Month: November 2020

The EDCI 339 course outcomes embodies key concepts, relating to an introduction to the practice of learning design and its application to interactive learning environments. Of the six learning outcomes, there  are two that demonstrated the most growth in as a learner. My two choices of outcomes are:  The development of an awareness of potential of human-centered learning in online learning contexts, and the conducted research into emerging and future educational technologies.

The awareness in human-centered is an on-going development and it has many implications surrounding learning in online and open learning contexts. Online learning platforms are often designed with students in mind, but the human-centered aspect of learning behind a computer screen can often be lacking and insufficient. Especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, students and instructors alike are often deficient of the classic brick-and-mortar class room experiences. As such, courses now offered online have an incorpration of humanization, to closer mimic the classroom experiences for students.  In the second chapter of the book “Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning”, Cathy Barnes defines and expands upon the following three presences in online teaching:

• Cognitive Presence
• Instructor/Teaching Presence
• Social Presence

The second outcome that I feel I demonstrated the most growth in as a learner is the emerging of future educational technologies. The realm of online educational platforms is nothing new and have been around in the recent 20 year of academia. However, it is interesting to note that educational technologies are not sedimentary, and instead, rapidly evolving to adapt to new learning designs. Prior to taking this course, I have studied UX and this is in relation to app design and user interface. The importance of an user interface is often undermined, as it can make or break an user’s overall perception and usage of the given platform. In the EDCI 339 course, it explores many platforms and this includes are not limited to BrightSpace, Moodle, Blackboard and many more. However, we already see a deep integration of face-to-face technology softwares such as ZOOM, adding a humanizing touch to both instructor and students. In my personal opinion, the usage of ZOOM is current optional, but I foresee ZOOM being made mandatory in the future as it helps to cement a stronger learning experience in courses that are offered online.

I believe that pre-recorded webinars and videos have already became dominant in online learning, as it provides flexibility for students to view videos and webinars at their own preferred times. In relation to this, I believe online education designers are still seeking better ways to embed videos in platforms. For example, a video that is made available by instructor in Moodle can pose a number of issues as it heavily relies on Java-Script and Flash add-ons. The aforementioned video may display fine on a PC computer but may not be on an iOS apple iPad device. This led to commonly-used work arounds by posting videos on Youtube and then hyperlinking the video in Moodle. The reason I chose the video embedment in online platforms is because there is an increased adoption in the viewing of pre-recorded webinars rather than the attendance of live-webinars hosted by instructors.

In consideration of definitions and practical examples of distributed (online) and open learning, I believe that “open learning” is most effective for myself as a learner. The reason for this is strongly tied to available resources that is accessible and offered to me. Open learning offers the flexibility for students to access journals most relevant to my research/studies and not be limited by the selection of journals that my campuses are able to provide. In many recent cases, I was able to save costs on textbooks and instead adopt ebooks to save money, and have the ability to connect to campus library resources via secure VPN portals. This to me is a spectrum of freedom and flexibility as I am able to seek resources made available by the school.

Finally, the most valuable thing that I have learned about myself as a learning throughout this course is open and effective communication. This course focuses on  learning design and its application to interactive learning environments. Yet during my time studying this very course,  I feel that effective communication is very crucial to my success in studying. For example, I love how BrightSpace have a well designated sections of resources for students. I am able to login to BrighSpace and be able to click through my assignments and instructions of weekly reading materials. The overall experience have been phenomenal and and positive. Communication plays a key role in the facilitation of this course and I especially enjoyed the live-webinars hosted between Dr. Roberts and guest speakers, as this helped to simplify harder-to-understand course concepts. On the whole, EDCI-339 is a valuable course and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to my peers.

With the ever-changing landscape of education, open-education has a dominant place in the world of academia along side in-person classroom settings. Platforms have been made available and carefully designed to support open education settings. This week’s course readings have been very delightful as it laid out the basis of good Open Educational Resources (OER) sites and its uses. Prior to this week’s readings, the OER is an area where I have been uncertain of, primarily their usage, procedures, and accessibility. In this blog post, I will explore the definition behind OER and how I resonate with the resources as provided.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning and research materials in different formats. The OER reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. (UNESCO, 2018, p. 2). In a way, textbooks and course materials can all be unified and stored within the OER.

From a personal standpoint, the accessibility of learning materials have been easier than ever. In the past, the usage of textbooks and printed materials have been the norm. However in recent times, the adoption of e-books and online-based reading materials have been widely available and often very affordable with a small subscription cost. There is a caveat however and that is the adaptation to reading course materials and textbooks on the computer or a tablet instead of texts on paper. I have peers who have trouble and grapples with this change of reading style and many have transitioned back to hardcopy textbooks or simply printing out sections of reading materials.

Photo by Tia Heftiba on Unsplash

In the realm of OER and it’s availabilities, it allows easy access to affordable resources for both students and instructors alike. It is important to note that distributed learning is widely embraced due to it’s flexility with materials. And in direct comparison, open learning offers bigger room for plasticity in terms of costs and convenience to campus library journal and resources for students. In short, the ease of access to OER with online libraries and academic research journals for students is a large factor, this is primarily because it negates having to be physically on campus in order to access the aforementioned materials.

I strongly feel that open learning is both mindset and value based. A personal experience in relation to this is the interdisciplinary program that I took part in the past. The Human Kinetics (Kinesiology) at UBC offered an interdisciplinary stream, and this enabled students to take the core program courses, while having the flexibility of self-picking electives that he or she feels adhere to her studies in Kinesiology. In a way, the student must be well disciplined and self-pace with the offered learning materials. At often times, the student is required to visit clinic sites to observe physiotherapy being practiced and at the same time, appropriately access OER and knowledge bases for learning instructions.

Open Educational Practices (OEP) are, “collaborative practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of OER (Open Educational Resources), as well as pedagogical practices employing participatory technologies, and social networks for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation, and empowerment of learners” (Cronin, 2017, p. 18). After careful review of this week’s readings, I feel that OEP is critical to both students and instructors because it offers guidelines to best practices and frameworks to educational material creation.

Photo by Clement H on Unsplash

What is next in line in online learning? An unpopular opinion of mine is that I don’t think new ideas will present itself. Instead, I feel that educators will simply improve upon current practices and guidelines. As an example, better incorporation of embedded learning videos can be better improved upon. Videos are often embedded via JavaScript, and this can be an issue when viewed on different computer and tablet devices; as contents are encounter play-back errors. A potential workaround to this is linking the aforementioned videos to a site like Youtube, as this imaginably provides better stability and accessibility. All in all, both OER and OEP will help to expand the educational horizons for educations around the globe!

References

“Learning Pathways: Open Education Online Tutorials: OER Africa.” Learning Pathways: Open Education Online Tutorials | OER Africa, www.oerafrica.org/book/learning-pathways-open-education-online-tutorials.