What do we mean by mode?
Defining Classroom Environment
For our paper, we will focus on 3 different types of classroom environment, which are in-person, correspondence, and distance education.
As has already been
shown in Chickering & Gamson (1987) as well as Graham et al. (2000),
the principles that make up good education practices are the same,
regardless of mode (i.e., distance education or in-person), rather it is
the instructor’s approach to pedagogy that makes each of these
principles effective in each mode (Bernard et al. 2004). Therefore, we
assert that the fundamental principles of good instruction do not change
when modes change; however, they do require a different pedagogical
approach to in order to achieve them in each mode.
Therefore, the driving question of this framework is: How can we
conceptualize and generalize the process of creating a course grounded
in the principles of good practice regardless of it’s mode? Our
framework considers four major classroom interactions across three
overarching dynamics that should be considered when creating a course in
any mode.
Most instructors have good intentions when creating online courses,
however the strategies that should be utilized to make them effective
are not easy to identify (Graham et al. 2000). One such concern is that
utilizing some strategies that work during in-person synchronous
instruction don’t translate well to the online environment (such as
peer-to-peer interaction) and can cause both the instructor and students
to spend too much time managing it, thus adding additional stressors to
the course (Graham et al. 2000).