When I look at Anderson’s Modes of interaction I can picture instances where I have witnessed and or been a part of all these different forms of interaction. This is truly because interaction is at the core of the classroom experience and defines learning for many people. These interactions I see are all, like the diagrams, very reciprocal and involve back and forth interaction. When I think about interaction beyond what I have experienced, one thing that sticks out to me is how the focus on reciprocal interaction is something that is new to education. If you look at education methods from a few decades ago, there was always interaction, but this interaction was never reciprocal. Teachers and students would interact, as well as the student and the content, but were far from reciprocal; students were expected to listen and teachers were expected to teach. This shift is obviously for the better, the growth in reciprocal interaction allows for teachers to learn from their students while their students learn from them.
When looking at the resource my group and I are creating, I understand how interaction can be limited. We designed our resource to be something learners could complete individually on their own schedule, but this set up does limit learner interaction. Our learning design means most learner interaction is between the content or themself, so our focus on flexibility does sacrifice interaction. Such as is addressed in one of our readings this week, there is reciprocal interaction in the form of our blog posts and emails that are sent in. These methods however do not allow for active back and forth response and there forth more intense learning growth. It is hard to find an online resource that allows for ideal reciprocal learning, but with further research and workshopping we can make progress.
