Self Reflection

New Challenge

It is never easy to change to an entire new domain, especially switching from IT to education. Three years of study in information systems required me to have logical thinking, just like most issues we concern in IT are linear and two-dimensional, either good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate. The world of IT seems to be logical and simple, even innovation does not mean that we have to see things in different perspectives because we communicate with machines in lines of commands or moving and clicking.

Switch to the world of education starts from the introduction of learning style theory. People are different from computers in all perspectives. For me, the theory of learning style is a way to acknowledge individual difference; it is how people acknowledge and respect others. Diversity makes the world of education colorful and real, like 3-dimentional. This is something I learnt first from this course, something completely new and opened other ways of thinking. I took the challenge way via the whole course, and will continue explore this knowledge domain. It is difficult to be the expert of one domain, and it is extremely difficult to be the expert cross various domains. Back home, in China, there is lack of people who know technical side as well as educational side of online education; and that is my goal and motivation to gain the knowledge of both.

Collaborative Learning

The third assignment provides us opportunity to work in pairs which is a very unique and valuable experience for me. Not only because of distance that makes the communication harder, but also I had chance to work with a person who is purely from education background. Via discussion, we understand each other better and we acknowledge each other’s strength as well as weak point. For instance, we had a conflict to categories the web2 technologies we are willing to introduce in our designed course “A course of social software for distance students”. My idea was to classify tools into categories in an IT perspective, such as Blogging, Wiki, Internet Call etc.; on the other hand, Leah suggested to categorize them by their functionalities, for instance, tools for listening, tools for talking and tools for presenting. The reason behind it is because this is an introductory course, students may not be familiar with technical terminologies, hence categorize tools by their functionalities is easy to understand and less scary.

When two ways of thinking work as a team, it can be frustrating. But once we acknowledge each other and try to think in another’s perspective, we understand each other more. The final result is promising since it consists of two people’s strength.

Another issue is communication. Surely distance is a barrier even with the help of technology. Effective communication is not only by verbal or written, but also by body language and expression. We did use discussion forum, collaborative editor, Skype, cell phone and email; however, it is not the same as face to face communication. Besides technology, time is another restriction on communication. Both of us have other commitment, such as work and family, so a time that suits both people could be difficult to arrange.

If there is another change of collaborative learning, we might explore more technologies such as electronic whiteboard and web-cam. Also if it is possible, a face to face discussion could be arranged.

Gain

There are several things I gained from the course. First of all, a diverse thinking style that allows me to acknowledge individual difference and see things from different perspectives. The second gain is my communication skills. Talking to computer is straightforward, but communicate with people involves greeting, discussion, respect and understanding. Thirdly, I have chance to know learning theories. Good instructional design is not the matter of using advanced learning system; it is the design that combines learning theories with helps of technologies to promote effective learning. In the past, I am fascinated with learning technologies, however now I realized that technology is not the key of effective learning, it is the person who have both knowledge of technology and learning theories.

Limitation

Due to the time constrain and other commitment, it is not possible for me to explore the topics I am really interested, for example, learning style theories, adaptive learning system and mobile learning. I wish to have chances of doing more study on those topics in the future. Secondly, for the purpose of demonstrate our design for assignment three, we built a prototype. It is only the conceptual design with couple of pages, but the prototype of our learning system could be implemented later in the future. The full version of the system can be tested and used by universities for newly enrolled distance students who are not confident enough to use learning technologies for their courses.