Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg
Question
Asked 30th Nov, 2011
What are contribution E-Learning for School Education?
E-learning is a new education concept by using the Internet technology, it deliveries the digital content, provides a learner-orient environment for the teachers and students. The e-learning promotes the construction of life-long learning opinions and learning society.
Most recent answer
This may become a longer post, since this topic hits my basic research motivation - making the world a little bit better with e-Learning. Thus, please allow me, to throw three topics and research areas into the room:
First of all, in a blended learning scenario, I see little problems for e-Learning in the framework of school-education - at least not, if the schools provide the necessary infrastructure and the educators are skilled enough to support their learners.
But when the discussion comes on substituting f-2-f education with e-Learning, I see a number of still unsolved problems.
On the one hand, e-Learning based school education is a future-related vision because there are so many regions in the world, where proper school-education cannot be ensured (e.g., low pupulation density, lacking school books, or skilled educators). In such cases, e-Learning based school education could solve urgent society-issues like missing illiteracy skills. I am convinced that together with caring online-turors and well-educated parents, some pupils may be able to deal with this situation of self-learning (we have e.g. successful programs in Germany for kids that cannot go to school for a longer time because of accidents or perma-travelling parents): But the barriers, e-Learning provides to it's learners (see http://www.editlib.org/p/38075) often meet competences that before had to be learned in f-2-f education, like self-motivation, organizing learning processes, looking for further information and dealing with information. Teaching such abilities via e-Learning still seems to be a white spot on the map of Internet based educational research. And not researching in those fields somehow means raising the gap between priviledged and not priviledged countries (in priviledged countries at least most parents have a suitable education to assist their kids). Thus, from my perspective, this is one of the three big research fields for the future.
When following the type/content of presentations on e-Learning conferences in the past 2 years (eLearn, EdMedia, EDEN, IADIS, Plymouth e-Learning, OEB), it seems being more promising/rewarding (for researchers) to research on phantastic educational opportunities, new technologies (like iPhones or iPads) offer. Researchers tend not to care if any learner may have such technologies. This research often even is conducted with infradstructure that has been funded/provided by the original producers - the researchers or their institutions would never have been able or willed to buy the related technologies by themselves. Nothing bad about this kind of funded research on the one hand, but on the other hand, if we use this as an opportunity to lay back and claim having done everything to solve the big issues in the world, it gets to be a problem. Last year in my lecture, I asked my 120 students who of them had a smart-phone with a flat-rate Internet access. Not even 10 percent had such a technology. Why should I provide my lectures or additional learning content for such a scenario - I upload it in moddle? If I did so although knowing that just 10% will use it, would I rather help myself by claiming that we are a modern department or would I actually help my students to get better learning opportunities and location-independent? Would I much more, maybe force my students to spend money for technology, they otherwise would not need? In consequence this would mean that I force them to even do more jobs besides university to afford it.
This leads to the second big research field (and critique): Implementing educational approaches that fit the technological standard even in poor regions. Instead of really finding solutions for poverty and worldwide understanding, we seem to develop more and more educational scenarios, the regions in need anyways cannot use (if not even students in highly developed countries can...).
Even if we had the perfect approaches for Internet-based school education, we can not expect that the necessary technological standard (be it the infrastructure provided by the region or the technological standard the local people can afford to have) is provided. Instead of developing more and more highly innovative ideas on how we could involve the newest technology in educational scenarios, we rather should research on educational concepts that work with the lowest technological infrastructures like spontaneously working modem-Internet and Win95 computers. Even in a country with a high technological standard (in average), such as Germany, most of the schools have a single computer room (if they have one at all), and poor families have no Internet or Computer at home - but those, first of all, would be the ones in real need of additional educational opportunities. Developing technology for rich people will never solve future problems - and the argument that first it needs to be paid and than it can be provided for the masses is a foul excuse (adapted from the pharma-industry) to play around with funny new technology instead of doing the painful work.
