| CARVIEW |
What?
I like the idea that distance education can contribute to the notion of flexible learning. Also, it is surprising that in the USA example, three-fourths of online learners are high school students and this is because they can get credit recovery, dual enrollment or advanced placement through the online courses. And I agree that high school student have a diversity of needs, so online learning allows them have a flexibility in learning. I wondered that Canadian context is similar with the US.
So what?
In Korea, more that half a million students take a Korean college entrance exam like s SAT in the US. And this exam is held once a year. Most Korean students regard this exam as the think that may change their lives. It is surprising how important this exam is in Korea. On the day of this exam, people start work a few hours late so that students can go to take the exam on time without any traffic jams, even the flight schedules are changed in order to do not distract students during the listening comprehension sections. Theres only one test a year and if students don’t get the score they want, they have to wait another year. All students feel stress about the exam. So, I wish Korean context would be changed with the ways of getting credit recovery though k-12 online learning in the US or Canada. Korean students really need flexible learning possibilities of digital learning applies to all Korean K-12 students.
Now What?
How can Korean researchers contribute to promote flexible learning for students? Changing or reform Korean education or college entrance exams is a complicated problem because this problem is related to a lot of stakeholders. However, implications of online learning courses that give students an opportunities for recovering their credit to enter the college like a system in the US can be one of the helpful ways to reduce their stresses about their college entrance exams.
]]>What?
In the emergent session 1, our team discussed about how to build learning communities between remote classrooms using synchronous and asynchronous technology. The question was how we felt in the online room or on the screens in terms of connectivity. Several people talked they felt connected through a video conference and a side chat. One of the peers pointed out that the more flexible the instructors and the more they are willing to connect, the more learners feel connected. I totally agree with this idea. In addition to flexibility of instructors and willingness of connecting with learners, the small group discussion can be one of the helpful ways to build learning communities. Smaller groups can help people find their voice while people tent to pull back and listen in a big group. However, the one of the challenges for group discussion is the high frequency of silence between learners and teachers should fill this silence which can be challenging for teachers to manage online learning as well. Also, the other challenge is that who will control during the conversations without instructors. On the other hand, the mixture of synchronous video conference and asynchronous discussion using bulletin board can be one of the ways to promote learners’ engagement in online only courses. Only participating in asynchronous discussion can result in the kind of insolation that learners not feel connected with their peers and teachers, even though there are pros and cons of asynchronous and synchronous discussion. One of the peers told that he read something about the groups of students from China and the US who were working on a data set of water qualities between the two countries. Even though there are some interesting things, the time zone changes can be difficult. He is looking at collaboration between two remote communities. In the other’s idea, in which using the lit circles (everyone has a particular job) in the small groups would encourage participation and build community in an online class like icebreakers or some goal setting and giving learners some guideline can be useful for remote learners.
So What?
My main interests were related to online discussion when I pursued my masters especially, asynchronous discussion using bulletin board that can promote learners’ engagement in learning and learner-learners interaction or teacher-learners interaction. As I had only experience of asynchronous discussion, taking this course (online, blended and distributed learning) provide me to learn how attractive this synchronous technology is. I assumed that providing students both synchronous and asynchronous discussion in online courses would be helpful for promoting learners’ social presence as well as learners engagement. There are pros and cons of both synchronous and asynchronous discussion. First, students can have more time to think about their thoughts deeply when they participate in asynchronous discussion, while impromptu discussion in synchronous video conference can be a challenge for organizing their thoughts. However, participating synchronous video conference can give more ways to connect with their peers and instructors, while asynchronous discussion without physical contact can lead to make learners feel isolated.
Now What?
I would like to research this topic more, which is building learning communities using synchronous and asynchronous technology and focus on international students online learning experience. I wondered how they feel about connecting with other learners and instructors. Also, I wondered if synchronous online meeting can help them to feel more connected during the courses or if there are some challenges to participate in synchronous interactive session. I would like to research international students’ perceptions about online learning experiences using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Arbaugh, Bangert, & Cleveland-Innes, 2010) focusing on teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence.
