Introduction
We share cultures through language. In the culture
of Education, for example, there are specific ways
of using language to describe teaching and
learning. This language becomes further
differentiated within the culture of Math
Education or Music Education. In spite of such
differences, a discipline-neutral discourse of
teaching and learning has recently evolved from
the newer field of Instructional Technology where
teaching and learning are typically discussed as
generic. It is the aim of this research to
provide empirical evidence of real differences in
how disciplines conceive of and speak about
teaching and learning.
The wave of change in instructional technology
often pulls together faculty from different
disciplines. Faculty members from as diverse areas
as Engineering and Literature find themselves in
the same instructional design/technology workshops
thinking and talking about teaching and learning
as if these concepts were conceptually and
linguistically shared. This study examines the
underlying conceptual grounding that faculty from
differing disciplines bring to such discussions.
As this kind of interdisciplinary activity grows,
the issue of common language and concepts
regarding instructional practices becomes
increasingly important. We believe that clarifying
similarities and differences between disciplinary
discourses around digital learning objects can
lead to more accurate and rewarding
interdisciplinary conversations regarding
instructional practices overall. We view
evaluation of digital learning objects as
representing a unique venue for 1) examining the
different discourse patterns used by different
discipline communities; and 2) examining
convergences and divergences around teaching and
learning that both exemplify and transcend
disciplinary boundaries
Digital Learning Objects
The term ‘digital learning object’ is a relatively
new one. The term describes pieces of
instructional material typically found on the
internet. To some, “learning objects represent a
completely new conceptual model for the mass of
content used in the context of learning” (Hodgins,
2002, p.1). The development and use of this new
conceptual model can be considered part of the
larger effort on the part of instructional
technology theorists to name
discipline-independent theories of learning.
Contemporary theories of instructional design, for
example, include budding theories on the
composition and sequencing of learning objects
(Wiley, 2000), the metadata they might contain,
and standards for their design (Godwin-Jones,
2004). For others, however, digital
learning objects are merely additional curricular
material at their disposal. A conclusive
definition remains elusive as, at present, any of
the following may fall under the digital learning
object umbrella: lectures, lecture handouts, tests
and quizzes, interactive assignments, images,
slides, cases, models, virtual experiments,
simulations and reference material.
For our
purposes, learning objects are considered to be
“small, reusable chunks of instructional
media” (Wiley,
2000, p.2).
Digital
learning objects are often cataloged in learning
object repositories such as MERLOT (https://merlot.org)
from which our data is drawn.
Disciplinary Discourse
There is ample evidence of systematic variation
between the language used in academic disciplines
(e.g., Biber, Conrad, Reppen, Byrd, & Helt, 2002;
Csomay, 2005). Indeed, the fact of distinctly
different academic disciplines and their
disciplinary discourses has been likened to
tribalism (Bauer, 1990;
Becher, 1989). What contrasts one tribe
from another is the language each speaks as well
as the overall essential epistemologies concerning
the subject area (Table 1). The discourse choices
we make – how we use language within our
disciplines - match the expectations of the
community in which we are accustomed to
communicating (Meskill & Anthony, 2007).
Table 1. Disciplinary Differences
|
Humanities |
Sciences |
|
Evocative |
Analytical |
|
Social construction of knowledge |
Scientific view of truths |
|
Critical |
Empirical |
|
Evaluative |
Objective |
|
Integration |
Simplification through isolation |
In short, disciplinary differences are manifest in
widely varying epistemologies, discipline-specific
discourses, disciplinary traditions of teaching
and learning, and in students’ preferred learning
approaches and styles (Bradbeer, 1999). With
instructional technology activities in higher
education bringing these diverse groups together
to address issues of teaching and learning, one
might conclude that between-discipline
communication would be thus constrained. How do
the disciplines view and talk about their teaching
practices and their students’ learning? German
sociologist Karl Jaspers calls this the “creative
tension” that occurs when people from differing
disciplines, with different discipline-specific
ways of knowing and talking come together
(Jaspers, 1959).
