Interface Matters: What Research Says About the Mediating Effects of Course Interfaces Karen Swan Research Center for Educational Technology Kent State University In 1989, Michael Moore identified three kinds of interactions that supported online learning— interaction with content, interaction with instructors, and interaction among peers—which have proved useful constructs for thinking about online learning up to the present. Not long thereafter, Hillman, Willis, and Gunawardena (1994) noted that new and emergent technologies had, at least temporarily, created a fourth type of interaction, learner-interface interaction, which they defined as the interaction that takes place between a student and the technology used to mediate a particular distance education process. Interface thus refers to specific technologies, platforms, applications, and course templates students must use to interact with course content, instructors and classmates. Ten years later, interfaces no longer represent the kinds of barriers to interaction they once did, but it is becoming increasingly clear that interactions with interfaces significantly afford and/or constrain the quality and quantity of the other three interactions (Swan, 2003). his paper will review educational research and explore issues concerned with students’ interaction with course interfaces and the ways in which these affect student learning. It will do so in terms of the mediating effects of course interfaces on the three types of interactions described by Moore (1989)—interaction with content, interaction with instructors, and interactions among classmates—and in so doing provide good evidence of the need for significant new research on issues of interface. Interface Issues and Interaction with Content Interaction with content refers to the learners' interaction with the knowledge, skills and attitudes being studied. In general, this has to do with the learners' interaction with the course materials. It is thus primarily concerned with course design factors. These, of course, include course interfaces. Measurement of online content learning has been undertaken in terms of performance and perceptions of learning by students and faculty. Most of this research has involved comparisons of learning online with learning in traditional classrooms, and most of that has found no significant differences in learning outcomes between the two modes of learning (Russell, 1999). Some of this research, however, has looked at specific interface issues. For example, pioneering research on online learning demonstrated that the structure (Romiszowki & Cheng, 1992), transparency (Eastmond, 1995), and communication potential (Irani, 1998) of course designs heavily impact students’ learning. Swan, Shea, Fredericksen, Pickett, Pelz. and Maher (2000) examined the relationships between course design factors and students' perceived learning in 73 different online courses and found significant correlations between the clarity, consistency, and simplicity of course designs and students' perceived learning. These findings suggest both a constraint of asynchronous online environments and a way of ameliorating that constraint. Because real-time negotiation of meaning is impossible among instructors and students separated by space and time, clarity of meaning is more important in online classes. Consistent, transparent, and simple course structures add to such clarity as well as insure that learners only have to adapt to course structures once. A growing focus in research on the effects of interface and interface design on online student learning involves the use of a variety of media to deliver course content. Researchers, designers and practitioners are beginning to ask what combinations of text, pictures, animations, audio and video best support student learning. Richard Mayer (2001) has been studying these issues for the past fifteen years in experimental studies of students’ understanding of how scientific systems work. In over 20 separate investigations, Mayer and his colleagues meticulously tested the multimedia 1 20th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning For more resources click here -> http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/ 05.06 Copyright 2005 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Duplication or redistribution prohibited without written permission of the author(s) and The Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/