Accordingly for the tutor, the issue of "group or network management" becomes predominant.

The specific context for this study

As indicated earlier, the Research Methodologies in Education and Training (RM) module involved fourteen students working together during the second semester of 2002-03. They were based at two local study centres in Nijmegen and Sheffield, together with two students based in Brussels, one in Linz, Austria and another in Kimberley, South Africa. The students' professional roles include those in the UK of a secondary county ICT consultant, a primary school teacher, two police officers involved in training and development, a multimedia developer in higher education. The Nijmegen group comprised a lecturer in Higher Education, a technical writer, quality control engineer in the ICT field, ICT consultant, education consultant and a marketing manager of a regional newspaper. The group studying at a distance comprised a provincial Education Department Adviser for ICT {in South Africa}, two web developers from the European School Net in Brussels and a lower secondary school (Hauptschule) teacher from Linz, Austria.

The RM module aims to promote a critical understanding of various paradigms and methodologies in the conduct of educational research, in preparation for undertaking independent research for the dissertation. It draws on traditions that give emphasis to research on processes of teaching and learning and to critical-communicative approaches to research on teaching and learning. It also aims to lay the foundation in research methods of particular relevance to pedagogical processes as preparation for the Dissertation module.

The teaching-studying-learning experience is structured around three strands which run through the entire module, all of which contribute to the summative assessment of the module as a whole: These are:

1. Active participation through discussion and collaboration
2. The critical analysis of a published refereed journal article leading to Assignment 1: A Critical Analysis.
3. The process of research planning leading to Assignment 2: A Research Proposal.

Each strand is an essential element of the whole. The aims of the active participation component include setting the context and content of educational research and also providing the scaffolding and support for the ongoing development of the other two components.

The authors of this paper are co-tutors on the module which is framed within the virtual learning environment that is supported by Sheffield Hallam University as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Opening page in the virtual learning environment

The module had run for the first time in the second semester of 2001-02 with the same team of tutors, though with a smaller number of students, with just four at each study centre. As might be expected with part-time professional participants, a number of students experienced some difficulties related to work and/or domestic life which limited their capacity to keep up with the demands of the module. However the impact on the maintenance of the learning community was significant with the result that the level of communication, interaction and collaboration in the second half of the semester fell away to below the level that had been anticipated. The evaluation of the module revealed that there was an insufficient critical mass towards of the second half of the semester to maintain the learning community at its anticipated levels, once two or three members started to become less active. However the evaluation revealed that the regular weekly tasks, though interesting and motivating to the students distracted time and effort from the central concerns of the summative assignments. It was also suggested that the phasing of the assignment hand-in dates would help future students with issues of time management, especially in the second half of the module. Accordingly assignment 1 was phased to be submitted immediately after the Easter vacation at the end of April 2003 and assignment 2 at the end of May 2003 on completion of the module.

For the cohort who studied on the module in 2002-03, they had experienced group sizes in the mid-teens and high levels of communication, interaction and collaboration on the first two modules of the programme in 2001-02. However the evaluation of the module in Semester 1 of 2002-03 indicated a generally lower level of communication, interaction and collaboration in the online learning community and some sense of disappointment on the part of students and tutors at the level of development of the learning community.

The module started at the end of January 2003 and spanned 18 weeks of which at least two weeks were holiday weeks in both centres. The scheduling of the submission dates of the assignments was revised with the first assignment, involving the critical analysis of a published research paper, due to be submitted after 12 weeks and the second assignment, involving the development of a research proposal, to be submitted at the end the module. The online communication, interaction and collaboration was scaffolded in the sense discussed by Bruner (1985) via the design of a number of activities which consisted of

• Discussion Fora in response to set Reading Tasks
• Discussion Topics in response to reflections on prior experience
• Group Activities

The Discussion Topics included responses to the questions "What is educational research?", "What makes a significant research question?", "Qualitative or quantitative methods - does it matter?" and a response to a photograph in relation to data analysis and interpretation. These aspects were interspersed with discussions based on set readings which included Chapter 1 of Cohen et al (2000) on the "Nature of enquiry" and also chapter 3 on "Research design issues: planning research". In addition there were two Group Activities. The first group activity involved the critical analysis of a research paper that was conducted in an international group. The second group activity involved the design, trialling and evaluation of a data collection instrument/technique(s) also in international groups. In addition to the students were asked to provide peer formative assessment on drafts of both assignments at set times within the module schedule.