Evaluating Digital Learning Objects
Evaluating digital learning objects “helps in
clarifying audiences and their values, identifying
needs, considering alternative ways to meet needs
(including selecting among various learning
objects), conceptualizing a design, developing
prototypes and actual instructional units with
various combinations of learning objects,
implementing and delivering the instruction,
managing the learning experience, and improving
the evaluation itself” (Williams, 2000, p.1).
Since 1999, the MERLOT repository (https://merlot.org)
has been collecting, curating, and subjecting to
peer review tens of thousands of high quality
digital learning objects from a wide range of
disciplines. The peer review process consists of
two faculty members within the designated
discipline providing numerical ratings and prose
reviews of the digital learning object. A
composite review is then developed by an
appropriate editorial board and posted on the
MERLOT site. This process produces a written,
publicly accessible review, the language of which
is the focus of analysis for this study.
Methodology
For the purposes of this study the archived texts
of 1,691 MERLOT peer reviews were saved as text
files and included in the corpus of one of the
three focal discipline groups: Education,
Humanities or Hard Sciences. The Education group
is comprised of 321 texts that reviewed learning
objects in education. The Humanities group
includes 478 reviews in history, music and world
languages. 892 reviews in biology, chemistry and
physics comprise the Hard Sciences group.
Corpus-based concordancing methodologies (see
Biber, Conrad & Reppen., 2002) were utilized to
capture linguistic characteristics of the
disciplinary discourses. The Concordance software,
developed by R.J.C. Watt
(http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk),
served as the primary data analysis tool.
The quantitative analysis of data was
complimented by the qualitative study of the
context in which words are utilized in each of the
discipline groups.
The following research questions guided the
analysis of the texts under examination:
-
What are the differences and similarities in
vocabulary choice of reviewers in Education,
Humanities and Hard Sciences? Do disciplines
differ in the frequency and contextual usage of
lexicon items often found in the selected texts?
-
Do there exist any distinct variations in who is
seen as performing the teaching and the learning
with the learning objects being reviewed? Who
is the primary agent (doer) of the instructional
process – the teacher, the student, or the
learning object?
-
Do disciplinary discourses differ in their
syntactical organization?
Finally, through our analyses we wished to probe
the larger question of how corpus-based analysis
of disciplinary discourses might inform the fields
of instructional design, cross-/inter-disciplinary
studies, and/or other fields.
Results
Most Frequent Words
Investigating the frequency of words provides
valuable insight into the language peculiarities
of a given text and enables comparison with other
texts (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen, 2002). For our
initial analysis we first focused on the most
frequent words that occur in texts composed by
reviewers in Education, Humanities and the Hard
Sciences. Table 2 shows the top ten most
frequently used words in each disciplinary group.
Here and later in the article we use “word” to
refer to a lemma, i.e. “ the base form of a
word, disregarding grammatical; changes such as
tense and plurality” (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen,
2002, p.29). Thus in tables and discussions each
word represents a word family where each member is
derived from the same root.
The three disciplinary groups share 7 out of 10
words (70%) from the list of 10 most frequently
used words. Each group also includes one or two
words that are not frequent in the other two
discipline groups (see shaded cells in Table 2 and
italicized words in red ink in Figure 1). Not
surprisingly, reviewers in Education often use
words with the common root educate. Those
in Humanities often talk about languages
and French in particular, which could be
explained by the large number of learning objects
related to language learning and teaching.
Reviewers in the Hard Sciences often use the word
applet to refer to learning objects in
their discipline group. Educators also use the
descriptor resource to describe the
electronic materials, while their colleagues in
the Hard Sciences choose to review learning
objects descriptively utilizing such words as
very and easy.
Sharing individual words, however, does not mean
that disciplines coincide in the whole corpus of
vocabulary used. Z-tests (confidence interval >=
95%, p<=0.05, 2-tailed) revealed statistically
significant differences between the usage of all
shared vocabulary: no word is used at the same
frequency rate in all three discipline groups,
though some words could be used at the same rate
in two disciplines (see Figure 1). For example,
word groups derived from site, use
and learn are used at the same rate in
Education and Humanities; the lemma study
is as common in Education as in the Hard Sciences,
while inform and provide showed no
difference in frequency when Humanities and the
Hard Sciences were compared.
