E-LEARNING CATEGORIES April 10, 2010

After reading the article E-learning categories, I would like to talk about my experience at La Universidad de la Sabana because it has been the only e-learning experience I have had.

In the master program, I have been involved in five of the seven e-learning categories mentioned by Siemens (2004): course, informal, blended, community and network.

Most of the subjects I have taken have been blended courses. Courses because they have had a start and an end date set. Most of them follow a constructivist theory and all of them have had a clear evaluation and assessment process established since the beginning of the course. For instance, the self-assessment class I attend, started on February 13^th and will finish on May 29^th. It is based on a constructivist theory because we “construct knowledge by understanding new information and building on (our) own current understanding” (Brown, 2005). And finally, the evaluation criterion is clear because all the assignments are well explained, with rubrics and the percentage they will have for the final grade. It also has a final project we have to make based on everything learned throughout the entire course.

The courses have been blended because they have both face to face and online sessions. Again, talking about the self-assessment class, we have received face to face sessions and online sessions (synchronous and asynchronous) to reinforce what was studied in the face to face session.

The blended courses at La Universidad de la Sabana have also encouraged me to have an informal e-learning. For instance, I would like to mention the ICELT component in which we had to fulfill some assignments and for doing so, we had to do a lot of search from which we learned a lot. I want to mention Lerner Autonomy and Self-access Materials class (LASAM) in which we had to design some activities and while designing them we found many interesting and useful resources to be applied in our teaching practice. And finally, I want to mention the blogs I have been constructing (ARP and NLE).

The master course has also helped us to become an e-learning community. We have become a community because we share the same and/or similar interests, purposes and goals “A community is a group of people with a common purpose, shared values, and agreement on goals” (Oblinger and Oblinger, Eds, 2006). Furthermore, we are constantly expanding knowledge by collaborating, supporting and encouraging each other. In that way we are keeping ourselves updated and making the knowledge flow.

Finally, I want to talk about the Network component we have develop in the blended courses. While studying the master course we have been also building our own learning network with more teachers from our school, teachers from the master course and the multiple resources we have been in contact with to enhance our function as teachers.

I did not mention the category of knowledge management because I am just capturing knowledge but the availability I have made of it has been little. Soon, I will start making all the resources I have been in contact with, and all my experiences available to the teachers who surround me, especially the ones from the school I work for because I really want them to start improving their teaching experience to enhance the children learning process.

References

Brown, M. (2005). Learning Spaces. In Educating the Net Generation, Chapter 12. Educause. Retrieved on March 10^th, 2010 from www.educause.edu/educatingthenet gen/

Oblinger, D., & Oblinger, J. (Eds.) (2006). Learning Spaces. Educause. Retrieved from

http://www.educause.edu/learningspaces Chapters 4 and 5

Siemens, G. (2004) Categories of E-learning. Retrieved from

http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/elearningcategories.htm

COGNITIVE DETERMINANTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PREFERENCE April 8, 2010

According to the cognitive determinants of environmental preference stated above, here I will analyze and compare a physical and an online learning environment based on my personal experiences.

For the physical one, I would like to talk about my literature class at the university. I remember it was an ugly, small, cold and wooden floor classroom. The wall was painted in light green (an old color) and the light was not good. The coherence of the class was not good for learning to take place, although the teacher tried to do her best…it was impossible. Furthermore, there were not any stimuli for catching students’ attention or make them feel comfortable, all the students were looking at the clock all the time, waiting for the class to finish everything in that class seemed to be complicated, maybe because we were not interested on the class. All the classes it was the same, it became a routine and a torture.

The virtual environment I want to talk about is Wiziq. This environment is organized cognitively, it has everything we could need in a physical classroom: whiteboard, markers, pencils, notebook, highlighter, eraser, a projector (the same screen), and the most important, it allows synchronous interaction. It is an interesting environment that can stimulate participation and discussion. It is friendly user and allows to present different contents through different media. Finally, it allows recording the session, which help learners to review the lesson as many times as they want and learn in their own pace.

A PPT PRESENTATION April 4, 2010

Dear all, click on the link below to see how we can transform physical learning spaces into virtual learning environments.

virtual learning environments

Community April 4, 2010

THREE IMPORTANT ISSUES OF A COMMUNITY

Retrieved from http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kZ_pdWl1UFU/StnWBtWvteI/AAAAAAAAAGI/Pw7BEAGCj9Y/s320/Online_Community.jpg

A community is a dynamic whole that emerges when a group of people share common practices are interdependent make decisions jointly identify themselves with something larger than the sum of the individual relationships and make a long term commitment to well being in terms of their own, one another’s and the group’s.  Shaffer and Anundsen (1993)

For me the three most important issues of a community are:

1. A community is not a place-based concept anymore. (Palloff, 1996 as cited in Palloff, Rena and Pratt,2007)

Nowadays, the concept of community has changed since it is not based on a place, as it used to be. Because of technology, now we can also find online communities, who may not share the same physical space but a virtual one.  The only requirement to form a (online) community is to have common goals and/or practices, and issues of identity.  In our NLE class, we are all part of a community that is not necessarily place based.  All of us have different skills and personalities but all of us share the same goal; learning from each other.

1. Members of a learning community depend on each other to achieve the learning outcomes. (Palloff, Rena and Pratt, 2007)

Since learning is a social process and meaning and knowledge is better constructed collaboratively, it becomes very important the participation of all the members in a community, especially when it is an online community. This does not mean that place-based communities do not need the cooperation of each member, it is only that when members of a community can meet face to face it becomes easier the communication because of the body language, signals and expressions. Fortunately, NLE community members are very committed and like to collaborate to each other. All of us are active members of the community because we are constantly sharing information, commenting on others ideas, giving opinions and even solving “conflicts). All this participation enhance our learning if it was not like this it would be frustrating to post our ideas and do not receive any reply instead. If there is not response, there is not community and so learning outcomes could not be achieved. Furthermore, some of the activities in the course are designed in such a way that without the help of each other could not be well achieved: wiki, mindmaps, etc.

1. Members’ expressions of support and encouragement exchanged between students, as well as willingness to critically evaluate the work of others. (Ibid).

In a community, support and encouragement are important to foster development. Our learning community is characterized by a constant exchange of expressions of support and encouragement that enhance our learning process. We are critical when replying to our classmates and respond to critics with maturity. We recognize when mistakes are made and correct if it is necessary. In this community we learn from each other experiences.

References

Oblinger, D., & Oblinger, J. (Eds.) (2006). Learning Spaces. Educause. Retrieved from

http://www.educause.edu/learningspaces Chapters 4 and 5.

Palloff, Rena and Pratt, Keith (2007). Building Online Learning Communities, Wiley, Chapter 2.