Abstract

The Campus Alberta Applied Psychology: Counselling Initiative delivers a Master's degree in counseling psychology using a primarily Web-based / summer school format.  Students and faculty in this program are engaged in teaching and learning counselling psychology, a discipline that explores the interaction between two people or groups in a helping context. This paper explores the issues that have emerged as counselling psychology students and faculty expand their learning and teaching experiences in a technologically-rich web-based learning environment. Specific strategies include the deliberate use of counselling skills and the working alliance construct in maintaining virtual community, relationship-based approaches to computer-mediated communication forums participation, and instructor training for web-based teaching.

Introduction

A significant amount of research has been conducted over the past ten to fifteen years on the use of the networked computer as both tool and as a medium for distance/distributed learning (e.g., Bates, 1986; Davie, 1988; McGreal, 1997).  Much of this work has focused on the use of the technology (e.g., Peters, 2000), the nature of the virtual learning environment (e.g., Oren, Mioduser, & Nachmias, 2002) and the reactions of instructors and students who are using this medium (e.g., Daugherty & Funke, 1998; Burge, 1994).

Counselling psychology is a new-comer to the field of distance/distributed learning. A brief search of the PsychINFO database (June, 2003) suggests that the majority of articles linking counselling and the Internet are related to concerns about the ethics of service delivery using the Web (Alleman, 2002; Griffiths, 2001), and “future of the field” speculation, with a mainly negative tone. One study, however, explored the use of “Computer-Related Technologies” (CRT) by counsellors and counsellor educators (Cabaniss, 2001). Using the Delphi method, the author determined that counsellors and their educators use a large variety of CRT in their daily work and that this particular group of experts predicted that use of CRT would increase substantially over the next five years, requiring more research into the nature of service delivery processes using CRT and training requirements for competency in this medium. To date, very few counselling researchers are exploring the use of the Web as a teaching and service delivery medium (with a few notable exceptions: Cook & Doyle, 2002; Page et al., 2003).

The Campus Alberta Applied Psychology: Counselling Initiative (CAAP) is a partnership between Athabasca University, University of Calgary, and The University of Lethbridge. This graduate counsellor education initiative was developed to address the need for an accessible and flexible distance-based Master’s degree in counselling psychology. It is the first distance-based graduate counsellor education program in Canada. More properly described as a blended-delivery model, the program adheres to an adult learning/ mastery learning orientation and offers courses using web-based delivery, summer institutes and weekend seminars, and, where numbers permit, off-campus course instruction.  The goal is to provide students who face serious barriers to completing degrees through traditional programs with the opportunity to further their education.

This paper explores the issues that have emerged as counselling psychology students and faculty expand their learning and teaching experiences in a technologically-rich Web-based learning environment. Specific strategies include the deliberate use of counselling skills and the working alliance construct in maintaining virtual community, relationship-based approaches to computer-mediated communication CMC forums participation, and instructor training for web-based teaching.

Program Snapshot: The People

The first student cohort started in January, 2002. There are currently 132 students enrolled in 1^st and 2^nd year courses. Seventy-three percent of the 1^st cohort and 88% of the 2^nd cohort remain. The attrition rates are comparable to on-campus programs at this point, but withdrawals happen very early on, either during the online orientation or the first online course. Informal review of the reasons for withdrawal suggests that a mismatch between the student and the technologically-driven learning platforms is a significant factor. A second major factor is the misperception that distance education requires less work or sets lower standards than traditional university education when, in fact, the time commitment on students’ part is often greater. The early attrition rates from the program support the hypothesis that particular sets of skills and attitudes are required for students to function effectively at a distance.

