As online distance education courses continue to expand their reach and serve a broader audience, we are required to understand the affordances and challenges of supporting equitable learning environments. The globalization of online distance education requires instructional designers and educators to work outside of their own bias to address a learner population that represents a […]
Category: Online Learning
Social Presence Expectations in Distance Education
How can learning design adapt social presence to the needs and expectations of learners in online distance education? In the book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle, she explores the relationship of our digital addiction to connect socially at the expense of face-to-face interactions. In her research, Turkle reports that […]
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 […]
# 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 […]
Online Distance Education as a Democratization Movement: Are We Inclusive Enough?
“To neglect where we have been hinders our understanding of where we want to go” (as cited in Bunker, 2003, p. 63). This is one of my favorite quotes with its very simple but insightful message: the future is built upon the shoulders of the past. Thus, if we try to understand the problems and […]
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 […]
Idea for designing online PhD activities
As Ph.D. students of the Learning, Design, and Technology program, our blog posts here in the GA Fellows site often discuss learning theory, technologies, and even our personal experiences. But with this post, I wanted to outline a design idea for online Ph.D. courses. This is one of those eventualities the marketplace is pushing for. […]
How to Realize Individual Learning in Small Groups?
Disclaimer: I do not have an answer to it. Like the questions listed in my last post named “Individual Learning within Groups in an Online Course: Who Cares?”, we are still in the process of finding answers to achieve group learning without sacrificing individual learning opportunities. A large number of research teams and projects are […]
Hurricane Irma and how affected my online experience
I am a remote phd student, who lives in Florida. On September 10th hurricane Irma hit the state of Florida. Many don’t know how this affected our lives, other than what was seen on the news. Well… here is my story, but through the perspective of an online student who is studying distance education and […]
Transactional Distance Revisited
It is interesting how certain misperceptions around educational theories and constructs often persist and propagate in education. This was highlighted again this week when I was reading an article by a group of educational psychology researchers (Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths). In this article […]