Data was collected from a variety of sources which comprised:

• An end of module student questionnaire that completed online by 11 of the 14 students.
• An end of module staff questionnaire.
• An end of module focus group discussion via video conference between Sheffield and Nijmegen.
• An end of module group discussion between tutors with external examiners via video conference between Nijmegen and Sheffield.
• An end of module group discussion with student representatives, tutors and module leaders in Nijmegen on completion of the module
• The module statistics collected automatically in the virtual learning environment.
• The dialogue contained in the various discussion fora, with the prior consent of the participating students following a request and associated statement of research ethics.

In addition outcomes of the initial process of data analysis and interpretation were provided to the students for their comments, feedback and validation by submitting a full draft of this paper to the virtual learning environment prior to final publication.

The overall statistics collected by the virtual learning environment give a broad indication of the degree of online communication and interaction with the learning environment by recording the total number of "accesses" by participants. This amounted to over 71500 during the period of the module and represented over 2.6 times as many accesses as the previous module. In fact a small number of students had been unable to maintain progress at the anticipated rate due to sudden and unexpected changes in work patterns. These students reported a sense of "being left behind" by the strong sense of forward momentum within the module.

In response to the questionnaire all the students responding agreed that they felt as if they belonged to a learning community, that the atmosphere of the learning community promoted their learning and that they had enough support for the studying process. Also all these students felt that they had succeeded in the module. This sense of community was one that was shared by the tutor team. There were a small number of students who did not feel the benefit of peer support or the international dimension. Nevertheless all the students agreed that the module content met their personal learning goals and that the module activities were challenging and motivating. All the students thought that the Reading Tasks and Discussion Topics promoted their learning and all except one student agreed that the Group Activities did so. A variety of aspects were emphasised in the open responses to the question of what most promoted student learning. The most cited aspects were the assessment items and the discussions in the local meetings (over half the students referred to these aspects). The other most cited aspects were to online group work, reading tasks and online discussions. Examples of specific responses to what the tutors did to promote students' included: "the structure of the unit was well thought out", "well-planned activities, discussions, and assignments"; "the role of the tutors in giving feedback on drafts" and "providing motivating feedback"

The end of module discussions revealed a number of particularly significant aspects to the module which reinforced the interpretations of the members of tutor team. Some of these aspects can be considered as a development of the idea of "critical incidents" (Tripp, 1993) which we have described as "significant situations" given the asynchronous nature of the communication over time in a virtual learning environment. In his discussion of the nature of a critical incident, Tripp (1993, p 8) notes that whilst incidents of all types simply happen, that critical incidents are produced by the way we look at a situation i.e. an incident is rendered critical through our interpretation of the significance of the particular event. When we take something as a critical incident we make a value judgement, in relation to the significance that we attach to the meaning of the incident. Furthermore he notes that in principle, we can read any and everything that happens in a critical fashion. It is on this basis that we offer the following accounts of three particularly "significant situations".

The most significant aspect of the module which came through from discussions with students and staff and the open responses to the questionnaire was the use of the photograph in relation to the discussion on the theme of data analysis and interpretation. This prompted a short but intense discussion over a period of ten days in the latter part of the module - see Figure 3.

Figure 3 Discussion Forum on Data Analysis and Interpretation

The photograph that was used as the basis of the activity is entitled 'Gun Law' by John Gaps and is reproduced in Brown and Dowling (1998, p 85). The activity was divided into two stages with the students being asked in the first stage to access the photograph¹ and to simply analyse the image and to offer individual "readings" or interpretations of what meaning was conveyed. The photograph was deliberately presented without a title or any description of the background context. These spontaneous responses were posted to the discussion forum, with the request to the students to resist reading other contributions prior to posting their own initial response. The second stage involved reading a short paper on data analysis and interpretation which was posted in the virtual learning environment and responding to the questions posed as part of the preparation for the local meetings and associated video conference on 15-May-2003.

In their discussion about quality in analysis, Brown and Dowling (1998, p80) make a useful distinction between information and data by arguing that data is information that has been read in terms of a theoretical framework or in terms of an analytic structure of some other kind. In responding to Stage 1 of the Reading Task, it was expected that the different "readings" of the photograph that would reflect a variety of theoretical frameworks or analytic structures and also of prior assumptions about expectations and the purpose of the task and indeed this proved to be the case.

An early contribution to the discussion forum came from Caroline:

This contribution produced a number of direct responses - this one from Martin:

Marcus responded on the theme of whether the situation was real life or from a movie:

This thread of discussion continued with several other contributions. In particular Caroline made reference to the fact that during her vacation in Greece, she observed that the information available from the {then} current war in Iraq was very different to the information received in Holland. She asked where the line should be drawn between getting information to inform public opinion or in simply dramatising events. Also Karl noted that "Well, after a second look I am quite sure that the soldier does not want to protect this guy. Concerning the question is he dead or not I am not sure ..."

