4.3 Perspectives Task

As for the Structured Academic Controversy task, it was argued in Chapter Three that there is a close fit between the various stages of this task and the model of practical inquiry proposed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2001).  The practical inquiry model was developed to analyse the discourse modes generated by online conferencing, computer-mediated communication and e-learning in general.  It adopts a message-level approach to the analyses of transcripts.  Fahy (2002) has adopted a sentence-level approach, arguing for a finer level of granularity.  The distinction between the unit of transcript analysis is blurred when applied to the analysis of text-messages, which are limited to 160 alphanumeric characters.  Indeed many of the messages sent were far shorter than that.

    During the pilot study it was observed that many of the arguments put forward during the Structured Academic Controversy task were characterised by a tendency to invoke pictorial evidence to do with environmental pollution, even though such evidence might have been only peripheral to the given topic.  For the three schools involved in the main study, while there was deliberately no mention made during the pre-trip briefings of similar examples of evidence which would largely not be relevant to the respective topics, care was taken, by briefing each side separately, to ensure that every effort had been made to help the participants comprehend the nature of their task.  As such, only three of the fifteen Structured Academic Controversies of the main study had a disproportionately environmental focus.

    An analysis of the messages sent during the Structured Academic Controversy tasks showed that of a total of 806 messages, 483 were sent during what Garrison, Anderson and Archer term the exploration phase.  This works out to 60 percent of the total number of messages, which compares very well to the 63 percent obtained during the pilot study and also by Garrison et al’s own work in 2001.  Fahy’s study a year later was also consistent with this, with a figure of 62 percent.  For the integration phase, 241 messages were sent, which represent 30 percent of the total.  The corresponding figures for the pilot study, Garrison et al and Fahy are 28 percent, 19 percent and 14 percent respectively.  Finally, for the resolution phase, 82 messages were sent, which represent 10 percent of the total.  The corresponding figures for the pilot study, Garrison  et al and Fahy are 9 percent, 6 percent and 20 percent respectively.

    It would appear therefore that the application of the Structured Academic Controversy in the context of a field-based mobile-telephonically-afforded learning environment does result in a worthwhile contribution to the corpus of research on the model of practical inquiry.  The relatively high number of messages sent during the integration phase can be accounted for by the structure imposed by the Academic Controversy task, and is particularly encouraging, given that Garrison, Anderson and Archer specifically point out that integration appears to be “more challenging than exploration” for learners, and as a consequence, “students will be more comfortable remaining in a continuous exploration mode”.  

<- 4.2 Orienteering Task          -> 4.4 Peer Critique