First, this paper explores various concepts of the ‘face-to-face’ learning and teaching experience. It also challenges the current views of ‘face-to-face’ mode of content delivery as a feature limited to the physical classroom. This study is based on the use of the Collaborate Ultra for teaching in the postgraduate online TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) programs at Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia. These online TESOL programs aim to deliver not just the subject content but also the ‘online face-to-face’ experience to university students. The project uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyse the effectiveness of the Collaborate Ultra platform in addressing the needs and expectations of the new learners. The research sample comprises data collected from teacher and student surveys and the Bond University teaching evaluation results. The ultimate objective of this project is to propose a new definition of ‘face-to-face’ as a feature also applicable to online learning and to emphasize the critical role of the Collaborate Ultra tools in making it possible.

1. Redefining the concept
of ‘face-to-face’ and
online learning using
the Collaborate Ultra
Dr Beata Webb & Alicia Vallero
Bond University
Gold Coast

2. 2
The plan
1. Resistance to online education
2. Our Bond Collaborate Ultra
experience
3. Methodology
4. Exploring the theoretical
framework
5. Our students on the Collaborate
Ultra
6. Conclusions

3. 3
1. Resistance to online
education
• Online not as good as
‘face to face’

4. 4
Examples
‘Online learning cannot offer human interaction.’
‘Not even the best online course can fully replace the
personal contact with a teacher, or the human
relationships that develop in a group.’
• Difficult to develop relationships with classmates
• Limited local networking opportunities
• No personalized attention from instructor’
‘Limited opportunities to interact face-to-face with
professors and other students:
(Advantages and disadvantages of online learning, 2013; Pros and cons of
online education, 2015; Innovative tools and strategies that help enhance
teaching and learning, n.d.)

5. Arguments against online education
Lack of human interaction
Human relationships do not develop
in a group
Limited opportunities to interact face-to-
face with lecturers and other students.
Isolation

6. 6
The plan: next
1. Resistance to online education
2. Our Bond Collaborate Ultra
experience
3. Methodology
4. Exploring the theoretical
framework
5. Our students on the Collaborate
Ultra
6. Conclusions

7. The Bond campus
The Bond Collaborate Ultra experience
chatroom
writing tools on whiteboard and
lecture slides
audio & video
sharing their work and resources
we/they socialise

8. Collaborate Ultra experience at Bond: Examples

9. Difference, gap,
discrepancy
• Arguments against online education
and our Bond Collaborate Ultra
experience
• We set out to explore students’
perception of their experience
• This is how…

10. 10
The plan: next
1. Resistance to online education
2. Our Bond Collaborate Ultra
experience
3. Methodology
4. Exploring and redefining the
theoretical framework
5. Our students on the Collaborate
Ultra
6. Conclusions

11. The aims
1. To examine the existing views on online
education (as above…and briefly as this
is another project)
2. To examine and, following that, re-
define concepts in use when referring
to online learning environment
3. To explore students’ views and
perceptions of their online learning
experience using the Collaborate Ultra
in the TESOL programs at Bond
University
2. Methodology

12. Source 1:
Data from official
Teaching
Evaluation
(TEVALs)
• TEVALs: Non-compulsory end of the
semester Teaching Evaluation
• 136 responses collected over 6
semesters, 2015-2016
• Students enrolled in TESOL & Spanish
Programs (approx. 40% of TESOL online
students)
• Open ended question:
1. What aspects of this subject did you
find most helpful?
2. Methodology

13. Source 2:
Students’
comments on
their Collaborate
Ultra experience
• During an informal Collaborate Ultra
session in April 2017
• 5 Students responded to open questions:
1. What is the best thing about studying
online?
2. What is the best thing about using the
Collaborate Ultra?
2. Methodology

14. 14
The plan: next
1. Resistance to online education
2. Our Bond Collaborate Ultra
experience
3. Methodology
4. Exploring the theoretical
framework
5. Our students on the Collaborate
Ultra
6. Conclusions

15. Struggling with
traditional concepts
Difficulty with defining online and not online
education:
• Personalised?
• Face to face?
• Traditional?
• Collaboration?
• Interactivity?
• On campus?
• Classroom?
• Synchronous? Asynchronous?
The way we use the Collaborate Ultra blurs these
definitions
In search for a broader concept…….

