Learning Curve

In this Developing Skills for Online Learning class, besides all the e-learning concepts and technologies that I learnt from the weekly online synchronous or asynchronous classes, the most valuable thing that I have gained is the awareness of self-directed learning. From facilitating one class session on the topic of "Online Learners", doing reading assignments and posting reflections on the group discussion topics in the learning management system, and some other critical and practical learning activities, I have improved my study skills, time management skills, and collaborative skills. There is limited time for the class session in one semester, but the learning experience in this class built my intrinsic motivation to keep working on the readings and practices on e-learning.

Alternate Reality Learning

Using Second Life Avatar to build social network in a virtual world may support the education in the real world. Alternate reality learning provides users rich visual and interactive instruction; self-paced and flexible learning schedule; and an opportunities to expand the users' social network from the communication, collaborative learning experience in the virtual world. Alternate reality learning and other forms of e-learning may not be able to fully replace the traditional in-class learning, but they provide learners more opportunities to have new forms of learning experiences with the consideration of the traditional teaching and learning principles in the society. Alternate reality learning may not be able to fulfill people's every need in the desire of learning, and may not be able to overcome the barriers of the cultural differences. Alternate reality learning requires the development in higher-quality of game design, usability design, and computer programing. An improved user-interface and user-experience design will engage and increase learners' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. 

The Advantages of E-learning

E-learning is a trend nowadays, especially for adult learning. The advantages of E-learning are as follows:

1. E-learning is a type of distance learning. Learners take courses online synchronously or asynchronously.
2. Learners have flexible learning schedule, since they have the opportunities to do asynchronous study.
3. The learning content can be more focused to meet the learners' needs. E-learning includes training courses to meet organizations' needs.
4. Since E-learning is developed along with the development of internet technology and telecommunication technology, the design for E-learning courses can be more interactive and engaging for each learner compared to the traditional in-class learning.

Here is a Youtube video of CISCO introducing E-learning.

Online Instruction

Besides all the advantages of an e-learning course, I realized the following disadvantages of e-learning based on my experience:
1. Asynchronous learning may makes the learners out of track of the core learning content.
2. When in the case of traditional in-class learning take place every week, e-learning course may schedule to give learners more self-study time which may cause inefficiency to go through the learning curve.
3. Learners may feel isolate in the virtual learning environment with less learning context explored. The learners don't meet their classmates face to face, which decreases the possibilities to build a healthy social network and learning community.
4. It is difficult for learners to communicate with their instructor. The learners may not be able to get immediate (within 48 hours) feedback from the instructor.

Reading Reflection - Is Google making us stupid?

I really like my reading reflection on Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains; so I would like to post it here to keep record:

When people feel they have increased demands of accessing information and they don’t have enough time to read; maybe there is a great change in the society demands, but not only in how the digital devices influence people’s reading habits. It sounds like that as the developed of digital technologies influencing the society, the society got powerful enhancement and increased the need and requirements for people from keeping the speed of development. Compared to the old days, people nowadays are surrounded by more and more accessible information, and they are demanded to read the information if they don’t want to fell behind the development of the world. In other words, the technology evolution, such as Google, maybe one of the reasons that caused the information exploding; and at the meanwhile, Google helps people to speed-up in catching up with the updates. The problem is that, if people know how to get used to the change in the world.

People who invented computer used to do research in the library by reading paper based documents and books. There were many brilliant people in the history made successful achievement, but they didn’t have digital devices such as computer to assist their work.

Similar to Carr addresses in the article, when television was first invented and became popular in publics’ lives; people felt the difference between reading paper-based books and watching TV. There are educators addressing how bad that watching TV affects children’s brain; some educators appeal to reading books is the good way for education.

Computer-based internet searching and the application of other digital devices are evaluation in the Human history; they are changing the world and they can assist the traditional teaching and learning methods. Carr mentioned that “the Net is becoming a universal medium” (Carr, 2008). Here is a question: Can Google searching engine take place of library research? There is not an easy answer.

Before comparing the difference between accessing information from paper-based format and digital format, there is a need to addressing people’s reading purposes. I assume that there is a big different between people reading for research and reading for relax. Even though Carr mentioned in the article that people exhibit the site “as ‘a form of skimming activity,’ hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited” (Carr, 2008); there is no clear study on what are people’s reading purposes in this case.

The Library of Alexandria was the first library in the world. I was founded in Egypt in the 4^th Century B.C. During the centuries, people study library science for building a better system for collecting and organizing information. The library has paper-based books organized under categories. Along with the development of technologies, new formats of information storage got applied in the library, such as, Microfilm, Microfiche, etc.; books were published in electronic versions; databases were built; computers got installed in the library for publics. I can feel that the computer technology is changing my expectation of seeking for information. When I read a paper-based document, I was thinking to use “Ctrl+F” to look for the keyword that I was looking for, which is the option in a computer-based document.

