WEEK 14 - ONLINE LEARNING AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC - WAY FORWARD

INTRODUCTION

This was the last week of the practicum weeks and also the last week of the course. I thought the group selected an excellent topic for the last week and aptly titled it the 'way forward'. Indeed after the 14 weeks of hard work and reflecting on online learning this was a good wrap up and provided closure. Like always we had 2 questions on the discussion forum that needed some deliberation and there was also an article posted written by our course convener as a case study on USP online learning.

KEY POINTS

 

There are 3 main delivery modes when we talk about learning: -
1.) Traditional Face to face
2.) Blended
3.) Online

The other way to look at this in terns of the degree of synchronous and asynchronous learning. For eg in face to face classrooms mainly all the learners are present at the same time and the teacher guides the learning in an interactive environment and all the students are learning the same content at the same time. As 21st century puts greater demand on our time and the advent of new developments in ICT, the enabling environment for blended and online learning has been created, giving learners teh flexibility to learn anywhere anytime !

As a learner, I love face to face instructional delivery mode and frankly what is there not to like!! If you think about it, it’s really a luxury.....to be sitting in a classroom…listening to a fantastic, knowledgeable and inspiring lecturer… who breaks down complex issues into bite size pieces for the brain to devour....who gets you all fired up for the subject at hand…who  with all their wisdom guides you in the right direction. To me ….this is what dreams are made of!! I am envious of my students who have this luxury!

But what busy lives we lead….we run after time and constantly complain about having no time. We want the best of all the worlds. We want to study but not give up the lifestyle that working life affords us. 

So we choose the next best thing available...blended!

RESOURCES

• World Bank. 2013 "An Information-communication Revolution in the Pacific"  URL: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/05/17/information-communication-revolution-in-the-pacific
• Raturi et al. 2011 Learner's Preference for Instructinal Delivery Mode:  A Case Study from the University of the South Pacific.  International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. Vol 8. No. 6. pp 17-30
• https://www.blackboard.com/resources/k12/Bb_K12_WP_BlendedLearning.pdf . This a report on compiling research on blended learning

REFLECTION
 

The infusion of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) into learning and teaching has occurred in all sectors of education and the Pacific is no different.  ICT has changed the nature of face-to-face (f2f) teaching and enabled the rapid growth of blended and online courses such as seen at USP.  The idea is very catchy as technologies enable instructors, students and others to participate in teaching and learning at a time and place convenient to them.  

From my experience I think in the Pacific if you are an academic in higher education and used to teaching in a face-to-face environment, there is an insidious pressure to embed ICTs into our face-to-face teaching and to work in blended and online modes. The changing teaching spaces with new available technologies have required us to change our approach to teaching to gain improved learning outcomes.

And let’s face it, as teachers we should be drivers of new knowledge so it will be very negligent of us if we do not use ICT in innovative ways to gain better learning outcomes.