Table 2. Ten Most Frequently Used Words (Lemmas)
in Each Disciplinary Group
|
Education
N=218,731 |
Humanities
N=262,225 |
Hard Sciences
N=436,004 |
|
Site 150 (3281) |
Site 148 (3892) |
Use160 (6998) |
|
Use130 (2837) |
Use 136 (3567) |
Study117 (5110) |
|
Teach 123 (2680) |
Study 105 (2757) |
Site 81 (3548) |
|
Study 121 (2643) |
Learn 73 (1911) |
Applet 64 (2777) |
|
Learn/learner 75 (1637) |
Material 49 (1293) |
Material 42 (1837) |
|
Educate 72 (1575) |
Language 48 (1271) +
French 25 (665) |
Provide 41 (1781) |
|
Provide 59 (1280) |
Teach 47 (1224) |
Link 37 (1600) |
|
Inform 56 (1225) |
Link 45 (1175) |
Learn 32 (1405) |
|
Link 53 (1162) |
Provide 44 (1166)
|
Very 32 (1391) +
Easy 30 (1301) |
|
Resource 50 (1088) |
Inform 31 (823) |
Inform 30 (1311) |
Note:
Frequency per 10,000 words, raw number in
brackets. Shaded are cells that include words
specific for a discipline group.
Figure 1. Most Frequently Used Words: Points of
Convergence and Divergence
Thus, while disciplines may share commonly used
words, when the whole body of vocabulary used in
each discipline is taken into account, we see
differences in frequencies. It seems that it is
the genre of review, as well as the similarity of
objects being analyzed, that make the top 10 list
identical in 7 out of 10 instances. However,
differences in disciplinary discourses surface
when close statistical analysis is carried out.
The Not Too Surprising Category
While the top 10 list mostly consists of words
common to the three disciplines, further analysis
reveals a number of words whose use is unique to
the discipline. Closer examination allowed us to
determine those words that we include in the Not
Too Surprising category (see Table 3). As the
category title indicates, this category consists
of words that one would expect to find in a given
discipline.
Overall, the words belonging to the Not Too
Surprising category can be described as:
-
a primary subject of the discipline (education,
culture, language)
-
an object of study (vocabulary, concept)
-
learning stakeholders (teachers, students
with disabilities)
-
teaching/learning tools (rubric, audio,
applet, animation)
-
ways of presenting and acquiring knowledge (design,
discuss, scaffold, guide, practice,
conceptualize, see, structure).
Table 3 below visually compares these vocabularies
across the three discipline groups. All words
included in the table show statistically
significant differences in the rate at which they
are used by one of the three discipline groups
when compared with the other two groups. Some of
these words are virtually non-existent in the
other disciplines. For example, the word
scaffold seems to be familiar only for
reviewers in Education, while parameter is
used almost exclusively in the Hard Sciences.
These words could be described as professional
jargon. Still, a number of words, though belonging
to the common lexicon, find their home in one
discipline group while being rare guests in
others. These words reveal a unique worldview in
which some phenomena are more valued and more
often talked about than others. This is supported
not only by the high frequency of a lemma in
general, but also by the variety of derivatives
that belong to the same word family. For example,
the lemma culture has 22 derivatives in the
Humanities, 11 derivatives in the Hard Sciences
(including agriculture and horticulture)
and only 8 word family members in Education, which
shows the importance of this concept in the
Humanities.
