Distributed Learning
For this weeks class, we were able to dive in to a great conversation about distributed learning.
We began by breaking out into some groups to discuss some prompts. My favourite discussion was around the pros and cons of remote learning. Some of these ideas include:
Pros: encourage collaboration, flexibility, not having to commute, extra time, easy to meet up for group projects, comfort of your own home, etc.
Cons: unclear assignment criteria, more lonely/less social integration, “zoom fatigue”, extra assignments, physical impacts (hunch back, headaches, eyes hurt), hard to be motivated, etc.
We talked a lot about what this looks like right now, during the pandemic, but we also had some really great points about how remote learning is definitely not this crazy new idea. It has in fact been around for a long time. We talked about some different methods of remote learning in the class discussion, as well as some of the factors that could influence or persuade one to learn remotely. Time, rural or remote locations, special needs or disabilities, learner preference, and physical health could all influence the decision to learn remotely.
We also talked about the many many different ways that remote learning can occur. It can look like any of these and more:
-Video conferencing (Zoom, Blackboard, Skype, etc)
-Virtual worlds (like Second Life, where it looks like a classroom, sort of like VR, kinda cool but kinda creepy!)
-Multiaccess personal portals (tablets set up around a room with each students’ faces on a different tablet)
-Robots (like Kubi, or this, that can manoeuvre around the classroom like a walking person, I remember seeing this in an episode of “Modern Family”, where Phil is away for business but still try’s to attend a family dinner via one of these moving robots)
We also had a little activity that we did which made us think about the various technologies we are utilizing this semester. We had to decide where we thought these technologies were placed on a little chart, and whether they were teacher or learner controlled, and asynchronous or synchronous learning.
This was interesting to see it all laid out like this. It was cool to see how much variety we are actually getting with these online classes. The technologies weren’t all crammed in to one corner, they were pretty spread out. I like thinking of my classes in this way. Some aspects of remote learning are not the same as what you would get with the face-to-face instruction, but there are definitely many ways we can integrate different technologies to make these classes a little more interesting and more fun to engage with.
Overall, this class was pretty interesting, and gave me a great look in to how everyone else is feeling about online classes. It was nice to see that we’re all kind of in the same boat!