Counselling and the Working Alliance

The working alliance is a core construct in the field of counselling (Horvath & Symonds, 1991; Geslo & Carter, 1994). The working alliance is one component of a counselling relationship, described as an on-going condition of the relationship between a counselor and a client where both individuals agree on the goals of the relationship, agree on the tasks that will be used to reach those goals, and these goals and tasks occur within the context of mutual respect in a trusting relationship. The CAAP program has consciously adopted the philosophical stand that the core features of the working alliance are applicable to any successful relationship and this stance permeates the program in theory and in practice. It is CAAP’s premise that the skills developed and the attitudes/philosophies acquired from the working alliance model form a strong basis from which all interaction occurs, providing both students and faculty an opportunity to be purposeful and collaborative about their participation in the program. A strong working alliance encourages self-exploration and the disclosure of relevant information and helps people feel ready to risk trying new approaches for dealing with a situation. One of the key assumptions, that seems to be born out in practice, is that establishing mutually agreeable goals will help all parties develop a greater sense of ownership over both process and outcome, and foster a sense of accomplishment in achieving the end goals.

Visually, the working alliance model may be expressed in this way:

A client seeks help from a counsellor and describes his/her current state, ostensibly a life situation or problem that encapsulates where he/she “is now.” The process of gaining agreement on goals involves an exploration of where the client is now in contrast to where the client “wants to be.” The counsellor and client then seek agreement on the tasks that will be required in order to reach where the client wants to be, bridging the now-then discrepancy. The trusting relationship develops as goals are met and tasks are successfully completed. Some authors (e.g., Winnicott, 1971) propose that a client presents in a conflicted state of hopeful hopelessness, seeking help and willing to invest an initial level of trust in the counsellor by virtue of his/her position as a helping professional.

Specific communication tools are used in the counselling process to manage the interaction. This taxonomy of skills includes three categories of skill. Engagement skills are used to initiate and maintain client involvement or engagement in the process. They help gather information, direct an interaction, or promote client practice in cognitive, affective, or behavioural domains. Structuring skills are used to provide an organized and meaningful focus to a counselling session. Generally speaking, when people know what to expect and can identify where they are in the process, this helps to create a more meaningful interaction. Enhancing meaningfulness can be fostered through skills which help consolidate information, clarify what has gone on in a session, create a common mental set which helps put the client in a frame of mind that will be more receptive to what occurs in the session, and create emphasis in a session. Reacting (or reflecting) skills provide clients with information about what they are saying, doing, or feeling. Some of these skills also have the multiple functions of helping to build relationships, establish rapport, or clarify various aspects of a situation. A reflection of affect involves rephrasing the affective portion of a client's communication, addressing the question, "What is the client feeling now?" A reflection of meaning involves rephrasing the meaning portion of a client's communication, addressing the question, "What did the client mean by that?"

Affect in On-line Education

Why is it important to manage affect in learning (or any context for that matter)? A number of theorists propose answers to this question. Zajonc and Markus (1982) explored the acquisition and change of preferences. In this context, they addressed the question of the primacy of cognition or affect. Their conclusion was that affect was primary and that “preferences needed no inferences.”  The implications of this are such that any activity that involves a cognitive decision-making process needs to address the affective domain as much as any other domain. Since these authors presented their findings, Zajonc (2000) reported that when they had argued “that affective reactions can take place virtually without the participation of any cognitive input, although no direct neuroanatomical or neurophysiological evidence was available to support these ideas. Since then, much behavioral, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological evidence has been found - evidence that is clear and robust - and that substantiates many of the suppositions that derive from the original conjecture that "preferences need no inferences."

Bloom (1956) presented a now widely-adopted “taxonomy of educational objectives … intended to provide for classification of the goals of our educational system” (1956, p. 1). In this taxonomy, Bloom delineated a structure for organizing and understanding educational goals with a level of precision that allowed educators to be specific about the intent of any given educational activity. His original work focused on the cognitive domain, where teaching and learning was defined by a set of levels of increasing abstraction moving through knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Krathwohl, Masia, and Bloom (1965) extended this taxonomy to include the affective domain. After piloting the cognitive taxonomy, they noted that “It was the other dimension of our specifications – the types of human reaction or response to the content, subject matter, problems, or areas of human experience – which seemed most significant…” (p. 3, italics in original). The levels of increasing abstraction in the affective domain moved through receiving (attending), responding, valuing, organizing by value, and characterization by value set. The CAAP program bases all its courses and program on this comprehensive taxonomy, mapping its courses and their assignments to Bloom’s taxonomy as well as a comprehensive counselling-based competency matrix that includes the domains of basic human functioning, professional behaviour, interpersonal relationships, assessment, intervention, teaching and group process, and applied research. 