I list the differences between accessing information from paper-based format and digital format as follow:

Paper-based books

Publishing period:

The publishing of books take time. There is a processing period from the author finish the book to the book is published in the bookstore.

Library is for general public needs:

The library may not be able to get the most up-to-date books in the library storage; and the library cannot get every book to meet all the readers’ need.

Waiting time:

People can get books from Inter-library loan, but takes 2 to 3 days to actually get the book.

Storage format:

Paper-based document needs physical space to store.

Google and other Internet access

Publishing period:

The information online is much more quickly delivered, for example, if you pay the fee and get access to the database, you can read books or scholarly articles from nook, kindle, iPad, etc. The problem is that not every book is published in the electronic version.

Searching information online:

There is no guarantee that you can get all the information you need from the internet either, but because of the technology, such as Web 2.0; and searching engine, such as Google, Wikipedia, MIT opencourseware; people have a broader varieties of information resources and a better chance to get the information they need. The problem of online resources is that the information may not be as accurate, academic, authorized, such as, professors will not recommended students to cite information from an unofficial website in their paper. 

Waiting time:

Accessing information online doesn’t require much waiting time as far as you have a good internet connection; how much time that you need to put into searching the information is also depends on how popular is your research topic. There may not be mush resources online if your research topic is merely heard of.

Storage format:

Digital document is stored in the virtual world as cloud or server; existing in the physical world as CD, hard drive, etc. 

Conclusion:

Paper-based information is classic which people got used to. Accessing information online provides people convenience and efficiency. 21^st is called information explosion era. It is a whole new way of doing business which may be benefit to the publishing industry to save materials, money, and time to publish paper-based products, and store information in digital format to circulate information more rapidly and easier.   

Are we becoming wiser by using the technologies in learning? In other words: Are there many differences between publics nowadays and people lived centuries ago? Do people from different centuries have different cognitive styles or learning styles? How different do people perform and act in learning? Most of the people living in the world nowadays don't have the great achievement as some great inventors and scientists lived in the human history. Somehow it shows the evidence that the efficiency of learning is not solely relay on technology; learning happens from the connection of experience, prior knowledge, practice, introspection, etc.; the studies on biopsychology and neuropsychology discover the mystery of behavior and learning process. There is no doubt that no matter living in which centuries, scientists are the people who focus on their research, have the access to the most updated technologies, and have strong creativity and problem solving skills. Similar to the example that two students are learning the same content with the same instructor, but the learning outcomes are vary on various scale; nowadays, living in the same technology surroundings, people achieve learning outcomes differently. People seems don't know how to read, learn, and remember things nowadays since there is too much information and the brain is just not powerful enough to process efficiently. It is not Google making us stupid; it is people don't know how to use Google to become wiser.

Reference:

Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains. Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

Interactive and Collaborative Learning

I would like to save parts of my weekly critical summary comments to this blog:

As a famous Chinese proverb says, "No man is his craft's master the first day", the learners need the instructors guidance during the learning process where the learners will experience different stages like climbing ladders or up-and-down curves. Another expression similar to the Chinese proverb that I quoted before which is "A man can lead a horse to the water but cannot make him drink". The learners need to learn how to select valuable information which fits their online learning content, because getting distraction in the ocean of information will disvalue learners' learning outcomes and drain of their energy.  Along with the development of accessing information online and taking online courses, the systematic instructions and logical constructions should be provided to learners, otherwise, the learners cannot acquire qualified learning content and learning efficiently.

People think differently than they used to. People’s reading habits are changing. When computer or other digital devices get hooked to the internet, there is a feeling, mentally or physically, that there is a channel leads people from the reality to the virtual world. It is a different feeling when people read online and read traditional paper-books. The feeling that people can touch the paper, draw highlights between the lines is the way people got used to; compare to that, using tablet to draw lines on the touch screen may cause the feeling of not doing a serious reading or not easy to concentrate on.

Reference:

Ludwig-Hardman, S. & Dunlap, J. C. (2003). Learner support services for online students: Scaffolding for success. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(1), 1-15.

Menchaca, M. & Bekele, T. A. (2008). Learner and instructor identified success factors in distance education. Distance Education, 29(3), 231–252.

Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains. Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

Online Learning from TED

If you are willing to know more about the strategies for designing a presentation; you would like this TED speech:

Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks

Nancy's PowerPoint design meets the simplicity principle; using charts in the two examples (Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King, Jr.) to state her findings through her research on speech patterns.

Presentation skills are important to instructional designers. The instructional designers need to have the ability to express their thoughts clearly to their audience with organized structure; coherence; and using technologies to demonstrate the efficiency of their design procedure.