Category: Reflective posts

The main concern of creating Flexible Learning for Open Education (FLOE) is to allow learners to study a subject base on their own preferences hobbies and personalize how each learner can learn and solve the barriers by providing resources. Due to the diversity of learners now, educators must fit into the different types of them to achieve the best performance. Personally, I found that inclusive learning very useful and efficient because of three important reasons.

First, it recognizes each learner individually, shows respect to all types of learners and designs for human uniqueness and variability. In simple words, it meets the needs and preferences of different learners. The fact that not all people are the same, the traditional way of teaching may not be the best for some unique learners. As technology develops, we have many alternative choices to present materials like using visual media, sound effects instead of a textbook. As for learners who have an issue to attend to class in person, or prefer to stay home, FLOE can provide online tutorials, and encourage people to finish assignments through the web. It is cheaper, efficient and shows respect to every single learner.

Second, it applies modern technology to education. Most people recognize education is face-to-face communication. It must be taught by a professional instructor, and learners must attend class in person at a designed time and finish all the assignments by paper. However, as the development of the internet, social media, and mobile devices, education is getting way more flexible. For example, I can totally complete an online course in UVIC and get full credit when I am in China, by watching and reading material online, submit all assignments and exams through the webpage. The technology eliminates the time zone, physical position, and creates a more flexible schedule. Also, it is cheap and easy to access, learners don’t have to spend a couple hundred dollars on purchasing textbooks, notebooks, and all other tools. Everything can be accessed online at a cheaper price, and environment friendly.

Third, it catches more attention, which simply means it is more fun than traditional education. FLOE encourages more interaction between people and an attractive way of teaching. In the handbook, it shows that games can actually provide useful ideas and help learners to understand the materials better. Instead of cramming, FLOE creates a great experience that makes learners are more attracted to study it. It is way more efficient and less painful than how most people teach and learn now.

Although FLOE and inclusive learning seem to be the greatest way so far, there are still few ideas I cannot agree with or have difficulty to understand, here are two:

“If you are unique (and aren’t we all), numbers are not our friends”, this statement is from the handbook. Personally, I disagree with it, I understand this sentence as how important the numbers are to human, and your words can only be valued when you have more like, or the number of views. Otherwise, your words won’t count, and your effort won’t value. Numbers are important for sure, but it cannot be the most important standard. It should be more like an index for creators to encourage themselves to be better.

I have difficulty in understanding inclusive EPUB 3 and HTML5. It seems to be some professional computer science materials, quite complicated. The webpage contains lots of academic terms and it really confused me.

The one question I have for FLOE is since it encourages learning through gaming. Is there a scale? Because I know when the game is too fun or too over the topic, learners will focus on the game itself more than learning. What is a good standard to maximize performance through gaming?

Reference

Inclusive Learning Design Handbook:

https://via.hypothes.is/https:/handbook.floeproject.org/

Pictures:

https://www.thoughtco.com/respecting-students-is-essential-for-boosting-effectiveness-3194682

https://erasmuscoursescroatia.com/2019/10/24/language-learning

https://www.simplilearn.com/why-e-learning-article

One of my most memorable online learning experience was during my co-op term last summer in China. I worked in an international trading company, and our company was trying to extend the market in an online trading platform like Amazon, eBay, and Taobao. As the employee who was in charge of managing online stores, I must be trained by a professional. The course was detailed and great organized, and my instructor Miss. Xu was an experienced expert in this industry. Although the course was taught online, and I have never met her in real life. I still feel the connection between her and myself.

Image from Finextra.com

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/32772/amazon-casts-a-long-dark-shadow-over-banking

The course started from a very basic level, maybe she was aware that I am only an undergrad student. She didn’t quite treat me like a young employee like most people do, instead, more like a high school teacher. Miss. Xu is extremely patient, polite, and the most important thing is, she really knows how to catch my attention and slowly cultivate my interest. By listening to her class, I feel way more encouraged and I made progress fast than I expected.

