Type II Technology Applications in Teacher Education: Using Instant Messenger to Implement Structured Online Class Discussions

Summary: This article discusses the use of AOL Instant Messenger in a graduate level distance-learning course. The authors begin by discussing distance learning as a challenge to help students become active participants in their learning. Instant messenger is synchronous meaning that all participants must be online at the same time participating in discussion in real time. In the case of this study, all students were taught how to download and install the free AIM software, taught a basic set of instant messaging skills. After the second week of class, all contact took place via IM. Weekly discussions took place where one student served as the “leader” of the discussion, ensuring all participants were heard, had a set of questions to lead discussion and recorded the transcript for the others. The instructor served as an “assistant” to the leader during these discussions.
Some of the observations that were noted included that “less-knowledgeable students in the group continued to expand and enhance the complexity of their IM skills throughout the semester” (73). Instant messenger is considered Type II technology because it allows the instructor/students to simulate relatively active intellectual involvement, places the learner rather than the teacher in charge of the learning environment, provides the learner with control between user and machine, has the accomplishment of creative tasks as the goal and also requires many hours of interaction to discover the full potential of the software and software based activity. Type II software allows students to provide more detailed and thoughtful responses to discussion prompts because of the interaction with other software programs and delay that typing requires. However, this delay in typing and lack of body language may also be a detriment to some students with deficient typing or writing skills.

Response:

I had never thought about instant messenger as any special kind of technology as I’ve grown up with this “Type II” technology. I’ve taken many online courses but none have used this resource. Most of our online classes use the Discussion board, which is a form of asynchronous communication, for convenience purposes I would guess. Many students take online courses for their flexibility of scheduling. Therefore, it would be difficult to use instant messaging often in a distance learning setting because of the nature of the students who take these course. Many have odd schedules and it would be difficult to get many to commit to a day and time to be online for a chat. Though I do see the benefits of this and definitely think instant messenger should be integrated into distance learning at least once a quarter, I believe more than that would be difficult.

Chen Wang, L &Beasley, W. (2005). Type II technology applications in technology education: Using instant messenger to implement structured online class discussions. In J. Hirschbuhl & J. Kelley (Eds.), Computers in education (71-77). Dubuque, IA: McGraw Hill.