What experiences have you had with interactivity in learning environments? How did the interaction (or lack of interaction) affect your learning? Your enjoyment?
Throughout my entire schooling after primary from grades 4 to now (in an undergraduate program), there has always been a lot of student-teacher interaction (Anderson, 2003). Most of my classes have used a lecture mode of delivery (Anderson, 2003) which means there is usually a low level of student-student interaction (Anderson, 2003). Luckily, being in the elementary education program we tend to incorporate a lot of student-student learning and student-content learning through group work and discussion-based activities.
I believe interaction is key in a learning environment. I always think about how other programs use standardized testing versus the elementary ed program where we have little to no tests. My roommates who are in psych constantly follow a teacher-student interaction and then have to show what they have learned through an exam. My roommates complain about how they do not learn enough during the lectures and when it comes time to study for the tests they are studying to memorize rather than studying to learn. In the education program, students learn through a mix of teacher-student, student-student, and student-content, especially through some of the asynchronous classes we have had over the 4 years. When we participate in class and work on projects we understand the content without the pressure of testing all our knowledge. Yes, we are graded on our projects but researching and learning to create something allows us to retain more than if we had to take a multiple-choice test.
I have an example from a class I am in this semester. We do a lot of hands-on work and we get to engage with the content. I find those are my most enjoyable classes when we are participating in a workshop versus with our laptops out taking notes. I believe the more interaction the better with students.
Reference:
Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v4i2.149
