Comments on: Confessions of an Online Student: Voyeur or Classmate? http://www.iddblog.org/?p=288 A Service of the IDD Department at DePaul University Tue, 03 Aug 2010 16:44:06 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Dee Schmidgall http://www.iddblog.org/?p=288&cpage=1#comment-2268 Dee Schmidgall Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:21:52 +0000 http://www.iddblog.org/?p=288#comment-2268 I think it's a mistake to let technology drive pedagogical concerns. Attend any e-learning conference and you‘ll see presenters stumping passionately for some tool du jour without demonstrating how exactly the new technology adds anything to the learning process. While one can argue (and I do regularly) that learning to effectively use web tools ought to be part of a liberal education, often the imposition of ill-conceived or poorly deployed technology creates needless barriers to learning. Further, while there's evidence our adult students at SNL often struggle more with tech than do younger students, youth doesn’t necessarily confer a desire to use technology or proficiency with it. My colleagues have commented here about the issues and difficulties more traditional-aged online students have with web tools and the courses that use them. Almost always these issues are exacerbated by the use of technology in courses without any clear or meaningful learning objective. Finally, my overarching complaint with the online course I reviewed was that there was no effort in the design of the course to either leverage the advantages of the online environment or mitigate its shortcomings. In this case all that had been done was to record an on-ground session for later online viewing, creating a learning environment that combined the shortcomings of both online and on-ground without the strengths of either. I think it’s a mistake to let technology drive pedagogical concerns. Attend any e-learning conference and you‘ll see presenters stumping passionately for some tool du jour without demonstrating how exactly the new technology adds anything to the learning process. While one can argue (and I do regularly) that learning to effectively use web tools ought to be part of a liberal education, often the imposition of ill-conceived or poorly deployed technology creates needless barriers to learning.

Further, while there’s evidence our adult students at SNL often struggle more with tech than do younger students, youth doesn’t necessarily confer a desire to use technology or proficiency with it. My colleagues have commented here about the issues and difficulties more traditional-aged online students have with web tools and the courses that use them. Almost always these issues are exacerbated by the use of technology in courses without any clear or meaningful learning objective.

Finally, my overarching complaint with the online course I reviewed was that there was no effort in the design of the course to either leverage the advantages of the online environment or mitigate its shortcomings. In this case all that had been done was to record an on-ground session for later online viewing, creating a learning environment that combined the shortcomings of both online and on-ground without the strengths of either.

]]> By: Crystal Hill http://www.iddblog.org/?p=288&cpage=1#comment-2262 Crystal Hill Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:22:29 +0000 http://www.iddblog.org/?p=288#comment-2262 Taking online courses is a challenge. With the advancement of technology, instructional designers are being pressed upon to come up with new and innovative ideas. How do we keep the student interested in the course materials and still achieved a certain level of required learning. I know that this is a challenge for me as I work on my Master's degree. I am being asked to complete all sorts of new learnings that I am not familiar with. For instance, just my replying to this blog is something that I am learning for the first time. It is important to to strive beyond the bounds of traditional learning in order to keep up with the younger generations. The challenge for an instructor is to know how much information to feed to the student, when all are on different levels of comfortable technological skills. It is especially hard for the online learner because we don't have the luxury of asking the instructor how to do something in real time. We must wait at least 24 hours for a response to a question, thus losing our momentum when completing an assignments. Regardless of the challenges, online learning has definately improved since my first college math class back in 2001. Taking online courses is a challenge. With the advancement of technology, instructional designers are being pressed upon to come up with new and innovative ideas. How do we keep the student interested in the course materials and still achieved a certain level of required learning. I know that this is a challenge for me as I work on my Master’s degree. I am being asked to complete all sorts of new learnings that I am not familiar with. For instance, just my replying to this blog is something that I am learning for the first time.

It is important to to strive beyond the bounds of traditional learning in order to keep up with the younger generations. The challenge for an instructor is to know how much information to feed to the student, when all are on different levels of comfortable technological skills. It is especially hard for the online learner because we don’t have the luxury of asking the instructor how to do something in real time. We must wait at least 24 hours for a response to a question, thus losing our momentum when completing an assignments.

Regardless of the challenges, online learning has definately improved since my first college math class back in 2001.

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