Category: EDCI 339 (A01) Learning Portfolio

Rheingold suggests that “somnambulism” (or sleepwalking) is a key factor in technological politics. “decisions are made because decision makers are asleep.” In other word, we have to be awake, to examine the potential impact of new technologies. “benefits may cause an awake person to pretend to be asleep.”

What do we need to know to design, deploy, control, and live humanely with the tools we are creating?”

knowledge of design principles：user-centered design, and human-computer interaction is crucial to ensure that the tools are intuitive, efficient, and inclusive.

Ethical considerations and responsible technology practices: is necessary to uphold human rights, privacy, and fairness while avoiding biases and unintended consequences.

Data management, privacy security, and compliance: ensures the protection of user data and the secure functioning of the tools.

Before adapting a new New technologies must undergo multiple tests before being put into use. Institutions should approach the adoption of new technologies from the perspective of users, considering whether the technology can genuinely address their needs and anticipate any potential challenges they may encounter during usage.

Before implementing new teaching tools or methods in their own practice, teachers should carefully consider several factors. Firstly, they should clearly define the teaching objectives and learning outcomes that the new tool or method aims to achieve, ensuring consistency with the curriculum and educational objectives. The applicability of evaluation tools or methods to specific content, themes, and teaching environments is crucial. Understanding students’ needs, preferences and Learning styles is important for catering to diverse learners and creating an inclusive environment. Both teachers and students should receive sufficient training and support resources to promote the effective integration and utilization of new tools or methods. Assessing technical requirements, assessing infrastructure compatibility, and ensuring reliable and accessible technologies are key considerations. Planning evaluation and evaluation, managing time and resources, and addressing ethical issues contribute to successful implementation. By considering these factors, teachers can strengthen teaching practice, promote student participation, and achieve expected learning outcomes.

Reflection

I choose this topic because nowadays, there are many new technologies and methods of learning appear, which need to adapt the market and to be adapted by the users.When institutions introduce new technologies and teachers use them for teaching activities, they should also consider the long-term impact of this technology on education. ChatGPT, as an example, some institutions advocate for prohibiting students from using it. While others encourage students to use it as long as they give proper citations.

I believe that students should actively embrace the emergence of new technologies and learn to harness its advantages because the development of technology is inevitable, and we should find ways to benefit from it.

I choose a course from Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) based on my major that I am currently studying at UVic — Psychology. The course is Introduction of Psychology offered by Yale university.

It’s a beginner level course that need approximately 14 hours to compete, but learner can flexible scheduling of their study time. This course has 7 modules, each module provides videos, readings, and quizzes. After taking this course, learners will development skills of reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, and general knowledge about psychology.

I took module 1 of this quiz, which is a basically introduction of the instructor and this course. This course is generalized and suitable for beginners to learn. The course schedule is flexible. My evaluation criteria are based on course content and course composition. The course is well organized.

Compared to traditional’ courses:

legitimacy: The courses are authoritative and provided by instructors from different universities. The one i was taking is taught by Paul Bloom from Yale. I search him on Ratemyprofessor, and the score is very high. So, the legitimacy of this course and the website is guaranteed. It offers the same course with same instructor as in universities.

Autonomy: Online classes require more autonomy than traditional classes because the schedule is flexible and students need to manage their own time for study.

Connection with your peers and the instructor(s): Lack of communication is a disadvantage of learning on the website. There is no way to communicate with the instructor or other students except comments on the course page.

Assessment and evaluation: There are module quizzes, and most are multiple choices questions, evaluation is based on the system and the preset correct answer.

Based on the information of this course, I think it is a xMooc. This course is a combination of a pre-recorded video lecture with quizzes, tests, or other assessments, and there is no communications between learners and instructors. xMOOCs are centered around a professor rather than around a community of students.

