Christy's Study Blog

Throughout this EDCI 339 course, a lot has been taught about different approaches to learning and teaching. New approaches to learning are necessary, especially ways to complement technology to improve the way that knowledge is shared. For example, in the current pandemic, the teachers that had adopted different teaching approaches, such as online teaching, have had their teaching go on uninterrupted even with the closure of schools in Canada. Below is a reflection of some of the areas that have been covered in the course and how the knowledge can be applied.

An interesting concept that is covered in this course is the theory and practice of pedagogy. Pedagogy is an approach or process of passing knowledge where the theory and the practice of learning impact and are also impacted by the development of learners in various aspects, including social, political, and psychological (Crawford, 2017). A good example of pedagogy is where students and the teachers take different roles, and they combine their efforts to produce work and learning together. The teacher takes on the role of the facilitator to enable the students to realize their goals. Using this approach, all the students and the teacher are equally engaged in the process of passing knowledge. The advantage of this approach is, distractions that are common among students to reduce because they are engaged in the learning process.

Such approaches need to be adopted in the process of sharing knowledge. Soon, such approaches will be essential to make online learning more successful. With the current teaching methods, where the students are only expected to listen, interruptions are likely to affect the concentration of students, generally lowering the quality of the education. However, the pedagogy approach can be used to effectively facilitate online learning without compromising quality. This approach can be applied to future learning and in the meeting of employment goals better. Online learning has also been covered in the course, and solutions to some of the challenges that come with online learning have been covered (Ayala et al., 2018). The biggest discouraging factor in the adoption of online learning is the teachers’ inability to effectively follow up with the students to ensure they perform as expected. And the other challenge is addressing the ethical issues associated with online learning.

The course teaches how to best plan, design, and develop an interactive online learning environment that will address some of the challenges associated with online learning. As days move on, online learning is evolving from being a teaching option to the only teaching option (Colley et al., 2019). This is currently the case as the world deals with a pandemic. The content of this course is, therefore, very applicable. The course has also imparted knowledge about the different principles of learning design and how they can increase the effectiveness of different learning approaches and ensure their learning experiences are appealing to their learners. This knowledge can go a long way in ensuring that those who have covered this course are adaptive to the environment, and they can change to best satisfy the needs of their learners.

My fellow students have appreciated the knowledge they have gained from this course. Guided by some of the reviews that have been posted on Twitter using the hashtag #edci339, most students agree that open and online learning is possible using social platforms such as Twitter and Instagram to share knowledge. Open learning can allow students to learn better and be guided by their interests to ensure they gain the most.

In summation, the knowledge that has been provided in this course is applicable. As the world continues to evolve at a fast pace due to technology, new teaching approaches, such as online learning, have huge utility. The concepts of this course can enable it, learners, to be more flexible and enable them to adapt to the needs of their learners.

References

Ayala, J., Drolet, J., Fulton, A., Hewson, J., Letkemann, L., Baynton, M., … & Schweizer, E. (2018). Field education in crisis: Experiences of field education coordinators in Canada. Social Work Education, 37(3), 281-293.

Colley, P., Schouten, K., Chabot, N., Downs, M., Anstey, L., Moulin, M. S., & Martin, R. E. (2019). Examining Online Health Sciences Graduate Programs in Canada. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(3).

Crawford, R. (2017). Rethinking teaching and learning pedagogy for education in the twenty-first century: blended learning in music education. Music Education Research, 19(2), 195-213.

People use networks for learning purposes. Twitter is an ideal learning tool based on its features, functions, and architecture. Individuals, for example, teachers, pupils, students, employed, employees, and self-employed, can benefit significantly from Twitter. After searching some of the assigned twitter accounts and hashtags, I have observed that Twitter is a good platform for discussion and information sharing. Learners post questions, and others share their responses to these questions. The content shared was to do with the benefits of open education, the benefits of open education, and links to websites that provide Open Education Resources (OER) (Wiley& Hilton, 2018). Moreover, other individuals shared twitter accounts, which their colleagues can follow to get more information about OER.

