Re: instructional design

Fatemeh Bagherian (fbagheri who-is-at ccs.carleton.ca)
Fri, 17 Oct 1997 22:56:36 -0400 (EDT)

Linnda, many thanks for your comments and questions. If I understand your
question about the difference btw course.newsgroup discussions and alive
discussion group, I am going to look for possible differences in gender,
major, and school year in general. And in particular, I would also look
at the group dynamics to see, e.g., how a particual person (could be a
student, TA or instructor) might pormote more discussions. What I have
found so far from the experience of running discussion groups in class
(last years) and on net (this year) is that more female students are
willing to come to alive discussion group and more male students come to
discussion on net. I am waiting to learn more after doing the survey part
of my study. By the way, did I answer your question?!

The second part of your e-mail is very interesting! because I, in fact, work
under supervision of Prof. Warren Thorngate. He is my great mentor, I am the
TA for the course he teaches! Wow such small world!
Thanks again for your reply.
Fatemeh

Linnda R. Caporael writes: >
> Fatemeh,
> I'm sorry not to repond earlier--I'm still behind in email. Your study
> sounds interesting. Do you have hunches about what differentiates the
> course.newsgroups discussions and seminar discussion? We have the same
> setups here, although I don't believe that anyone at Rensselaer has
> looked at them. Chis Bose, in the Department of Language, Literature,
> and Communications has studied gender differences in compputer-mediated
> class discussions. (Briefly, she found that all male groups rapidly
> became locker room discussions; one female changed the nature of
> discussion.)

> BTW, if you are teaching social psychology, then you must know Warren
> Thorngate, who was my collaborator, a long time ago, on a JSI volume
> titled something like, "Computers: Prophecy and Experience." (Well, a
> long time ago, the title did make sense!)
>
> Thanks fot the reference to Scott Althaus.
> Linnda
>