Virtual communities play an important role in education as they offer great opportunities for learners to communicate, share, create and apply knowledge regardless of the distance. Being able to collaborate, interact and learn in the comfort of the home is attractive as well as motivating for most of the people. As the learners explore the environment independently, they interact with people they want, reach the resources they need and construct their knowledge. It is obvious in Renninger and Shumar’s text that a well designed virtual environment can really help learners to develop their knowledge and skills while a poor virtual environment can fail easily.
I agree that teachers are losing authority regarding know due to student' extensive exposure and access to all kinds of information and resources. But still does it make us all experts in various ways?
With the emergence of technology and internet nowadays there is more room for students to research, self-study and explore. Students can reach to whatever information they need with one click, and obviously this has a big impact on the general shape of the education. Education is more learner-centered and research-based now. Teachers are not spoon feeding the information any more. Their role is totally different in technologically supported learning environments. Technology requires teachers to serve as a guide, not the primary authority!
How will education and the structure of schooling change in this digital age?
As I have said above, education is more learner-centered and technology-based in this digital age.
What do you think this hyper-connectedness mean to the future of nursing education?
Virtual learning environments provide great opportunities to apply the knowledge in health area. Being able to learn with simulations and case-based scenarios developed in digital formats make the technology very attractive and effective in medical science field. Especially since it is a matter of life and death, virtual trainings will continue to attract attention.
I agree with you that it is important to use technology tools wisely and to structure course content in a manner that aligns with and supports the course objectives. I really like technology. In the online class I teach I try to make sure that when I do introduce technology that I am not aggravating the students who are easily frustrated with technology. I have to make sure supports are available. Example, I use WImba for exam reviews and an orientation. Wimba works a lot like Adobe Connect. Students can participate in the live session or view the archive. They get to participate by submitting answers to questions on the screen during the presentation. A recent change in Internet Explorer caused the program to not run in IE 8 unless the student changes the security settings. As an instructor it is a lot of work to get all 50 students to use Firefox or change the security settings of IE 8.0. When browser upgrades cause access problems you have to think about if the content is woth it. In this case I came to the conclusion it was.
ReplyDeleteYeah, students have always tendency to stop trying and blame technology if technology frustrates them at first attempt. So, all possible support should be provided at the beginning while introducing a new technology. So, students feel confident.
ReplyDeleteIpek,
ReplyDeleteI am interested in your experiences with simulations in nursing education. Do these online simulations use virtual reality? How are they structured? Interesting blog!
One of my classmates and I developed a Flash-based multimedia material for a course in Health Science Center of OU last semester as a project of Dr. Ge's class. We designed a kind of virtual clinic in which nurse practitioners can identify and solve problems of the virtual patients. In that module, first, the learners (nurses) get to take a pre-training to learn some basic concepts, and then they meet the patients in a case-based environment. We supported lots of scaffolding in the first case, and faded away the support as they proceeded to the last case. It was a great opportunity for me to have an idea of health care education.
ReplyDeleteIpek,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting indeed! That is great that you had the opportunity to design your own. Have you had the chance to use it outside the classroom yet?
This is the plan! But we're looking for a native speaker of English to narrate. After a couple of small revision, it will be used by a Health Science Professor in an online course. Hopefully:)
ReplyDelete