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At least four types of thinking are identified in the literature as being promoted by discussion: critical thinking, higher-order thinking, distributed thinking, and constructive thinking.

Discussion is widely used because it can promote several types of thinking-and certain types of thinking especially those characterized as constructivist, are important in education.

Questioning is a significant instructional design element for the promotion of effective discussion. This article describes a theoretical framework for designing questions for starting online discussion and follow-up questions to maintain the discussion.

flexibly and creatively incorporate ongoing experiences in the classroom into the negotiation and construction of lessons with small groups and individuals. The environment is democratic, the activites are interactive and student centered, and the students are empowered by a teacher who operates as a facilitator/consultant.

This belief is explained by the Constructivist Learning Theory.

This theory states that learning is an active process of creating meaning from different experiences. In other words, students will learn best by by trying to make sense of something on their own with the teacher as a guide to help them along the way.

(direct instruction, collaborative learning, inquiry learning, etc.),

These other methods not only are popular, the researchers reported; they also seem to give students

But when they were evaluated a week later, the students in the testing group did much better than the concept mappers. They even did better when they were evaluated not with a short-answer test but with a test requiring them to draw a concept map from memory.

The final group took a “retrieval practice” test. Without the passage in front of them, they wrote what they remembered in a free-form essay for 10 minutes. Then they reread the passage and took another retrieval practice test.

we are organizing it and creating cues and connections that our brains later recognize.

But “when we use our memories by retrieving things, we change our access” to that information, Dr. Bjork said. “What we recall becomes more recallable in the future. In a sense you are practicing what you are going to need to do later.”

The Purdue study supports findings of a recent spate of research showing learning benefits from testing, including benefits when students get questions wrong.

Howard Gardner, an education professor at Harvard who advocates constructivism — the idea that children should discover their own approach to learning, emphasizing reasoning over memorization — said in an e-mail that the results “throw down the gauntlet to those progressive educators, myself included.” “Educators who embrace seemingly more active approaches, like concept mapping,” he continued, “are challenged to devise outcome measures that can demonstrate the superiority of such constructivist approaches.”

But at its heart, the university was born to provide a structure to govern the student-teacher relationship.

development of Wikiversity (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page), an initiative from the Wikimedia Foundation

materials are produced by Wikiversity participants, who are, like their counterparts in Wikipedia, motivated volunteers. In addition, the Wikiversity course materials, unlike those made available by MIT, are editable by users

. Instead, students are invited to work together, to engage in discussion, to solve problems, and to otherwise “construct their knowledge.”

Put another way, the role of the teacher in a constructivist setting is like being a “procedural author,” as defined by Janet Murray when discussing virtual reality spaces.9

transformed into a kind of platform where students were invited to explore/create/construct knowledge. Peer production is very much a part of the constructivist classroom setting.

are more theme-parks than sandboxes,” meaning that learning is made as uniform and as controlled as possible (under the name of “standardization” and “outcomes-based” assessments).

In contrast, a sandbox conjures up images of unstructured, unplanned, emergent play that is determined by the players. Imagine a university organized and managed like a sandbox, where teachers and students are invited to play and create in an unstructured environment—or, rather, in an environment structured by their own actions, choices, and decisions.

Concerns would surely be raised about the quality of these credentials, similar to the debates about the quality of the articles in Wikipedia

To what degree will such informal learning and “credentialing by reputation” be legitimated and accepted by society?

emerge from the decisions, the edits, the additions, and the deletions of a number of people, all bound by the rules and protocols of Wikipedia

The wiki-ized university will probably not displace the traditional university but will likely exist alongside it, albeit in direct competition.

While arguments have been made in opposition to online education, there are proponents who are in support of this mode of instruction. They suggest that the lack of face-to-face interaction can be substituted by online discussions in bulletin board systems, online video conferences or on listservs (Blake, 2000). Online education can also promote students' critical thinking skills, deep learning, collaborative learning, and problem-solving skills (Ascough, 2002; Rosie, 2000). Donlevy (2003) asserted that online education may help schools expand curricula offerings with less cost and can help graduates gain important technology skills to improve their marketability. Proponents also argue that online education can encourage non-discriminatory teaching and learning practices since the teachers and students, as well as students and their classmates typically do not meet face-to-face. Palloff and Pratt (1999) have concluded that because students cannot tell the race, gender, physical characteristics of each other and their teachers, online education presents a bias-free teaching and learning environment for instructors and students.

academic dishonesty of online learners (Muirhead, 2000)

several factors that may deter faculty from teaching online.

lack of professional prestige

While many critics have suggested that there is no sure way to hold students accountable for academic dishonesty, Heberling (2002) concluded that while maintaining academic integrity in the online instructional setting may be a challenging, many strategies may be employed to detect and prevent plagiarism, such as reversing an Internet search, tracking back to an original source.

10 keys to quality online learning

Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted. Students can take full responsibility for their own learning. Students are motivated to want to learn. The course provides “mental white space” for reflection. Learning activities appropriately match student learning styles. Experiential, active learning augments the Web site learning environment, Solitary and interpersonal learning activities are interspersed. Inaccurate prior learning is identified and corrected. “Spiral learning” provides for revisiting and expanding prior lessons, The master teacher is able to guide the overall learning process. (p. 6-17)

Alley and Jansak (2001)