Reflection

I choose this module activity because I took other online classes before, and I like this way of learning especially the form of xMooc. I am kind of social phobia. I don’t like group work, and group discussions. For students like me, xMooc are the ideal way to learn. We can watch the course recordings based on our own time and we don’t have to communicate with others. Mooc is also benefit for other people, such as people who have worked. They don’t have time to study like a full-time students. So, this form of classes allow them to study at spare time. I do think Mooc is open course it’s open for everyone as long as you pay. (some of them are free), Simplest example: i am not a students of Yale, but I can take the course taught by professor of Yale.

Zoom video communications inc, is usually referred as Zoom, and widely used for online chat, and video communications by companies and schools. The first time I used it was during the pandemic, when all my classes conducted online. The major functions of Zoom are video communications (Meetings), messaging (Chat), voice calls (Phone), conference rooms for video meetings (Rooms), virtual events (Events) and contact centers (Contact Center).

Zoom is launched in 2013 by its creator and CEO Eric Yuan. Eric Yuan is a Chinese-American. Because of his background, when Zoom are widely used during the pandemic, the security and privacy policies are concerned by western society. They are worrying that if Zoom would share the users information with Chinese government.

Before we going through the privacy policies of Zoom, let’s considering what information do we need to register and login Zoom.

We can use our phone number, Apple ID, Google ID, and Facebook ID to login. We can also use a safer way to login it, the SSO, and with SMS. SSO allows us to use a company or institution domain to sign in.

When register it, We need to provide our e-mail, date of birth, and phone number.

Now, let’s go back to the question, is it safe to use Zoom? Where do they keep our information?

Zoom meeting service is where they keep all the data of our screen-sharing, chat, connectors, audio plans, cloud storage, and other collaborative services. Zoom has a very strict policy of copyright and data.

Which means we own the meetings, chats…. the activities we conducted on Zoom, nobody else could use it.

The goal of Zoom is :

Zoom allows us to conduct remote learning.

Reflection

The popularity of Zoom is due to people being quarantined at home during the pandemic, but I think it is believe this is an inevitable trend. Remote working, and learning saves lots of costs of time and transportation, and overcomes the limitation of time and space of traditional learning.

Privacy information is what we need to concern. We are not offering much to Zoom, (only our date of birth, e-mail… which are needed for almost all other apps) and our activities on Zoom are well protected (based on their policy and information online) I believe Zoom is a save place for us to do learning.

Schools and teachers always teach us how to avoid plagiarize. As more and more learning activities are conducted online, I think it is also important to teach students how to protect their own works.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications

https://explore.zoom.us/en/acceptable-use-guidelines/

Morris, S. & Stommel, J. (2017) A Guide for Resisting Edtech: the Case against Turnitin. Hybrid Pedagogy. https://hybridpedagogy.org/resisting-edtech/

The theory of connectivism was proposed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes in 2004 – 2005, defined as “the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories, and emphasized that learning is not entirely under the control of individuals but a process continues changing depending on the environment.

“It is not a pedagogy, but a set of principles” Siemens (2005)

Compared to traditional learning approach, connectivism is a network based on knowledge. Education occurs through the transferal of knowledge from educator to learner, and both the learners and educators who participating in the process constitutes learning.

Connectivism is characterized by four major types of activities: aggregation, relation, creation, and sharing.

As the developing of connectivism, the process of learning will gradually becomes more decentralized. A educator or learning source on the internet, can be a teacher doing online lecturing, can be a short video on TikTok, can be a blog, or a Youtube video. This is reflect creation and sharing of the characteristic of connectivism. The online learning sources are opened, anyone can be the creator, and creating and sharing their own knowledge to others, and anyone can be the learner, there are tons of learning source out there on the internet wait for you to discover. if only like this, the learning resources are decentralized and without control. So, a platform is needed to aggregation and connect the educator and learner. There are many platform out there, such as Brightspace, TikTok, Youtube….etc they are playing a key role in connetivism, reflecting the characteristic of aggregation and relation.

A example mentioned in the article: Downes and Siemens developed an opened course called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that anyone could study them at no financial cost, but also open in terms of content, direction, and technology. These courses, such as Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08 and CCK09), allowed learners to freely access and contribute content using various online tools. The connectivist courses had less structure and emphasized learner-generated content and connections.

