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Connecting, Making Meaning, and Learning in the Electronic Classroom: Reflections on Facilitating Learning at a Distance

The increasing use of technology to meet the vast educational needs of our expanding world has led to heightened concerns about learning experiences within educational environments that are removed from the immediate purview of instructors (Duffy & Kirkley, 2004). Recent calls for use of more collaborative environments in which students interact with their instructors as well as with fellow students, have become more pronounced because of the purported learning benefits for students (Bonk, 2002). Constructivism, a theory of learning that is based on collaboration and interactions, provides such an environment (Jonassen, 1991). We report on the experiences of one professor who maintained a constructivist approach while teaching a foundation course in education (classroom learning theory) in a distance education setting. Emphasized are the challenges associated with creating the appropriate conditions for learning when moving from the face-to-face interactions of the regular classroom to the setting of compressed video. The implications of the medium for her role as facilitator, the establishment of a learning community, techniques of questioning and inquiry, and group collaboration are addressed. The impact of the medium and the greater cultural diversity of the distance education classes on how the tenets of constructivism are manifested and experienced by the students is also discussed.