Teaching and Learning with Web Course Management Systems

Learning Styles, Electronic Environments and Minority Students:
Teaching Public Speaking on eCollege.com

Vera Walker (Communications)

Introduction

eCollege.com was used to teach minority college students Fundamental Public Speaking during the Fall 2000 semester. Forty students, most of whom were freshmen and sophomores, were enrolled in this course, which is a requirement of the core curriculum. Of the 40 students, 93% were African American; the remaining students were of Asian descent. The university catalog describes this course as: "A performance-oriented course that requires students to present several speeches. Major emphasis is placed on preparation, organization, delivery, and the development of confidence and poise." At the completion of this course, students should be able to:

Research, develop, and organize ideas for oral presentation with ethical responsibility
Deliver speeches with a measure of poise and confidence
Present speeches extemporaneously-practiced and rehearsed, but delivered from limited notes
Use the voice as a creative instrument in the communicative process
Understand the roles of dialect within the English language
Give a rationale for the use of Standard American English in spoken language and be able to demonstrate this skill in your speeches.

Lucas (1998) served as the text for this course , along with its companion workbook and CD-ROM. Class lectures, use of videotapes, PowerPoint presentations, hands-on activities and critiques of peer performances were all part of the structure for this course.

There were several reasons that prompted me to use a Web-based management system for this course. First, eCollege facilitated the use of PowerPoint presentations to deliver lectures and lecture notes. Second, eCollege afforded me the use of threaded discussions to engage students with the material presented in the text. Threaded discussions allowed students to extend their classroom comments and critiques to the Web, thus saving valuable classroom time for more speechmaking activities. Third, eCollege provided a chat room and other on-line tools such as document sharing and e-mail, which allowed students to interact with each other using alternative forms of communication. Fourth, eCollege allowed the students to post webliograhies and to connect directly with other electronic sources such as databases and other public speaking websites. Last, I recognized the need to encourage minorities and women to critically use technology to exchange information and communicate effectively.

Connecting Cultures Online

Research suggests that the learning styles of African American students differ from that of their white peers. In her book, Black Children, Hale-Benson (1986) addressed the specific learning styles of African American students. She describes two particularly salient issues for African American students: they are more kinesthetic than their white counterparts; they are reared with more affective orientation. Freedom of movement and the need for physical contact is extremely important in understanding the kinesthetic orientation of African American children. According to Hale-Benson (1986), affective orientation explains why the most important learning for African American students in the classroom is that mediated by people -- their teachers and peers. Boykin (1977) concludes that affective stimulation and verbal stimulation are necessary for the African American learner to be motivated to achieve in an academic setting.

Using this research, I was able to construct on-line activities using eCollege that in ways mirrored the communal nature of the interactions occurring in the classroom. Verbal discussions were carried over to or initiated through threads on the Web. Documents such as speech outlines could be exchanged and critiqued using document sharing. Class could be held a various times and from numerous locations using the chat feature of eCollege. I was able to keep the class abreast of changes to the course schedule, upcoming examines and communicate more effectively.

When Cultures and Computers Conflict

Most of the African American students in the course had previous computer experience. However, only a few had worked in a Web environment like eCollege; most were not technologically savvy. Conflicts between culture and the computer were articulated to me via chatting experiences with the students. Several students told me that they preferred face-to-face interaction and missed the language of body gestures and verbal expressions articulated during our traditional classroom experience. Initially, some students felt that the technology isolated them from their peers. I recognized that the need for peer interaction and teacher mediation was tied to the African American student's preference for a communal environment with lots of verbal stimulation and affective freedom.

When Culture and Computers Converge

By the end of the semester, the students had grown accustomed to communicating via eCollege. In the evaluations of the course and their use of eCollege, most of the students felt that they had enhanced their technology and communication skills a great deal. I noted an increase in self-efficacy and computer usage amongst the students. Also, I was able to structure the course in such a manner as to include lots of face-to-face interaction with and among students. As chats continued, students began forming their own language to communicate with one another including the use of on-line names and symbols such as :). Indeed, the more that these minority students used the technology, the more comfortable and articulate they became with the medium.

Conclusion

Marshall McLuhan (1964) argues that the power of a medium is not contained within its content but rather in its innate form. Communications scholars attribute the cliché "the medium is the message" to McLuhan, implying that the form by which information is presented may be of greater importance to understanding a message than the content itself.

The use of eCollege was an interesting experience for both the students and me. Conflicts arose with incorporating the cultural aspects of the learning with the medium of eCollege as a teaching tool. There were also systemic technical problems associated primarily with user access. Nevertheless, these college students preserved the structural and cultural challenges of the medium to become more critical thinkers and more effective public speakers.

Bibliography

Boykin, A. Wade. (1977). Experimental psychology from a black perspective: Issues and examples. Final Report from the third conference on empirical research in black psychology, ed. William Cross, National Institute of Education, Washington, D.C.
Hale, J. (1986). Black children: Their roots, culture, and learning styles. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
McLuhan, H.M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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