Week 13: Podcasting, Webcasting, and Coursecasting

Podcasting is a new technology with an evolving definition. The term is generally considered to be derived from combining the words iPod and broadcasting. Podcasting involves making audio and video files available for download on a routine basis via subscription (Levinson, 2005).

Nowadays podcast has been increasingly brought into education. Just like other technologies (e.g. video conference, virtual life, etc), educational institutions have to ensure that such technology is worth funding, either in terms of human resources or infrastructure and equipments; and most importantly, it has to enhance the learning environment.

Also, the University of Michigan (U-M) School of Dentistry was thinking to integrate podcast into their teaching, and then chose to conduct the formative evaluation. Surprisingly, findings reveal that students preferred the mobility of the audio recordings rather than video. The reason for this might be the convenience of the audio files which can be access easily. In other words, it does not need high concentration when reviewing the content. For example, students can listen to their lectures while doing exercise, unlike the video media that they have to focus their attention only on the screen. Another possibility of such preference is that the video files are usually big and, therefore, takes time when downloading or transferring to their personal players.

Despite the fact, students did also choose to download video, particularly in certain subjects. This is because of the nature of lecture’s content as well as lecturers’ didactical approaches. To put it differently, some subjects have/use heavily visual presentation (e.g. charts, graphs, etc.) whereas some are only pure speech.

The results also indicate that the audio recording is easier and do not require lot of resources, and hence feasible for the classroom setting. Nevertheless, there must be more concrete plan for further implementation. In this stance, collaboration among all stakeholders is crucial. Moreover, this also yields for sustainability of the project.

References:

Brittain, Sarah, Glowacki, Pietrek Van Ittersum, Jared, & Johnson, Lynn (2006). Podcasting lectures: Formative evaluation strategies helped identify a solution to a learning dilemma, 29(3). Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm06/eqm0634.asp

Levinson, J. (2005). What is a Podcast. Retrieved 20 November, 2008, from http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/what-is-a-podcast.htm

Week 12: Alternate Reality Learning: Massive Gaming, Virtual Reality, and Simulations

Long time ago, I used to think that it would be nice if school lessons were as enjoyable as the video games. Now, I had to regret that I should not have been born so early because those dreams come through!

Virtual reality or virtual world has brought the new dimension of teaching/learning to the millennial or young generation. Multi User Virtual Worlds are becoming a valuable
Educational tool. Learning experiences within these worlds focus on discovery and active experiences that both engage students and motivate them to explore new concepts (Coffman and Klinger, 2007). In addition, the virtual world is considered as the most choices for conversation where allows a number of people to have simultaneous interaction (Bell, 2007). Nevertheless, this tool has to be used appropriately in order to get the full benefits; otherwise, it can be double-edged sword. Students might be too involved with the scene/game and finally learn nothing. They may be confused between the virtual and real world, and hence bring the unexpected results. Therefore, this is a responsibility of teachers/educators to make use of the virtual world up to its potential.

Since these technologies are very new and have just been integrated into education, practitioners and researchers still have a lot more areas to explore how to incorporate them into teaching and to increase learning ability of students such as the issue of social interaction in the virtual world such as Social skills and friendship development. It is vital to understand how activity is spawned and accelerates in these social spaces as well as what transpires cognitively, socially, and emotionally in order to better support group communication and performance (Bonk and Dennen, 2005).

Despite the requirements of new pedagogies and curriculum, attitudes of teachers and stakeholders are also crucial. They have to be open to these innovations and adjust themselves to this new phenomenon. If both human resources and equipments are ready to this alternative reality learning, the most benefit will eventually turn to learners.

References:

Bell, S. R. (2008). Higher Education as Virtual Conversation. EDUCAUSE Review, 43(5). Retrieved 15 November, 2008, from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/HigherEducationasVirtualC/47220?time=1227502170

Bonk, C. J., & Dennen, V. P. (2005). Massive multiplayer online gaming: A research framework for military education and training. (Technical Report # 2005-1). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense (DUSD/R): Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative. Retrieved August 17, 2008, from http://mypage.iu.edu/~cjbonk/GameReport_Bonk_final.pdf

Teresa Coffman, Mary Beth Klinger (2007). Utilizing Virtual Worlds in Education: The Implications for Practice, International Journal of Social Sciences, Volume 2 Number 1. Retrieved August 18, 2008, from http://www.waset.org/ijss/v2/v2-1-5.pdf

Week 11: Educational Blogging

A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is one forms of Web site that evolved for a last decade (Blockstar.com, 2002). The blog was originated from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Nowadays a blog is usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. In the realm of education, blog has been gradually used as a tool to engage students in their learning activities. Additionally, it can enhance collaborative learning among their peers both in and outside classrooms. No need to think far beyond, here that I’m writing or what you are reading from, is the merit of the blog’s facilities. I can reflect my own thought (it is said that writing requires higher cognitive thinking than just talking and, hence, stimulate learning (Downes, 2004). Meanwhile I also get a feedback via comment post which helps me improve or correct my ideas. On the other hand, you, as a reader, may get some useful information, finding some friends who share similar interests, and develop your own thoughts as well. Here’s then we both gain a win-win solution!

Apart from benefits of blog in the formal education, blog has a lot of contemporary information which is useful in our life. One unique characteristic of blog’s content is that it is easy to understand unlike the textbook. Part of which is due to its simple way of writing. Those content are usually viewed through the lens of loggers, who try to break down all difficulties. another thing I like for the blog is that its content is usually up-to- date, also, some comments are interesting no lesser than the main content itself. There are many loggers become famous from writing their blogs and those blogs eventually got published.