Every morning, the instruction video made by Miss. Xu will be sent to my email. A very interesting point is, she never started the class from the beginning, instead of that, she does a small talk about her job, life after work or news. And during the video, she also tried to make a connection with me by making examples of a student shopping online. It really helps me focus because it felt like listening to a friend talking, but not taking a class. Also, it encourages me to think from the customers’ point of view and clarify my decisions. I have a whole day to accomplish her assignments and analyze the knowledge. Before the end of the day, we will video chat by a professional office software “Dingding”. Miss. Xu will Airplay her screen to me and clarify all the problems with me, step by step and very detailed.

Image from Inside Higher ED

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2017/04/19/three-ways-humanize-online-class

There are only 7 classes in a term, and I was meant to finish my own online store at the end of the term. However, this term doesn’t end after classes. Miss. Xu gave me a huge surprise by pretending to be my customers in the few following weeks. She checked my website and ask me lots of tricky questions that other customers may ask. I guess this is her pop quizzes, but thanks for her advice, I could handle it smoothly.

There is something great about Miss. Xu, and it can be explained professionally by using the theories we learned in EDCI 339. First, she values the humanization of online learning a lot more than other instructors. Considering I am still a student and not quite experienced in online trading, she adjusted her teaching method to be more tender. It makes the student feel less stressful and calm, which also make them more productive. The small talks and greetings in instruction videos are also reflections of humanization. Miss. Xu shows empathy to an intern who was having a hard time at work, built a connection to encourage me and help me perform better in this subject.

Image from eduspire.org

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/32772/amazon-casts-a-long-dark-shadow-over-banking

Second, the software she chose is very efficient for online teaching. It a combination of multimedia education video. It allows Miss. Xu to video chat and do screen sharing performance at the same time, so she could explain and clarify my problems at the same time. In my opinion, video chat helps me grow interests in this subject since it feels like talking to her face to face, and I can share my opinions and questions as soon as possible. Since I was working on a platform, listening, and reading is not efficient and causes many misunderstandings. Screen sharing is a great decision, I could follow every step quickly and accurately.

To figure out the differences between online educational content and openly license educational content, we must know the definition of online education and openly license.

Online education is the sharing and exchange of personal ideas, knowledge, and creation by using internet technology to the global. People can access through computers and mobile devices, but not the traditional face to face teaching or textbook. Online educational contents are the materials being shared and exchanged for teaching online. They could be in many forms, like audios, videos, contexts or even images. It is a new and efficient method compares to traditional education.

Openly license is giving permission that allows the public to use this material under license. With open license, you can use the resource for free in any way you like. License is a part of the copyright system all around the world, it works in many companies, organizations, and governments. For example, when an author needs to use a character or texts from another author. He can negotiate with the other author and get the license, but of course, it takes patience, time and money.

Therefore, different from online educational resources, open-licensed educational resources are given the permission of free to use instead of posting them online. They are teaching, learning and researching resources that released under intellectual property license that allow free use by others. Different from online educational resources, they can be more than digital materials like videos, images, music. Lots of content like textbooks, tools, and techniques that use to learn and research are included as well.

A good example of an open educational resource is Wikipedia, nearly all of the material and resources on Wikipedia are openly licensed. Here is a link about linear regression: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression （open educational resource）

Overall, I found open educational resources are quite useful. First, with the permission of free use, people can exchange and share this knowledge, or even remix/rewrite the resources with other licensed resources to create new work in a very easy way. Second, the license gives proper attribution to the original creator, it is a lot easier to do compares to other methods under the copyright system. Third, if you are trying to use the knowledge created someone you don’t know, or you are not able to reach out to the original author to get permission. Choosing an openly licensed resource is way easier to do because it is unnecessary to deal with the author.

Personally, I would use open educational resources for doing projects, create works. Since I am still a student, open resources are quite useful and easy for me when I need to mix some works. Especially when I want to use the knowledge which the original author is aboard, it would be great if I can figure out if the resource is opened. That would save plenty of time.