The Land of e-Learning Experiences

This would be the second e-learning subject I’ve come across during my studies and again, I’ve gained more exposure to using various technologies, which may either have enhanced my learning or added to my ponderous nature in wondering what this would mean to my future learning? Right now, it feels like technology and the ways in which we utilise them for education might alienate me from many other learners in the future. Take for example, the current state of web 2.0, social sharing and social networking is the hottest thing right now and in all honesty, I am not a much of a stakeholder in either. Would I be missing out on a lot of learning if everyone around me started using it and I didn’t?

Throughout this subject, the emphasis to me has been on generating creative ways to implementing technologies that can be delivered in an e-learning context and overcoming the obstacles and challenges in doing so. However, I’ve realised that it would be extremely challenging to create an e-learning course that would be able to cater towards all the different learning styles of its users. It feels that the direction educators are taking towards e-learning is that it could be used to potentially replace existing traditional methods of learning delivery. As society and technology progresses, I can well imagine the possibilities of future primary school kids holding their m-learning devices and connecting to a virtual classroom at home.

I personally see that the major challenge lies in balancing a certain type/number of technologies to be integrated into a learning course. Much like how universities are quickly experimenting and adapting with such technologies as podcasts and virtual worlds the likes of Second Life. This creates a hybrid of learning involving e-learning and non e-learning components. That’s why I very much appreciate the activities and theories discussed in class because it is very relevant in overcoming this ‘major challenge’ (as I see it). Not all learners may be comfortable with various e-learning components. Would it be financially possible or time-wise effective to create a learning course that caters to every single learning style?

The classes themselves have been structured and prepared fairly well. The added support of Brett was very welcome as it provided an opportunity for students to showcase possible solutions to this exact challenge I am describing, by bridging the learning experience between e-learning, non e-learning, the elderly, the young, the technical, the non-technical and so forth.

On another note, I’ve always wondered whether it would be possible to develop an online virtual world game (the likes and popularity of World of Warcraft) and integrate HSC subject information, so that high school kids would be actually simultaneously addicted to learning and playing.

And of course, a big thank you to Anne and Brett for their time and efforts in teaching and supporting the subject =)

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Did a short class test today on identifying good multimedia principles used across a couple of different e-learning courses. The two I chose weren’t particularly fancy, but both of them were created with certain design principles to suit their targeted audience. It allowed for comparison and allowed the examiner (me) to critique the effectiveness of the design in delivering the learning content.

Essentially, today is the last class with the option of turning up to next week’s class or not. I’ll write up a subject reflection later to sum up what I’ve learnt and how I felt about the classes in whole.

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Worked through the activity guide 3 where most of the lesson focused on multimedia principles when developing e-learning courses. The teacher went through a flash-based game, which was to teach learners how to develop negotiation skills. The course itself was very appealing as a learning tool because it contains a narrative (story) and allows users to interact with the story (there was always more than one choice/outcome). A game like this would’ve taken alot of time into the development of the story line and how it would relate to the learning objectives (although these weren’t clearly stated).

To sum up that whole module and some of the information in it, the layout and use of certain multimedia in e-learning courses can either be really suitable for it or developed poorly. Sometimes, the creator of these e-learning courses mightn’t incorporate good layout principles, such as spacing between graphics and text, using too many distracting/contrasting colours, etc. Hence, it’s good practice to really consider the type of learners you might be catering to before developing an e-learning course and especially pay attention to the finer details of good multimedia principles.

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Virtual Worlds - Presented By Rashida, Anna, Mel & Adam

Was expecting another fun virtual world experimentation, but unfortunately, it was only presented through a powerpoint slide. Although I can understand how complicated it would be to prepare and organise for all students in the class to sign up for an account, log in and conquer the learning curve within the start of the presentation, I was hoping for at least something similar to what I saw at the beginning of the semester. This makes me realise that even though the potential is very great for the use of such a technology in learning. Likewise, if it was hard to setup and prepare a presentation to allow for everyone to just jump right into using it, then more so for a course, which might base itself entirely in a virtual world.

How you would connect everyone together? How would you ensure everyone is experiencing the same quality and level of content? Would broadband bandwidth play a huge impact on learning quality? The same issues keep arising, which makes me feel as a learner that there may be other learners that might find it hard to learn through virtual worlds.

