The pillars of “The Vicarious Learner” project then are action and conversation

“Instructional methods that use a constructivist approach to teaching and learning focus on dialogue, learning partnerships, and the joint construction of knowledge. This approach is used for the design of many of the online courses at USQ”

is the level of teacher participation sustainable? Does “more” necessarily mean “better”?

“Palloff and Pratt (1999, p. 15) note that “in the online classroom, it is the relationships and interactions among people through which knowledge is primarily generated”.

Disinhibition (Suler, 2002) is one of the more frequently mentioned effects of online learning. It is sometimes described as the increased likelihood that a shy student will speak up, for example, or that students will be more forthright. – I have witnessed this myself when my students engaged in blogging. The shy students were more able to participate given that they could spend more time cultivating their responses and not have to engage F2F.

A major difference between F2F and online is - Operating in the online environment means that bodily differences and social values attached to visible differences are invisible and irrelevant - teachers and learners online construct themselves through text in the discussion forums, for example (distinctions of gender, ethnicity, body shape or impairment, accent or speech styles ‘don’t matter’ – visual cues of difference are missing) and the challenge is to know more about online sociality and the ‘special circumstances’ of learners.