References
The Community of Inquiry main website
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Future Technology Infrastructures for Learning (pages 199-230)
What?
This book provide the insights of future technology infrastructure including educational softwares and platforms. I can learn from this chapter that educational softwares or platform have several elements of control, integration, ownership, and structure and these elements can impact on the quality of learning and teaching activities. Also, the authors highlight the equitable model is important in education.
So What?
Competency-based education was the thing I was interested in my previous career in Korea so I was curious about the Tex which gives students competency-based educational system. This help students to build their personal profile related to their chosen career and interest so instructors can customize learning contents according to the students’ learning experiecnes and needs. I would like to know more about this personalized learning systems and effectiveness of this system.
Now What?
These day, personalized learning seems to ba a crucial norm in education field and distance learning or online learning can help to practice this idea of personalized learning. My though is that online learning is not a mandatory option to everyone, but this can be an option for someone who have a specific desire to learn. Empowering students to choose their own learning ways and flexibility will be more important and educators should think about how to design this learning environments.
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What?
This article presents that privacy concerns in education fields are being increased since data is an essential factor for learning and teaching process in these days as well as personal data is numerously collected for commercial or economic reason. The authors point out that institutions or educators should have an effort to protect students data privacy and empower students to be aware of their data privacy when they engage in online learning activities.
So What?
I totally agree with the author’s idea “data privacy comes with a special set of concerns and issues for students. First of all, if students want to participate in standard educational activities, they often have little opportunity for real choice or consent around what data is collected. Additionally, once the data is collected, students have little visibility into how that data will be leveraged, monetized, or exposed later on. Given ongoing developments in data science application and analysis, data that seems innocuous or even anonymous today may well put students at risk in the future”. Students are unaware of their data values and how can it be used in the future. I also can’t expect how my data will be used. While I was reading this article, one movie came to my mind. The title of the movie is Snowden and I watched this movie a few years ago. Before watching this move, I never thought about my data privacy and I didn’t care about it. Many people react like “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about” I am wondering how can I answer this question for my children. How can I teach my children to have a digital literacy as well as data privacy.
Now What?
Educational programs about the digital literacy or data privacy need to be developed for teachers and children or parents. We need to start to be aware of the challenges of collecting information in the internet and have related knowledge and the law. Even though we are ware of this concern, we don’t have a power to refuse it. Anyway, educators should think about protecting students from their data privacy in case of engaging in online learning.
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What?
This study demonstrates that how scholars imagine their audience when they participate in online academic activities. Because there has not much research on scholar’s use of social media and the imagined audience, this study helps to understand how scholars conceptualize their audience. Through their literature reviews, the imagined audience can be conceptualized severally. Some bloggers regard their audience as themselves, thinking people who have similar interests and trait. The most SNS users imagine their audience as a specific audience who are their friends and family. In addition, imagination of their audience can be different depending on social media environment such as Facebook or Twitter. While people know their audience well on Facebook, users on Twitter imagine their audience as targeting audience specifically. In terms of the users who are scholars and use social media for academic purposes, the authors points out that there are some tensions in participating in SNS with a diverse audience of people. Also, the faculty might have a gap between their imagined and actual audiences.
So what?
This article is interesting to me as it gives me an idea to think about the imagined audiences and their impact. I am not a person who actively use social media with academic purposes but thinking about imagined audiences seems to be valuable to explore. My imagined audience is always friends and family in Korea. As I started to communicate with local people in Canada, I was thinking about writing my post in English. Writing or posting by SNS is obviously affected by imagined audience. Since I only use SNS as a personal thing, this article can be helpful to reconsider the scholar’s concerns about posting their research or expertise. Also, Scholars have also specific audiences in mind and they find collapsed contests problems and also it can be a practised intention.
Now What?