Podcasting & Vodcasting - Presented By Sam’s group

Great preparation into some of the podcasts and vodcasts because it really gave a good feel for how some lectures in some universities would distribute and create podcasts. Like someone pointed out in class, being able to listen to a captivating voice also enhances the learning process, but I do feel that listening to audio, in particularly if it was a long one, to be very boring. Reason is because it only utilises one sense of the body and that’s hearing. Another downfall is not being able to jump to parts of a long podcast as easily, it becomes very disjointed when you try to and you can’t re-hear the content the same way as you can with re-reading a paragraph in a book.

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Today’s class was brought to you by Brett. We started to go through the module activity relating to digital storyboards and got a rough idea around what we would expect from the assignment. Other than that, it was mostly a discussion lecture to see how we were going with our other subjects and anything relating to our assessments for e-learning.

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Jess & Eddy’s Presentation on Synchronous Learning - Webinars

This is by far the best presentation I’ve come across. This is the first time I’ve come across using web conferencing software with such user friendliness and ease of use, especially since I don’t expect it from a Mac! The group did well to provide both discussion and lecture whilst presenting through the webinar in a series of presentation slides. The best thing is being able to allow everyone to physically input something real to the white board, I can imagine this to be a very effective communication and learning tool for any sort of meetings in general where discussion and ideas need to be formed. However, the downsides associated with using this technology is the costs to purchase the software and hardware required. The software can be an expensive ongoing cost if used regularly.

Otherwise the technology has a very big wow factor for first time users such as myself. I can imagine small classrooms being managed and taught effectively through this type of learning using webinar technology.

My Group’s Presentation on Social Sharing & Social Networking

Have to say I was very nervous, but am glad I was able to create more discussion between DoCS and the group because the relevance of our classes and studies wouldn’t be very relevant or beneficial to DoCS if it wasn’t for feedback to truly determine what DoCS wants out of this experience working with students in UTS.

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1. Group on Mobile Learning

2. Suemin’s Presentation

Both presentations were pretty interesting in their own ways today. Suemin’s presentation was similarly based on alot of the recent “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” pros/cons commercials and as good as the idea was, it made the presentation feel a bit disjointed as the information jumped from speaker to speaker. The group on mobile learning did a pretty descriptive presentation on the technology involved and the costs/limitations associated with implementing m-learning. Both presentations both addressed their respective topics really well though, so it was quite enjoyable.

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1. Received some help from Brett in locating our closest neighbourhood centres.

2 . Anne went over what our group wiki should have:

• proper referencing
• no product reviewing
• How would DoCS be able to use this technology for training purposes?
• How would this technology be used in a general educational context?
• the wiki is more of a preamble to our presentation

3. Our presentation should provide recommendations, benefits, disadvantages, what resources are required for the technology to be implemented, possible issues around the technology. Show the audience some example of these technologies. Everyone will be peer assessed and is labeled ‘Presentation Feedback’ on UTS Online subject documents. Marked out of 15. Teacher will moderate these marks to provide fair grades for presentations.

“Powerpoints with too many words and/or slides are bad”

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Mucking around in Second Life is quite fun. Went to class today and the teacher gave a presentation purely in the Second Life environment. I had the chance of using one of the Macs to join in and follow the group of e-learning teachers that were available in the afternoon to give the classroom and any users a tour of the place. It was a very simple process to sign up and open up the application, however, once I entered the world, I found the learning curve to be somewhat very high for the first half hour or so until I eventually figured out how to transport to different virtual lands.

I could see the potential in using a virtual world to develop many different sorts of interactive content or objects, which would enrich a user’s learning experience. However, the initial learning curve may put some learners off and I believe that this sort of virtual environment mightn’t be for everybody. There’s also the issue of having to wait for content/objects/environments to download first before they would function or show correctly. This was the case especially at home despite being on a cable connection where content might take up to a minute or longer to load up.

At the same time, I felt very distracted during my experience in the tour, which was given in class. The reason is because of the figuring out of keyboard/movement functions an at the same time, there is so much to see outside of the lands that was shown to the class. Overall, I enjoyed the presentation and experience, however, I don’t feel as interested in learning about using the platform more for e-learning purposes.

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Nothing much today, just went over most of module 1, so that part is pretty much complete. More information relating to our group wikis and choosing our groups. We did recap more on last week’s presentation by DoCS. More helpful advice and guides to finding our local community centre by Brett. My group wiki topic is on social networking and social sharing. Have to say it was quite the lucky dip because the topic is very broad. Initial group ideas centred around creating a facebook profile, but we’ll see how that goes.

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