Twitter is an ideal channel for disseminating information. The open platform is beneficial to both learners and educators in a variety of ways. Both educators and learners can quickly and easily tweet details of assignments and homework. Besides, the educator or the learner can share links to valuable online sources and pages. Additionally, Twitter is a useful tool for learners’ collaboration (Lowe, 2016). Leaners can tackle a collaborative assignment with ease. The educators have a chance to intervene, give advice, and share valuable links with the students. Moreover, both educators and learners can get links to relevant links and also have insights and ideas from other individuals around the world.

The 280 characters post limit is a harm to both learners and educators. This is because limits give limited room for response elaboration, which can cause misinterpretation (Dumford & Miller, 2018). By making the message too short, in-depth thinking of both learners and educators is restricted. Additionally, twitter causes harm to educators and learners because of the increased workload. It is challenging to maintain the flow of leaners’ and educators’ interaction.

Twitter can be used to increase education access by sharing links to relevant websites, twitter accounts, and useful learning materials. Enhancing collaboration between learners is essential for their learning. For instance, a learner posts a question about a particular topic, and others have a chance to share their knowledge about the subject. Besides, the learners can interact with individuals out of class using the hashtag feature, which connects learners, educators, and other interested individuals.

References

Wiley, D. & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-enabled Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 19(4).

Lowe, R. E. M. (2016). Education all a’Twitter: Twitter’s role in educational technology.

Dumford, A. D., & Miller, A. L. (2018). Online learning in higher education: exploring advantages and disadvantages for engagement. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 30(3), 452-465.

Access to knowledge and information are fundamental human rights that every individual should enjoy. In the competitive higher education world, educational resources are significant intellectual property, and that was the core reason why access to these materials was a privilege to professors and students (Karaganis, 2018). Bearing in mind that everyone has a right to knowledge and information is a right of all humans, open education is a significant facilitator towards fulfilling these rights.

From the assigned readings, I have noticed that different institutions and approaches have been put in place to facilitate the access of information for the good of professors, students, and society at large. There have been notable collaboration in raising awareness about and promoting positive attitudes towards open education. Individuals and institutions use the internet to share digital resources free of technical, financial, and legal barriers (Gilliard, 2016). I have also noticed that different concerned organizations are making efforts not only to provide open education resources but also to facilitate learning by integrating cultural aspects and development of enterprise, which makes the learners feel that the knowledge is contributing to personal growth.

Despite that open education provide many benefits, for example, broader participation in education, and improvement of students’ satisfaction and performance ((DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2018), I am wondering how these approaches are tackling the obvious challenges of developing a collaborative online community and ensuring that the content available in the platforms is of high quality. Besides, some individuals who are willing to learn might be living in areas where internet connection is erratic, and some do not have gadgets that access the network. Without measures to address these issues, I wonder how open education is beneficial to the broader society.

I have been inspired by the efforts made by different platforms to promote access to learning. Through the open education platforms, and individuals can access educational materials from any corner of the world, repeatedly and at any time if the individual has access to the internet. Besides, I have been inspired by the fact that with internet access, a learner can enjoy substantially reduced costs of learning materials as compared to the traditional course packs and textbooks.

References

Karaganis, J. (2018). Shadow Libraries: access to knowledge in global higher education (p. 320). The MIT Press.

Gilliard, C. (2016). Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy | Common Sense Education. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/digital-redlining-access-and-privacy

DeRosa, R., & Jhangiani, d. (2018). Open Pedagogy. Retrieved from https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/chapter/open-pedagogy/

I realized how social media could influence the style of teaching after I read the article. The technology enhances the student to effectively communicate with the educator in a way that the traditional face to face class could not allow.  The students use a cornucopia of informational and HR available through the network and the educator’s encouragement, making it easier to learn collaboratively and cooperatively. I noticed that the critical factor in online reading and learning is how to use the available technology (Major, 2015). Although it is a new idea, it is not a complicated process. Social media allows learners to create knowledge together while personally reflecting on the learning itself. In other words, I have realized that social media is one of the most important techniques educators can utilize since they give learners the ability to obtain more useful information while connecting with the learning groups as well as the other educational systems. This makes the entire learning process more convenient by providing the learners and institutions with different opportunities to improve learning techniques.

