Describe the potential of human-centered learning in distributed and open learning contexts.
To reach this outcome, I engaged in several educational activities, including extensive research through literature and engagement with learning pod members blog posts. Responding to my learning pod members forced me to re-examine certain ideas regarding pedagogy and digital instruction methods.
This is my learning pod members Susie comment:
This is my relpy:
From my topic 1 post, I talked about Education has experienced an explosion of educational technologies that provide powerful new tools but have also mention controversy about how the application of these technologies affects the outcomes of learners of different learning styles. It was also that while blended learning may have some benefits, educational technologies must complement traditional teaching methods, with an emphasis on whole-of-classroom learning, social justice, and democratic values. Focusing on learner outcomes rather than individualized assessments can ultimately lead to an education system in which technology enhances learning without excluding or alienating learners, retaining key learning values.
Here is my blog1 snippet:
By this completing these activities, I learned the main idea of human-centered learning is that we consider all aspects of the student when designing educational curricula. However, there are questions raised as to how this can be accomplished effectively through online media. An article by Regan and Jesse (2019) argues that digital personalized learning applications are too connected to Big Data, raising ethical concerns regarding the privacy of children at the K-12 level, noting that the issue is far more complex than most realize (p. 168). This does not mean that such technologies do not have potential; it is that they must be carefully implemented.
The problem, as Morris (2018) notes, is that the application of many digital technologies to education remain very much in the experimental stage (para. 9). This, arguably, is the case for both the software and the pedagogical techniques that must be identified as being the most effective for digital learning. Regardless of the forum, human-centered learning must be the focus, since, as Vaughan et al. (2013) argue, blending learning in a digital world is far more than simply adding an online component (para. 4).
The things I learned matter to me because I believe that promises of digital learning can be realized in both distributed and open learning contexts, with the focus remaining human-centered, or student-centered if the term is easier to comprehend. Distributed learning is a form of instruction that integrates multimedia so that learning can occur in any environment: in person, at home, live, or asynchronous. Certain aspects of teaching remain the same. The instructor is still responsible for developing clear, measurable learning objectives, presenting course content that challenges students through several different modalities, and provides opportunities for peer interaction, which reinforces learning and promotes metacognition.
Digital learning is nothing but extending academic discourse, thought, and learning over time and space, as opposed to it occurring in a specific classroom location at a specific time (Vaughan et al., 2013, para. 6). Assessment of learning does not necessarily require face-to-face interaction, so long as there are a variety of teaching activities that have measurable outcomes. Open learning contexts take distributed learning a step further, completely desynchronizing learning from a set time and place, and offering students complete flexibility in terms of their study and learning.
Certainly, this will require a great deal of experimentation. Morris (2018) challenges educators to ask, “why not,” and see what happens when openness to technological resources is had (para. 13). If the educational efforts remain focused on learning, giving student as much flexibility to engage in discovery learning, while still guiding and directing their inquiry, then the forum with which learning takes place should be secondary.
I believe that, for some educators, there is a fear that technology will make classroom teachers obsolete. If the entirety of learning comes from a computer, then is there a need for an instructor? However, this misses the point entirely. Education is communication from one human being to another; it is the imparting of knowledge. A human being with expertise in delivering new information, teaching, will always be required to help students understand their educational journey.
References:
Morris, S. M. (2018). Teaching in our right minds: Critical digital pedagogy and the response to the new. An Urgency of Teachers. https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/learning-in-our-right-minds-critical-digital-pedagogy-and-the-response-to-the-new/
Regan, P. M., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2
Vaughan, N. D., Garrison, D.R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry: Chapter 1, Conceptual framework. AU Press. https://read.aupress.ca/read/teaching-in-blended-learning-environments/section/ac46044a-ecde-4fc4-846d-8c17fe8bf712