When applied to the on-line teaching and learning environment, Rourke, Anderson, Garrison and Archer (1999) discuss the importance of individuals being able to project themselves socially and affectively into the virtual community. They propose that social presence can be encapsulated by three categories of response: affective, interactive, and cohesive. Affective responses include the “…expression of emotions, feelings and mood” (p. 57).  Interactive responses are important in promoting socially meaningful interaction and serve to measure, build, and sustain relationship, including expressions of willingness to continue to interact, indicate interpersonal support, encouragement, and acceptance.  Cohesive responses are exemplified by activities that build and sustain group commitment such as through the expression of feelings, salutations using a person’s name and referring to the group as “we.” Rourke and colleagues (1999, p. 51) summarize this process in a “community of inquiry” model that assumes that both professors and students are part of the educational process in a community of learning and inquiry.

Working Alliance, CMC and the Management of Affect

CMC

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been explored from a number of perspectives. An example of an exploration of the mechanics of CMC is Fahy, Crawford, & Ally (2001). These authors explored interaction patterns in on-line conferencing including structural features such as size (member numbers and potential complexity of the network), density (ratio of actual numbers of links to possible total), intensity (responsiveness and attentiveness of members to each other); and interactional features such as content exchanged (an indication of members perspective of the learning elements of the social relationships) and the exchange flow (an indication of the degree to which exchanges were symmetrical or asymmetrical, equal, unequal or complementary). In a similar vein, Lobel, Neubauer and Swedburg (2002) explored the real-time interaction patterns of students in a virtual classroom. They explored observational measures in the four areas of group development: attentiveness (i.e., who is attentive and who is withdrawn); interaction (i.e., communication lines such as one to one, one to the group, one to the facilitator); involvement (i.e., Who are the influential members? Who are isolated? Who are absent? Who are late? ‘Idle’?); and participation (i.e., Who are the over or under participators? An example of an exploration of the potential for thought development in CMC is the work of Garrison, Anderson & Archer (2000). Their work evolved the concept of a (virtual) “community of inquiry” that encapsulated cognitive, affective and social presence components of CMC.

Strangelove (1994) is adamant that,

“The Internet is not about technology, it is not about information, it is about communication--people talking with each other, people exchanging e-mail, people doing the low ASCII dance. The Internet is mass participation in fully bi-directional, uncensored mass communication. Communication is the basis, the foundation, the radical ground and root upon which all community stands, grows, and thrives. The Internet is a community of chronic communicators.” (p. 11)

Chenault (1998) notes that “[m]any scholars (and others) assume the following about CMC-initiated and conducted relationships. They are: casual, temporary, false, [and] lack deep (or any) emotion.” In fact, Chenault argues that emotional connection and personal relationships do develop on-line and through CMC. She cites Lee & Spears (1995) and their work on the nonverbal aspects of relationship development:

“Lea and Spears ultimately argue that, by moving current relationship theory away from a dependency on "physical co-presence of individuals" and into a realm where attraction and social dimension are seen as essential components to forming relationships, CMC can be seen as a viable avenue for relationship-development. Lea and Spears (1995) argue that the reduced cues approach is "ill prepared" to account for the development of personal relationships that is occurring currently via CMC, as it relies too heavily on the "physical and spatial aspects of interaction" (p. 220).”

What do we conclude from this research? That the human emotional experience occurs regardless of the medium and that there is always a human being at the other end of CMC (both ends, presumably.) As such, we must, by necessity, interact with and attend to the affective domain in our on-line experiences.

Working Alliance

Adapting the working alliance model and skills to computer-mediated communication is a natural fit. The translations are direct: “client” and “counsellor” to “learner” and “instructor”; the goals are educational as opposed to clinical and may be found in the typical course outline common in a post-secondary context; the tasks are embodied in the instructional/learning activities (also found in the typical course outline); and agreement on the process for learning is found in an initial acceptance of the course outline by both instructor and learner.

