Final Reflection

Week 14 Reflection

Just when we are getting to enjoy the course, it has to come to the end. Wow! The last two weeks had been a hell of a week for all of us; for me, I was pressured from all sides and all angles in particular by the FALE newsletter where less than two weeks time frame was given to us to work within, that made me think, oh, my god, how will I ever accomplish all these crucial tasks!  I thought I would be able to make, but incredibly, I did, and so did the rest of us.

In the group activity assigned by our facilitator, it allowed us not only to experience the pressure under which we worked in, in order to achieve our target, but more importantly it made us realize the vitality of being a team player. The commitment that each one of us put in to accomplishing the major task was a crucial characteristic that students need to possess in team or group work. With our course, we are fortunate that majority of us are mature learners thus we know of the obligation we have towards the group task. This is something that we, facilitators, need to be aware of and must always encourage our students to motivate them to participate effectively in group or team work. Roby (2005) provided some tips into how we can successfully include peer collaboration in an online course, which can be accessed from this link http://www.magnapubs.com/newsletter/online-classroom/story/2415/

The task also reminded us of the important role the facilitator plays during the presentation to ensure that we participate fully and effectively. This was made possible when she gave us full control of the presentation and to make decisions particularly spontaneous ones when she was referred to. For example when asked by one of the groups for something, she said, that she the group had to decide and go by it. This made me realize that this is what facilitators need to do to allow learners to feel responsible and value the worth of the group work.

Overall, I have enjoyed the course very much. I have learnt great many things that are pertinent to the success running of an online programme, which I will, for sure, use in my online programme.

To all ED403 students, I thank you for being active participants of the class through your postings, comments, and contributions making the virtual class lively and a place to visit now and again.

To our facilitator, I commend you very much for giving us so much with online learning ideas, concepts, skills and practices enabling us to be better and effective online learning teachers. I thoroughly enjoyed the course.

All the best to your future endeavours!

Week 13 Reflection

The topic and readings this week further enlightened me on the challenges of online learning in the context of the South Pacific countries. Gold, et.al., (2002) presents the following as challenges faced by online learners of USP.

·      Student access to computers

·      Lack of electricity or telephone service

·      Travelling to the nearest technology center is impossible

·      Cost to own a computer and/or using a computer and the internet is exorbitant

·      Scarce resources to develop technology-based materials (expensive)

·       Inexperience of distance education staff of the technology

My reflection

The above challenges or realities of using technology at USP show that the university should dedicate more of its time and money to bettering the situations in its regional campuses by providing more access to computers, improving electricity, training its online learning staff.

If I were asked what the major challenge of online learning at USP is, I’d vouch for the last point above – inexperience of distance education staff of the technology – including their lack of awareness of what entails online learning, and their lack of training on developing successful online learning courses.

From experience, two years ago, USP made a commitment that it will become a fully (100%) online learning institution resulted in many like me having no choice but use Moodle to deliver my course. With the support of a colleague from the Centre of Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL), plus the few workshops conducted by way of introducing the concept of Moodle and giving some practice for the participants, I was able to upload the content of my course on Moodle ready for learners’ use. The course looked perfect online and I thought, well, my students would enjoy and benefit from this course. I was proud of myself, but little did I know of the glitches fundamental to the success of online learning.

First and foremost challenge in my course is the lack of interaction and participation from students. A Forum was created; students were told of what the forum was for and what they have to do; questions were posted for them to respond to; they were reminded many times to participate in the forums, but to no avail. There was neither single response nor a posting, let alone meaningful, in these. The Forums were used only for clarifications on assignment submissions and test dates; nothing at all that might have triggered a meaningful discussion and learning experience.  I was frustrated because I could not communicate meaningfully with my learners, but I did not know how to improve the situation then. If I had had the proper training of developing online courses, I would not be frustrated neither were my learners.  

Secondly, the fact that there were no student engagements contributed to the boringness of the course and lack of motivation on learners to meet the requirements of the course.  Again, I had no idea that I can increase student motivation by making the course interesting with the inclusion of online learning tools, authentic assessments, and varieties of activities like teamwork where they communicate with members of the group to achieve the task.  If I had the proper awareness and training on delivering online learning, my learners would have enjoyed the course.

Thirdly, the students were not taken into consideration in relation to the first reality pointed out by Gold, et.al. (2002) above. The decision by USP management to go online learning full time assumed that distance learners have had access to computer and internet connectivity. If computer accessibility is an issue in the pacific region; what about computer literacy? Many of my students come to the course finding the use of computer intimidating because they have never used before. Ok, what about English language literacy? At what level of language usage should the communication be pitched? I believe, that all these should be done right at the beginning of the course or before the commencement of the semester – carryout your students’ needs analysis – to find out what they need and to give you ideas on how to assist them to enhance their learning.