Table 3. Not Too Surprising Category
|
Words |
Education
N=218,731 |
Humanities
N=262,225 |
Hard Sciences
N=436,004 |
|
disability |
10 (215)* |
0 (1) |
0 (0) |
|
design |
23 (505)* |
18 (481) |
13 (570) |
|
discuss |
14 (310)* |
10 (273) |
8 (363) |
|
educate |
72 (1575)* |
8 (204) |
8 (333) |
|
evaluate |
9 (192)* |
2 (50) |
1 (48) |
|
guide |
13 (284)* |
9 (240) |
6 (281) |
|
rubric |
9 (195)* |
1 (19) |
0.1 (5) |
|
scaffold |
1 (15)* |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
|
teach |
131 (2862)* |
47 (1224) |
14 (629) |
|
audio |
4 (97) |
20 (537)* |
2 (93) |
|
culture |
5 (114) |
31 (802)* |
1 (57) |
|
French |
0 (1) |
25 (665)* |
0 (8) |
|
history |
7 (152) |
31 (800)* |
5 (226) |
|
language |
8 (181) |
48 (1271)* |
3 (146) |
|
music |
1 (28) |
25 (650)* |
0 (14) |
|
practice |
12 (267) |
16 (427)* |
5 (203) |
|
vocabulary |
2 (41) |
17 (448)* |
1 (53) |
|
animate |
3 (71) |
5 (131) |
26 (1114)* |
|
applet |
2 (52) |
5 (124) |
64 (2777)* |
|
concept |
14 (312) |
5 (140) |
26 (1122)* |
|
cover |
3 (75) |
5 (142) |
10 (440)* |
|
interactive |
9 (188) |
11 (289) |
21 (902)* |
|
parameter |
0 (1) |
0 (7) |
8 (341)* |
|
see |
6 (131) |
6 (153) |
12 (530)* |
|
structure |
6 (110) |
5 (121) |
9 (399)* |
|
understand |
21 (468) |
13 (334) |
27 (1191)* |
Note:
Frequency per 10,000 words, raw number in
brackets. Shaded are cells with words that are
more frequent for a specific discipline group.
*Significantly different proportions as compared
to the other two disciplinary groups (confidence
interval >= 95%, p<=0.05,
2-tailed), based on Z-test for two proportions
http://www.dimensionresearch.com/resources/calculators/ztest.html
Thus, the Not Too Surprising category provides
additional evidence that speaks to divergences
among disciplinary discourses. The selection of
words used reveals discipline-specific ways of
speaking about MERLOT digital learning objects
which illustrate significant differences in
disciplinary traditions of teaching and learning.
Descriptors
To further explore discipline-specific lexicons,
we examined descriptors selected based on their
frequency and compared the frequency of words in
two groups: Education vs. the Hard Sciences and
Humanities vs. the Hard Sciences.
The results indicated that out of 89 words
selected, only 8 showed no significant difference
in usage between all three disciplines: easy,
useful, most, particular, visual, major, main,
better.. In 29 instances only one group -
Education or Humanities - showed significant
difference when compared to the Hard Sciences;
these are such descriptors as high, various,
comprehensive, engaging, etc. Judging by the
words selected, in 67% of cases reviewers choose
different descriptors to describe and evaluate
MERLOT learning objects (see Table 4).
The analysis shows that each discipline uses
descriptors that could be included into the Not
Too Surprising category as they represent
adjectives that are particular to the discipline.
For example:
Education = educational, instructional,
professional (development), social, etc.
Humanities = cultural, historical, musical,
grammatical, etc.
Hard Sciences = mathematical, physical,
numerical, quantitative, etc.
Still some frequently used adjectives yield
surprising results. Reviewers in Education, for
example, tend to use the adjective scientific
twice as often as their colleagues in the Hard
Sciences. We might interpret this to be in keeping
with current U.S. federal policy in Education that
stress this term. It is important to note in this
regard that the MERLOT peer reviewers in Education
are all U.S. born native speakers of English.
Another anomalous use of adjectives is in the
Humanities where reviewers use the descriptor
human far less often than their colleagues in
Education and the Hard Sciences.
It is interesting to note that in the Hard
Sciences a wide range of words is used to evaluate
learning objects; notable in that the
stereotypical view of scientists involves their
being less verbal than their Humanities
counterparts. Some of the frequently used
adjectives in the Hard Sciences, such as good,
excellent, nice could be
characterized as subjective evaluation words.
