The question of teacher and learner roles was specifically focused on during Cycle 1 of the action research project when the participating students had the important task of testing and developing the new course format, both in terms of content and methodology. In their final course report, the HSE students were asked to describe the roles of the teacher and the learner during the course as they perceived them.
During Cycle 2, the HSE group was not specifically asked to address the topic mainly because the technical difficulties regarding the functioning of the network and the prevailing irregular conditions and lack of functioning classroom space resulting from the renovation of HSE’s main building led to the tightening of the course timetable. During Cycle 3 we had our share of difficulties as well, but the HSE group did have a face-to-face discussion at the end of the course where I in-troduced my then prevailing view of the classroom roles and the students com-mented on it, either confirming my perceptions or suggesting some additions. In the following, the roles described will therefore mainly focus the views presented by the HSE Cycle 1 group in particular, with some additions from Cycle 3 group.
The Cycle 1 students were aware of being participants in an action research project and they were also explained the basic terminology and concepts used in the research project. The students were surprisingly quick to adopt the terminology that I in my researcher’s role was providing them regarding notions such as telematics, learning environment, teacher and student roles. In fact, I was most taken with their ability to reflect on their experiences from these perspectives which were still very new at the time. No doubt the instructions that I gave for their final reports were quite helpful because they were structured and provided the es-sential scaffolding (See Appendix 1). However, I was still very surprised at the mature and analytical approach with which they tackled the topics.
Teacher roles
When discussing the teacher and learner roles in a collaborative network-based learning environment, some of the students’ comments were directly describing my role as they saw it whereas other comments were meant to describe what kind of teacher is needed for a network-based course.
Most of the comments centered on the non-authoritarian role of the teacher, the facilitative role and the organizer role. In the following excerpt, the student de-picts the non-authoritarian role of the teacher. When using the word “instructor” it is likely that the Finnish-speaking student may have a translation of the Finnish word in mind and is thinking of ‘somebody giving instructions’, i.e. advisor.
“I find that the role of the teacher in a virtual classroom is more like an instructor rather than a leader or a ruler. It is not the same role as ‘in the old days’ when the teacher taught and the pupils listened to what he or she had to say. The teacher gives the frame for the video conferences and WWW discussion forums but in the end the students are those who make (create) the actual learning and teaching event.”
(Student F3 – Cycle 1) Another student also indicates that the teacher’s role is not authoritarian.
“It is really difficult to try to analyze the impacts of the learning environment on the classroom roles. the learning environment was more positive than in some other courses. You were encouraged in a nice and positive way, and the role of the teacher was not an authoritarian one.
(Student F4 Cycle 1) The teacher was also described as ‘more or less just another participant.’
“The teacher’s role wasn’t anything like in conventional situations, where the teacher tells exactly what to learn. In a telematics-based environment the teacher is more or less just another participant, though very active one and the teacher’s role as an organizer is greatly emphasized. So in this way it is much more efficient to learn to communicate, and learning is not just a one-way street.”
(Student M1 Cycle 1) Another student, also emphasizing the teacher’s organizing tasks, describes the role of the teacher that of a coordinator.
“The role of the teacher seemed to be more like a coordinator between participants and HSE group and LUT group. This enabled the participants to plan their actions more freely and practise their teamwork. The concept of this course could be altered to any course that deals with the negotiations or requires information (e.g. case assignments).”
(Student M4 Cycle 1)
One student aptly gets to the heart of the matter in her analysis of the role of the teacher, by pointing out that the teacher’s giving ‘the room’ to the students is not an easy task. This is what Underhill (1989; discussed in Section 6.1.1) implied in his discussion of teachers’ ability to move between the authoritative and autono-mous uses of power in the classroom.
“The role of a teacher is not an easy task. It requires courage to give the room to the students and let us “hit the head to the wall” and learn by doing almost everything ourselves.
The teacher must still have an active role in the background and steer the situations somehow.
Telematics-course needs an enthusiastic teacher, devoted to a special subject maybe.
Couraging [sic] strong, democratic with an authoritative touch.”
(Student F1/ Cycle 1) Based on my own teaching experience, I appreciated the students’ discerning comments as they did not seem to be intended to please me or necessarily support my enthusiasm about the use of educational technologies. For instance, in the fol-lowing excerpt, the student is highlighting the essence of good teaching by de-emphasizing the role of technology while also implying that students should be given the opportunity to experience different kinds of learning environments:
“Traditionally the roles of the teacher in relation to the students have been very unambiguous and one-sided. Nowadays there is a certain change towards bilateral learning and mutual development. To my mind this development seems healthy and reasonable but it is not bound to the learning environment. High quality teaching can take place anywhere and anytime and it’s not to be connected only with a high-tech environment.
