Multiple Channels of Interaction

The teacher-educators who adopted this mode saw interaction as the central component of their teaching mode. They made much use of the virtual space of the computerised forum and of e-mail as means to advance this agenda. They thought it valuable that each learner should be open and able to read, study and learn from the contents, form of writing and corrections performed by their peers. Through this exposure before peers students were enabled to reach higher levels of understanding and application. Exposure to the remarks of their peers and of the teacher-educators helped the learners to improve and reach a higher level of writing.

If you need to do something for your friend then your friend also learns at the same time … here if someone disappears he is absent [from the group], I send him a reminder or I meet with him … I think that this

should be open for everyone because they all in fact learn from everyone ... in the first lesson … I already tell them: look, this is my

teaching method, we all see everyone, whoever shows and has more

mistakes will also actually receive the highest grade because he is the one who will undergo the most significant and longest process.

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The 'talkative' teacher on the forum

Teacher-educators who adopted this mode used the forum as a central tool for their communication with the students and as a means for teaching and learning. The forum served as a virtual platform to create interaction with the individual learner or group of learners and as a lever for peer learning. They were very anxious that as a result of the change in their teaching method they were liable to lose the most dominant characteristic of their teaching: 'the charismatic teacher'. They therefore found the solution for this distress by attending the forum every day. They felt that they had an obligation to regularly attend the group discussion, using it as a resource and means to maintain their status as teacher-educators.

This means that the course is very intensive from the point of view of work, because it demands my presence all the time … the frequency of my entrances and my considerations, not only the work per se. Also the process is in my view one of the solutions that I try to use to solve the problem of the disappearance of the charismatic teacher (Tad).

Since they were perpetually anxious about their status and the change of their position in the teaching process, they used the forum as a mirror for their chosen method of teaching. Through this mirror they were able to reconstruct the interaction and teaching that they had with their learners in the traditional system, to reflect on their own work, to examine themselves, to ponder and think and to learn something from this.

I need to examine myself as a teacher all the time and this teaches me quite a lot about myself as a teacher with regard to my way of reaction, the method by which people go from point A to point B within the forum. In fact, the main part of the activity is in the forum. How I see myself as a teacher (Tad).

They harnessed the forum as a means to examine and to display the presence of the students in the learning process over time. Thus they enforced, ensured and followed-up on the students making sure that they persevered with regular

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presence throughout the course and did not only peep in from time to time on detached visits over the course.

Your presence is actually your participation in the forum (Palma). I see them over tens of tasks (Tad).

They brought the learners to a higher level of learning, supplying a flow of 'oxygen' to the group dialogue, and linking them to external data resources. They perceived the continuation of discussion in the forum as a central part of the learning experience. They therefore continually ensured that the discussion did not die away. When they sensed that there was difficulty or a drop in the discussion they intervened and tried to use their pedagogic skills, command of the area of knowledge and enrichment from sources of data to direct, renew and widen the discussion. They perceived it as their role to be the central figure in the forum, leading and steering the discussion. They performed managerial work in the forum thereby organising materials and files and presented the contents in a clearly explained manner for all the learners.

Our interactions, those between the students themselves are very important to me. But I know, I am aware and I argue that if they don't have any interaction with external data sources, so then it will be a means to aggrandise ignorance. The fact that they read and learn and learn by heart, also won't transform it into something they acquire. They need to talk about it (Avon).

The forum served as a place to upload students' products. The work and writing of each student was examined and again uploaded onto the forum at each stage. The first stage was the initial writing of the student. The second stage was the feed-back, comments and remarks by the teacher concerning the student's work. Stage three was the students' correction and improvement of the text and this process was repeated as a consistent ritual. In this way communication was formed between the teacher-educator and the individual student while the whole community of learners could watch, be partners in the process and learn from it.

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I think that their writing ability, the ability to express themselves, freely has been improved … the whole issue relates to the student's writing, from the aspect of the spelling and language … their ability to understand that learning is a process (Avon).

Tightening Personal Interaction with the Individual

An additional channel of interaction that emerged from the findings is the relationship that is woven between the course teacher and the individual student.

