Collective webinars in higher distance education

• The aim of this paper is to study, compare and analyze students’ participation in synchronous webinars, directly F2F and their use of dialogue exchange and chat communications to develop an individual and collective meaning and understanding of the course content. Another aim is what possibilities flipped/inverted mini-lectures before follow-up webinars can provide as an expanded resource. One group of 15 students had synchronous webinars and one group of 22 students had flipped mini-lectures a week before follow-up webinars. The study joins the research tradition about sociocultural theories and computer supported collaborative learning, CSCL, as well the theoretical approach, termed Computer Self-Efficacy (CSE), concerned with individuals’ media and information literacy. Important conclusions from the results of collective synchronous webinars, flipped mini-lectures and chat communications are that they are important tools for students to be able to manage their learning activities and evaluate their participations, abilities and collaborative learning through communicative exchanges of knowledge. However, there are challenges for teachers to reach mutual engagement, common interests and joint creativity, but also use the role of technology in mediating interactions.

Nyckelord

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning

Distance Education

Distance Learning

Flipped classroom

Online Learning

Self-efficacy

Webinar

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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