As Internet bandwidth improves and connections become more reliable, on-line course designers will be encouraged to make more structured use of synchronous communications. Little work has so far been reported on how to make the best use of synchronous communications to support a problem solving approach. The OTIS pilot course made extensive use of synchronous communication to support learning through case studies in occupational therapy. The transcripts of communication sessions have been analysed using the SOLO taxonomy, to study the development of deep learning week by week. Results show that synchronous peer-to-peer working meetings have an important role to play in the development of deep learning.
Armitt et al. (Tue,) studied this question.