Wrz Blog

After taking the course EDCI 339, I get to know more about open and distributed learning. Open platform like Twitter may be a good way for education in the future, but for now face-to-face classes may have more advantages compared to online classes. I discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of online learning in my previous posts and I think there are both positive and negative factors in terms of different aspects. There are benefits such as, reducing time and fee for transportation, accessibility and efficiency. With the advanced technology in today’s society, students can easily access to information and websites that they are interested in, it is more likely that they can have a more flexible schedule. However, as a learner, I prefer face-to-face learning. Despite the advanced technology as well as the benefits that open source provides, there are drawbacks such as, students being easily distracted by the environment, students who do not have a great sense of time management may easily get lost during the course as well. When learning online, students cannot get immediate support and feedback, lack of communications between peers is not very helpful at all. I think e-learning can still not achieve the same education level that a classroom-based education achieves.

In recent year, the improvement of internet causes the development of online courses. Some students start to take class online. Because it has flexible time, many school has provide student online sections, but will online class may instead face to face class one day. I will revise the fourth individual post. Before I take the online section on zoom, I really wished that one day students do not have to go to school; we could take courses at home using computer or website like course space until the Covid 19. Because of the covid-19 pandemic, students have to stay home and use zoom to take courses online. However, after we joined the twitter chat last week, I realized that there are some drawbacks of study online. Therefore, I would like to share my experiences after I have used word press site and zoom or twitter chat. They are benefits for study online. Students do not waste time on traffic, and time is flexible. However, students get less contact with others. During the class time, we listen to teacher, and after the class is over, everyone leaves the meet. To me, I get less motivation when I take the course online. It might because tests are open book, or I do not have to take a lot of time on review. I prefer the feeling that discuss a question with my classmates, but for online course, everyone just does their own work, we do not need to meet at library and do the assignment together. In addition, I find is difficult to concentrate in a online section. It is too easy to be distracted by other things. Before the class begin, students may indulge in other things. They just join in the zoom, but teacher does not know is the student pay attention or not. Unlike online course, in a face to face class teacher have to contact with students, so students are fully concentrate during the class period.

Word press is a good pedagogy, and it is for free like twitter chat. They provide free access to both teacher and students. Like word press, some open pedagogy web even provide free primary source. “In the context of British Columbia (BC), Canada, the BC campus open textbook initiative has resulted in over 2,000 textbook adoptions by 435 faculty members, which equates to learners saving approximately 8–9 million Canadian dollars (£5–5.5 million British Pounds) in textbook costs (BCcampus, 2018)”(Paskevicius & Irvine 2019). Those resources are helpful for students, but it also cost a lot. Like Uvic library, It contains numerous resources for students to use, and Uvic cost a lot on collect those resources, so if the website is free, how does the website profits? School charge the money from students, and what the website does? “Open universities are faced with a paradox between the mercantilism of private education, the pressures of surveillance capitalism on the one hand, and the effort to increase the openness of public science and education by another”(Nascimento 2020). Therefore, this is a challenge for those open pedagogy webs to earn profits without distract students because they cannot pop up a window with advertisement during a student’s class time.

Nascimento Cunha, M., Chuchu, T., & Maziriri, E. T. (2020). Threats, challenges, and opportunities for open universities and massive online open courses in the digital revolution. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 15(12), 191-204. doi:10.3991/ijet.v15i12.13435

Paskevicius, M., & Irvine, V. (2019). Open Education and Learning Design: Open Pedagogy in Praxis. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2019(1), 10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.512

After reading the article Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy, Wiley and Hilton(2018) pointed out an organization called Open Educational Resources that provides students a open pedagogy. The authors mentioned that many students do their assignments just for getting good grades, they only care about the grades that they get after the course instead of teachers’ comments, they called this “disposable assignments” in which I think is not efficient. Nowadays, a lot of students would cheat on exams or even pay for someone to help them to get good grades on the assignments, it is also often that students do not remember the knowledge after the class. In addition, they give an example about their renewable assignment, which “offered extra credit to create tutorial videos, chapter summaries, and review games for a particular topic; these tutorial resources were also evaluated by the teacher and some were selected to be integrated into the course” (Wiley and Hilton 2018, p. 6). I doubt that may not be efficient either, and it only give teachers extra works. In my opinion, if a student wants to get a high grade in a course, he/she will spend extra time on this course, and will review the course materials after each class. They would also see teachers in office hour and read teacher’s comments. In contrast, if that person only wants to pass the course, he will not do it because there is no big different between a D and C-. Therefore, no matter Disposable assignment or renewable assignment, they are just different ways of learning. The real difference is students themselves, how much efforts they put into the course is the most important.

