Online Learning Environment Essay

The recent shift towards intensive use of electronic calculator technology in educational practices has already mother so powerful that computer-based skill is no more perceived as something new. Whether it is computer laboratories in the primary schools or Internet-equipped computer facilities in the high-school, computers have dour into unalienable part of students life. However, such rapid and overwhelming spread of the new technology raised serious questions concerning positive and negative aspects, new opportunities for students and teachers, age peculiarities, and sex specifics of computer-based learning.The latter seems to be one of the major focuses of contemporary interrogation in computer-based learning. Article Gender residuals in the use of computer mediated communication by post graduate distance students indite by Barrett and Lally (1999) investigates into the gender aspect of computer-mediated education, namely the use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) in a specific learning context by a small group of postgraduate (MEd) distance learners and their tutors.Taking into consideration the fact of steadily growing listening of students involved into online educational practices, relevance of such research can hardly be questioned. Although the number of participants is rather small probably the first and foremost drawback of the research the authors have managed to collect comprehensive amount of data using students electronic diaries, questionnaires and transcripts of all their online contributions.Barrett and Lally (1999) apply content analysis arguably the most favorite method in psychology to evaluate on-line dialogues between members of the group. Specific attention has been nonrecreational to studying learning and socio-emotional pattern of behavior demonstrated by participants, since the major scheme of the authors is that male and female students differ significantly on this di manpowersion. The choice of method seems absolutely correct keeping in mind the hypothesis posed by the authors.Key outcomes of the study supported the authors hypothesis content analysis of the available data has identifyed serious difference in behavior of men and women put into the online learning environment. Firstly, male students tend to send more messages than their female counterparts. Secondly, messages written by male students were on average twice as large as messages written by female students. And thirdly, male students tend to write socio-emotionally oriented messages, small-arm female students exhibit interactive orientation.These three findings make it realistic for the authors to establish strong correlation between students gender and his/her behavior in the online learning environment. Despite seeming plainness of this study, it seems rather onerous to give it a univocal assessment. On the one hand, there is a small sample group, which raises the issue of the studys reliability, and simple research design, while on the other hand, there is exceptional relevance of the study (keeping in mind that it was published in 1999) and important findings, which have shown right direction for except research.Although there may be other visor of view, the second component outweighs all drawbacks of the research while the drawbacks relate to formal aspect of the study (e. g. inadequate sample size, poor data capturing techniques, etc), the content (hypothesis and findings) is really great. Newness of the authors ideas has turned the article into a good starting point for other researchers, whose working help develop the most optimal learning and dogma strategies designed according to specific learning behavior of both sexes in a immix online learning environment.Although newness is the most important characteristic of Barrett and Lallys (1999) work, they apparently relied upon a number of previous studies. As soon as the overall field of study of their research is concerned, the stu dy can hardly be addressed as absolutely original a number of studies dealing with the impact of computer technologies on the learning environment of classrooms (including the learning activities that take place in the classroom, and various educational strategies designed to make them more effective) were written throughout the 1990s.Although none of them paid serious attention to gender differences that might characterize behavior of students in computer learning environment, they definitely revealed a number of specific features of computer-based (including online) learning and teaching practices. For example, Richards (1996) conducted one of the first studies of the influence of computer-based environment on student motivations. His research conducted as a part of the Bell Atlantics World initiate Program revealed that computers and the Internet significantly improved students motivation.Thus, 92 percent of the respondents in Richards program classified the Internet as an effec tive learning tool (Richards, 1996). Findings of another research performed by Follansbee (1996) and his colleagues the same year stand in line with those of Richards. Comparison of the learning outcomes of students doing a task with access to the Internet demonstrated overmuch higher level of confidence in conducting and presenting the research task.Besides, the study discovered that students with access to the Internet demonstrated better diversity and inventiveness presenting their tasks, could better meld various perspectives, and presented their answers/projects more accurately (Follansbee 1996). In 1997, Proost and Lowyck (1997) published a study devoted to gender aspect of computer-based education. The sample group of the study was impressive tralatitiousistic and distance learning university