ONLINE LEARNING
How many of you would like to study online?
For the next minutes or so, I'm going to look at online learning. Basically, I've divided my presentation into three parts. In the first part, I'll talk about the main concept that we are going to deal with in this presentation. We are going to define and understand it in order to continue with the rest of the subtopics. Then, in the second part, I'll look at the advantages and disadvantages of online learning. And in the final part, I'll focus on online teaching during the pandemic and consider how it has affected students, teachers and different situations.
Without going further and one I have said my structure, I’m going to start with my presentation.
I’d like to move on to the first point of my topic, which is online learning. I want to make clear the definition of this concept that we are going to analyzes during this period of time. Furthermore we are going to enumerate and then we are going to explain each part that completes its definition.
Online learning is education that takes place over the Internet. It is often referred to as “elearning” among other terms. However, online learning is just one type of “distance learning” - the umbrella term for any learning that takes place across distance and not in a traditional classroom. Distance learning has a long history and there are several types available today.
By far the most popular approach today is online learning. According to the Sloan Consortium, online enrollments continue to grow at rates faster than for the broader student population and institutes of higher education expect the rate of growth to continue increasing. Some of the key findings:
• Over 1.9 million
students were studying online in the fall of 2003.
• Schools expect the
number of online students to grow to over 2.6 million by the fall of 2004.
• Schools expect online
enrollment growth to accelerate.
• The majority of all
schools (53.6%) agree that online education is critical to their long-term
strategy.
• A majority of academic leaders believe that online learning quality is already equal to or superior to faceto-face instruction. (The “no significant difference” phenomenon.)
HOW IT WORKS
In years past, instructors had to create their “virtual classrooms” from scratch which was difficult and often led to poor results. Today, an entire industry has emerged to do this for us. Course Management System (CMS) software is utilized by just about all colleges today. CMS allow instructors to design and deliver their courses within a flexible framework that includes a number of different tools to enable learning and communication to occur.
Popular for-profit CMS include:
• Blackboard (www.blackboard.com)
• WebCT (www.webct.com)
• eCollege (www.ecollege.com)
Low cost alternative
and open source CMS include:
• ETUDES-NG (http://etudesproject.org)
• Moodle (http://moodle.org)
• Angel (http://angellearning.com)
SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF
GOOD TEACHING
Based on considerable
educational research, Chickering and Gamson (1987) outlined Seven
Standards of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education, principles that have been widely accepted as measures for judging the effectiveness of classroom teaching. ETUDES-NG incorporates elements in each of the seven areas, as demonstrated below:
Principle 1: Encourage student-faculty contact
Through Private
Messages students and faculty can communicate. Among other things, this allows
instructors to be proactive by following up on students who are not
participating in chats, discussions, etc. Students and faculty can also
communicate through the discussion forums.
Principle 2: Encourage student cooperation
The same areas of
ETUDES-NG that allow for student-faculty contact can also be used for student-to-student
contact. Assignments can be created to take advantage of this. Furthermore, the
discussion forums can help foster group work and collaboration among students.
Consider incorporating peer reviews, project sharing, and thread-leaders to
moderate discussions. Student collaboration leads to a sense of community and
higher learning outcomes.
Principle 3: Encourage active learning
Instructors can take
advantage of the rich interactivity on the Web by designing assignments around
appropriate Websites. When students come to these sites, they make choices, and
they learn from their choices. Active learning also takes place when students
work cooperatively. Give students more control, leadership roles, and options
in what assignments to complete. Leave the center stage and transform yourself
into a guide on the side. Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning Joshua
Stern, Ph.D.
Principle 4: Give prompt feedback
In ETUDES-NG,
students can see results of their tests and view solutions to graded
assignments immediately after submission. Instructors can and should promptly
respond to student questions. ETUDES-NG allows you to provide both
acknowledgement and information feedback.
Principle 5: Emphasize time on task
For example, give
students something specific to respond to in each module via the discussions.
Build in a reward system of points for each post and reply to the discussion
forums. In other words, make posting and responding mandatory. Create a
structure that can be followed, broken down week by week or unit by unit,
allowing for acceleration of pace.
Principle 6: Communicate high expectations
In your syllabus you
should include course goals and performance objectives. You might include model
assignment submissions that can serve as examples for students to follow. The
bottom line is that you must be explicit and clear in communicating your
expectations to students.
Principle 7: Respect diverse talents and ways of
learning
Create assignments
that offer students options. Giving students choices in their learning
experience increases satisfaction and retention. Consider giving students
options as to what format to submit assignments or projects. For example, they
might design a Webpage, write an essay, or develop a PowerPoint presentation.
There is no reason why all students should submit the exact same homework or
participate in one discussion topic. Variety is the spice of life and your
online class; teach to the various learning styles of your students.
