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.