A further thread within the discussion began by Marcus interpreting the photograph as a "white soldier" physically suppressing the black young man. This led Martin to question Marcus about how he could be sure that the soldier was white and to the following response from Marcus:

Drawing the discussion back to the issues of the Research Methodologies module, Martin responded with the following contribution:

This contribution drew the following response from Karl:

The following day Gerry made his initial response as follows:

This was followed by Matt's contribution:

Jane's response came relatively late into the discussion and her opening remarks draw attention to that fact:

Having read the other messages and studied the photograph again, Jane observed that she could "now make out the soundman and film man", who she had noticed at first and asked the question "Incomplete or inaccurate observation?" Furthermore she expressed surprise at "the strength of emotional responses to the image", noting that "For me, I have to suspend judgement until I know more about the context of the situation." She also responds to Gerry's posting with the comment and question: "The style is spot on Gerry - have you ever done any reporting?"

Seb responded by expressing agreement with Jane and taking the discussion further:

There followed a contribution from Gerry, who spoke collectively for the group at one stage, and which served as a summarising comment, although the discussion continued for another two days with several more contributions:

These contributions provide a short account of one aspect of the teaching-studying-learning experience on this module and the level of data analysis could be taken a stage further by looking more closely at the nature of the communication involved. However one aspect that is clear from a reading of these contributions is the strongly emotional aspects of a number of the responses, with many contextual factors and underpinning assumptions brought into the frame of reference. In local discussions what was especially interesting, was Matt's own evaluation of his contribution which he had intended as a neutral reading, based on his experience as a police officer. He questioned his own "neutrality" in the way in which he referred to "peacekeeping", "peacekeepers" and also to the stick on the ground as "the weapon".

We have chosen to highlight this particular situation following our discussions as a tutor team of the first stage on analysis in preparing this paper. The particular discussion took place earlier in the module in response to the first Reading Task on the Nature of Enquiry and focuses on research as a systematic, controlled, empirical and critical process . This episode was initiated by a contribution from Martin:

In his attachment, Martin wrote:

"Research is the systematic, controlled, empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical propositions about the presumed relations among natural phenomena. (Kerlinger.1970)

I had never thought about such a definition before and like in all definitions there are a few words that are essential. The term critical is very important in my view. You can do a lot of things systematic and controlled, you can have a lot of experience but it is the critical analysis of all the outcomes that makes research worth doing it.

And what makes the outcome and conclusions of research a science? It helped me to think about that when I read the five steps of Mouly (1978) on page 10; experience - classification - quantification - discovery of relationships - approximation of the truth. Do we not all do this automatically in some respect in daily life without realising it? We divide things in good/bad; ugly/beautiful; worthwhile/ worthless; strong/weak etc. But how do we do that and is this the truth?"

This prompted the following response from Klaas as a module tutor, which focused attention on the meaning of the term "critical" and Martin's subsequent reply:

The reference to "thinking in a different way about research" was a typical reaction to this reading task as also was the expression of the level of reading difficulty, though this was by no means restricted to the students from the Nijmegen centre. Furthermore this situation can be seen as an illustration of the importance of tutor feedback to a student, and also as a form of scafffolding (Bruner, 1985). In this particular case the tutor reacted in a very direct weay to the student, instead of presenting it in the form of questions for instance, or waiting for or challenging other students to react. The reaction of the student seemed to confirm that it had a positive effect i.e. he understood now why. The apparent success of this tutor-student interaction might be understood as an illustration of the Vygotskian notion of the ZPD (zone of proximal development) (Newman and Holzman, 1993) in practice i.e. the tutor intervention took the answer of the student to another level and this response seems to enable the student to have the feeling that he learned i.e. he understood.

The next example was chosen in a similar way to the previous one and is intended to illuminate the way in which the researcher's own perspective in terms of subjectivity and biases comes into the frame. This episode was initiated by the following contribution from Jane:

This prompted the following response from Klaas, which focused attention on the inherent subjectivity of the research process and on some of the ways of dealing with this methodologically:

This exchange led to the following dialogue and further questions on ways of dealing with such subjectivity:

This last posting prompted the following response from Tony:

We conclude this paper by returning to the key research questions posed earlier. Firstly we will consider the first question concerning what new opportunities are afforded by the technology for collaborative learning and for supporting it in open and flexible e-learning environments. Undoubtedly it is the case that the technology afforded opportunities international collaboration between both students and tutors on an ongoing basis that would otherwise not be easy to replicate via other media. The asynchronous nature of the discussion gave a degree of flexibility over and beyond that which would be available in a traditional setting. Furthermore the time available for the consideration of the contributions may have been a key factor in the depth of the issues considered in the discussion and in the generally high quality of debate that took place.