Next, I’d like to look at my second point today. On one hand we are going to see what advantages can give us online learning. On the other hand, we are going to see some of the ways in which online learning affect in negative to our students.
First of all, one of the great advantages that we find is flexibility. As long as you have a device connected to the network, you can do online learning without having to go anywhere.
The curriculum that we find is similar to the one developed in face-to-face classes, therefore the same knowledge and skills are acquired. This does not mean that all that face-to-face practice such as practices in our career should be put aside.
Technology advances more and more and becomes more essential for human beings. Therefore, one of the great advantages that we find is learning how to use technologies. In the future, companies or the sector where you want to develop learning will attract more attention in those applicants with greater technological knowledge than those who do not have it, since it allows them to develop digital skills and knowledge that are in high demand in the work environment.
The next two good
points are immediacy and cost. With immediacy we refer to the
ease that online learning gives us for the beginning, there are several
starting dates of the course, so you can adapt more easily regardless of your
studies. Regarding the cost, normally the registration of the online programs
usually cost less than the face-to-face ones.
Scholarships and aids are still present in this teaching. Even if the teaching is not carried out physically in a university, institute or college, student aid continues to apply. For example, scholarships from the Ministry of Education can also be applied for online degrees, and universities offer their own grants.
Finally, regarding
class size: online degrees attract a
wide variety of students of different ages or nationalities, and class
sizes can be even larger and more diverse. At the same time, it should be noted
that there is no problem when it comes to being more or less students since the
different platforms give rise to a large number of attendees either to classes,
talks or conferences.
Without going any further, we are going to continue with the disadvantages of this issue.
First of all, it highlights social relationships. All those video calls, videoconferences and talks that save us from moving around the other side take us away from physical contact.
On the other hand, the flexibility of schedules can sometimes transform your schedule or forget about allocating a part of the day to your studies to ensure that you keep everything up to date. For this reason, we highlight self-discipline as a disadvantage: the ability to perform daily tasks and study according to your own schedule requires great concentration, effort and perseverance.
Regarding the exams when taking them online, it is possible that you do not pay enough attention to be in an environment with more distractions, that the space where you are going to take them is not suitable or that system failures occur. An example could be the hour limit exceeded, in person it can sometimes be extended or not.
Feedback is not always necessary but in many cases it helps. When studying online you may feel more alone and it may seem that you cannot count on the support of your classmates or teachers. That is why it is important to make an effort to interact with others, even if it is in virtual format.
Necessary equipment, this aspect is
necessary and fundamental for online learning. Sometimes not having the right
one can be a waste of time. Without the appropriate or compatible with the
studies we want to carry out, it cannot continue.
This brings us to the final part of my presentation today: I am going to talk about the way the pandemic affected our students and its relationship with online learning.
According to the information obtained in the surveys carried out in the Barrio la Comunidad de San Miguel de Bolívar and after the global pandemic of 2020 that is keep going to this day, we have obtained the following results. Parents of students were asked their opinion about the online classes and how they had seen their children. The entire survey was guided by a series of questions where we obtained the following responses.
· 43% express that online education was regular because not all students have access to the internet that allows them to carry out daily tasks with ease and fulfill their daily obligations.
· 40% express that they do have access to a computer that helps them to carry out their daily tasks and develop their knowledge.
· 60% receive and carry out their tasks on mobile phones and tablets due to their low economic resources.
· 43% state that online classes were moderately effective since it complicated their online education because they were taught in face-to-face education and do not have all the ease of having a device or an internet network that allows them to receive their virtual classes. Face-to-face education is much better because their children acquire their knowledge in a better way and they can also interact with their classmates, teachers and begin to live with the other society that surrounds them.
· 77% of the parents state that their children were affected more psychologically since this was in a surprising way since it occurred due to the health emergency worldwide since this affected not only them but the whole family member.
· 63% had problems teaching their children because they did not have knowledge of the subjects and the way of teaching.
· 57% of their children are stressed when receiving their classes online, because they are not used to sitting in front of a computer and trying to understand the class that their teacher is giving them.
· 67% of parents state that teachers are not as efficient in teaching their children because even for them this modality is new and they were not properly trained to be able to handle these new platforms.
· 67% have adequate space for their students to receive their classes online and can concentrate so that they learn something about what they are being taught.
In general, the
survey is negative and is affected by all the previous disadvantages, but we
know that it is a complicated situation to which we must adapt little by little
since we do not know when it will end.
To finish I would
like to return to the rhetorical question that I asked at the beginning.
How many of you would like to study online?
Now that you know
what online teaching is, its advantages and disadvantages and how it can affect
situations such as the 2020 pandemic, I would like you to rethink your answer.
I hope you’ve enjoyed
my presentation today. If anyone has any questions, I’ll do my best to answer
them. Thank you very much for listening.