Topic 1: Privacy, and Building Relationships & Social Interactions in Distributed & Open Learning Environments
I did not have any knowledge in regards to Col and social presence in online/open learning before this week. Although I know that E-learning involves interacting with people, I haven’t think of it in a systematic or formal way. After reviewing my weekly readings this week, my initial thoughts about the col framework is that with three different kinds of presence: social, cognitive, and teaching, E-learning creates an environment that eliminates the teacher-student hierarchy. It makes me think how learning is a process of creating new knowledge with people that come from different backgrounds, instead of a process that students absorb what teachers say. However, this is not to say that teachers aren’t important, as indicated in the “Where’s the Teacher” article, I see that teacher’s presence makes students feel assured that there’s guidance ahead of them. With this guidance and teachers’ rich experience, students can work with each other in a more ordered way.
In reading the course materials for the three weeks, I think that E-learning is still a topic that has enough research but these researches were not implemented greatly. For example, as we move all the courses online due to pandemics, there’s no workshop provided to students of how to benefit from E-learning. It seems that we already assume E-learning is worse than in-person classrooms. It makes me confused about this assumption after reading the theories in the weekly readings. We already have many people study this subject, and we are using learning theories to help students work with E-learning, adapt to E-learning, but still, not many students could access these resources and help themselves. I think this creates problems for inclusion and equity, which I believe is a major concern of E-learning.