This week we get to know a new open platform like twitter chat. I think this kind of platforms are really convenient. Twitter provides a free access platform for educators and learners. A group can meet anytime online and students do not have to waste time on transportation. However, as far as I concern, there are some disadvantages as well. Sitting in front of computer is not like sitting in the classroom, student can be easily distracted by anything, it may be harder for students to concentrate in a different environment. Thus, I believe that there are both benefits and drawbacks for open learning, I do think that e-learning is very efficient yet it may not work for everyone.

Reference:

Wiley, David, and John Levi Hilton III. “Defining OER-enabled pedagogy.” International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 19.4 (2018).

The articles that we read this week have given me a better understanding of Open pedagogy and Open Education Resources(OERs). In “A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students” DeRosa and Jhangiani have clarified the definition of open pedagogy, which is a platform that everyone can communicate with each others. I think it’s a good starting point, however, I think it’s a little unrealistic. If a person is afraid to make his point in front of acquaintances, how can he do it in front of strangers. In addition, when people are have a dispute, they both think the other is wrong, it is hard to judge whether who is right. There are a lot of these open pedagogy in China in previous years, a lot of people were seriously discussing some interesting topics, but these days it is only jokes and slang. It is inevitable that people will post some miscellaneous things.

Mays, E. (Ed.). (2017). A Guide to Making Open Textbooks With Students. Rebus Community Retrieved July 16, 2020, from https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/chapter/open-pedagogy/ [chapter 1]

This week’s reading is about the beginners’ guide to Open education. In “Teaching Online – A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice” Claire thinks today college class should include some online components. I agree with Claire’s point that college classes should include some basic online component such as course space, which students can use to check schedule and download document from the class, or communicate with teacher. However, I disagree to teach online. Nowadays, with the progress of science and technology, many people think that e-learning is a normal thing, nonetheless, I think that there are still many aspects of online courses that are not perfect.

First of all, online courses and face-to-face courses are two completely different ways of education, without face-to-face communication, inexperienced online teachers can easily lead students to completely wrong way, learners may easily get lost without immediate support and feedback from the educators. It is also difficult for students to fully understand the expectations and requirements by only reading the instructions that are given online. During classroom-based education, teachers and students can make full use of class time, asking teachers questions and communicate with one another. On the other hand, an online section may be distracted by technical problems or hardware problems. Similarly, online courses reduce the communication between students as well. For example, Students can consolidate their knowledge by educating others, but online section deprives students of this opportunity to learn from teaching each other. It is very important to communicate with other peers in order to improve get feedback from different people. All in all, even though there are some benefits for online course in terms of accessibility and efficiency, I believe that it still cannot achieve same level of education as face-to-face classes, there are drawbacks such as, students not being able to get immediate support and feedback from educators and lack of communications between peers.

Johns, H. U. P. (2015). Teaching online : A guide to theory, research, and practice. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca

The link for our blog:

https://339projecti.opened.ca/

The link for our project:

http://339projecti.opened.ca/2020/07/19/guideline-for-di…tive-pod-project/

After reading “Learning is not a mechanism”, I totally agreed with author’s ideas. Stommel (2018) said “Students often do not have time to discover what they like and don’t seem to enjoy the experience and process of learning, the overall quality of the learning experience has diminished greatly as a result”(Stommel). Many students try to complete four years majors in two years. They take 6 courses in campus, and they have to take two or more courses outside campus. They nearly have no time to join any outside class activities. In fact, they forgot what they learned after they have completed courses. They learned how to finish an assessment and how to do well in a test. Students learning like machines because score is the only thing to evaluate them. Therefore, no matter Digital pedagogy or face-to-face lecture, I think teacher is the key. I have been to the class that students are pleasure to join in the class discussion, and class that everyone is doing their own work. I still can remember what I learned in the first type of classes, but for the second, it is not impressed. I agree with Stommel that Learning is a process of discovery. In addition, I think a good teacher can make this process more interesting, and it helps students reduce the bad outcomes.

Reference:

Stommel, J. (2018, September 12). Learning is Not a Mechanism. Retrieved July7,2020, From https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/learning-is-not-a-mechanism/

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