Critical Review: Downing's 'Creating Interaction in Online Learning'

This report presents a critical review of Kevin J. Downing's research paper, "Creating Interaction in Online Learning: A Case Study," published in ALT-J. The study investigated student-teacher and student-student interactions within a 16-week online module, exploring the impact of online communication tools on conceptual learning and collaboration. Downing's research highlights three phases of online interaction and the roles of instrumental and social posts. The findings support the potential of online environments to foster collaborative learning and virtual communities, mirroring real-world learning setups. The review also considers the limitations of online learning environments, particularly concerning the creation of a cognitive learning environment. The report's conclusion supports the hypothesis, emphasizing the potential of online tools to facilitate collaborative learning environments and virtual learning communities comparable to real-world learning settings.

Critical Review

Introduction
Researcher “Kevin .J. Downing” published a report under the title “Creating interaction in online
learning: A case study.” In the prestigious journal of “ALT-J, Research in Learning
Technology,” this research report is based on an empirical survey covering the interaction of the
students and teachers in an online module that lasted for 16 weeks. This empirical study tried to
explore a hypothesis revolving around the “collaboration and concept development” during an
online module. The researcher went for exhaustive research to figure out the impact of the tools
and online communication protocols to establish a hypothesis that goes as under.
Online modules have the capacity to fulfill all the necessary conditions of conceptual learning by
creating a collaborative environment to facilitate a learning community that can complete the
process of concept development without any significant generation loss.
A brief journey from the point of evolution to the conclusion
This report covers a journey of the learning that lasted for sixteen weeks. The researchers divided
this journey into three phases; they took the support of various previous theories to determine the
goals for the group for each phase.
In order to compare the results of the endeavor, the researchers also included the notes collected
from a blended educational program where web and face to face interaction were present in part.
The methodology of the research defined three actors in the process. Student-teacher interaction,
student-student interaction and participative interaction were classified as actors. Dashboards,

discussion boards, online chats and the performance during the final exams were taken as the
milestones to capture the differences.
According to the hypothesis, the posts were divided into the categories of instrumental and social
posts. Instrumental posts were considered as the mandatory posts whereas the social posts were
treated as an agent to enhance collaboration between the course mates. The instrumental
interaction between the teachers and the students ranked at the top level whereas the social
interaction between students and teachers find the lowest rank during the three phases.
Researchers accepted the fact that online interactions have this potential to increase
communication between the stake-holders quite effectively. They fulfill all the necessary
conditions related to the three-step model of learning. These three steps are “nurturing of a
learning environment by the teacher,” “social interactions among the students to collaborate,”
and the “final outcomes of the learning in the environment of “community learning.” The
findings of the research support the culture of online learning barring certain fine details related
to the cognitive model of learning.
Conclusion
The findings of the research support the hypothesis. Online tools and the environment has this
potential to facilitate a collaborative environment for learning along with the development of a
“virtual learning community setup” that can be equated with a real-world learning community.
While considering the rebuttal for the main hypothesis, a failure in the creation of a cognitive
environment of learning can be taken into an account. This is the area where the future
researcher should work and enhance the online tools to facilitate an “effective cognitive
environment of learning.”

References
Downing, K. J. (2007). Creating interaction in online learning: a case study. ALT-J, Research in
Learning Technology, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp ( 201-215).