Article review - 'Lost in translation: Importance of effective communication in online education'

You might have seen the movie, well now it's time to read an interesting article about online education with the same title!

In a recent article published in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Kristen Betts has written an excellent article about the importance of effective online communication. Betts highlights the importance of effective communication in online education in order to maximise student engagement. In addition, she also cites statistical evidence indicating that around 12% of students who dropped out of a particular university program did so because of poor communication with their instructor. This leads Betts to refer to the term 'Lost in translation', which she defines as follows:

'the misinterpretation or communication breakdown of the message or stimuli between the sender/receiver (Communicator 1) and the receiver/sender (Communicator 2). Within an educational setting, the role of sender/receiver and receiver/sender can change regularly and frequently between students, faculty, administrators, administrative staff, technical support staff, and academic advisors. Therefore, as communication increases, simultaneously there is a greater opportunity for the message to be lost in translation due to technical or semantic interference'. (Betts, 2009).

In the remainder of the article, Betts proceeds to provide a review of the research on different types of communication (both face-to-face) and (online). She also offers some suggestions for achieving more effective online communication.

In this article, Betts has come up with a very clever means of highlighting a real problem in online education - how to ensure effective online communication. As she notes in the article, the growth rate of online education is booming, so this issue is one that needs the attention of educators. The suggestions that she offers are a step in the right direction.

Reference
Betts, K (2009) ‘Lost in translation: importance of effective communication in online education’, Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume XII, Number II, Summer 2009, [online] http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer122/betts122.html (accessed 31 August 2009)