Instead, an unexplored learning environment will probably motivate and inspire both the teacher(s) and the student(s) just by being something new. In my opinion, every student should have a possibility to experience different kinds of learning environments – just for the sake of it.”
(StudentF2/Cycle 1) In the middle of Cycle 1 I received an e-mail message from an acquaintance from a training organization telling me about tutor training they were going to arrange for a network-based training project in their organization. She asked for my comments on the characteristics of a good tutor. For my answer, all I needed to do was to stop and think how I saw the teacher’s role being right then in the midst of running a network-based multimodal course myself. I sent the following reply:
“In my opinion a good tutor is like a chameleon who is able to adapt himself/herself in versatile ways to various roles during the course, for instance on this continuum:
organizer – advisor – expert – group leader – coach.”
(Translated from the Finnish original) My views of the teacher’s roles were further expanded and confirmed through dis-cussions with Partner in which we compared and shared our perceptions. We based our initial identification of various teacher roles largely on the basis of the various tasks and duties that we as teachers were involved with during the courses. Berge’s (1995) categorization of online moderator roles into pedagogical, social, manage-rial and technical roles gives an appropriate basis for categorizing teacher roles in a network-based multimodal learning environment as well.
Managerial roles
Based on the content analysis of the data, the teacher’s role as an organizer seemed to arise as the role that belonged to one of the central roles in the teacher’s role set. Although it could be argued that the organizer role belongs to almost every teacher’s role set, it does, however, seem that in a multimodal, collaborative net-work-based learning environment the organizer functions are multiplied because of the many modes involved. Interestingly, the managerial roles also included a pro-ducer’s role. In the propro-ducer’s role Partner and I as teachers needed to look for and assure funding for e.g., renting the videoconferencing facilities, which were costly at the time. In the producer role we also needed to develop and utilize the contacts with various specialists within and outside our universities.
Pedagogical roles
The “multi-mode” teacher’s pedagogical role set seemed to be varied as well. The role of being a resource specialist emerged in a new light as the books and hand-outs were largely replaced by web links and writing course material and instruc-tions which were to be placed on the course web site. Writing material could in-clude for instance writing a case as I had to do in a hurry during Cycle 2 when the students just simply could not reach an agreement on what topic to discuss during their last video conference on ethics and values (See Appendix 2).
Most importantly, there was the teacher’s role as a facilitator, which included a range of facilitative functions ranging from acting as an advisor, a consultant and a coach. The purpose of the facilitative functions was to help students improve their presentation and argumentative skills in particular. Finally, there was the teacher’s role as an evaluator whose role included the double functions of directly evaluating the students’ performances and participation and indirectly through the students’ own self-evaluations.
As for the teacher’s roles, there is a difference between what could be consid-ered the ideal roles based on the constructivist principles and the reality. Goodfel-low (1999) points out that, on the one hand, the constructivist, facilitative and knowledge construction roles can create expectations in the learners that tutors would be peers as well as mentors, contributing equally to subjective and unstruc-tured, as well as strucunstruc-tured, discussion with the community of learners. On the other hand, as he points out, the assignment-marking and student support roles force the tutors into the position of expert and assessor, with the consequent pres-sure of objectivity and accountability. Goodfellow (1999) also maintains that this kind of conflict means that roles have to be performed independently, which again results in an increased workload. He pinpoints the problem as one arising from a conventional teaching role being forced onto an unconventional teacher-learner relationship by institutional requirements. As possible efforts to alleviate the con-flict, he sees e.g. the tutor role being separated from moderator and technical help function.
During the three action research cycles I did not start feeling the effects of the role strain resulting from the conflicting types of roles that I was expected to play until the last cycle when I did not have a course assistant any more who could do some of the moderating in the discussion forum, for instance. During the final face-to-face session with my Cycle 3 students I presented them my then prevailing ideas concerning the teacher and learner roles in a multimodal, network-based learning environment. I asked the students whether they agreed to the suggested roles and whether there was anything they would like to change or add. Two additions were proposed to the teacher roles: one role was that of a “cheerleader”, and the other one that of “an assessor”. I could see the cheerleader role as one of the social roles and found it appropriate. The assessor role was an eye-opening experience to me.
As I evidently looked surprised, the student who suggested it added, “But you are an assessor. You give us the final grade.” I then understood why I had been feeling the effects of a role strain and that it is this strain caused by conflicting roles that Goodfellow (1999) above is referring to.
Social roles
Perceived on the basis of the experiences arising from the three action research cy-cles, the teacher seemed to have the important role as being ultimately responsible for the creation of an atmosphere of trust and respect in the multimodal network-based environment involving the participation of another geographically dispersed group. Again, this would be the case in a conventional classroom as well, but as, apart from the few face-to-face sessions with their local groups, communication is mediated through writing or videoconferencing, the social role aspect presents new challenges for teachers.