After completing the reading of Jordan and Weller (2017), I gained a deeper insight into the open education technique in schools, including its origin from the UK. I did not have a clear image of how the open classrooms could be in the 1970s. This material helped me in clearing my traditional misunderstanding between the concept of open education or the open classroom with online learning (Jordan & Weller, 2017). The internet was not available during the time, and there was no much innovative technology as the current.  Most importantly, the material helped me understand the evolution of the open education concept from 1969 to the current era. The theme of open education has significantly changed from its initiation, mainly due to technology innovation and changing learning requirements.

The author did not indicate the challenges associated with implementing online learning techniques. Anything with benefits should also have some limitations or disadvantages. I expected the author to indicate self-discipline issues since the learners utilizing the online techniques are required to have high self-discipline to remain engaged. The learners who remain unengaged could be a challenge as their activities may not be effectively monitored. I also expected the author to indicate the issues of plagiarisms and cheating by the online learner. Keeping in mind, the learners are using computers and the internet; they could easily plagiarize their essays and other works. The learner may also cheat on online exams.

Jordan, K., & Weller, M. (2017). Openness and education: a beginner’s guide. Global OER Graduate Network.

Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching online: A guide to theory, research, and practice. JHU Press. (pp. 88-105)  http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874

After reading the first article, I totally agree with Stommel’s idea on education. She mentioned in the article that “stop attempting to distinguish so incessantly between online and on-ground learning, between the virtual and the face-to-face, between digital pedagogy and chalkboard pedagogy”. (Stommel, 2018) Different teaching method has their own pros and cons and there is no right or wrong. The best teaching method is any way that an instructor could deliver the knowledge to the learners effectively and understanding the need of students. Educational technology platforms indeed provide us with better and more convenient ways to access resource from the internet than face-to-face learning. For example, you can download the textbook to your laptop, you can search keywords on the laptop to jump to the part you need in the textbook, whereas using paper copied textbook is harder to locate to certain information. Technology aids students to learning more effectively, however, both learners and instructors should pay close attention to the eight major ethical concerns: information privacy; anonymity; surveillance; autonomy; non-discrimination; and ownership of information while using edtech. (Regan, 2019)
It then brings me thinking about the concept of blended teaching strategy in Vaughan’s article. Blended teaching “addresses the educational needs of the course or program through a thoughtful fusion of the best and most appropriate face-to-face and online activities”. (Vaughan, 2013) The purpose of blended teaching strategy is to have the students more engaged in the educational environment and share their understanding. This reminds me of one of my psychology course. The instructor presents pre-recorded mini-lectures and reading assignments for students to complete and then ask us to write online discussion about the materials; this is an example of “the text-based online asynchronous communication” that students share their thoughts, reflective and understanding online based on the assigned reading and videos. My instructor also provides online office hours through Blackboard Collaboration, where she answers the questions that students are concern about and giving feedbacks on assignments. The real-time office hour would be identified as “face-to-face synchronous communication”. In conclusion, I think all three articles are extremely helpful for use to understand the importance of technology in educational context.

Hello, My name is Christy Lo, I am from HongKong. I am a fourth year economic student at Uvic. I don’t have any experience related to full online course. Because of the situation right now(during COVID-19), online courses are becoming the mainstream of learning and teaching. I’m interested in experiencing new method to learn and I believe I will definitely learn lots that I never had before. And this course can help me to do best in time management since I have to arrange my time and plan the schedule well. I am getting use to take online courses due to COVID-19. I am looking forward to take EDCI 339 and learn from this course. Hope to see everyone in the future.

The reason why an understanding of digital privacy and security, FIPPA, and acceptable use policies of educational institutions an essential aspect of distributed and open learning is because it guarantees student’s online privacy is kept safe. Moreover, it provides better online study environment which protects students personal information. In addition, it ensures that students are learning from a safe platform and provide better learning experience.

All in all, hope to have fun and learn a lot in this class. Thanks for teaching.

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