May 2003 — Features
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The Web's Impact On Student Learning
Furthermore, students with a high motivation to learn, greater self-regulating behavior, and the belief they can learn online do better; as do students with the necessary computer skills. These are not particularly profound insights, although they do tend to explain why online learning will work as well as other forms of education for good students, but may not work as well for students who struggle because of a lack of motivation or self-confidence.
Interestingly, gender differences appear in online exchanges just as they would in regular situations. Based on content analyses of exchanges in Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) courses, Blum (1999) found differences in male and female messages that mirror traditional face-to-face communication. Males were more likely to control online discussions, post more questions, express more certainty in their opinions and were more concrete. Whereas females were more empathetic, polite and agreeable. The females also supplied the niceties that maintain relationships such as "please" and "thank you." This finding may only indicate that we take our normal personalities, judgments and beliefs about others into the online setting. In other words, we are consistent in our online interactions, despite expressing ourselves in a different form.
There is another interesting development along generational lines. Now, it's true that students are arriving at college with greater abilities in online learning and an expectation to learn that way. But, what is even more intriguing is that these students also arrive with brains that are more likely to have been shaped by very visual, rapid movement, hypertexted environments (Healy 1998). This has led some to suggest that these younger brains are different from those of faculty, who are more likely to have brains formed by reading - a largely linear and slow activity.
Our brains may also be the reason why we can become so involved with our computers. As a result of 35 laboratory studies, Reeves and Nass (1996) concluded that it is the psychology of the relationship between us and the computer that is important, not the fact that one member of this so-called relationship is a piece of technology. They came to this conclusion after experiments where subjects were asked by the computer to critique its work. Subjects responded politely and seemed not to want to hurt the computer's feelings. But, when asked by one computer to critique another's work, subjects were more likely to offer criticism.
Asked to explain their behavior, subjects said they knew the difference between a computer and a person, and argued vehemently that technology is a mere tool without feelings. Yet, their responses belied an underlying belief that the computer is real, implying that the relationship of humans to media may be unconscious and perhaps innate. The authors hypothesize that this relationship may be due to the brain's slow evolution over the ages, as well as its inability to distinguish between rapidly advancing media and real life.
In addition, if humans cannot distinguish between computers and real people, then this might imply that technology could not independently influence the quality or quantity of learning. It would also argue that failures of learning are more likely to be due to other factors, such as inadequate instruction or a poor match between the individual and the learning situation.