Technical roles
Whether the teachers like or not, they are also faced with having to play a technical role when they move from the safe conventional classroom to a network-based en-vironment utilizing multiple media. As it seems unrealistic to be able to have tech-nical assistance and support available all the time, the teacher would need at least a basic understanding of what the technical problem might be in order to be able to look for help from the right people. Even more importantly, the teacher would need to have an understanding of the affordances of the media in order to be able to sup-port their students better.
Learner Roles
The task of analyzing their roles as learners did not seem to be as easy for the stu-dents as the task of outlining their perceptions of the teacher roles. For instance, they seemed to approach the topic from the perspectives of what they thought they had learnt and how the course was different from a “regular” course. Interestingly, however, some of the Cycle 1 students seemed to emphasize the use of multiple channels in the learning environment, pointing out the opportunity thus given to the students to communicate more effectively.
“My role as a student certainly became more active because of the different learning environment. In my opinion the discussion forums offer the verbally not so talented people a chance to express their opinions as well, and a chance to other people to hear about them. I think that any course that involves self-studying will benefit from a telematics-based learning environment, particularly from the e-mail and WWW. The main difference compared to other courses was that the students could participate in building the course, and in this way it is possible to motivate people more efficiently.”
(Student M1/Cycle 1) The Cycle 1 students’ full-hearted participation in the action research project seemed to reflect their exceptionally high level of motivation and enthusiasm. Al-though the groups during the other two action research cycles also seemed to be actively involved, the Cycle 1 group still seemed to stay in a class of its own, per-haps because of factors that can only be assumed. Among such factors could be the following: first, the students truly seemed to enjoy the responsibility of being in-volved in course development and being participants in the action research project.
This, on the other hand, perhaps depended on the fact the because of its special nature and the “newness” of the technologies used appealed to the particular stu-dents who signed up for the course. Importantly, most of them shared a deep per-sonal interest in the subject itself, environmental communication. Indeed, one stu-dent seemed to experience the participatory process during the course as an optimal flow experience as apparent in the following excerpt:
“… This proves something interesting when it comes to the roles: I lost my role as a regular student and took the topic personally. I as a student had a way more channels to express myself than in a regular course. I also learned that we are all only people:
even those, who create and write those fine environmental policy-reports in the companies.
The topic made the learning so easy. Surfing in the www-pages in the learning space was like food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty. I lost my sense of time, never actually had to make any effort on learning. Somehow it just happened.
I know it has happened, because my sister keeps commenting it every time we talk about her special subject.... She claims that not only my knowledge of the things happening in the world has increased, but also my argumentation amazes her: “you sound as if you believed in that!”
(Student F1/Cycle 1) On the basis of the content analysis of the data, the following main learner roles seemed to emerge. First of all, in the multimodal, collaborative network-based learning environment the learners’ main role appeared to be that of a communica-tor. Obviously, the whole course format was built around the very theme of com-munication, but it does seem, indeed , that without the use of the various communi-cation channels not everybody would have had an equal opportunity to make their presence known and their messages expressed and heard.
An altogether new learner role compared with a conventional classroom set-ting seemed to be that of a broadcaster. Apart from private e-mails, everything that the participants posted was transparent, readable and recorded for all the other participants as well. Oral communication taking place in a conventional classroom does not leave such a record nor does the students’ written work as it would be rare that everybody’s written work would be copied for all other participants to read.
The recording of both written interaction and notably the oral interaction during the videoconferences provided the student with the opportunity of acting as an evalua-tor of his/her and the whole group’s communicative performance.
The learner could also been seen as a builder and an owner in the sense that the opportunity to give a contribution as the “builder” of the course also seemed to increase the participant’s sense of ownership of his/her own learning, thus leading towards a fruitful and satisfying learning experience.
Finally, the learner’s role as a collaborator seemed to be a distinct one as a result of the membership in two in-built groups: first, the working together of the local group, and then the learning encounters with the group from the other partici-pating university. The endeavor relied on sharing and collaboration with others, not only on the participants working or studying alone.
In conclusion, this final section of the chapter presenting results and interpre-tations, has now dealt with the question of teacher and learner roles in a collabora-tive network-based learning environment. The findings are largely in line with the bulk of previous research into the issue, especially as regards the role of the teacher. As for the roles of the learner, this study stresses the learner’s communi-cator and broadcaster roles, which can also largely be explained by the context of the study which is foreign language and business communication teaching, with a specific focus on environmental communication.
9 Trustworthiness of the study
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