An Exploration of Online Peer Interaction among Preparing School Leaders

The goal of this comparative study was to explore the online interactions among members of two learning communities. The two cases examined two different cohorts in the same professional preparation program for school principals and administrators: a distance-learning cohort and an onsite university-district partnership cohort in which online activities supported face-to-face instructional delivery. Of interest here was how students wrestled together to interpret, understand, and support their learning process within the online environment. Because the content and instructor remained consistent in both sample cohorts, the differing modes of instructional delivery offered a unique opportunity for a comparative study. This paper reports preliminary analyses of the content of online exchanges among cohort members of the two learning communities, generated during the first semester (leadership domain) of the program. (Contains 2 tables.)