The third big research topic in this field, is related to educational resources and still not solved (but I am hard working on this one since 2007). Sure, we have high quality ressources that can freely be reused. But can they really be reused? Even German teachers feel insecure when dealing with this question (see http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media25178.pdf) and rather do not reuse resources from others than choosing the "wrong ones" (whatever this may mean in a certain context). How can we ensure that when reusing such resources, those resoureces fit the context of the learners and we do not give up or "violate" our own cultural identity? Particularly in school-education, the cultural identity of our learners still is to be developed. From my point of view, it is one of the basic school tasks to preserve local culture (university already should be more general). We urgently need working approaches that help educators to adapt learning resources to their specific content. And following an apporoach of national culture (as a lot of colleagues recommend) is not a solution but a unjustifiable simplification. We need mechanisms that help educators to determine their own (local) educational context, determine adaptation needs and finally, conduct the adaptation. I still am stuck in the first part (although in parallel also working on the other parts - but basic questions still are unanswered or answers are not validated enough) and somehow, it seems, I have opened a bottomless keg. Right now, the biggest problem is motivating universities all over the world to invite their students (by mass mail) to participate in my survey on learning culture. However, without further data of learners in different cultural contexts, it seems almost impossible to finding appropriate results/solutions. Fortunately, I now, received translations of my survey into French (verified), Russian and Turkish (additionally I have verified translations in Korean, German and English). Since the survey needs to be implemented in the national language, this is another problem for coming further.
If you are further interested in this topic at all, be free to look at http://uni-due.academia.edu/ThomasRichter. As far as I was allowed to, most of my publications are online there. I invite everyone to contribute/support my research and am willed to even share the raw-data as soon as they are evaluated.
I look foward reading your comments,
all my best wishes and thanks for starting this discussion!
2 Recommendations
All Answers (29)
Aligarh Muslim University
From the educational point view, the e-learning is a way to acquaring knowledge,expweriences and skill
and it is an activity to achieve through digital instrument, included computer, internet, satellite broadcast, compact disk, and interact TV.variuos studies showing that it may be main stream of learning in near future and create a lot of advantages.
1 Recommendation
Aror University of Art Architecture Design & Heritage
E-Learning provides ample opportunities of formal and informal learning. Learning is no more limited to the classroom setting. E-Learning has become a source of developing motivation among our digital natives.
Institut Teknologi Telkom Purwokerto
but, in growing country such us Indonesia, the habit of teacher hold an important role in elearning process. They become unfamiliar if they dont use elearning as a tool in daily teaching. For some teacher who use elearning as a added tools for teaching it becomes unuseful. So, the solution is closing elearning to teacher....and before that, teacher must know and love internet or information technology before they has to implemented elearning in their class...
Núcleo de Tecnologia Educacional para a Saúde
I teach Scientific Methodology on an hybrid presential/virtual learning environment. I enclose the english abstract of a papaer of my own describing the course.
LEARNING AND METACOGNITION ON SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY
ABSTRACT: There’s a need of new methodologies to assist the learner in
the perception of their learning processes. This paper reports the use of
metacognitive strategies to teach scientific method to 23 graduate health
students. Based on the constructivist approach we used techniques of
mobilization to promote cognitive conflict between the beliefs of
students about scientific thinking and simulated tasks for a scientific
methodology course. A reflective journal was used to encourage the
student awareness of their learning processes and as a tool for
observation of individual differences in receiving information and
possible knowledge transfers.It was concluded that the reports allowed
observe widespread effects on the behavior and thinking of students.
Keywords: Metacognition. Scientific Methodology. Learning.
I wanna study a master in e-learning!!! I'm preparing with some concepts and methods, i'm teacher and i'like understand about this new concept for the teaching!!!
Orillia Museum of Art and History (OMAH)
Here is the abstract for a recently published paper I wrote and that might be of use to you:
"This paper examines the Knowledge Age and how economic factors are causing educators to rethink and reinvent education. Two key factors in education in the Knowledge Age will be education for an economy of innovation, and the increasing virtualization of education.