For the teacher-educators who taught according to this mode, interaction with the individual learner was the most significant and important aspect in the teaching and in the teacher-student dialogue. They were concerned with regard to the effect of the transition from traditional teaching to distance-learning and the profit and loss it produced with regard to their interaction with the students. They felt threatened that their place was pushed aside by distance-learning so they harnessed technological tools to enable very frequent direct personal communication with the students. The cost was the large amount of time that they devoted to the course and teaching.

As noted, the new learning environment enabled them to create a direct personal relationship with each learner. The teacher-educator was able to isolate each 'disturbance' and to focus exclusively on the goal. In comparison to traditional teaching where the teacher was required at the same time to look after, treat and organise a large number of learning subjects, here in the new environment the teacher's role could be devoted solely to teaching and to an individual dialogue with each learner.

The deliberation of each teacher who transfers from the system, of the

charismatic teacher is whether this move which is a transfer to modern

means does not mean a loss of the personal relationship with the pupils, the look in their eyes, the support, the class atmosphere, very many things? (Tad).

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The teacher-educators sensed the difficulty involved in the lack of their ability to make a personal relationship with each individual student. This bothered them a lot. The solution that they have found, assisted by technology, was to use e- mail and discussion groups. Their teaching presence was made through these tools to the students and their daily communication contributed to strengthening and deepening the connection, and developing personal tutoring, support and personal follow-up for each of the learners. They felt that they granted each student an 'attentive ear' and professional pedagogic supervision as needed.

I was concerned that this disappearance would be bad for education and it is bad for personal contact because any personal contact in an on-line method, even the most sophisticated, loses something, something is lost and that something can't be made up … so that going into this adventure, for me has opened up a lot. Because I find that without stigmas it is not only learning that is on line / computerised / technical / listening learning but it is learning that also enables a direct contact

and also depth and also provides respect to the student, but in different ways (Tad).

They felt that they reached a very high degree of closeness and familiarity with each learner to the extent that they knew the student's typed 'handwriting' on the computer. They knew how to identify each student's personal writing style. Their professional expertise was originally in the field of literacy and writing and so their familiarity with the person who was the student was through their writing.

I know them through their writing, also from their personal approaches through the e-mail or in the forum, also in the task writing itself I can already identify personal writing styles, oh I can learn a lot from someone's writing, beyond his level in the course (Palma).

They saw their role as qualification trainers and so they felt a need for personal, frequent and consistent fostering. This frequency of transmission of materials created a very strong personal relationship between the student and the teacher-educator.

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They used technological options such as: a forum, and 'track changes' in the word-processor in order to advance this dialogue. When the format of the forum was observed, this subject was very obvious, there the lecturer appeared in a different colour and 'peeped out' of every page of the forum. Every message sent by a student was immediately followed by the mentor's reaction. In an overview of the site they appeared to be intertwined one with the other. A personal relationship was reflected between the student and the teacher. This connection also compensated for the teacher being a 'lone wolf' facing the computer display, who does not meet anyone.

With the help of the forum and the e-mail and the reading by their peers and change tracking and the introduction of remarks etc. Since I'm

continually fighting in this job not to lose the other dimension, the

dimension of the student, so that the student won't become enslaved by the computer. And so that the computer will in the end just be a work tool and not the principal tool that controls our lives. I put the emphasis on

reading by their peers, on inter-personal contact, also between the teacher and the student … I respond to every one of their entries …

today we … stand at 700 entries. I have made a rule for myself that I

answer the remarks of each pupil to another pupil for peer reading of a text that he has made. I mean there are simply hundreds of entries

there ... Because in our forum every one of my entries is coloured red, although I did not plan it that way and so they see that the entries of the

students are embraced by my reds. Each one on his two sides, has

red and that's actually very attractive text, with their entries and with my entries for each one. Even when they just comment (Tad).

The teacher-educators used e-mail as a means to strengthen their connection with the individual student through the provision of a quick reply for each student request. The teacher-educators, who worked in a computerised environment, spent long hours beside the computer and when a letter arrived by e-mail they heard a ring from the computer and immediately sought for the letter that had arrived. Thus, almost in real time, when the student sent a

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request, the teacher could receive it and immediately provide a solution, help or response.

