As we enter the new year it is a good time to explore topics that are new or continue to be important to distance education and adult learners. Many are topics that have been discussed for a number of years, but remain as relevant and important today as in the past. The following is a […]
Category: Blog Posts
Exploring the influence of Color on Learning
Over the Thanksgiving break, I was designing a poster presentation for an upcoming conference – and was stuck with picking out the right color palette. In Academia, this is supposedly a ‘wasteful dilemma’ because the color, formatting, design etc are weighted much less than the research itself, but this was still a dilemma that could […]
Design Thinking: An Identity in Crisis
Design thinking has been accepted by many. Unfortunately, as the terminology continues to gain traction, many adopters vaguely apply design-like processes to solve wicked problems, under the guise of “design thinking”. Perhaps it’s time to do something different. Maybe it’s time to re-identify. What is Design Thinking? Beginning in the 1950’s creative techniques and problem-solving […]
How does Scientific Theory Evolve/Revolve?
Traditionally, scientific development is viewed as the cumulative triumph of an ever more truthful understanding of the reality. However, Kuhn (1970) argued in Structure of Scientific Revolutions that theory adaptation is in fact rare, and new theories replace old ones rather than building on them. A core concept in this argument is the life cycle […]
Among the hundreds of issues of tech-based educational innovation
Education, as an old topic existing for centuries, hardly makes people relate it to innovation. When we are asked about innovations in education, we would easily think of technologies, because technologies are gradually changing our lives in every possible way. If we don’t think twice, we tend to see the promising side of the technological […]
A new year, a new research agenda, a renewed excitement
As we enter a new academic year it is a good time to look back at past research trends and forward to new research agendas for distance education and online learning. Many of our big questions remain that we will continue to debate and explore associated with deep learning, cognitive load, and online pedagogy. As […]
# 1 Adult Education: an education for Global Citizenship?
Disclaimer: I do not claim to recognize all the possibilities, and apologize to those not mentioned or understood here. The goal is to open and expand the dialogue. I speak to my own understanding to the domain of Adult Education and the grand purpose. Introduction Are we missing topics in Adult Education? This is the […]
Criticism, a learner’s greatest tool… and why distance education makes this achievable
I recently read Brookfield’s, “A Political Analysis of Discussion Groups: Can the Circle Be Unbroken?”. Brookfield has worked diligently on the topic of critical analysis as a tool for learning. (Brookfield, 2000, 1001)I found this an interesting take on how people feel about themselves through the examples he provided as vignettes. Brookfield’s vignettes provide this pattern […]
Visits to Science Centers Can Predict Interest in Science?
I came across an article the other day that is about adults’ current and previous informal learning experiences and the relations to the interest in science. It is a quantitative study done in 2017, and it involved about 14,000 participants and 3,001 effective data from 3 metropolitan areas of the United States, Los Angeles, […]
A Review of Reviews on Collaboration within Different Fields of Study
No matter how people call it, cooperation, collaboration, team work, or group work, etc., we have been witnessing growing research and practices related to group activities. Just for consistency, this post will use the word collaboration to represent the aforementioned terminologies at a broad level, where a group of students learn together inside or/and outside […]