This study seems to be somewhat litiemd, as video , in my opinion, is only a small portion of what online learning is all about. Personally, I find that my students in my online courses (I am teaching 3 this summer) do a lot better than those in my live classes. I grade their discussions, which is a lot of work for me, so they are motivated to participate if they want to earn the points. In live classes, when they are mostly lecture-based, students tend to sit back, turn on their laptops, plug in to facebook or whatever, and tune out. They may still be facebooking while online for my courses, but they need to be very engaged and use critical thinking skills when answering discussion questions. They also lose points if they fail to respond to other students’ posts.So, for me, online learning is multi-faceted in the sense that they may watch videos (of me, if it is a more difficult course such as criminology theory or research methods, for criminal justice; I teach in a large Criminal Justice program) or they watch videos of documentaries (Frontline has WONDERFUL programs, as an example); they can download power point slides, lecture notes, email me if they have questions (I am online every day, multiple times a day), blog with each other on administrative issues (I create a separate blog for that) and on and on and on . So, yes, I would be perfectly content to teach all of my classes online for the convenience of it as well as the higher level of critical thinking and learning that goes on.Plus, lest we forget learning is really a two-way street. If teachers begin thinking that they are solely responsible for their students’ learning, well then, I think they have missed the point. To go even further, the way I see it is that a teacher is a facilitator of knowledge, offering explanation when necessary and opportunities for learning all of the time. It is really up to the student in terms of whether they take advantage of those opportunities to grow, learn, explore new things, contact their teacher, etc. I suggest more research needs be done, to explore other courses in which online learning takes place and to examine other online forms of pedagogy. The videos seem to resemble to old distance ed. model from years ago Folks still use them I do, too, as I mentioned above but in conjunction with other online tools and modalities. Cheers!
↧