The second question relates to how best can we facilitate purposeful engagement of autonomous and independent learners in e-learning environments. In general the use of a variety of strategies involving discussion fora in response to set reading tasks, discussion topics in response to reflections on prior experience, group activities and peer formative assessment on drafts of assignments worked effectively in promoting purposeful engagement, autonomy and independence. The overall structuring of the various tasks, assessment requirements and orchestrated feedback all were key factors in the process of facilitating purposeful engagement. In addition the local meetings played an important role and were cited by more than half of the students, through the open responses at the end of the module, as one of the most important aspects in promoting their learning. These meetings gave the opportunities to provide the students with general overviews and enabled them to consolidate their detailed understandings. The first reading task on the Nature of Enquiry contained much that was entirely new to the students and many new ideas and terminology that were difficult to grasp. This also created difficulty for online discussion. The local meetings also provided opportunities to support the students emotionally e.g. in providing reassurance in addition to additional explanation and opportunities to discuss some of the underlying ideas. Accordingly the "blended" nature of the learning experience was a distinctive aspect of this experience.

The third and overlapping question relates to the extent to which is the notion of assessment for learning a key condition for achieving orchestrated interdependence and autonomy in e-learning and is considered to be of relevance. It can also be said that the use of a variety of strategies involving discussion fora in response to set reading tasks, discussion topics in response to reflections on prior experience, group activities and peer formative assessment on drafts of assignments worked effectively also to promote a high level of interdependence within the learning community. This conclusion can be drawn from the evidence of the high levels of interaction, communication and collaboration in the discussion forum. It is also supported responses to the questionnaire which indicated that all the students agreed that they felt as if they belonged to a learning community, that the atmosphere of the learning community promoted their learning and that they had enough support for the studying process. Also this sense of community was one that was shared by the tutor team. Furthermore the responses to the question about which activities promoted learning confirmed the importance of assessment in this module because of the way in which the role of the assignments was stressed by the students. What all the responses illustrated is that the tutor team was able to engage most students in this e-learning environment as a result of the complex interaction of (i) structure of the module as a whole (e.g. reading tasks, group tasks, local sessions, discussions on line and processes of peer feedback), (ii) the content of the tasks and assignments and also (iii) the processes of tutor feedback to the students.

With regard to the fourth question on the optimal conditions for achieving well-orchestrated interdependence in open and flexible e-learning environments, this question is one that will continuously drive ongoing development. Furthermore the four points raised by Lowyck (2002) are considered to be highly relevant in relation to tasks that need to be multi-faceted, sufficiently complex, oriented towards social goals and unambiguous in order to elicit co-ordinated interaction. A strong sense emerged within the local meetings and final focus group discussions at the end of the module that it would represent a considerable improvement to the experience of the module if the photograph activity, or something similar, could be brought forward right to the beginning of the module. Some very strong reactions had resulted from the reading of chapter 1 on the "Nature of Enquiry" from Cohen et al (2000) which reflected those of the first cohort a year earlier. There were numerous protests about the difficulties of the language {including the native English speaking students} and the complexity of the ideas after the initial reading. However as the ideas were repeatedly returned to throughout the module, the relevance of thinking about the philosophy of the research process seemed to become apparent to all. The discussion in the local meeting in Sheffield prior to the final video conference was summarised by one of the Sheffield students as follows:

To conclude we would like to reflect on a primary aim of the module team which was to engage students with idea that the aims, processes and outcomes of empirical educational research need to subjected to critical scrutiny of underlying assumptions and that the process of interpretation is one to be approached only after careful and deliberative reflection. This perspective of educational research as a critical social and human science challenges the relatively widespread instrumental view of research about teaching and learning as some kind of practical reasoning based upon the gathering of relatively unproblematic information. The general sense of the tutor team is that we succeeded to a large extent with this aim. However the real test of that interpretation will lie in the quality of work contained in the final dissertations from the group of students in 2004.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of all the students participating in this module during 2003 and especially to those who provided feedback on the first draft of this paper prior to publication.

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Note:

1. Reproduced with the copyright permission of the original author for a limited period in the virtual learning environment.

This document was added to the Education-line database on 27 October 2003