Blog Summary (by Dayle)

This debate has been about some of the many pro's and con's of online learning. Phil has come up with many common pitfalls and I have attempted to rebuke them in favour of my current favourite medium for learning.

Pitfalls of Technology
The debate began with a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages from a technology point of view. Technology can and will fail at the worst possible times but there are always alternatives like text chat when voice fails and discussion boards when text fails etc. Slow internet is becoming a problem of the past with the vast majority of students having broadband, but yes ultimately online learning is still dependant on having an internet connection up and running. The technology does enable students to study from anywhere (like me in Adelaide), use multi-modal communications, record almost all aspects of class and create a very participatory environment. In a post on AndreaMartines blog, the interesting idea was raised that schools should not be fostering the use of technology at all, but because technology has permeated all aspects of modern life, schools should avoid technology in favour of 'direct contact with the living world'. I think this argument is wrong on some levels, most people use technology regularly as part of their lives so to remove it from schools would create a very artificial environment. However the way we use the technology should be carefully examined to ensure it's not overdominating our curriculum.

Academic Integrity
Problems with cheating and identity fraud were raised in round two of our debate. Phil asked the question how can you ever be sure who is on the other end of the internet? I would suggest that this is a problem in face to face environments as well as you never really know who actually wrote the essay that is handed to you. With the internet full of electronic resources it is very easy to just copy and paste together an assignment, however it's also very easy to run assignments through one of the many plagiarism detection tools available. Many examples of types of technology based cheating were given and just as many detection and verification methods exist. Some students will always be trying to find a way to cheat whether it be online or offline, the solution is to try as best we can to prevent it from happening. Once again it comes down to good pedagogy and excellent teaching in a way that discourages cheating or makes it unthinkable.

Isolation
The internet can be a lonely cold experience but it can also be a friendly social experience. I gave an opposing example to Phil's argument by citing the use of Facebook to increase social interaction in the face to face environment. Social interaction is definitely important for learning and this does come naturally in a face to face class as the act of putting people in a room together forces at least some interaction. In the online environment it is important for teachers to explicitly allocate time to foster social interaction in one way or another. There are currently many tools to enable synchronous interaction including virtual classrooms like Elluminate and voice chat apps like Skype and I'm sure hologram technologies are just around the corner. If done well, online learning has the potential to be just as social as face to face learning but again it comes down to good pedagogy and excellent teaching.

OpenCourseWare
My final contribution to the debate was to look at how the online environment has enabled education that would otherwise not have been possible. There is a growing list of some of the worlds top universities offering 'OpenCourseWare' including MIT, Yale and Berkeley. There are also many sites offering free lessons in specific subject areas purely because they want to. This type of free and open philosophy is seen across cyberculture from Wikipedia through to opensource software and is just starting to flourish in the realm of online education. The valid question of quality was raised but the internet is somewhat self moderating. Once again I think only sites with good pedagogy and excellent teaching will gain popularity.

Conclusion
This debate has made me think about some of the barriers to online learning and raised some interesting issues. Across all the arguments I think the common theme is that of good pedagogy and excellent teaching. Online learning provides opportunities for different learning experiences but they are not necessarily better or worse. I think that we can't ignore technology in education as it is an integral part of both our working and social lives. It is clear that technology provides many new opportunities to improve the delivery of education - the tools available to teachers are now far more powerful than any other time in history. It is a mistake to think that these technologies will, of themselves, guarantee better learning and I believe it is our job as teachers to find relevant, useful and innovative ways in which these technologies can actually improve the learning environments we provide.

SUMMARY OF DEBATE – BY PHIL

It has been an interesting experience over the last few weeks taking the side of a debate I had very little belief in. Having said that, I may have started to convince myself that I did have some good points regarding the benefits of the more traditional teaching methods. I feel like it has been a good challenge to try and put forward arguments against e-learning to a group of students who are essentially doing this course because of its online benefits and flexibility. Needless to say I was up against it from the start.

The first points discussed by Dayle and I were some of the problems/limitations of e-learning in terms of issues associated with technology. I argued that glitches in hardware/software were quite common and can result in an unproductive experience for the student. Microphones drop out, likewise internet or skype connections etc. Dayle conceded that technological problems do occasionally occur, but life goes on and we find ways to get around it. I would agree with that as we seem to get around any issues with our week-to-week skype sessions. I still believe that if it was a one off class, for example a full day session for a particular subject, I might be a bit wary of relying on technology when there are no more opportunities if things were to go wrong.

The second point I raised concerned the issue of authenticity. I argued that it is more difficult to determine if a student was really producing their own work using an online environment than by attending a face-to-face class. Plagiarism to me was a concern especially in the TAFE environment where students will try and get away with anything. There really is no guarantee that a student on the other side of skype or any other program is who he says he is nor that the work being produced is not being written by another person. The same can be said for students doing a standard essay and then submitting it to their teacher (on campus). The general feedback on this issue from Dayle and the others who posted comments was that we as teachers need to find ways of appropriately assessing our students so that cheating can be minimised, whatever the teaching environment. This might include collecting various forms of evidence throughout a course and trying to “get to know” your students so that you can easily detect if a piece of work submitted is theirs or not. Yes, I agree that we need to tailor our assessments to blend in with our style of delivery. But what about an online course that is totally asynchronous? How can you then get to know your students and verify their work? Still a few question marks for me and I am leaning towards my own ideas here.

The next angle I took was regarding e-learning as being a lonely and quite solitary experience. I stated that a lack of social interaction associated with e-learning could produce a number of side effects such as a decrease in the effectiveness of any online course, a student’s motivation to complete the course and the enjoyment of the online learning experience. I was quite happy to receive a few comments from people actually siding with me on this one (to an extent). A few people said they have at some point felt isolated in their course except during the synchronous skype sessions that we have each week which would not be a part of every online course. I believe a fully asynchronous online course would be very isolating no matter how you look at it. Thank goodness for skype and messenger!

Dayle put forward an idea about getting students to post photos and information on a facebook page as an activity to break the ice and allow social interaction to take place. A great idea in my opinion and I have thought about doing something similar except that I know a few students who are not actually on facebook (yes I know it is hard to believe), and might object to having images or information of themselves displayed in a semi-public domain.

The final post was interesting with Dayle explaining the concept of a free university where all the materials are made available online and students can study whatever and whenever they like. Despite the ‘University of the People’ not being accredited at this stage, I can definitely see some potential with this idea as a way of granting students access to an education. If there were a system of nationally accredited assessments that students could pay to undertake, these could go towards making up a recognised qualification.

In summary, this debate has been a fun and interesting journey which has answered many questions, yet left many more lingering. I do not know that we as teachers can ever get our assessments or methods of delivery exactly right (if that is at all possible). And anyway, how can you really say that one method will ever suit all members of a particular class. We can only try and do our best and experiment with different techniques as we strive to make education engaging, relevant, productive and useful.