USP has a long way to go in terms of online learning particularly where his distance education staff and students are concerned. The literature also offers a rich body of research on whole range of aspects pertaining the success of online learning. The links below are two examples.

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ers0303/rs/ers03036.pdf This article talks about the impact of e-learning on instructors and students, some which are relevant to our context.

http://eprints.oum.edu.my/145/1/issues_and_challenges.pdf In this article, the issues and challenges of implementing e-learning in Malaysia were discussed. Many of these are similar to what we face here at USP.

Best!

Week 12 Reflection

This week’s readings were interesting particularly in highlighting the challenges that teachers and learners of online learning in the pacific can encounter. Although the studies concentrated on Science, the challenges can be implied generally across the learning spectrum of online learning. The challenges of online learning in the South Pacific are many, and different words and phrases were used to mean the same thing, so below are my attempt in grouping them under common umbrellas.  

Ø  Technology

Issues under this umbrella would be anything to do with the technology such as expensive to obtain and maintain, poor access to ICT equipment, low awareness of the benefits of ICT, low connectivity speeds & repairing, difficult to repair broken equipments

Ø  Academic

Issues relative to academic may include course quality, poor course development, boring activities, inappropriate assessment tasks,

Ø  Professional  

Issues in this regard relate to the teacher’s ‘know how’ of online learning/teaching, class size, teaching presence, time for research,

Ø  Learners – readiness to learn online, computer illiterate, scared to use new technology, low awareness of the importance of online learning thus participating in online activities is not valued

My reflection

The literature gives insights into the challenges of online learning that are more or less related directly to our Pacific context. For example, the study by Hogan and Kedrayate (2010) investigated the possibility of using an innovative, blended learning approach to deliver Science training in the Pacific (Tonga, Vanuatu, The Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu). The fact that the study was done in a Pacific context does not warrant Pacific-wide application of the challenges that were identified therein. This is because, learners in the region have diverse and distinct backgrounds in terms of language, education, backgrounds, religions, societies, which play crucial roles in the learning process of pacific island students, and as Yusuf (2009) points out, to apply such findings across the South Pacific Atlanta can be quite challenging. I support this, and so suggest that we – Pacific educators – need to get involved in a lot of research; we need to do our own studies in our own environments and in areas critical to the successful development of online learning.

From experience, I think, researching our own practices is something we – pacific educators – are not accustomed to, but we must realize the importance of it in the learning process, and must start executing it. We need to engage ourselves more in action research so that we know how to improve our individual practices in our own contexts.  

Week 11 Reflection

Key Points

The reading on ‘Preparing K-12 Teachers to Teach Online’ by Kearsley and Blomeyer (2004) explains the importance of preparing online teachers to enable them to do their job well. According to the reading, online teachers should:

• ·        be able to dedicate 2 hours at least every day online (teaching presence)
• ·        respond frequently and supply frequent feedback to students’ postings
• ·        be flexible and accommodating in her teaching approach
• ·        be confident to do online teaching
• ·        know the appropriate workload a course should have
• ·        know where to turn to when challenges are face (technical, administrative, etc)
• ·        be able to develop and design online learning materials that would best suit their students
• ·        etc., etc., etc.

In a nutshell, I think before a teacher is engaged in online teaching, training is paramount. The facilitator needs to be made aware of what online learning encompasses; how to develop an effective online course; what is out there that she can use in her online class to enhance the learning. Without prior knowledge of these things, the online course or learning will surely fail, and I am talking from experience. With my EL001 course, it was a failure because there was zero interaction and/or student engagement mainly because

“the facilitator had no awareness or idea of what encompassed online learning when she was asked to put her course on Moodle in 2010; neither were there any pre-training as to the use and benefits of online learning. The facilitator was made to believe that all that mattered was the content, and as long as there was one on the Moodle shell, everything was fine” (Laupepa, 2012; 5).

If an online teacher knows what online teaching and learning entail, she would know what activities to use that would best get her learners engage more with each other, with the content and with the teacher; what tools to use that would best relay course content and information to learners, and those also that would best obtain optimum results from students.

Doing ED403 course sheds light into the many things, ideas, tools, activities, etc, etc, that I can use in my online course (future). An example is a story that I created this morning using the Storybird online tool, which can be accessed from this link http://storybird.com/books/my-experience-of-ed403/?token=5rp48d. I think this is an excellent tool to promote language learning in particular.

I also came across this link http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/janehart/toptools2012/2 where we can access many online learning tools, scrutinize them and use them to our advantage.

Looking forward to learning more!

  

Week 10 Reflection

Elements of a successful online learning were covered this week particularly from the perspective of the teacher in what she/he has to do to move students to achieve learning outcomes successfully. The reading by Hobgood (????) clearly explained the online teacher’s role in reference to his own experience, making it very practical. I can easily relate myself to the reading in that what was said was very true. The following are some of the elements that a teacher online needs to know of and implement in his/her course.