Using SNS allows scholars to share their knowledge with groups of peers and connect academic social networks as well as keeping up to date with related topics and discovering new ideas. However, it is important to consider there are growing concerns or desires for the separation of professional and personal lives. Personally, I have a little concern about kind of the permanence of the record or digital records in social media. The academia.edu site is very new for me and need to be explored.
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What?
This reading provides the answer to the question of what is the role of the online educator? The author defines the several roles as an online educator from their literature review including managerial, pedagogical, social, technical, assessor, facilitator, content experts, instructional designer, researcher, and evaluator role. Also, this report demonstrates the related competencies for effective online teaching according to the online educator roles and the author emphasizes the importance of teacher presence in online learning presented in Community of inquiry (COI) model (Garrison et al., 1999).
So What?
The most interesting part of this report for me is the discussion on the idea of online educator presence in the community of inquiry model Garrison et al. (1999), in which includes the cognitive, social and teaching presence. As my topic of master’s thesis was the student’s social presence in the online learning environment, and I only focused on the student’s social presence, the ideas that both the students and the educator have roles within the three elements of the COL model was impressive. I agreed with the idea that participating in online courses can be challenged for learners with a sense of isolation which can affect learner’s satisfaction or learning motivation. Also, educator presence can be significant factors in online course discussion with social and cultural view.
Now What?
I am curious how to increase social presence in order to build international student and teacher relationships in online courses as international students are increasing all over the world. As well as international students might have difficulties in taking online courses as a second language student, but also the instructor might have barriers to promote international students to participate in the course actively and manage some problems with cultural differences. If there is a guideline for instructors and students how to design and take a, online course, this can help both of their teaching and learning.
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What?
This article provides the change and sustainability of the OER. Through the survey about online educational resources, the paper suggests that OER initiatives have been having sustainability challenges with insufficient operational funding support and the lack of knowledge and skills about Open Courseware among the faculty. However, the author argues that there are some factors of succession in OCW and OER, which are accessibility for global users and self-directed, informal learning, calls “enhance personal knowledge” as well as being used as courses, learning and teaching supporters or student recruitment. The successful project of open courseware production in MIT can affect the other institutions in extending their interests in the Open Courseware. The important thing is that openness can be a catalyst for innovations in order to be progressive change in education.
So What?
I have thought about the other factors influencing OCW use intentions among university students since this article does not provide the perception of the users. When I started my masters program in 2008, OCW was quite sensational for Korean students as they can learn English language as well as the subjects from MIT Open Courseware. As a global user of OCW in the past, I assumed that many Korean students’s usage intentions of OCW would be diverse experience using OCW and it could be fun, new and kind of light and entertaining materials. Since there were not sufficient programs to educate students how to use the OCW properly, the OCW or KOCW(Korean-Open Courseware) ended up for students by not expanding academic exchange with the world’s leading universities and they had difficulties with sustainability of KOCW and failure to meet the students’ continuous use intentions of OCW.
Now What?
Today’s society is based on knowledge and I believe open-courseware or open educational resources can be helpful for learners and instructors to do their work effectively for learning and teaching. However, there are many barriers to expand this useful tools because of funding or lack of interests in practice. Even though educators have positive intentions of OER, giving them incentives seems to be necessary. In addition to faculty, in order to improve leaners’ perception, they should be given opportunities to approach OCW or OEW with a variety of strategies to use it properly so that they can obtain benefits from the academic cooperation in global educational activities.
]]>In this article, the author provides the meaning of openness in education with a historical approach and current debates among the different open initiatives. I have learned from this paper that the beginning of the open education started by the students themselves and they desired to have knowledge. This impacted on the growth of universities. However, the shift from “pure” openness towards “pretended” openness is problematic. Some parts are not for learners but other stakeholders. Sometimes, I also often forgot the perspective of the importance of the open education as humanistic values and I shouldn’t have viewed the OER as ONLY efficient or pragmatic approach.
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