Category: Edci339

This learning activity attracts my interests a lot, because I have not noticed educational metaphors when I read any articles in the course for the first time. Meanwhile, it nicely aligned with one of my learning goals: to learn and understand how digital identity could affect students learning and social life. Overall, I think this learning activity helps me better understand the digital pedagegy.

The metaphor I chose is from the article “Open education: Walking a critical path”, which is the concept of “visitor” and “resident” for online learning. I selected this metaphor because it has significant meaning in open digital pedagogy, and people need to know which identity they want to show when they are using any social media and online learning platforms. In terms of the word “visitor”, literally, it means a person who shortly spend time in a place; the word “resident” means a person who live in a place for a long time.

However, these two words have a different meaning for online users. The metaphor here is that people who only use the internet to look up and view information without leaving any social trace are the visitors in the digital environment – for those people who build relationships and online communities through the internet, such as share thoughts and learn from each other, and leave their social traces and personal profile, they are the residents in the digital world.

In this case, I think the metaphors of “visitor” and “resident” are very appropriate, because they are really vivid in explaining the deeper meaning of the two identities in the digital environment. Besides, these two identities are very crucial for us to adapt the digital education. Regarding to the privacy issue in online learning, everyone has a different comfort and sensitivity with our online profiles. For those people who want to keep their personal information private when browsing and looking up learning materials on the internet, they are able to be a digital visitor. Meanwhile, in terms of those people who want to share partial or all personal information, such as real name, hobbies, and personal and professional challenges to build same-interested relationships and live in the online community, they can decide to be a digital resident. Furthermore, digital identity allows people to selectively reveal their real information, in order to preserve our privacy. After I understand the deeper meaning of the metaphor, I decide to be a resident when I study online and display my partial private information in my profile.

Reference:

http://eprints.teachingandlearning.ie/4345/

https://sc.orsoon.com//search/%E5%B1%85%E6%B0%91.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=visitor+cartoon&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi4o9z2x-L7AhWXwnMBHYJ9DZoQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=visitor+cartoon&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBggAEAUQHjIGCAAQBRAeMgYIABAFEB4yBggAEAUQHjIGCAAQCBAeOggIABCABBCxA1CXBlioI2CAKWgAcAB4AIAB3wGIAb0WkgEGMC4xNC4ymAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=Le-NY_jYOpeFz7sPgvu10Ak&bih=778&biw=1017#imgrc=NcQQgcY7mk54MM

https://www.google.com/search?q=digital+environment&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjlrL_pyOL7AhU6jNgFHc0oAfQQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=digital+environment&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQ6BAgAEEM6BwgAELEDEENQAFjYEmDfE2gAcAB4AIABpAGIAaYNkgEEMC4xMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=HvCNY-WlKLqY4t4PzdGEoA8&bih=778&biw=1017#imgrc=sR7dLUcMsNCa7M&imgdii=gTMMWZ936EH7XM

I have joined a MOOC(Massive Open Online Course) in Coursera, and I really like how it worked. I searched the keyword, music, as my topic, and there were many courses related to my preferences. Then, I chose a beginner level course, which called Fundamentals of Music Theory. The course was offered by the University of Edinburgh. I felt surprised that the course was totally free, and I was able to access all the course materials and lectures. There were six instructors in this course, and the instructor rating and the course rating were shown under the name of the course, which was really high. Meanwhile, six-week courses were available, and each week had different main concept related to music theories. There were approximate 12 hours to complete in the six weeks. Specifically, the lectures were all recorded, so it was a kind of individual learning. It was nice that I could study at my own pace, and I usually spent my leisure time to acquire the knowledge. In order to make sure whether or not I fully understand the lecture content, I was able to take the knowledge check each week; the quiz each week would show my grade, which also helped me to better absorb what I learned.

Moreover, compared to this learning experience to the traditional courses taking at school, it removes the barriers of time and distance. Since the courses in Coursera are mostly offered by universities and colleges, this kind of online learning increase the number of people who are able to take classes at the university level. In terms of the learning process, it is an individual and self-directed learning. There are rarely interactions between teachers and students, this MOOC would be considered an xMOOC(Extended Massive Open Online Course). Furthermore, based on my experiences, I would consider xMOOC to be “Open”, because there are abundant university- level OER(open educational resources) and learning quiz, and they are available to everyone who want to learn.

In terms of why I chose this learning activity, it allows me to know one more useful MOOC provider, which is really helpful for me to acquire more high-quality knowledge outside of school schedule. Another reason is that this activity aligned with one of my learning goals; the goal is to learn how digital identity could affect students learning, and how it could help my future study. In this case, since I logged in to the online learning platform, Coursera, in order to join in the courses, my digital identity is a resident. I am sure this digital identity in this platform would help me to search and learn what I wish to learn, and the courses are at university level, which is beneficial for me to learn more academic knowledge now and in the future. Overall, this xMOOC platform, Coursera, helps me a lot, and if I were to rate it, I would give it a nice score.

References:

http://eprints.teachingandlearning.ie/4345/

https://blog.extensionengine.com/xmooc-vs-cmooc

I chose this learning activity because it helps me to better comprehend what is a digital identity, and how it really affects and becomes a part of our life.

