Purple Coffee Guernsey Web Design

To describe the experiences that I have encountered this semester one must first attempt to define the structures that enable such experiences. Students learning and communication was facilitated by Moodle, an open source VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) that provides a framework or structure to make CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) possible. The aim of such structures is to facilitate communication between students despite their distinctly differing geographical locations. To help better define my personal experiences within this module (Digital Culture) it is worth noting that this is my fourth such course of study within this environment, and that many of my experiences this term are defined by my continually evolving knowledge of the system. The internal structures and interactive elements available to support students learning included; Bulletin Boards (Forums), Chat Rooms and WIKI’s.

Universities and other such institutions are increasingly making use of such online learning structures for a variety of reasons. From a student’s perspective VLE’s facilitate learning at a distance, can in many instances be very convenient, cheaper than traditional courses of study and bring together students from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. The very nature of VLE’s thus alters the context for learning students undertake. While VLE’s are often perceived as a direct imitation of traditional learning, its structures make available many new teaching methods, while to a certain extent removing other methods that are more efficient when employed in a traditional learning environment. The following quotation from Spelling, the Secretary for the U.S Department of Education helps better define online learning environments relationship with traditional forms of education;

“Today, student learning is no longer confined to a physical space. Computers and the Internet have broken through school walls, giving students greater opportunities to personalize their education, access distant resources, receive extra help or more-challenging assignments, and engage in learning in new and unique ways.” (SPELLINGS, M, 2008)

The following sections are intended to summarise some of these new teaching methods and my personal experiences in using them;

Bulletin Boards

The bulletin board or more commonly known internet based forum was used to co-ordinate much of the students learning during the Digital Culture course. The following quotation from Trivison serves to better define bulletin board technology.

“Internet bulletin boards function as a virtual classroom for students and teachers who can participate at any time, from anywhere, using a computer and a modem.” (TRIVISON, D, N.D)

This quote highlights two advantages of bulletin board use. Firstly that bulletin boards operate in an asynchronous environment; this allows students to contribute work at any time of the day or night. While this has advantages associated with working flexibility, it does have a few distinct disadvantages in comparison to classroom based conversations. Conversations or threads as they are more commonly known, often loose impetus as real time communication is somewhat lost. People often take long periods of time to respond to one another; however this often results in well researched responses or findings. To this avail I would note that the quality of conversation within the bulletin board system is higher than that of a classroom environment, despite occurring over a longer period of time. Unlike traditional verbal conversation, bulletin boards also provide an ongoing reference of conversation that can be re-visited and be made use of at a later time. Like many online systems, the bulletin boards thrive on a link based structure. Students use links to reference other relevant materials and support their findings. This is a great advantage over traditional learning structures, where knowledge resources are often limited in the short term. The abundance of resources often tests a student’s ability to present well summarised or relevant findings from multiple sources. In some instances the bulletin board system suffers from information overload or lack of direction if this is not well considered by the students.

Chat Rooms & Instant Messaging

The Moodle VLE comes equipped with a chat room. The purpose of such chat rooms is to provide a form of real time conversation, in some sense to mimic the physical learning environment. In my experience chat rooms are used less to study or consider learning resources, but are often utilised to organize group activities and assign roles within these groups. Chat rooms that are restricted to use within VLE’s like Moodle often experience stagnation of lack of use, this is likely attributed to the fact that there are multiple superior instant messaging systems available to students. The very advantage of chat rooms and instant messaging are their instantaneousness and ease of use, to restrict their usage to one environment such as Moodle somewhat contradicts their inherent usefulness and is perhaps why they are rarely used. Much like the bulletin board system the Moodle chat room allows students to use HTML links to reference different sources of information. This really adds something of value to student conversations, as distributing subject matter is virtually instantaneous.

WIKI Environments

Students of the Digital Culture module were grouped into fours to undertake a research project and present their findings in a WIKI. The WIKI structure had some key advantages and disadvantages with regard to accumulating, organizing and presenting the group’s findings.

The WIKI was accessible to all members of the group, this meant that despite group members differing geographical locations, all members were able to amass and organise their findings within one place. While this is advantageous in terms of amassing information, it did pose one key problem; without group members communicating effectively over email, instant messaging or other forms of communications, the structure of the WIKI often became disorganized or illogical as a result of multiple contributors. One such solution was to assign a key member of the group the responsibility of assessing the raw findings of the other group members and using the WIKI structure to order and group the information logically. Information systems like WIKI’s also have the added advantage that like many other forms of online media, they are mutable and changeable. Despite disorganisation at some intervals, with effective communication between group members, information could be re-ordered as many times as is necessary to ensure a logical architecture. As WIKI’s have evolved they have developed some key conventions with regard to information architecture. The advantage of these conventions is that should others make use of the WIKI, they are likely to be able to extrapolate useful content with relative ease, as they may be familiar with such conventions having used popular information systems such as Wikipedia.

What does the future hold?

Increasing worldwide computer literacy rates and improving communications infrastructures are empowering individuals and developing societies with high quality and affordable learning. Bates notes that;

“The developments in technology are very exciting. In particular, the developments in mobile technology are moving forward in ways that are really valuable for education: greater bandwidth, greater functionality, improved user interfaces, many more apps, greater access, lower costs.” (BATES, T, 2009)

The internet and its very nature as a global medium, often transcends localized or nationalized opinions in media, commerce and other areas of society, and the same could be true for education, providing students with cross-cultural values and perspectives on subject matter that had traditionally been considered in a localized context.

It is clear that while CSCL and VLE’s are perhaps not directly comparable to traditional learning techniques, that they are continually re-defining what learning really is. As information becomes increasingly abundant and accessible as a result of evolving technologies, it seems that the challenge for students is less the pursuit of answers and information, but increasingly the individual’s powers of deduction, analysis and ability to become knowledgeable rather than passively acceptant.

Author: Simon English – Purple Coffee Interactive, Guernsey, Channel Islands.

Related Blog Articles

• Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: A History of Apple & Innovation: I’m a Mac! I’m a PC!
• Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: Outdoor Guernsey & Purple Coffee Web Design Embrace Facebook & Social Media Marketing
• Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: Social Media Marketing: Social Media Summary for Guernsey Business’s
• Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: Global Information Technology: Sociological or Criminal Revolution?
• Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: Mobile Innovation: Apple leading the way with iPad?

Ask purple_coffee To Recommend Your Posts