To promote learning, you will want to structure online activities to encourage the kind of student interactions and active learning that foster deep learning. Deep learning, which has an extensive international research base, is predicated on four key principles.
Careful planning can support the first two principles.
But, simply putting students into groups, as numerous studies have indicated, does not accomplish the desired results. Effective, creative uses of technology should rest on all we know about human learning. Not surprisingly, the same principles outlined below that foster effective in-class learning can also promote learning at a distance. Ask yourself key questions about the proposed group activity. David Campbell has warned, If you don t know where you re going, you ll probably end up somewhere else.