Keeping the Thread: Adapting Conversational Practice to Help Distance Students and Instructors Manage Discussions in an Asynchronous Learning Network

Abstract

This paper first describes the ways in which face-to-face conversational practices work to ensure the shared understanding of all interactions. It then describes how asynchronous interactions may violate these practices and inhibit the construction of shared understanding. Finally, it proposes methods for communicating in asynchronous interactions that adapt and preserve face-to-face conversational practices and permit students in an ALN to engage in "discursive" asynchronous learning (Laurillard 1993).