There might be, however, an objection about the credibility and reliability of the content in the blog. I also used to think about this issue, especially when my friend sends me a blog for medication. Then later, I think this is not only a a concern for the blog itself, but this is a universal issue for the internet content. There is one study reported that blogs were judged as moderately credible, but as more credible than any mainstream media or online source (Johnson et al., 2007). Therefore, we, as an audience, should use our own judgment and if possible, find other reliable sources to help our consideration.

References:

Blockstar.com. (2002). Blog History in Timeline Formsuch as graphics or video. Entries are. Retrieved 20 November, 2008, from http://www.blockstar.com/blog/blog_timeline.html

Downes, Stephen (2004, September/October). Educational blogging, EDUCAUSE Review, 39(5), 14 –26. Retrieved August 27, 2006, from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp?bhcp=1

Johnson, T. J., Kaye, B. K., Bichard, S. L., & Wong, w. J. (2007). Every blog has its day: Politically-interested Internet users’ perceptions of blog credibility. Journal of Computer -Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 6. Retrieved 13 November, 2008, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/johnson.html

Week 10: Interactive and Collaborative Learning

In the online or distance learning, learners’ engagement to the learning activities has been an issue that stills an on-going debate (Chen et al., 2008). Many studies try to compare the learning engagement between online learners and those who are on campus. Engagement of learners is essential to their learning outcomes including high grades, student satisfaction, and persistence. As a result, activities as student-faculty interaction, peer -to-peer collaboration, and active learning are thought to be important. It seems that the online environment provides students more opportunities to be involved in active learning as individuals, but limits students’ ability to collaborate with each other. However, this also depends on many factors, such as learners (e.g. age, responsibility, etc.), instructors (e.g. pedagogy, time availability, etc.), and so forth.

According to the research by Chen and colleagues (2008), it is not surprising to learn that the distance learners generally scored higher on the student engagement and outcomes measures than their campus-based counterparts, with the exception of engagement in active and collaborative learning activities. The collaborative work requires learners to be involved in activities that depend on interacting with others, such as working with other students on problems or assignments. For the online/distance learners, particularly those who are more than 25-years-old, hardly have time to interact with their peers or even get to know their classmates.

Another factor that influences online learners’ engagement in learning is their culture and ideological background as shown in Naxin and Duglas’ study (2008). It seems that some points of the findings in this study contrasted with the previous research. The result reveals that foreign students gain advantages from online learning and , hence, lead to engagement in learning activities as well as more participation (than in face-to-face courses). For example, Chinese students have confident with their language (most likely through reading and writing), so they collaborate more with their peers. Another example is that Chinese students preferred to work with native English-speaking students in online group work, because they could practice their English skills and could better attain multiple perspectives.

Nonetheless, the culture and diversity can be barrier to prevent their collaboration and engagement in any activities, such as unfamiliarity with the disciplinary culture, attitudes towards presenting opinions in public, instructor’s authoritative image, and so on.

These are only some factors that influence online learners to engage in their educational activities as well as to collaborate with their peers. Educators should be aware of these factors and modify their course for a better teaching and to achieve the learning goals.

References:

Chen, P., R. Gonyea, and G. Kuh (2008). Learning at a distance: Engaged or not?. Innovate 4 (3). Retrieved August 18, 2008, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php? view=article&id=438
view=article&id=438

Nixing Zhao & Douglas McDougall (2008). Cultural influences on Chinese students’ asynchronous online learning in a Canadian university. Journal of Distance Learning, 22(2). 59-80. Retrieved August 17, 2008, from http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/37

Week 9: Wikis, Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Collaborative writing.

The Wiki technology was first launched in 1995 by Ward Cunningham and had been developed to various versions. The most original and well-known is the “Wikipedia”. The highlight of this tool seems to be its feature of group collaboration and ease of access. Nowadays, Wikis has been widely used in many fields including education.

As mentioned above, the Wikis’ feature that allows group members to collaboratively manage and easily share their ideas and tasks enhances feasibility of workflows. I have used Wiki as a tool for group work in many courses and was appreciated in its capability. It is true that we regularly use Email to communicate; especially for me, it automatically becomes part of my life that I have to check my mailbox everyday. However, the main feature of Email is to communicate, not to collaborate particularly with an iterative task. For example, in the research methodology course, we, five people, were asked to share our survey result and wrote up one complete paper. At that time, we primarily used Email to communicate and exchange our files. We had to upload and download each other results and kept on editing our main document. There was so much confusion particularly when five people were trying to fix and modify the very same document. Sometimes we got lost, not knowing which was the most recent document that we had to proceed. In addition, it is hard to keep track from the previous editing points and to identify who did those changes. If we had decided to use Wiki, those problems would have not occurred.

At the present time, there are many service providers for the wiki tools, but my favorite is Wetpain.com.
There are many useful features for the collaborative group project, such as privacy rules, 24/7 availability, history page, and so on. Moreover, there are various templates to choose, including the class project.

Despite of many advantages, Wikis also have disadvantages that prevent the use of this tool. The most criticizing aspect is its usability and its functionalities, especially when comparing with other web 2.0technologies. For instance, most Wikis features have been primarily designed to work with the text-based information while other types of information are increasingly used in the cyber world. Another example is the ease of use; in order to perform the text editing, authors at least should have some knowledge of coding on the Wiki unlike other tools, such as discussion forum or blog which allow users to directly type on with the easy formatting.

Nonetheless, I believe that the Wikis technology will be continuously improved, particularly, when it has been widely adopted and its purpose has been extent such as Wikibooks!