BarclayBlog

Law Library announcements, legal research updates from around the world, new and interesting research resources and web sites of interest to the faculty at the Syracuse University College of Law. Note: For easy navigation, right click on hyperlinks to open links in a new window.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Classroom Instruction v. Online Discussion Forums

Scottish law professor Paul Maharg has written an
interesting post on the Zeugma blog (5/24/2006)
about the differences between the traditional modality
of face-to-face interaction with faculty in a classroom
setting and the more transactional, student initiated experience
of the online discussion forum.

Maharg posits that, in classroom interaction
(based on the "initiation-response-follow up" (IRF)
model), "faculty rarely ask what we might regard
as genuine questions that seek knowledge – what
they are trying to do is to start dialogue or test
student knowledge." He compares this with
the online discussion environment where
"almost none [of students' questions] are initiated by
[faculty] : students raise the issues. The agenda belongs
to them. The questions are genuine: they are seeking
knowledge that they cannot obtain elsewhere."

A list of references follows the posting.