16. Re-defining concepts
Finding the tool for re-
addressing the existing
concepts
Finding the framework for
Learning Environments

17. Many refer to ‘a learning
environment’ but few define
them
• Doing research: do we know what it is
yet?
• All referred to Learning Environments
(many political references from)
• Most on learning environments with a
connection with technology, to blended
learning etc.
• Many pointed to problems of
implementation
• Many written by IT experts; great
frameworks and graphics of these, but we
couldn’t understand them
• Koper (2000): “the term ‘learning
environment’ has been widely used but it
has rarely been defined.”

18. What’s
‘a holodeck’?

20. “On board Star Trek’s USS
Enterprise, there was a
room where Lt.
Commander Data could
experience the world of
Sherlock Holmes, Lt. Worf
enjoyed cowboy
adventures with his son and
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
relaxed while roleplaying as
private detective Dixon
Hill.”
What happens in
‘a holodeck’?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZwtVz7z0wM
Thornburg, 2013; http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/star-trek-
like-holodeck-may-be-closer-to-reality-than-you-think

21. From the
Campfire to
the Holodeck
Learning environment
as a pedagogical
setting:
The four elements
The framework we
love: Thornburg (2013)
Campfires
01
Watering
Holes
02
Caves
03
Life
04

22. Learning Space
1: Campfires
• The home of didactic
presentation of material
• Early campfires: home to
storytelling
• Apprenticeship: practical skills:
hunting, cooking, gathering
• A place where people gather to
hear stories told by others
• Storytellers were the keepers of
knowledge
• Teachers are arbiters of knowledge
• The home of lectures

23. Learning Space 2:
Watering holes
• A place of social learning among peers
• Social learning as a dominant activity in societies
• Conversations not lectures
• Watercooler, Photocopier, Lunchroom?
• Vygotsky: the zone of proximal development triggered
by social interaction
• McLuhan: close the universities and go to pubs (as cited
in Thornburg, 2013, p.18)
• Conversation groups: 3-4 members
23

24. Learning Space 3:
Caves
• Home to reflective learning
• Home to cognitive construction of
understanding
• Depending on the learner, it can be a
solitary one
• Not just giving the learners ‘with
reflective time or special place, it is
giving students something to reflect
on’ (Thornburg, 2013, p.27)
• A curricular challenge because if
you’re reflecting, others may think
you’re not working

25. Learning Space 4: Life
• This is where the learners
demonstrate that they know what
they have learnt
• Meaningful application of the things
they have learnt
• Learner continues the learning process
through applying what they have
learnt in authentic situations and
sharing the application with others.
(Thornburg, 2013)
• It ties all other elements

26. From the
Campfire to
the Holodeck
Learning environment
as a pedagogical
setting:
The four elements
The framework we
love: Thornburg (2013)
Campfires
01
Watering
Holes
02
Caves
03
Life
04

27. 27
Arguments against online education are about the Watering Hole
Lack of human interaction.
Lack of human relationships that develop in a group.
Limited opportunities to interact face-to-face with
professors and other students.
Isolation

28. 28
The plan: next
1. Resistance to online education
2. Our Bond Collaborate Ultra
experience
3. Methodology
4. Exploring and redefining the
theoretical framework
5. Our students on the Collaborate
Ultra
6. Conclusions

29. Students on
Watering Holes
in the
Collaborate
Ultra
1. Bond Teaching
Evaluation (TEVALs)
2. Comments from
TESOL online
students

30. TEVALs:
What aspects of this subject did you find most helpful?
51%
31%
13%
5%
Highly valued activities Teacher's teaching
Engaging activities Authentic content
Online
sessions
Student
seminars
and peer
teaching
All
Quizlets
and
quizzes
Pre-
recorded
lecture
videos
Teaching
practicum
Highly valued activities 39% 13% 13% 9% 9% 4%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%

31. TEVALs:
Examples of student comments
Interaction:
• I enjoyed the interactive
Blackboard activities;
• I really enjoyed the interaction
in the Collaborate tutorials
• Online sessions are personable
• Effective use of Collaborate
where students could interact
All of it: the Holodeck experience
• all aspects were very helpful
• Enjoyable learning experience
• Everything is great

32. Students on
Watering Holes
in the
Collaborate
Ultra
1. Bond Teaching
Evaluation (TEVALs)
2. Comments from
TESOL online
students

34. 3434
Online students on
online education
Donna
‘I love the interactivity of the classroom.’
‘I'm also loving that collaboration with my
teammates, with my classroom.
You know, with the other students in there I feel
like I’ve got a good relationship with them, when
I see other students when I see Katie as well I
genuinely (and Charles… Donna laughs) I
genuinely get… I am really excited like, you know,
I belong there… that’s where I belong… with
those other people who are part of this class
too.
And you kind of get to know them beyond just
the classroom even though we are in a
classroom (even Charles…Donna laughs).

