Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014 | Page 57

Internet Learning active, web-facilitated and/or blended classrooms early in the semester so that their teachers may intervene and address the specific needs of potentially at-risk students in interactive classrooms. Conceptual Framework The concepts that frame this study are as follows: interactive teaching, blended learning, self-efficacy, and Peer Instruction. We describe our research-based definitions of these concepts below. Interactive Teaching The pedagogical approach in such classrooms is generally based on constructivist theories of learning: “the contemporary view of learning…that people construct new knowledge and understanding based on what they already know” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000 p. 10). Interactive teaching is a concept that lacks definitional clarity in the higher education literature. It is most often used in contrast to didactic, lecture-based teaching and researchers often attach the use of technology to conceptualizations of interactive teaching (see Sessoms, 2008). However, while there are numerous examples of interactive teaching that incorporate technology, there are just as many that do not; rather than technology serving as determinant in conceptualizations of interactive teaching, we posit that it is the pedagogical approach that is the most salient, defining feature. In a typical classroom where interactive teaching is in use, an observer would witness numerous discursive actions occurring through multi-directional feedback loops among students, teachers, and other course staff. The pedagogical approach in such classrooms is generally based on basic constructivist theories of learning: “the contemporary view of learning people… that construct new knowledge and understanding based on what they already know” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000 p. 10). Prevailing constructivist views of learning do not imply that “teachers should never tell students directly, but instead should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 11), but rather that learning is a social and cognitive process that depends on the prior knowledge state of the student (Ambrose et al., 2010; Bransford et al., 2000; Darling-Hammond, Rosso, Austin, Orcutt, & Martin, 2003; Piaget, Green, Ford, & Flamer, 1971; Vygotsky, 1998). Constructivists also privilege the power of social learning theory (Vygotsky, 1998), which emphasizes the idea that “all learning…involves social interactions” (Vygotsky, referenced in Darling-Hammond et al., 2003). Web-facilitated and Blended Learning According to the report, Grade Change-Tracking Online Education in the United States (Allen & Seamen, 2014), web-facilitated learning is typically “a course that used web-based technology to facilitate what is essential a face-to-face course.” An online course is one where at least 80% of the content is delivered online. The course we studied for this research was a blended, flipped classroom: “a course that blends online and face-to-face delivery”, where between 30-79% of the content is delivered online, and students do engage in continuous learning before, during, and after class. Self-efficacy Theories of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977, 2003) lay the groundwork for this study. We define self-efficacy as the belief 56