y, (Americans born between 1982 and 2000) have grown up on an online environment, so they are invite an opportunity leave the brick-and-mortar schoolhouse and learn in a virtual classroom, rendering the Denning and Davis work obsolete.

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Stefan and Moldoveanu offer that designing “special graphical and instructional design to simulate an effective learning environment[s] and make students focus on their learning objectives” (Stefan). Aligning with Ivory’s views, they contend that a serious gaming experience, 3D or Second Life as a learner-controlled experience with “very little content and infrastructure” built in by the developer. Its popularity was that it “allowed users to interact with each other and the environment in” any way they choose, even letting gamers keep the intellectual property rights to self-created content (Stefan). 
otherwise, is a learning experience in and of itself. Ivory points to Linden Lab’s online game

Computer learning is growing (evidenced by the increased success of this PhD program). This relatively new synchronous, live-camera, in the classroom collaboration builds a 2.5-dimensional experience more enriching than a cold asynchronous dial-in based on a read-then-post learning model, but not as immersive as a traditional, tactile, seat-in-the-class environment. We are not at the point of offering a 3D “holodeck” experience (Murray), but students’ desires for a more “real” experience combined with their comfort of living with new online technologies, will bring us to a rich life-like digital learning experience that will have a new name, making the term “3D” sound like an archaically charming way of talking about today’s IMAX movies.