students a total of 1368 students (945 males and 416 females) over 18 years of age (Proost and Lowyck, 1997 371-372).However, that study dealt only with the gender differences in pe rceptions of and preferences for computer based learning environments, while Barrett and Lally (1999) went deeper into the subject. Thus, Proost and Lowyck (1997) found out that female respondents had, on average, more negative perception of computer based technology and a preference for traditional methods than male respondents (p. 380), but did not try to answer the question whether male and female students demonstrate different behavioral patterns in the online learning environment or not.While Barrett and Lally (1999) relied on a number of previous researches, their own findings were further explored, confirmed, corrected, and extended by later studies. Kelly (2000) used Barrett and Lallys (1999) self-assertion that girl pay more attention to the interactive aspect of computer-based communication and learning to explain why girls normally have little interest to computer science. In her account, computer does not involve a lot of teamwork and social interaction and, therefore, is less interesting than traditional communication and learning.In the same fashion Kelly (2000) explains why absolute majority of the computer games are designed according to tastes of male audiences and emphasize things (violence, intensive action, speed) that are not attractive to women. Therefore, boys feel more attraction to computers and computer-based learning and with more males getting into careers in the computing industry, they perpetuate this cycle of catering for the needs of a predominantly male audience who recognise an entry point into the computing world via games and later take up careers in the computing industry (Kelly, 2000 156).Similarly, Passing and Levin (2000) explored gender difference amongst pre-school students trying to reveal their preferences to various designs of multimedia learning interfaces (in order to improve outcomes of learning). The study involved a sample of 90 children (44 girls and 46 boys), and its major outcome was significant differen ce in boys and girls preferences boys demonstrated more attraction to movement while girls paid more attention to visual elements.Shin and Chan (2004) also cite Barrett and Lallys (1999) in their study of the effects of online learning on distance education students. The authors assume that there is a direct relationship between students involvement in online learning and distance learning outcomes taking into consideration gender aspect as the major factor that affects online learning (p. 277). Riding and Grimley (1999) investigated how differently the same computer multimedia affects cognitive style and performance of boys and girls (11 years).The study involved 40 boys and 40 girls and was conducted in two stages firstly, participants underwent the procedure of assessment which revealed their cognitive style secondly, they were offered a multi-choice recall test after studying a science topic with the help of computer and CD-ROM (p. 44-45). Upon completion of both stages the auth ors compared computer-based scores of the participants with scores attached for similar topics learned with the help of traditional educational methods.The authors reported that with regard to the mode of presentation of the multimedia materials, girls who were Wholist-Imagers and Analytic-Verbalisers were better with presentations which had demonstrate and sound than those which had only picture and text. Those who were Wholist-Verbalizers and Analytic-Imagers were better with presentations which had picture and text than those which had only picture and sound. The results were the opposite for boys.For both gender groups performance was best with presentations which combined picture, text and sound (Riding and Grimley 1999 55). Evidently, the article written by Barrett and Lally (1999) can hardly be addressed as a classic work which has already become the basic reference point of modern studies in computer-based teaching and learning. At the same time, it is far from being a med iocre and irrelevant study that has absolutely not scientific value.The justice is somewhere in between the article is a well-written piece of work which stands in line with previous research, has an element of newness and, therefore, opens new opportunities for scientists. REFERENCES Barrett, E and Lally, V. (1999) Gender differences in an on-line learning environment Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 15, 48-60 Follansbee, S. , Gilsdorf, N. , Stahl, S. , Dunfey, J. , Cohen, S. , Pisha, B. and Hughes, B. (1996) The role of online communication in schools a national study .Peabody, MA centre for Applied Special Technology. Kelly, Karen. (2000) The Gender Gap Why Do Girls Get Turned Off to Technology? The Digital Classroom, ed. D. T. Gordon, The Harvard Education Letter, Cambridge, pp 154-160 OHara, S. P. (1998) A font study of attitudinal effects of Internet use in a middle school integrated science curriculum. Paper presented at the Annual conflux of the National Associatio n for Research in Science Teaching, San Diego, CA, April 19-22, 1998 (Eric document ED417978). Passing, D.& Levin, H. (2000) Gender Preferences for Multimedia interfaces, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 16 64-71 Proost, K. , Elen J. & Lowyck J. (1997) Effects of Gender on Perceptions of and Preferences for Telematic Learning Environments, Journal of Research on Computing in Education, Summer, 29(4) 370-384 Richards, F. C. (1996) The impact of the Internet on teaching and learning as perceived by teachers, subroutine library media specialists and students Masters thesis, Salem-Teikyo University (Eric document ED410943)