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.