We present knowledge building pedagogy as a model for education in the Knowledge Age and discuss Knowledge Forum, online knowledge building environment designed to facilitate and support the knowledge building process.
Built into Knowledge Forum is a suit of online tools that track the interactions that students have with Knowledge Forum. We focus on the social network tool that allows us to examine communication patterns among the students when working online.
Using the data obtained, we examine the growth and development of online community formation during the first week of class for a group of naïve users in a third-year university class. Examining the note reading and response networks, we see that the note reading network develops more rapidly than the responding network, and that it is more symmetric than the responding network. However, by mid-term, a highly connected network has developed for both note-reading and responding."
1 Recommendation
I have taught online through Moodle for some years. I really do not like talking on the phone... I'd rather talk seeing the other person's eyes, so I had never thought that this kind of contact could work well. But the most wonderful thing of it is that any disabled person can be with you or anyone! How many people cannot afford moving next to the institution or cannot leave their children for so long?
Hello, Kirsti!
I haven't remarked that before! That is a very important feature! Thank you!
I was a terribly shy child and adolescent.
It was only at university that I could get rid of timidity and because of a Psychology teacher compliment.
Now, with your comment, I notice that I feel much better to express my feelings and knowledge in writing.
Don't you think e-teaching ( :)) or: e-learning) could also be used as a (first) step to cope with timidity?
Orillia Museum of Art and History (OMAH)
Although I don't have it handy at the moment, I know that research into that area was done in the '90s. Overall, it was found that students who were reluctant to speak out in front of a live class were more likely to post online. As a result, more or the class participated than would be the case in a face-to-face class.
1 Recommendation
University of Waterloo
I recently published a book—Mehlenbacher, B. (2010). Instruction and technology: Designs for Everyday Learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press—that addresses many of these issues and the history of distance education and e-learning as well. Hope you find it useful! See http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12243
Hello! I am a tutor in person, since 2008, an undergraduate degree in Music Education in Brazil. His work has many reasons for our action as the practice of music has a very wide with technology
We postulate that the E-learning and Internet technology are products of the new culture and should not run the search for simple use and only the maintenance and proliferation of equipment. The construction of a new knowledge in another embodiment has a history, but this recent past. The update seems to me more than that daily in every gesture, e-learning and technology require a new routine? Would not only upgrade but must also encompass conversion features of transposition, translation, adaptation, etc. By placing the human being in the center and social relations?
Technical University of Denmark
I have just conducted a 5 and half month action research in Bangladesh, being in one of the rural school of Bangladesh, as part of my PhD project. The contexts are formal, non-formal and informal learning. For formal the approach was to introduce a concept called DigiClass (yet to be published) which considers learning content delivery of multimedia content in the disadvantaged developing country context. For non-formal there is computer literacy training for students. As co-curricular activities some competition were arranged preceded by training which would enable educational information access from the national websites. In the informal context need creation was conducted by various methods and purchase of ICT resources were facilitated from the school. Hope to share more details after publishing the work.
2 Recommendations
I make the post-graduate course on Planning, Implementation and Management of Distance Learning Courses. I am tutor of undergraduate in Music Education from a Federal University of Brazil-UFSCar. I have produced material for music education for schools TICs. Can you send examples of material for you. Congratulations on your work.
1 Recommendation
Kamphaengphet Rajabhat University,Thailand
I interest in blended learning and research based learning for development research competency in my student.Because it have benefit for my student.
Having worked with distance learners of all ages for the last 10 years, I can say that the experience of all learners is not the same and if the learner does not have technical skills they will be very frustrated with e-learning of any kind. For these individuals, the simplest tasks are difficult to master, and if they do not obtain those basic skills in a timely manner, they will never complete the course(s) they are enrolled in.
