Distance Education Course & its interaction techniques

Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASTR) 210
Introduction to Astronomy and Astrophysics

Course URL: http://www.athabascau.ca/html/syllabi/astr/astr210.htm
Overview:
ASTR 210 is a course on modern astronomy and astrophysics for the student with some background in science. The course presents and discusses the physical laws responsible for a variety of astronomical and astrophysical phenomena. Laboratory exercises emphasize the scientific techniques of astronomy and other sciences.

Interactions:
“Interaction with students in ASTR 210 is nominally by telephone and by mail with a tutor. In practice, students do not use the telephone much anymore, but send email. This is usually related to assignments called "telephone quizzes" which are multiple choices. Now it is maybe 90% interaction by email, 10% by telephone. This applies to general questions about help on specific topics also; however such inquiries are about 20% of the number that are related to assignments. The other aspect of interaction is submission of lab writeups. This is a lab course and the labs are long and challenging. It is encouraged to submit a printed report by mail, and comments are written on them and on a report form, and the lab is mailed back to the student. In justified cases, these can be sent by email, which is quicker and more convenient for the student but not reliable and inefficient for the marker/tutor. There is a course webpage also for very general information, likely not used very much once the students are actually in the course” ( Martin Connors (former course professor, now tutor))
Interaction techniques are:
1.Interaction between learner and teacher:
i.Telephone: about 10% of interaction done by telephone. It is used in the “telephone quizzes” which are multiple choice questions answered via telephone. Also, used for general questions about help on specific topics and about assignments. This technique not used much anymore nowadays.
ii.Mail: it is used to submit the lab write-ups (lab reports). This technique is preferred because it is more reliable and efficient.
iii.E-mail: about 90% of interaction done by e-mail. It is used for similar uses of telephone (as descried before).Also it is used to submit the lab write ups (lab reports) as alternative solution which is quicker and more convenient.

2.Interaction between learner and content:
The university provides website for this course which has most of the course materials which may a student need to meet the course objectives (course objectives, course outline, course units (the units sequence and content), course schedule, student evaluation and the quizzes)

3.Interaction between learner and learner:
There is no interaction tool provided for students enrolled in this course only.

References:
1. http://www.athabascau.ca/html/syllabi/astr/astr210.htm , Athabasca University website. Accessed: 21 September 2008.
2. martinc@athabascau.ca , Martin Connors (former course professor, now tutor). Wednesday, September 17, 2008 7:14 PM

Interaction Software for Distance Education

One of the ways to interact in the distance education to interact through e-mails with your tutor or your class mates. There are many mailing systems provided for people to be used all around the world. Some of these systems are free and others are not. Each mail system has features that help users to interact in certain manner. One of the new and most favorite e-mails is Gmail. Gmail provide new applications as it is part of the google services. These new applications called "Google Apps" or google application. There is section within these apps specified to serve the educational institutions such as: universities and schools. The purpose of this group of apps is to " facilitae information sharing among students and their teachers even if they are separated physically" and to " facilitate information flow among people all around the world.

This group of apps " Google Apps the Edcational Edition" has many collaboration and communication tools that facilitate interactions in the educational sittings. These tools are described in the following lines:
Communication

1. Gmail: Kind of webmail which offer high strong, excellent spam protection, and mobile access. It is built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful for the interactive between the learners and learner with tutor.


2. Google Talk: An application provides several features for communicating in real time which help learners to communicate with the tutor and between them self. Some of these features are :

· Instant messaging: It provides chat room to contact with all of Google Talk and Gmail contacts in real time.
· Free PC-to-PC voice calls: It helps to talk to anyone else for free who's online and has the Google Talk client.
· Send and receive voicemails: It helps to leave a voicemail if the person calling isn't available.

1. Google Calendar: It is online shareable calendar service which help learners to Share personal, schedules and events with other learners and tutor.

Collaborations:

1. Start Page: this page is like the home page in the LMS. It include tools like: inboxes and calendars, access to the essential content and a search tools to search through the web. In the educational sitting, these tools will facilitate the learner interaction with the content and the tutor or the other learners in the course.


2. Google Docs: this application allows the user (learner) to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations while collaborating with each other synchronously. It is a web-based word processing and spreadsheet program. On of the most interesting features in this app is that " It lets learners keep a document online that others in the same course can edit and update simultaneously right from their browsers, so he/she do not need to keep track of attachments and who has the latest version of a file". Learners allowed to upload files and attach them.


3. Google Sites: (Google Page Creator):
   Learners can create their own pages as they like them to be like using a web-based software ( learner doesn’t need to download any software to design the web page). There are many templates available to learners to choose the design they like. This will motivate learners to use their web pages and to visit others web pages. This tool also can be used to create a webpage for each course so learners can easily reach the information related to the course through this page.