The working alliance taxonomy of skills (engagement, structuring and reacting) provides a set of tools and strategies for the instructor and the learner to interact with each other in a deliberate way while using CMC. Just as it is the counsellor’s role to manage the process, it is the instructor’s role to manage and facilitate the forum discussions, encouraging dialogue among participants. Engagement skills help participants to initiate and maintain their involvement. They foster the gathering of information and the connecting with peers. Structuring skills, more likely to be useful to the instructor, help to organize and focus a CMC process. This role has been alluded to in other research (especially research that looks at sociogram-style network maps of CMC) where an individual, usually the instructor, is tasked with consolidating and clarifying what has gone on in a CMC session. Reacting skills are a core aspect of managing affect. These skills help build relationships, establish rapport, or clarify various aspects of a situation. Continued use of reflecting affect cues the instructor (or learner) to be aware of what the other human being(s) on the other end of the CMC process may be feeling.

When this happens effectively, learning and student satisfaction is enhanced. Some comments from students include: The “online discussion forums… allowed me to receive feedback on my thoughts and interact in an academically purposeful manner with my peers” and the “discussion forums are the most useful to present and challenge my own perspectives and learning.” This level of learning would not be possible without the firm commitment to the position that students have expertise in their perspectives and experience to share with others, just as clients in a counselling interaction are the experts about their own personal issues.

Students in the CAAP program have grasped the concept of the working alliance, both in terms of its application to counselling and to their experience as students on-line.  Both counsellor (instructor) and client (student) are seen as experts in their own right and both contribute to change (or knowledge).  It is the collaborative effort that results in this change (or knowledge). One interesting observation from student course evaluations is the correlation between the student ratings of the quality of the instructor and their ratings of both course content and the delivery process and tools. This correlation carried over into the ratings of the individual online communication tools, particularly the online discussion forums, and was also observed for distinct learning objects, such as online audio clips incorporated into particular courses.  Since the academic content and learning process in an online platform is consistent across sections of the same course, these results reinforce the importance of ensuring that the core principles related to instructor interaction with students are consistently implemented.

The agreement on goals (ultimately attaining a master’s degree, or in the short-term, successfully mastering course content) provides a context in which to make sense of, and take meaning from instructional experiences such as papers, online group work, and online discussion forum participation. Trust appears to be assumed by most participants at the start – a generic trust that the professors and institutions involved “know what they are doing.” From the students’ perspective, this trust evolves into a personal experience as the online community develops into personal relationships with professors and peers. Trust deepens when the collaborative learning process confirms a student’s knowledge and the value of their unique contribution. When all are combined, a mutually collaborative and mutually interdependent community of inquiry evolves. Learning or knowledge diversification or gain is reduced without equitable contributions from all.

The Importance of Instructor Training

In the CAAP context, professors must participate in all aspects of the on-line relationship. Ideally, their participation reflects an understanding of collaborative community development principles grounded in the working alliance. The course evaluations identify both effective and less effective instructor behaviours. One pattern of instructor response involves a primary focus on group process – with posts that integrate content across student posts and elaborate, challenge, prompt further critical thinking by the group as a whole. A second pattern tends towards specific replies to individual student posts with a frequency that tends to set up a dialogue between the professor and each student rather than facilitating dialogue among the students as a whole. While a balance of both approaches may be appropriate, students respond more favorably to the first style, using words that reflect the collaborative, constructivist concepts reflected by the program philosophy (Pallof & Pratt, 1999; Kanuka & Anderson, 1998; Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997.)

Conclusion

Counselling psychology is new to the field of distance education. Its usual domain is the process of helping-orientated communication between two people (or groups of people) for the purpose of resolving personal issues. A core construct in counselling is the working alliance, which states that agreement on goals, agreement on tasks and a trusting relationship are necessary for a successful collaboration. The philosophy and premise of CAAP program is based on this concept, permeating the development of skills and fostering the collaborative relationship online between instructors and learners. The structure and development of a supportive, relationship-based on-line community within the courses and the program as a whole, with a focus on utilizing the counseling skills of the working alliance, has contributed to positive attitudes and affective experiences of the students.  Knowledge and meaning is thus enhanced in this CMC environment.  CAAP evaluates every course with every student and continually strives to promote instructor effectiveness in creating a positive affective experience with students in a virtual community of on-line learning.

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