Reviewers in the Hard Sciences more frequently
than other disciplines also use words that
describe objective parameters related to a)
accuracy – accurate/inaccurate, correct, b)
size– small, large, little, and c)
parameters – limited, detailed. Comparative
adjectives – different/similar – are also
frequently employed as are terms that indicate
level of difficulty – introductory, basic,
simple, difficult. The evaluation of learning
objects in the Hard Sciences also seems to include
potentiality indicators such as potential
and possible.
In addition to the frequencies indicated in Tables
4, we randomly examined the contexts in which
frequently used adjectives occurred within the
actual texts and found that each discipline group
tend to use descriptors in different semantic
contexts. For example, in Education the focus of
the descriptor “appropriate” are learners as it
describes such nouns as grade level, age,
or curriculum; in the Humanities reviewers
talk about appropriate material, sites, resources,
while in Hard Sciences they focus on the mechanics
or specific features of the learning objects (variables,
design features, labels, questions, for course,
locations, vocabulary, functions, level, gene
therapy).
Thus, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of
descriptors suggests that while academic
disciplines may utilize identical lexicon items,
they often do so at different rates and in
different contexts.
Table 4. Most Frequent Descriptors
|
Descriptor |
Education
N=218,731 |
Humanities
N=262,225 |
Hard Sciences
N=436,004 |
|
appropriate |
10 (213)* |
7 (175) |
7 (301) |
|
valuable |
6 (125)* |
3 (69)* |
1 (49) |
|
educational |
12 (269)* |
2 (64)* |
3 (110) |
|
instructional |
10 (225)* |
2 (62)* |
1 (38) |
|
professional |
9 (188)* |
1 (33) |
1 (41) |
|
social |
4 (91)* |
3 (77)* |
0 (12) |
|
specific |
13 (286)* |
6 (149)* |
8 (360) |
|
helpful |
9 (199)* |
6 (150) |
7 (285) |
|
new |
10 (218)* |
7 (196)* |
4 (181) |
|
national |
8 (184)* |
2 (45)* |
1 (38) |
|
best |
6 (133)* |
5 (120)* |
3 (114) |
|
scientific |
4 (84)* |
0 (8)* |
2 (99) |
|
multiple |
5 (106)* |
2 (65)* |
3 (143) |
|
authentic |
2 (37)* |
6 (148)* |
0 (3) |
|
native |
0 (6) |
5 (125)* |
0 (13) |
|
individual |
4 (87) |
6 (148)* |
4 (161) |
|
external |
1 (23) |
5 (141)* |
1 (47) |
|
primary |
4 (93)* |
8 (199)* |
2 (83) |
|
advanced |
3 (57)* |
11 (279)* |
5 (197) |
|
cultural |
2 (52)* |
10 (263)* |
0 (11) |
|
intermediate |
0 (10)* |
8 (210)* |
1 (34) |
|
historical |
2 (50)* |
7 (196)* |
1 (35) |
|
musical |
0 |
3 (83)* |
0 |
|
grammatical |
0 (3) |
3 (79)* |
0 (14) |
|
traditional |
1 (21) |
3 (79)* |
1 (56) |
|
independent |
3 (57)* |
6 (161)* |
2 (102) |
|
great |
4 (77) |
6 (156)* |
4 (177) |
|
clear |
7 (158)* |
14 (355)* |
11 (470) |
|
rich |
2 (40 )* |
3 (84)* |
1 (47) |
|
technical |
3 (60)* |
4 (98)* |
2 (103) |
|
mathematical |
2 (45) |
0 (1)* |
5 (215) |
|
physical |
2 (54)* |
0 (6)* |
3 (152) |
|
numerical |
0 (3)* |
0 (2)* |
3 (146) |
|
quantitative |
0 (4)* |
0 (2)* |
3 (125) |
|
graphical |
0 (6)* |
0 (2)* |
4 (168) |
|
potential |
3 (75)* |
2 (65)* |
6 (244) |
|
possible |
2 (52)* |
3 (82)* |
5 (199) |
|
limited |
3 (65)* |
2 (56)* |
5 (228) |
|
accurate |
2 (54)* |
3 (86)* |
6 (259) |
|
correct |
1 (24)* |
3 (75)* |
4 (188) |
|
interactive |
7 (161)* |
10 (254)* |
17 (738) |
|
effective |
6 (141)* |
5 (123)* |
8 (356) |
|
good |
11 (243)* |
11 (299)* |
16 (715) |
|
excellent |
9 (188)* |
10 (263)* |
14 (615) |
|
nice |
1 (26)* |
2 (62)* |
6 (275) |
|
different |
10 (216)* |
10 (275)* |
13 (588) |
|
similar |
2 (34)* |
2 (43)* |
3 (144) |
|
introductory |
2 (37)* |
2 (42)* |
9 (414) |
|
basic |
10 (213)* |
10 (261)* |
14 (592) |
|
simple |
5 (101)* |
6 (153)* |
13 (549) |
|
difficult |
4 (84)* |
4 (116)* |
7 (297) |
|
detailed |
2 (45)* |
3 (90)* |
4 (171) |
|
large |
3(64)* |
5(133)* |
9(377) |
|
little |
3 (56)* |
3 (85)* |
5 (210) |
|
small |
2 (50)* |
2 (52)* |
4 (155) |
Note:
Frequency per 10,000 words, raw number in
brackets.
