This section of this issue of Studies in Continuing Education continues with four papers dedicated to the special issue on ‘Advances in researching adult e-learning’ which began in issue 2. Sceptics of e-learning often question the quality of learning that takes place online, and argue that it is not possible to produce quality learning outcomes in these settings. The four papers in this section help address this criticism by researching the broad issues of interaction, dialogue and communication—all of which are central to excellence in learning—in the quest to produce quality learning in the e-learning process.
A paper by Mary Thorpe and Steve Godwin of the UK Open University opens this second section of the special issue. The paper has a focus on a key concern of e-learning, namely interaction in the learning process. The authors consider the distinction between interpersonal and content interaction when they examine the student experience on 36 distance learning courses that employ e-learning. They show that students value both content and interpersonal interaction and suggest that it is not helpful for us to privilege one over the other.
The concern for interaction is also addressed by Debra Ferreday, Vivien Hodgson and Chris Jones when they consider the potential of networked management learning, in which learning is seen to emerge from relational dialogue in the setting of collaboration and interaction through communication technologies. Using ideas about dialogues from Bakhtin and Fairclough, they present an analysis of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ dialogues and show that, through dialogue, participants construct meaning about who they are and about what counts as acceptable knowledge They examine three core areas: gender, inclusivity and academic language, and show (among other things) that the active and performative nature of dialogue can have effects on the creation of meaning and the construction of identity in online learning environments.
The theme of researching dialogue (and promoting quality learning) is also the focus of the paper by Elsebeth Sorensen, Eugene Takle and Heather Moser, in which they analyse collaborative knowledge building in online learning dialogues. They suggest that many of the existing approaches to understanding how learners collaborate online do not provide authentic insights into the nature of inter-human dialogue. They suggest that these approaches often reduce interactions to sets of statistics. It is suggested that a ‘language games’ methodology in which learners are encouraged to act according to the rules of interaction (the rules of the game) and in which the interpretations of actions are associated with the activity in which they take place may provide a more rigorous framework for understanding online dialogue. The authors apply this to a real learning situation in which they attempt to measure the quality of learning taking place. This is achieved by showing how language game coding can be applied to online dialogues. Although their findings are equivocal and tentative, the authors suggest that the design of any online learning activity that aims to foster, for example, critical thinking has to be carefully implemented before we can expect quality learning to take place.
This second section of the special issue on ‘Advances in researching adult e-learning’ concludes with a paper by Philippa Levy in which she considers how learners in e-learning contexts have to learn a different form of communication. She shows this by means of an in-depth analysis of a particular case in which she reflects on her own practice in designing and implementing a networked learning course. She chooses to focus on four important dimensions of course design, namely task design, socio-technical issues, information design and tutoring strategy, all of which are harnessed in an explicit concern with ‘process’ in the course. The case study approach adopted has benefited the author's practice by helping her pinpoint ‘blind spots and tensions’ in the area of supporting communication in the e-learning process. The richness of Philippa Levy's case study will resonate with many e-learning practitioners who wish to examine their own practice through experiencing others’ practice—something that we should all, perhaps, consider doing as a way of appreciating how adults learn in e-learning contexts.