Copyright © 2006 Anthony ‘Skip’ Basiel & Alex Moon
References (2/2)
SCORM: Interoperability Standards:
 http://www.cetis.ac.uk/static/standards.html
Links to Types of Discussion Boards below:
This List of references comes from a research paper:
"Push & Pull Pedagogy for
Web-based Instructionally Designed Environments"
This paper can be accessed at: www.elearning.mdx.ac.uk/research/
Discussion boards that support images:
  http://www.screenporch.com/sp/product/demo_conference.html 
www.yahoo.com - for Yahoo Groups
http://www.delphi.com/ 
2D virtual reality discussion environments:
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/stadium/aboutstadium.html
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/researchweb.html 
http://www.thepalace.com
3D worlds:
The greater the transactional distance, the more autonomy the learner will exercise. Low transactional distance can be achieved by much dialogue and little predetermined structure (Muelller 2000).
(+) = an increase, (-) = a decrease
(+) learner autonomy = (-) structure + (+) dialogue
Transactional distance formula
Learner autonomy sees the student sharing responsibility for their own education process. One illustration of this is when students make presentations to the class (face-to-face or online). By acting as a resource for their peers, motivation and self-direction is supported (Mueller 2000).The transactional distance formula shows a relationship between dialogue, structure and learner autonomy:
Structure is a measure of an educational programme's responsiveness to the learner's individual needs. Some elements of structure are the adaptability of learning objectives, teaching strategies, and evaluation methods (summative and formative) to support the learning experience. Highly structured programmes are determined for the learner in a linear, content-driven design, while a loosely structured design allows flexibility to support a student-centred pedagogy (Baume 1994).
Moore (1993) sees the extent of transactional distance in an educational programme as a function of these three variables; dialogue, structure and learner autonomy. Dialogue describes the extent to which the learner and educator are able to respond to one another. Some elements of dialogue are the content, educational philosophy and (virtual) environment factors such as the medium / online tools for communication. For example, dialogue is low in a one-way B.B.C. T.V. delivered programme, but high in an interactive text-chat on the web.
Theory of transactional distance