Elements of Distance Education Diffusion

Module 2 Post 2

Collaborative interaction allows for multiple intelligences to come together in a single group or learning community. Each member in a learning community must be able to collaborate with one another in order to reach a common goal. Collaborative learning involves not only taking in new ideas but also creating new ideas. Smith and MacGregor (1992) illustrates that collaborative learning produces intellectual synergy of many minds coming to bear on a problem and the social stimulation of mutual engagement in a common endeavor.
Some online tools that are available today to facilitate collaborative interaction are video conferencing, web conferencing, voice over IP, virtual classrooms, blogs, and wiki’s just to name a few. “ Videoconferencing attempts to proximate face-to-face communication and web conferencing integrates the phone and networked computer screen so that an unlimited number of participants can talk to each other while viewing the same content ,” (Foreman, 2003). Foreman (2003) explains that Voice IP is a system, which bypasses the telephone and transmits audio over the same Internet lines that link users to their shared applications.

Foreman, J. (2003). Distance Learning and Synchronous Interaction. The Technology Source Archives at the University of North Carolina. Retrieved fromhttp://technologysource.org/article/distance_learning_and_synchronous_interaction/
Smith, B.L., & MacGregor, J.T. (1992). What is Collaborative learning? Retrieved from http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/pdf/collab.pdf.