There are at least four types of interaction in an online course:
Student-student interaction
This type of interaction is a focus in most language classes--opportunities for learners to interact with others need to be maximized as communicating in the target language is vital for the development of language skills. This is easily accomplished by involving students in discussions, having them do projects together, including opportunities for them to give and receive peer feedback. Many other tasks can be done with a partner or group.
Student-instructor interaction
This type of interaction is vitally important in language courses since students in such courses are likely to need even more support than students in other types of courses do. Interactions will happen in synchronous class meetings and activities, students will seek support during office hours, and they will get regular feedback of different types from their instructor.
Student-content interaction
Content needs to be carefully selected for use in online language courses. As with any course, the content needs to be appropriate given the objectives of the course, considering for example whether the topic and text type support the objectives. Factors that may be particularly important in language courses are the complexity of the content--will the learners be able to understand the text easily enough given their language skills--and how engaging the text will be for them. Texts (reading or listening texts) that are both too challenging and not engaging enough will only cause frustration for students.
Student-technology interaction
With effective planning, this interaction will hopefully be the least obvious--ideally it should be seamless and should not cause students to struggle and become frustrated. This type of interaction will support the other three types of interaction and will hopefully enhance student-content interaction by making materials/activities more interactive than they are when paper-based.
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