During the week, all of my classes were online courses, so I spent most of my time at home to have a digital learning as well as achieve my weekly tasks for each course. I often used Email, Slack, BrightSpace, and WeChat to join in class communities, and communicate with my professors, group members, classmates, and friends after the class. Zoom and BrightSpace allowed me to meet online with professors, class members, and group members; meanwhile, I acquired knowledge and studying resources from them. WordPress and Google Docs were the tools I utilized to share thoughts and do assignments(for both group work and personal work). Besides, I also chose to draw both in the park and at home; this helped me find more interesting and meaningful objects to draw so that I could better achieve my weekly drawings.

From my network map, most of my learnings are digital learnings, and most of my connections were from technologies, which surprised me a lot. Specifically, I perceived that when I adopted digital learning, my relationships with professors, friends, classmates, and group members were all two-way connections. We in time communicated with each other and gave instant responses and feedbacks. However, when I studied alone and did individual tasks, my relationship with my class communities was one-way connection. In addition, in terms of the relationships among classmates, it tended to be less connected for online drawing class, since those tasks were all individual tasks; whereas for the class EDCI337 and EDCI339, there were many group assignments, which leads the class members to be more connected. Overall, each class with different methods and different kinds of relationships could lead to a good outcome.

Here is my network map(screenshot and in PDF. format):

Digital learning has become a crucial part in the life of contemporary students, and it is vital for us to pay attention to privacy issues when we use digital identity for communicating and learning. From my personal perspective, students’ personal information, such as full names, home address, phone numbers, should not be leaked to other people, organizations, and companies. However, it is acceptable for institutions or instructors to use tools that may challenge students’ privacy only if there is a permission from the students.

In terms of the idea and policies of privacy in education, it is easy to look for relevant and uncovered information on the school website. What students need to do is to search some key words, such as students’ privacy. There are a variety of ways that helps students access and understand the areas of students’ privacy. Some pages and documents are instructing the idea of privacy from the perspective of teachers, others may from the students’ point of views. They are even showing the exact policies in details. Before I search them, I surely cared about my personal privacy, and I noticed some of the policies. For example, whether or not my email address, home address, and my photos are shown on class communities. It is nice that schools and professors respect our choices, so we are optional to reveal our information when there is a class meeting for learning.

Moreover, I learned that BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), as privacy legislation, really supports students to protect their personal privacies. According to FIPPA, since foreign governments may access to students’ personal information from some educational technologies, whether or not student information is accessed and stored on servers outside of Canada is inevitable for us to notice and know. That explains why our instructors always spend some time to detailedly discuss the class technologies in course syllabus and at the beginning of the first class. I was thinking that information about class technologies is not necessary for us to know before we study and start to use, which was completely wrong. Besides, I also discovered that students are able to decide which educational technologies they would use if they are aware of some privacy restrictions; meanwhile, professors always provide alternatives for students to choose and complete school tasks.

Furthermore, this learning about students’ digital privacy is meaningful for me, and it helps me to be closer to my learning goals. Specifically, it allows me to understand more about the field of digital identity and technology tools we use for studying as well as how they are playing a role in our life.

References:

https://www.uvic.ca/til/onlinelearning/home/privacyresources/index.php

https://www.uvic.ca/til/assets/docs/Student%20Privacy.pdf

https://www.uvic.ca/library/research-teaching/copyright/faculty/studentprivacy/index.php

https://www.uvic.ca/til/assets/docs/Top%20Educational%20Technology%20Tools%20for%20Learning.pdf

According to Martin Weller’s “25 Years of Ed Tech”, he discusses the development of e-learning, and how this new mode of education gradually became acceptable and made an impact on people’s learning.

In fact, people were opposed to the the implication of e-learning for education area when it was first proposed in 1998. They over-romanticized the use of fact-to-face learning. They only wanted to pay for the face-to-face education, and they even rejected to hear and accept the new word, e-learning, which represented the exploration of digital education. At first, e-learning was defined as any use of electronic media for learning, and it gradually represented more about the online delivery.  Since e-learning had been broadly argued, the blended learning was come up. It allowed people to blend face-to-face learning with the online delivery, which made online delivery more feasible and created more opportunities for the online education. In other words, the blended learning laid the foundation for the acceptance and the success of first fully online undergraduate course in 1999, which ended the controversy of the e-learning. Besides, people perceived that the cost of the e-learning per student is relatively low in a long term, and the reuse of digital resources also economized many physical resources. 

In a nutshell, the development of e-learning positively affects people’s study, and the success of the e-learning sets the framework for the future educational mode, which means it has really a long term impact on online learning.

I chose this activity because I was really interested in the development of the digital education, and this area of knowledge perfectly aligned with my learning goals. Specifically, one of my learning goals is to understand how social media could affect people’s learning and social life. This activity helped me learn the development of e-learning since it was first proposed, and understand how people gradually adapted to this new mode of learning, which benefited me a lot. I also learned that the term of blended learning was from the development of e-learning, which made online delivery more feasible and acceptable; meanwhile, it created more opportunities for the online education. Thanks to the development of e-learning, it benefits people’s learning and  eventually becomes a mainstream in educational field now. 

References:

Chapter 6 of “25 Years of Ed”

Audio