·        Supporting students

·        Planning

·        A realistic workload

·        A learning community

·        Building a comfort zone

·        The instructor’s role in maintaining communication

·        Teaching presence

·        Use a variety of activities (synchronous and asynchronous)

·        Etc, etc, etc.

There is a lot that is being said regarding the above on the internet that teachers can fall back on to support and enhance their online teaching. 

My reflection

I don’t have much to reflect here because I feel that Hobgood has said it all. The challenges encountered were similar to the ones I went through also and I like his ideas of how to combat the issues. The reading was also very easy to comprehend.

However, there are two issues I’d like to raise in regards to students’ postings.

11. Teaching presence is emphasized as one of the best practices of online learning, but if you have 200 students, you will not certainly respond to each and every student, will you? How will we then choose which ones to respond to and when to respond?

22. How do we grade the postings? Everyone is required to answer a question given and to comment also on colleagues postings; how are these graded – according to the number of postings posted which may not be of quality? Students need to know how they will be graded. 

I do believe that the role of the online teacher is as important as the traditional teacher but in very different ways. The success of any learning depends on the teacher. 

Happy learning everyone!

Week 9 Reflection - IP and Copyright

Key points

Ø  Generally, Intellectual Property is giving protection over creations of the mind and giving creators rights over their work from being exploited.

Ø  Under IP, there are two branches: Industrial Property and Copyright.

o   Industrial Property refers to creators of new ideas or inventions as new solutions to technical problems in industries, and in order for the new ideas to be used by the public, authorization should be granted first and foremost by the creator.

o   Copyright “relates to artistic creations, such as books, music, paintings and sculptures, films and technology-based works such as computer programs and electronic databases. Generally” (WIPO, 1). Copyright is known as the right of the author over his artistic work that he himself can only give. For example, reproduction of work, authorization has to be granted first.

§  In some countries, the concept of fair use or fair dealing exists.  “This allows use of works without the authorization of the rights owner, taking into account factors such as the nature and purpose of the use, including whether it is for commercial purposes; the nature of the work used; the amount of the work used in relation to the work as a whole; and the likely effect of the use on the potential commercial value of the work” (WIPO, 1).

Ø  Every country has its own Copyright laws, and there may differences from country to country, and that we need to know.

My reflection

Copyright in the academic arena is becoming an issue in that our students are repeatedly plagiarizing despite being told and informed not to for they will be penalized heavily. Yes, we tell our students: do not plagiarise; ensure that the author(s) are acknowledged; use the proper in-text methods to avoid copying; yet our students do not seem to grasp this. I am sure our students are bright thus one wonders what the problem could be.  I believe students understood very well what it means by Copyright; they know they should acknowledge the use of other people’s works, but the problem, I believe lies within the ‘how’ of the Copyright: how to properly and correctly use quotes, rephrase and paraphrase, and in-text referencing and citations.  Therefore, instead of telling our students to avoid plagiarism; we need to seriously start training them not to. For example, have a unit in your course dedicated to IP and Copyright with which learners can be taught the skills of referencing proper. At the institution level, all courses can be mandated to do this. At the national level, a component of IP and Copyright can be included in all sectors of education. I think this is something that we online facilitators have to be serious about.  

Given the rise in the concept of IP and Copyright, I think our students needed to be taught right from the beginning of their education journey to give them practice to acquire the relevant skills well, and people with authorities at educational institutions and ministries may incorporate the concept of IP and Copyright in the school curricula. What you guys think?

Another possible reason as to why our students may not comprehend the concept of IP and Copyright well is due to the fact that the concept is foreign in the Pacific countries. In most of the Pacific countries, creations, new ideas and inventions are known as indigenous knowledge and are meant to be shared for the welfare of everyone. For example, a new recipe is shared to other women if the creator was prompted; the same goes for medicinal methods. Everything is of free use, no laws of anything attached to new ideas. On the contrary, when students enter the arena of tertiary institutions they are required to abide by the laws of copyright – something totally new to them. This, I believe calls for a lot of work and commitment on our part as online facilitators to assist learners become better equipped with the proper knowledge of how not to plagiarize.

IP and Copyright concentrates on industrial property and copyright (artistic works), what about traditional knowledge (TK). This may not relate to ED403 directly, but it something important that we have to think of for the future generations of your country. The importance of TK is evident as Rao (???) states below:

Traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (or “expressions of folklore”)

(TCEs) are important elements of the cultural heritage and social and historical identity of

many local and indigenous communities, as well as many nations and regions with a shared

cultural history. They are increasingly recognized as key elements of the future well-being

and sustainable development, as well as the intellectual and cultural vitality, of those

communities and are often seen as part of the “common heritage of mankind” in the sense

that all humanity should share in their benefits.