2 Recommendations
I agree with Ms. Stuart. However, it has been my experience that such user frustrations are almost always related to fundamental flaws in the instructional design process. In my work, I always insist that the user never have to learn the tool itself. I was lucky in having been present at the earliest days of self-paced, on-demand learning and before the disappearance of a diversity of operating systems for PCs. In one early project in the early 90's I headed development of a learning tool patented as "SimStation" using one of these. It was about (average user completion time) a 12 hour LaserDisc supported simulation of the safety systems on an offshore oil platform and the target audience had an average of 9 years of public education. Few had ever seen, much less touched, a computer. So, we designed accordingly. All they had to do was turn on the power. From there, the screen showed a picture of the mouse and told them to move it. Once they'd succeeded in locating and moving it, they were told how to put their hands on it and place fingers over the buttons. In about 5 minutes, they could point, click, drag, and enter their names on the keyboard.
By 8 hours later, they were immersed in running a well bay timing test that involved moving all over a large 3D model. The project cut training time from a 5 day ILT on shore to 12 hours (average) on the platform and they loved it.
Now, we had an advantage in that the OS we used allowed us to design screens, functions, and icons anyway we wanted. Today, it's more difficult in that all three (Linux, Windows, Mac) OS systems are far more rigid. Nonetheless, it is possible to minimize computer skills and concentrate on the teaching with sufficient care and lateral thinking applied to the design phase. Target audience analysis is often poorly served these days, and it is often the target audience that pays the price.
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
An important contribution is the expansion of borders. That is to say, the classroom is not the only space to learn.
1 Recommendation
Alagappa University
Well, in schools,through e learning we can bring the learner nearer to reality.The abstract concepts can be made simple.It provides flexible learning.I did many research works on e learning. For details please visit my Blog; www.professorsivakumar.blogspot.in
Periyar University
I conducted few studies on e-learning related to Education as a part of my PhD scholar's dissertation work. We came to a conclusion was, "provides e-learning provides a learner-orient environment for both learner as well as teacher". Eg. All researchers use the word " Standardization"; But thru' e-learning we got a word "Validation", not standardization. It includes NORMS. Like this.. lot of opportunities for both of them.
1 Recommendation
E-learning has many good benifits but still needs good attitudes and motivation from each students and teachres to fulfill its goals
Gov Ashram school Moramba
This is not new concept. This concept is in india from Buddha, Mahabharat and Ramayan.
1 Recommendation
Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg
This may become a longer post, since this topic hits my basic research motivation - making the world a little bit better with e-Learning. Thus, please allow me, to throw three topics and research areas into the room:
First of all, in a blended learning scenario, I see little problems for e-Learning in the framework of school-education - at least not, if the schools provide the necessary infrastructure and the educators are skilled enough to support their learners.
But when the discussion comes on substituting f-2-f education with e-Learning, I see a number of still unsolved problems.
On the one hand, e-Learning based school education is a future-related vision because there are so many regions in the world, where proper school-education cannot be ensured (e.g., low pupulation density, lacking school books, or skilled educators). In such cases, e-Learning based school education could solve urgent society-issues like missing illiteracy skills. I am convinced that together with caring online-turors and well-educated parents, some pupils may be able to deal with this situation of self-learning (we have e.g. successful programs in Germany for kids that cannot go to school for a longer time because of accidents or perma-travelling parents): But the barriers, e-Learning provides to it's learners (see http://www.editlib.org/p/38075) often meet competences that before had to be learned in f-2-f education, like self-motivation, organizing learning processes, looking for further information and dealing with information. Teaching such abilities via e-Learning still seems to be a white spot on the map of Internet based educational research. And not researching in those fields somehow means raising the gap between priviledged and not priviledged countries (in priviledged countries at least most parents have a suitable education to assist their kids). Thus, from my perspective, this is one of the three big research fields for the future.