Shaded are cells with words that are more frequent for a specific
discipline group.
*Significantly different proportions as compared
to Hard Sciences
(confidence interval >= 95%, p<=0.05, 2-tailed),
based on Z-test for two proportions
http://www.dimensionresearch.com/resources/calculators/ztest.html
Processes and Agency
We use the Processes and Agency category to
document how the different disciplines use
language to describe processes and outcomes of
teaching and learning. This category focuses on
the action (e.g., teaching, learning, interacting,
etc.) and the agent of the action, the one
who performs the action. The English language can
express the agent of an action explicitly (SHE
learned her lesson) or implicitly through use of
the passive construction (The lesson was learned
(by HER) or by implication (materials for
discussion (by STUDENTS)). By examining the
contexts in which the most frequently used lemmas
that denote teaching and learning actions
appeared, we attempt to establish whether
differences exist in who is seen as performing the
teaching and the learning with the learning
objects being reviewed and, by extension, each
discipline’s priorities for agency in the
instructional processes.
Indeed, through examining the contexts of
use for the most frequently used actions across
the three disciplines, we see distinct differences
in terms of how and by whom instructional
processes are undertaken. A typical illustration
of this concerns the use of discuss:
Typical context:
The resulting printouts are rich and can be
used in a variety of ways to discuss teacher
dispositions, the classroom teaching environment,
the school work environment, etc.
As illustrated above, the lemma discuss most
frequently carries teacher as agent. Discuss was
also frequently used in the context of discussion
boards (used by teachers), ways to facilitate
class discussions, and the roles for discussion in
teaching and learning methods. In the vast
majority of cases, the action of discussing
carried teachers as the agents of the action. As
most learning objects in the Education discipline
of MERLOT are geared toward teacher education and
teacher support materials, the teacher as agent
makes sense as the most common form of agency,
especially in light of the fact that contemporary
Education generally sees the agency of teaching
and learning primarily with the professional
educators who undertake instructional practices.
The vast majority of actions are in the context of
teacher learning, professional dialog and
professional development.
As compared to Education, we can see that the main
source of agency in the Humanities learning object
reviews tends to be null; that is, the passive
form with no apparent doer of the action.
Typical contexts:
The elemental level is discussed very
briefly. (Music)
The exception to this trend is in the World
Languages reviews where students/learners are the
most frequent agents of the action discuss:
Students can write to each other and discuss
topics that interest them such as experiences with
learning English… (World Languages)
In the case of this action, discuss/discussion,
there is a clear difference between the
disciplines within the Humanities. Unlike Music
and History where the agent is typically null or
the materials themselves, in World Languages, a
discipline for which emphasis on active student
communication is key, students are most often the
agents. Where there were no instances of student
agency attendant to the lemma discuss and its
derivative in the History and Music reviews, in
World Languages there are 83 instances out of 167
where students are written of as the agents, the
actors of discuss: e.g., class/student discussion,
discussion questions, discussion groups,
springboard/catalyst/stimulus for discussion.