35. 3535
‘For me, part of getting back to study and getting back to education, was to
socialise..socialisation …
Part of it was to go and meet people and have adult conversations and, be a
grown-up and get my brain working again…. One of the disadvantages i … this
is disadvantages i forsaw .. Was that i wouldn't have an interaction with
incredible people that I have in the classroom.. up to that point ..
That actually … flipped.
I found that the people that I … Donna, Beata, Charles ….weird people (laughs)
.. the people that I interacted with in my online class I have a better
relationship … I have more in common with and they're incredibly interesting
people because they’ve got a history as to why they're not on campus … and
they are all the same age and they are not easily making the things…
Everybody’s gone way way out of their way to reach to become the people
that they’re becoming through education so I felt the richness of the people in
the collaborate classrooms (…) so deep and … I felt a real connection with the…
with the online classes and,
because you're in their homes…. (…) You get a connection with their
personality and their lives and their family and their story …which I think (…)
is the extra level of personal in a collaborate classroom and, another level of
deep (…)
I am getting emotional…’
Online students
on online
education
Katie

36. 3636
‘Having the presence of other students. Has
been also fantastic because it gives it that human
touch… I have done other online courses and
nothing like this ….
Blackboard collaborate … the way that you guys
do it (because I know other blackboard
collaborate) is absolutely amazing.
I have to congratulate you because seriously… it
is the best.
And, you guys make it, you know, make it fun …
make it personal and that to me is a big big
difference. ’
Online students
on online
education
Isabel

37. 3737
‘Oh. The things I have enjoyed most about this
program is the interactions between students and the
lecturer.
There are very interesting conversations that we have
together and one of the things that keeps us going
and motivating is the level of humour that is
interjected into the online sessions …
Whether it's comments made with one voice or
whether it is comments made in the chat room I think
that humour can really make or break a class (…)
I really enjoy (…) hearing others’ comments and also
and, I enjoy making comments (…).
And getting to know the students and the lecturer
has been a good experience (…).
Online students
on online
education
Charles

38. Beyond Collaborate
Ultra:
Collaborate Ultra is
the engine starting
powerful learning
and social and
communities
WhatsApp
Facetime
Off campus social meetings

39. 39
The plan: next
1. Resistance to online education
2. Our Bond Collaborate Ultra
experience
3. Methodology
4. Exploring and redefining the
theoretical framework
5. Our students on the Collaborate
Ultra
6. Conclusions

40. 40
Arguments against online education are about the Watering Hole
Lack of human interaction.
Lack of human relationships that develop in a group.
Limited opportunities to interact face-to-face with
professors and other students.
Isolation

41. 41
Good pedagogy
Bad pedagogy
Online
THE HOLODECK:
doing it all
On-campus
Webb-Vallero
2017 J
Pedagogy
Dichotomy

42. To sum up
To sum up
• Still negative attitudes towards online delivery
• Lack of awareness of technology potential
• Many existing views and definitions need redefining
• We propose: The holodeck as a model of a universal
learning environment
• Lack of human interaction or the lack of the Watering
Hole, thanks to the Collaborate Ultra, is only a myth.
• It’s not about the mode of delivery but about
collaboration of technology and pedagogy.

43. To conclude:
The Holodeck as a Learning
Environment
• The holodeck learning environment is at the
intersection of four (five..) megatrends
• Developments in educational technology force us
to re-consider traditional definitions and
boundaries. For example:
• Online face-to-face
• On campus synchronous and asynchronous learning
experiences
• Learning spaces conceptual rather than physical
• Effectiveness of the holodeck is supported by
students involved in this project
• Learning in the holodeck is already
here
The potential benefit of technology is not
simply replication of existing educational
practice, but its ability to sustain a variety of
pedagogies and to support the development
of communities of learners.
Hovorka, Reese, Alkilani 2010
Thank you for listening
Alicia and Beata

44. 4444
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