TK and TCEs are, on the one hand, valuable cultural assets of the communities who maintain,

practice and develop them. On the other hand, they are also economic assets as they are

creations and innovations that can, if so wished, be traded or licensed for income-generation

and economic development. They may also serve as an inspiration to other creators and

innovators who can adapt them to derive new creations and innovations.

Visit the following links for more information.

http://www.wipo.int/freepublications/en/tk/933/wipo_pub_933.pdf on understanding Copyright and related rights;

http://www.wipo.int/freepublications/en/tk/1014/wipo_pub_1014.pdf on Traditional knowledge and indigenous people.

Enjoy reading!

Week 8 Relection

As always, the readings this week are intriguing and very informative. They broadened my understanding of the importance of student engagement or interaction, and gave a lot of insights as to how to engage learners from diverse backgrounds with differences in learning styles and abilities. Listed below are some of the things learnt from the topic this week. In order to promote online learning,

·         Interaction is the key to promote online learning or quality in the learning

·         Quality interaction can be achieved by the inclusion of a variety of activities, therefore care must be taken into account in the designing of activities to ensure that activities:

o   cater for the different learning backgrounds and styles of online learners

o   feature high order thinking skills tasks mostly

o   are authentic

o   interesting enough to motivate learners to participate

o   are easy to comprehend and simple to follow and do

·         Instructors’ presence or feedback is vital

·         Interaction among student is also a vital element of online learning outcomes.

·         Instructor plays an essential role in making interaction a viable means of promoting learning through the technology

My reflection

From experience, none of the above happened in my course (EL001) although I knew that interaction plays an important part; two reasons for this. First, my understanding of online learning, let alone online interaction, was very limited and I did not know how to get my learners interact with me or with each other or with the content. I admit there was no interaction at all happening because there was no meaningful inferences resulted from the few contributions that were made. Participation from students centered mostly on questions like ‘when is the assignment due?’, or ‘can I submit my activity via email instead of Moodle?’ I tried formulating thought provoking questions and posted it in the forum thinking that it would make a change in students’ interaction, but it did not.  I just couldn’t get anything out of my students, and I think the problem ties closely with the willingness of the learner to participate. I felt that students were just not interested in the course and would not bother. This is something that we as instructors/facilitators have to think about because no matter how interesting or good your activities might be, but if students were not willing to participate they will not.

Secondly, when I was given the coordinatorship of EL001, I had no idea what to do regarding online education, so I basically followed what my predecessor did. The course materials she used became my course guides also, all of which were used for the online learners of EL001. I had no training as to usefulness of online interaction or in what to do to bring about positive outcomes in student interactions. I guess the university expected me to do my research and find out things on my own, but nothing of this sort happened because I didn’t think there would resources about online education available. I was too naïve to think that.  

Now, with all the readings given, not only in this week, but since the beginning of this course, I am beginning to perceive wonderful things about online education and how the technology can actually be utilised to promote learning. The readings also deepened my understanding of how an online course can be designed and used to the advantage of the learners. I can now say with confidence that I can devise my EL001 course taken into account the many ideas learnt so far not only to better engage my learners and also to promote learning.  

While I am overwhelmed by the readings and the knowledge gained, I cannot stop thinking about some of the challenges underpinning some of the great ideas regarding online interaction.

Online learning is good for independent learners; those who can take control of their learning, for example, can work on their own to meet deadlines; they can work with less supervision and are no doubt capable learners. On the contrary, dependent learners are going to find online learning challenging if there was not much support and encouragement from the instructor. These learners will always rely on the facilitator for guidance and support thus if the facilitator slackens in fostering and maintaining this connection, these learners will either fall behind and/or opt out of the course. I think dependent learners will be our challenge as facilitators for we have to keep them in mind in the designing stage of the course and the activities. Catering for dependent learners will be challenging given that these learners went through an education system where they are ‘spoon-fed’ and dependency on the teacher is high. This type of system breeds passive learners who in their tertiary education are required all of a sudden to be active and independent learners.

I think this contributes largely to online learners’ willingness to participate successfully; the fact that they were not taught nor encouraged to be independent nor active learners is a major barrier in their online education. This is very true of Pacific Island learners, and it is something that facilitators or instructors need to think about and undoubtedly this calls for or more research on this area.

Additionally is the English language proficiency issue. If you had students in virtual classroom who could not communicate in good correct English, what do we facilitators do? I believe that this is a road-block to students participation and success in learning; are we going to offer assistance in this regard, and if so, what and how?

All in all, I think, for online learning to successful, a close connection needs to be established and maintained through out the course as ways of monitoring and supporting learners along the way. It is the instructor’s job to ensure that this happens.

I also think that the need for research on online education in the Pacific contexts is paramount.