Finally, in the other two Humanities categories,
Music and History, the construct whereby agency is
given to the learning object itself (“allows for
discussion”) occurs frequently throughout.
C: Hard Sciences
Where there are 363 instances of some form of the
lemma discuss in the Hard Sciences data,
there is not one instance of the active tense with
student nor instructor acting as agent of the
action. Every instance is either passive “is
discussed” whereby agency is absent entirely, or
with inanimate subjects such as sites (“the site
discusses”), texts (“the text discusses”), page
(“the page discusses”), the researcher (“the
researcher discusses”). The exception is thirteen
instances of the phrase “for class discussion” and
four instances of “discussion point” both implying
agency on the part of instructors and students;
participation in the former, accessing in the
latter.
There are, therefore, differences, some salient,
some subtle between the three disciplinary
categories in terms of how teaching and learning
gets done; specifically between the sources of
agency and the guiding of instructional processes.
In writing their reviews of digital learning
objects, Education faculty see the agency of
teaching as lying with teachers, less with
materials and less with what learners see and
interact with on the computer screen. Contrary to
this trend, Humanities faculty imbue materials
with the agency of teaching and learning with the
Hard Sciences attributing the acts of teaching and
learning to the computer application per se. It is
clearly the case that there are distinct ways of
perceiving and expressing the activities of
teaching in learning as reflected in this corpus.
Syntactic
Features
The syntax used in the different disciplinary
discourses could be equally as suggestive as the
choices of vocabulary. Moreover, examination of
the reviews’ syntactic features can distinguish
features among registers including those that are
characteristic of the particular academic
discipline. The length of the text, relative
organization of the sentences inside the text, as
well as the sentence internal structure that
reveals the relationship between parts of speech,
characterize the discourse explicating its
individual features. Biber and his co-authors, for
example, show that corpus-based linguistic
analysis of syntax may contribute to
characterizing texts on such dimensions as
involved versus informational production,
narrative versus non-narrative
discourse, or impersonal versus
non-impersonal styles (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen,
2002, pp. 135-171).
For the purposes
of our study, we examined three syntactic features
of the texts: 1) text and sentence length; 2)
passive constructions; and 3) bulleted
constructions. In each of the three discipline
groups a number of texts were randomly selected.
30 texts each were extracted from the Education
and Humanities groups with 45 texts comprising the
randomly selected texts in the Hard Sciences.
Figure 2
summarizes the results obtained after the selected
reviews undergone concordancing, hand coding and
descriptive statistical analysis.
Figure 2. Syntactic
Features by Discipline
Text and
sentence length
The calculations
reveal that reviews in Education are on average
lengthier: here an average review comprises of 44
sentences as compared to 33 and 34 sentences in
the Humanities and the Hard Sciences respectively.
At the same time, the sentence length in all three
disciplines is similar: the average sentence in
Education is comprised of 19 words, in Humanities
– 18 words, in the Hard Sciences – 17 words.
The results suggest that while reviewers
in Education are wordier and choose to provide
lengthier evaluations of their digital learning
objects, they tend to express their thoughts in
sentences that are as long as sentences selected
by their colleagues in the Humanities and the Hard
Sciences. It seems that educators, being very well
versed in assessing teaching tools, are more
verbose when reviewing MERLOT learning objects,
activity that requires the assessment of the
learning object’s potential effectiveness as a
teaching/learning tool.
Passive
constructions
It is
generally accepted that passive forms are more
often used in formal documents and are frequently
featured in science texts. Passive constructions
make a text sound more impersonal (Biber, Conrad,
& Reppen, 2002), that is, more objective. While
taking in to account that the academic nature of
reviews under analysis implied a certain degree of
formality, we hypothesized that this degree could
vary between the different discipline groups. The
results, however, contradicted our predictions as
seen in Figure 2. With 167 instances of passive
forms per 10,000 words in Education, 157 instances
in the Humanities, and164 instances in the Hard
Sciences, we can not claim that any discipline
group tends to use passive constructions
considerably more frequently
The findings suggest that reviewers in
different discipline groups use passivization at a
similar rate. Apparently, shared understanding of
the target audience and purpose of the texts they
produce, make reviewers of digital learning
objects select similar syntactic constructions.
