reflection 2: interaction

First I need to apologize for being so late this time and the confusion about the posts. I have been under the weather especially it's been so hot in Taiwan! Also, I thought I saved the first part as a draft and it turned out to be a post!!! techonlogy....

Anderson (2003) discusses the concept of interaction in CALL in this nicely titled article " Getting the mix right again". He first reviews the various definitions of interaction in the filed of education and refers to earlier educaitors such as Dewey for the definition and values of interaction in education. He then proposes the concept of equivalence of interaction or the equivalence theorem, as he terms it. He further argues that as long as one of the three forms of interaction is active, the other two forms of interaction can be at a minimal level without damaging the educational value. I appreciated Anderson's effort in theorizing "interaction" in education, Particularly in distance education in this article. As he rightly points out, the idea of interaction has long been a debate among educators. What counts as active interaction and participation in regular as well as distance educaiton classroom can be very different. He draws on the interaciton theories such as Wegner's "community of practice" as one of the framework to conceptualize interaction in education. He also details modes and equivalency of interaction and categorizes three types of interaction: student, teacher, and content interaction, and further provides examples of applying the equivalency theorem to popular education delivery modes.
Anderson(2003) has made some good points regarding the issues of cost and communities. With technology as well as strategies such as web-conferening, it's possible to connect students and teachers and increase significantly the student interaction. However, it will also raise the issue that whether its cost effective.

Although I appreciate his effort to theorize the concept of interaciton and the suggestions to put it into distacne education. I have my questions and concerns regarding a few arguments in this article. First of all, as I poit out in the last paragraph, Anderson(2003) draws on theorists from the pragmatic (Dewey) and socicultual (Wegner) tradition. In my understanding, interaciton among participants is the key factor in learning and knowledge construction from the sociocultural perspective. However, Anderson(2003) argues that human interaciton(teacher-student, student-student) can be replaced as long as the content interaction and its instructional design is right. This argument is where I have been wondering about CALL. From my personal experience of having a course such as this, my fellow students sometimes tend to interact with content and there's little interaction between and among students. How to write to create and build a relationship in a virtual classroom has long been my question as a student in distance educaiton and possibly an instructor in the future... Can we really substitute human interaciton as Anderson suggests here without degrading the educational experience? This is a question I have in mind when thinking about Anderson's title "Getting the mix right again" and I am wondering what exactly goes into the pot. How do distance educators strike a balance among student-student, student-teacher, and content-student interaction? Or is it possible to do so?