E-mail served in some cases as a pedagogic tool enabling the learner to write a personal journal. This journal, in contrast to writing on the forum that is open to everyone, remained confidential and only the teacher and the student could see it, read it and write in it. This dialogue contributed much to the strengthening of the relations between them. This tool also provided an opportunity to record the entire learning process. At every stage it was possible to go back, to reread and to see the professional development of the learner. Using this relationship that was created by e-mail correspondence it was possible to learn and go deeper into a particular subject. The dialogue by e-mail often served to make a formative assessment or a summative assessment of the learning process or in order to treat a particular subject. At the end of the semester all the material remained in the student's possession to enable reflection to be conducted by the student on the work. Thanks to the e- mail correspondence the teacher-educators distinguished all the minute nuances and the technological tools enabled them to provide an 'attentive ear' and to show much sensitivity towards the student. Despite the uniformity of printed language they had the ability to distinguish certain tones of writing and student's emotional expressions such as happiness and anger.

They feel that because there is e-mail so: 'the teacher is accessible for me and if I am in difficulties then he should now solve the problem for me, I won't wait until another week until he comes into the forum in another few days, but now I want to get an answer'. So the e-mail really happens every day (Palma).

Over the entire period of their work they manage a writing journal, this journal is not uploaded into the forum but they send it by e-mail. It is between them and me (Tad).

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They also used e-mail in order to maintain the individual's confidentiality when transmitting unpleasant messages to students such as: criticism, notification of non-performance of a task. In other words subjects, which, if they were uploaded onto the forum might hurt the student and disparage him in public, or alternatively personal subjects that the individual student did not wish to share with his peers but only with the teacher-educator.

Other reactions are given by e-mail … it is not done on the forum in order not to embarrass them, but it is done by private e-mail … but its emphasised that every personal problem and any problem that the student does not wish to upload onto the forum because the forum is read by everyone and opened by everyone, is transferred to e-mail (Tad).

However, despite all these very intensive efforts and work they still had the feeling that distance-teaching did not fulfil all the teaching characteristics because it lacked something, which could not be filled. They thought that there should be strong personal relations between the teacher and the pupil, continually built and maintained by eye contact. In this work environment they could not use this technique and so despite all the technological solutions they felt that they had not succeeded in bridging the gap sufficiently.

When I teach someone to be a teacher, he can't be a teacher until he catches the bit about frontal teaching, of eye contact. The writing process is a process between a person and a text. And in teaching writing it is a process between a person and a text and with the person who teaches. And this is very difficult to provide, a request that it is very difficult to provide in teaching. So we have found good solutions, possible ones, but they are still not sufficient (Tad).

To summarise: They saw the creation of a personal relationship with each student relating to learning as an additional central element of their teaching mode, and they used technological tools such as e-mail and the forum to facilitate frequent direct, personal communication with the students. The use of these technological tools served as a response to the shortfall created by the lack of face-to-face meeting. They devoted much time to these communications in order to develop a personal dialogue with each learner.

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Interaction relating only to Academic Subjects

The teacher-educators who used this mode did not see it as their role to promote social relations between students or inter-personal relations. They explained this to the students through their written language and the academic orientation that they gave to their writings on the forum. They were proud of their declaration on this subject and thought that this was the proper way to teach and saw it as an educational rationale. Their perception stemmed from a fear that transgression into social subjects might disrupt the hierarchy between the teacher and the college and the student and would harm their status as teacher-educators. The blurring of boundaries might also influence the character and type of discussions in forums so that they might reach undesirable areas and subjects that would not contribute to learning.

I don't use it as a coffee bar, definitely not, there is nothing personal there; everything is work, remarks, texts, questions that they write to one another on study subjects (Palma).

Face-to-face sessions relating to the academic aspect

As noted, all the face-to-face sessions dealt with dialogue concerning purely academic subjects and were devoted to improving the learning abilities of the individual student and the learners' group.

The research findings show that the three teacher-educators included in this mode ensured that there would be two face-to-face meetings in the first and last lessons of the semester and required compulsory attendance by the students. Sometimes they increased the number of personal sessions during