Bulleted
constructions
While collecting
data to describe syntactic peculiarities, we
noticed that many reviews in the Hard Sciences
contain bulleted constructions. Reviewers in this
discipline group often prefer to describe learning
objects not in paragraphs of connected sentences
but rather in bulleted shorthand. Thus, some of
these constructions do not represent fully
developed sentences with subjects and predicates.
Additionally, reviewers tend to mix complete
sentences and those where some important parts of
speech are omitted but easily derived from the
sentence stem. Even when writing in full
sentences, reviewers may omit a part of the
predicate – usually the linking verb “to be”. For
example, when describing the quality of content,
one of the reviewers writes the following:
Quality of Content: (4.60)(4.00) = 4.3
·
Layout fairly
well designed
·
Material complete
allowing many factors to be tested in a single
simulation
·
Accurate with
excellent references to justify simulations
Such bulleted constructions allow for quick and
concise verbalization of the observation. They
save time over developing text cohesion and
worrying about such relatively insignificant
elements as linking verbs or punctuation marks for
sentence meaning. The fact that bulleted
constructions are much more frequent in reviews in
the Hard Sciences could be explained by the
non-narrative (factual, informational) concerns of
texts in ‘pure’ science (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen,
2002).
Bullets also
allow for visual separation of thoughts, so
important in the information era where visuals
assume a leading role in providing information.
Wide usage of bulleted constructions could also be
explained by gradual penetration into academic
writing of language features we tend to associate
with electronic communication – e-mailing, instant
messaging, presenting information in PowerPoint
format. It would probably be safe to say that the
acceptance of bulleting means that the electronic
“version” of academic writing has become more
democratic, less formal and more graphical (Tufte,
2003).
Implications
Like Motta-Roth’s study of book reviews from three
disciplines, a study which revealed distinct
differences between discipline-specific
methodological approaches, this study finds that
variation in faculty use of language in composing
digital learning object reviews is distinct. In
the Motta-Roth case, implications were drawn for
the teaching of English to non-native speakers. We
too see the need for both native and non-native
speakers to be made aware of the differing uses of
the language of teaching and learning between
disciplines as part of advanced academic
preparation; e.g., the professoriate in training,
policy/administrative staff.
Additionally, the growing field of instructional
technology design and support for technology-using
faculty would also benefit from understanding and
perhaps making use of these differences
productively in their work with faculty from
varying disciplines. Finally, the complex
conceptual frames and accompanying discourses used
by each discipline can potentially enrich one
another through productive, collaborative and
synergistic work around instruction in general and
the evaluation of digital learning objects in
particular.
Conclusion
As the world of information grows more dense and
complex, so too do academic disciplines. As a
result, disciplinary language becomes increasingly
compartmentalized with a loss of mutual
intelligibility between and across disciplines
becoming more than a remote possibility. Such
divisions have often been cited as limiting
intellectual growth and discovery due to lack of
communication between groups. “Disciplinary
specialization inhibits faculty from broadening
their intellectual horizons—considering questions
of importance outside their discipline, learning
other methods for answering these questions and
pondering the possible significance of other
disciplines’ findings for their own work” (Stober,
2006, p.317). With faculty from diverse
disciplines now finding themselves in mixed venues
for the purpose of developing instructional
technologies, opportunities for broadening their
instructional horizons through
cross-disciplinary conversations abound.
We share the view that learning about or forming
connections between fields of knowledge is an
essential educational need for success in the 21st
century (Caine & Caine, 1991; Dwyer, 1995; Jacobs,
1989; Martinello & Cook, 1994). Using digital
learning objects as catalysts for productive
discussion of instructional practices represents a
promising beginning. Where Bradbeer (1999)
encourages the dissolution of disciplinary
discourse barriers through movement toward
commonality, we suggest quite the opposite: an
awareness building and promotion of mutual respect
for one another’s epistemologies and practices as
expressed in what is ostensibly a common language
of teaching and learning.