Personal reflection

I don’t think connectivism is a totally new approach. As in traditional learning, our schools, or classrooms, play a similar role as a platform plays in connectivism, which links educators, learning resources and learners together. But, in connectivism, overcoming the limitation of time and space of the traditional learning, and enriching the learning materials. Connectivism places high demands on learners’ autonomy. learners need to take some time to discover and find the best “platform” suit for their goals of learning. “Interaction” is also important in connectivism because the connection is not only between the learner and learning resources but also between the learner and other learners.

Sources

Weller, M. (2020). “Chapter 17 – 2010  Connectivism.” 25 Years of Edtech. AU Press. https://read.aupress.ca/read/25-years-of-ed-tech/section/198057f5-1a3e-4436-a4b8-c6e1a3e0bd69#ch17.

I always believe that different learning approaches or theories apply for different people, and there is no single approach or theory works for everyone.

Personally, I grew up in the environment where they used the same method to teach everyone in the school, which i felt uncomfortable about it. These approaches they use may works well for some students but not me. For example, the teachers would ask us to memorizes English words written on the textbook, but i just couldn’t. I prefer to learn new words through movies, musics, and even videos on the internet. This personal experience makes me realized that we should “teach students in accordance with their aptitude”. This is why i selected this reading “Learning theories and online learning” by  Bates (2014)

In the article, Bates (2014) outlined a numbers of theories on learning and emphasized the importance of understanding learning theories to effectively design and deliver online courses. Bates (2014) proposed in the article:

“With a knowledge of alternative theoretical approaches, teachers and instructors are in a better position to make choices about how to approach their teaching in ways that will best fit the perceived needs of their students, within the very many different learning contexts that teachers and instructors face.”

Indeed, with alternative theoretical approaches, teachers can give better support to their students.

Here are some approaches Bates (2014) proposed in the article:

Behaviorism

Behaviorism was developed in 1920s, and it still be a dominate approach in many countries especially in the U.S. Behaviorists believe that specific behaviors are related to specific stimuli, in other words, specific stimuli can trigger specific reactions in people. By punishing and reinforcing, it is possible to enhance or decrease the frequency of specific behaviors among people. In the context of online learning, behaviorist principles can be applied through providing clear objectives, offering immediate feedback, and using rewards to motivate learners.

Cognitivism

Cognitive approaches emphasize the understanding of learning, and we cannot be limited to observable behaviors. Instead, we must focus on learners’ psychological experiences and abilities, such as memory, concepts, comprehension, and logical thinking. Artificial intelligence is the application of cognitivism. As Chatgpt, it first analysis the logic behind the question and then “retrieval” from the large memory resource database of the internet and to answer the questions you ask. Through continuous learning, its answers will become increasingly accurate. This is a simulation of the brain, which also reflects the plasticity of the human brain. Online learning can incorporate cognitivist principles by presenting information in a structured and organized manner, promoting active engagement and reflection, and encouraging learners to build connections between new and existing knowledge.

Constructivism

Constructionists emphasis the importance of consciousness, free will and social influences on learning. In constructivism, knowledge is seen as value, people are seen as unique, and everyone can pursue the value they want to achieve using their own methods. In online learning, constructivist approaches can be implemented by encouraging collaboration, providing opportunities for exploration and inquiry, and fostering a learner-centered environment.

Connectivism

Connectivism is a new approach to online learning and it is still been developing. it emphasizes learner autonomy, interactivity. This also means that teachers would have less control on the students. The learning results are mainly depending on how much efforts the students put into on the course, and the degree how the student connect to the course materials and other students.

I am a psychology student at UVic, so more or less, i knew some theories about Behaviorism and Cognitivism. Constructivism is new to me and the Connectivism approach is what i am now experiencing (taking this course). I think, for the students, to experience different approach so that you can find the one fit you the best, and for the teachers, integrating different teaching theories can they better cope with different students.

sources

Bates, T. (2014). Learning Theories and Online Learning. [Blog post]. https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/07/29/learning-theories
-and-online-learning/