The Medium Is the Message: Online Technology and Knowledge Construction in Adult Graduate Education

Teaching online entails delivering a course fully or in part via the Internet and, in particular, the World Wide Web (Aragon, 2003; Ko & Rossen, 2001; Palloff & Pratt, 1999). Online course delivery in higher education is widespread and increasing (Aragon, 2003; Palloff & Pratt, 1999; Weiss, Knowlton, & Speck, 2000). A range of offerings exists, including fully online degree programs, online courses in all disciplines of study, and hybrid courses, where face-to-face meetings are combined with online learning technology. It is important to focus on teaching effectiveness as it is enhanced or degraded with the use of online technology rather than on the technology itself (Maid, 2003). Research has shown rather conclusively that pedagogy and instructional design are correlated with student learning while technology itself has little influence (Johnson & Aragon, 2003). Watts (2003) views technology not as an end in itself, but rather as a catalyst that allows educators "an opportunity to revisit how, what, and why we are teaching" (p. 6). More prominent online technology tools like WebCT (see www.webct.com) and Blackboard (see www.blackboard.com) appear to support a traditional behaviorist approach to teaching (Maid, 2003). Yet, many adult educators are social constructivists who ground their instructional designs in the assumption that meaningful learning occurs through interaction with other students, the instructor, and the learning environment (Gibson, 2000; Taylor; Marienau, & Fidler, 2000). For their students, the connecting classroom has been found to play a central role in their learning (Graham, Donaldson, Kasworm, & Dirkx, 2000). Adults make meaning of being a student, develop relationships with other students and instructors, and connect with other cultures and communities in the connecting classroom (Graham et al.). Some adult educators are resistant to teaching online because they believe it does not complement social constructivist pedagogy by facilitating the experience of the connecting classroom (Palloff & Pratt, 2001). At the same time, online course delivery is of particular interest to adult educators in higher education because it offers greater access to adult students for whom it is inconvenient or even impossible to attend classes on campus (Derrick, 2003; Gibson, 2000; Kilgore, 2003; Palloff & Pratt, 2001). In response to criticism of the use of online technology, Gibson observed that it is possible to design online courses to encourage interaction and experiential learning, and that there are "countless examples of [constructivist] adult education using a wide range of technologies" (p. 429). Wilson and Lowry (2000) argued that constructivism can be employed in online teaching by providing access to "rich sources of information"; encouraging "meaningful interactions with content"; and bringing people together to "challenge, support, and respond to each other" (p. 82). The problem for the instructor, then, is to improve accessibility for adults with the use of online technology, without threatening the constructivist potential of the connecting classroom. The purpose of this article is to describe my own experiments with online technology in adult education graduate courses, as I attempted to improve access to adult students while providing a collaborative, connected, and experiential learning environment. I will briefly describe three cases where I designed a blended course including both face-to-face meetings and online interactions. I will then compare and contrast the different technologies used, and how they shaped the knowledge collectively constructed by the students and me during the semester. Finally, I will discuss the implications of what I learned for practitioners. Three Experiments With Online Technology for Adult Graduate Education I first became an active participant in Internet-based communications in 1990. …