When following the type/content of presentations on e-Learning conferences in the past 2 years (eLearn, EdMedia, EDEN, IADIS, Plymouth e-Learning, OEB), it seems being more promising/rewarding (for researchers) to research on phantastic educational opportunities, new technologies (like iPhones or iPads) offer. Researchers tend not to care if any learner may have such technologies. This research often even is conducted with infradstructure that has been funded/provided by the original producers - the researchers or their institutions would never have been able or willed to buy the related technologies by themselves. Nothing bad about this kind of funded research on the one hand, but on the other hand, if we use this as an opportunity to lay back and claim having done everything to solve the big issues in the world, it gets to be a problem. Last year in my lecture, I asked my 120 students who of them had a smart-phone with a flat-rate Internet access. Not even 10 percent had such a technology. Why should I provide my lectures or additional learning content for such a scenario - I upload it in moddle? If I did so although knowing that just 10% will use it, would I rather help myself by claiming that we are a modern department or would I actually help my students to get better learning opportunities and location-independent? Would I much more, maybe force my students to spend money for technology, they otherwise would not need? In consequence this would mean that I force them to even do more jobs besides university to afford it.
This leads to the second big research field (and critique): Implementing educational approaches that fit the technological standard even in poor regions. Instead of really finding solutions for poverty and worldwide understanding, we seem to develop more and more educational scenarios, the regions in need anyways cannot use (if not even students in highly developed countries can...).
Even if we had the perfect approaches for Internet-based school education, we can not expect that the necessary technological standard (be it the infrastructure provided by the region or the technological standard the local people can afford to have) is provided. Instead of developing more and more highly innovative ideas on how we could involve the newest technology in educational scenarios, we rather should research on educational concepts that work with the lowest technological infrastructures like spontaneously working modem-Internet and Win95 computers. Even in a country with a high technological standard (in average), such as Germany, most of the schools have a single computer room (if they have one at all), and poor families have no Internet or Computer at home - but those, first of all, would be the ones in real need of additional educational opportunities. Developing technology for rich people will never solve future problems - and the argument that first it needs to be paid and than it can be provided for the masses is a foul excuse (adapted from the pharma-industry) to play around with funny new technology instead of doing the painful work.
The third big research topic in this field, is related to educational resources and still not solved (but I am hard working on this one since 2007). Sure, we have high quality ressources that can freely be reused. But can they really be reused? Even German teachers feel insecure when dealing with this question (see http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media25178.pdf) and rather do not reuse resources from others than choosing the "wrong ones" (whatever this may mean in a certain context). How can we ensure that when reusing such resources, those resoureces fit the context of the learners and we do not give up or "violate" our own cultural identity? Particularly in school-education, the cultural identity of our learners still is to be developed. From my point of view, it is one of the basic school tasks to preserve local culture (university already should be more general). We urgently need working approaches that help educators to adapt learning resources to their specific content. And following an apporoach of national culture (as a lot of colleagues recommend) is not a solution but a unjustifiable simplification. We need mechanisms that help educators to determine their own (local) educational context, determine adaptation needs and finally, conduct the adaptation. I still am stuck in the first part (although in parallel also working on the other parts - but basic questions still are unanswered or answers are not validated enough) and somehow, it seems, I have opened a bottomless keg. Right now, the biggest problem is motivating universities all over the world to invite their students (by mass mail) to participate in my survey on learning culture. However, without further data of learners in different cultural contexts, it seems almost impossible to finding appropriate results/solutions. Fortunately, I now, received translations of my survey into French (verified), Russian and Turkish (additionally I have verified translations in Korean, German and English). Since the survey needs to be implemented in the national language, this is another problem for coming further.
If you are further interested in this topic at all, be free to look at http://uni-due.academia.edu/ThomasRichter. As far as I was allowed to, most of my publications are online there. I invite everyone to contribute/support my research and am willed to even share the raw-data as soon as they are evaluated.
I look foward reading your comments,
all my best wishes and thanks for starting this discussion!
2 Recommendations
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