the exact timing. We can even see our own lecturers when he logged in, when or whether or not he read our posts and so on. So a lot of it is self-driven, self-assessment. John also appreciated the analytics associated with Knowledge Forum, but suggested to introduce these analytics earlier in the course so that the students can use them earlier. The central goal of dialogic teaching, empowering learners’ voices and developing shared classroom control, seems to have worked well with some. There were learners who were ready for such challenge and felt that such a learning environment was beneficial to them. The challenge of moving from didactic approach of instruction to dialogic learning, is explicated in the next section.
4.2. Moving from didactic teaching (direct instruction) to dialogical teaching and learning The feedback from Diane during the interview captured some of “surprises” that students experienced in this course, particularly about how the course was organised and how the students were assessed: I think the whole, the way the course was structured, came as a surprise. Yah, because it’s very different from how the other courses have been structured, so, like, the weekly contribution, adding up to, you know the, the… building up towards the folder that we are doing, and then the, how, you know, the weekly contribution actually adds up to the, to the entire course, and eventually affecting the grade that you get, was also quite, was also a surprise to me as well…I never thought of a course being, you know, that I’ll be assessed based on what… what is being created as a community, when the thing that we’re trying to create, is not even known… it’s very much different from the other course, courses that are more, that, when they, you know it’s more predictable, and you know that, oh, like the typical courses that I’ve attended, it’s you know you, there are readings, and then after that there’s presentations, and then you share your reflections on reading, so those are more… those are things that we’re very much familiar with, whereas the structure in this course, as well as the assessment components, they are, they are entirely, they are very different. To elaborate on the dialogic design of this course, in the first session (a face-to-face session), a 10page course outline was provided to the students during the first session, outlining the learning objectives, the approach, the schedule of topics, the criteria and rubrics for assessment, and a list of references. The learners were assigned to four groups and stayed with the same group throughout the course. The group assignment took place in the Knowledge Forum and was based on heterogeneous criteria, trying to mix learners from doctoral and Master’s level, and different work experience. The educator led the discussion of the first two sessions. Starting from the third session, the group took turns to facilitate the online discussion. Each face-to-face lesson follows the same structure: (a) student-led discussion; (b) clarification by the educator; (c) educator-led discussion and elaboration; (d) short break; and (e) class activities, often aiming at “rise above”. For the online discussion, the educator assigned one paper and encouraged the group to identify other relevant papers for discussion. Learners could choose one of the papers from the reference lists given in the course outline. The educator-led discussion often starts with a summary of the student-led online discussion in the Knowledge Forum, a highlight of some of the notes that caught his attention, and a map of keywords of the discussion (extracted using a text-mining software SOBEK). This transition from the predominant approach of direct instruction to a dialogic approach put many learners out of their comfort zone. Dylan shared, “because… my education, you know, is predominated by, you know, very, more traditional (instructive) teaching style.” Even though there are design principles underpinning the lessons, the students found it “lack of structure”, especially during the first few sessions, as epitomized by the comments from Kathy:
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