Altilab2005 - Distance Education Blog

Bangalore, Monday February 22^nd 2010: Vidyadeep, a national level case study competition by Sikkim Manipal University, Directorate of Distance Education (SMU-DE), has announced the winner of South Zonal finals held yesterday in the city.

Tadasuq Rehman Bhat and Pallavi Singh, MBA Finance (4^th semester), have been declared the winners of the Zonal level finals. They will now compete with the winners of the other 3 zones in the national level finals. The four zonal winners will be given an opportunity to present their solution to the case study at “EDGE”, the national forum focusing on “Emerging Directions in Global Education” next month in New Delhi.

The competition is open to the MBA students of SMU-DE, one of the largest providers of Distance Education in India. Teams of two students each from more than 700 SMUDE learning centers across country will participate in this nation wide competition. Team will submit essays on the topic “Entrepreneurship – The Next Growth Strategy in India”.  The teams are divided into four zones – North, South, East and West, with 10 winners chosen from all four zones competing in the national level finals scheduled to take place on 4^th March 2010 in Delhi.

This case study competition provides students an opportunity to make their presentations to industry and academic experts at the forum, thereby giving them a platform to showcase their talent. Winners will also bag prizes worth more than Rs.1.5 lakhs.

About SMU & SMU-DE

Sikkim Manipal University is a unique public-private initiative between the Govt. of Sikkim and Manipal Education. SMU, a state University, is recognized by the UGC, Ministry of HRD and is a member of the Associations of Indian Universities. The Distance Education Council has granted recognition to all Distance Education programs offered under the aegis of SMU (Sikkim Manipal University). The SMU Directorate of Distance Education is ISO 9001:2000 certified.

For details about the contest and the university, visit http://mba2010.smude.edu.in

With the increasing crush of posts and emails to the effect of “this class has so much information, how can I learn it all this week, in time for the midterm???” I get this time of year- increasing not only with the flow of the semester itself, but in comparison year to year- I decided to put my butt in gear and do something. After all, I teach intro classes. My students are about 40-60% first-years, and some of my non-first-years are only that by technicality (in reality, their “first year” was 20 years ago, and they are back for another round of college in order to finally finish/get a new degree/change careers/etc). The idea of “study skills” is either non-existant, forgotten, or not internalized for whatever reason. The result is a lot of students with few or no tools for independently learning and analyzing material. In other words, they have no clue what to do with the elephant on their plate, and don’t even know what a fork is.

So, as I said, I put my butt in gear, and put together a new tutorial module, “How to Study.” I included some basics on studying techniques, note-taking, and the all-important flashcards and timelines, so useful for beginning art history students. I put in some weblinks to cool sites about all these topics, posted it, and held my breath.

So far, I have sixteen thank-you emails, four thank-you posts, and a instant ebb of the “How do I do this???” messages. Holy frijoles, I might have actually helped somebody and taught them something.

I mean, something actually useful.

Chapter Four   Technologies and Media  -  Moore & Kearsley

There were several issues that came up in this chapter that were of interest to me. Reading that print was the most common medium used in distance education, at least when this book was written, was an obscure fact to me. Since I am usually thinking in terms of videos, webcams, etc. print didn’t even cross my mind (see audio-conferencing comment below). Another interesting issue was the use of audio media. I have had a statistics class that would have an audio component to the PowerPoint, but I’ve never thought that I could learn something just from listening. For me, audio learning alone is not very successful. I’m more of a visual learner.

The section about audio-conferencing was a revelation. The fact that the “technology remains available, but neglected by educators who are locked into a concept of distance education that is entirely dependent on computer-based technology” rung true with my thinking. Why do I only think that distance learning is via the computer and not by any other means? Why can’t learning occur if there is an audio-conference? This type of conference might just help the “back and forth” dialog that goes on in a face-to-face classroom.

The computer conference section stated a “golden rule” for teaching using any technology is that the technology must be reliable and the sound quality must be good enough so that it will not interfere with the message. In just this semester, I have not seen or heard a totally reliable “class”.

Is the Internet2 available “widely” yet?

A key statement in the chapter is that educators tend to fixate on a particular technology and try to deliver all the different components of their course on that technology. This is SO true. It is as if one-size fits all! That is not true for students, so it should not be true for the delivery of a course.

The ACTIONS model for making decisions about the use of technology helps those thinking about using technology in their courses. The “N” I particularly like since it discusses the novelty or “trendiness” of the technology. This is a way to get money – the trendier the better as far as getting money.

The final analysis of the chapter is so very true. You can make sure that online materials are well documented, designed as learning objects, and developed in a common format, but that does NOT mean that the administrators or managers of the educational programs will use them!

This week marks the start of postgraduate teaching for me and with it comes the launch of our new e-learning postgraduate endorsements.  It has been a long road of 18 months to bring these qualifications from concept to operation, but we now have a suite of 5 dedicated e-learning papers which can be combined into either a Postgrad Diploma (120 credits, aka 4 papers) or and MEd (which is a PGDip plus 4 more papers).  These programmes represent a bringing together of the Educational Technologies and Distance and Online Education endorsements of the past.  They also represent a significant ‘update’ in terms of programme content and focus, with practical design, development and teaching at the fore in the study of e-learning.

If you are interested in postgrad study in e-learning, you can choose from courses about:

• Instructional/Learning Design
• Foundations of e-learning
• Teaching with technology
• Trends in e-learning
• Advance e-learning practice
• Research into e-learning

Naturally, I’m biased about the quality of the programmes, but you can email me as programme coordinator if you’re interested in studying with us.

What is Telelearning?

Telelearning consists of two words: Tele and Learning.  The word “tele” comes from the Greek word which means “far or distant” hence, telelearning means “distance learning or distance education”. It is also known as “tele-education” to some people.

In Asia, telelearning is most commonly known as “online education” so the teachers are called online teachers or online tutors.

With the advancement of the technology, computers and internet, the concept of telelearning was created where it is possible to learn anything we want to learn without even leaving the house to go to school.

All a person needs is a computer connected to the internet and he can already learn from home. This makes learning easier and more convenient on the end of kids and adults who want to study at the comfort of their home.

In this learning process, the class is done via telephone, mobile phone, and computer hooked up on the internet. The teacher and student choose what type of internet communicator to use.

They can meet through YM, MSN, SKYPE or the platform provided by some online schools/companies. Once everything is agreed upon, the teacher and the student will meet online at the agreed time.

Google Wave for Education

Thinking of using Google Wave in the classroom? The active learning potential that a Google Wave can facilitate has sparked the interest of many instructors.  Google Waves can be embedded objects in web pages and course management systems.  Some instructors are getting creative by implementing group Waves for students. If you are looking for resources, here is a getting started list to help you out:

• Google Wave in Education, search tags:eduwave, education
• Google Group of Teachers on Wave: http://groups.google.com/group/teachersonwave
• Google Wave Templates for Instructors:  http://www.poojasrinivas.com/googlewave/wave-templates.html
• How to use Google Wave for Instruction: http://www.poojasrinivas.com/googlewave/how-do-i-use-wave.html
• Google Wave Ideas for Teaching and Learning: http://jaredstein.org/2009/10/30/google-wave-ideas-for-teaching-and-learning/
• Twitter hashtag: #eduwave
• Wave Bots: http://completewaveguide.com/guide/Wave_Bots

Join the conversation.

Word on the grapevine is that Massey University has joined the Australian Distance Education Hub (DE Hub), “an Australian based institute for research into best sector practices in distance education. It represents a collaborative partnership between Australia’s four leading east coast distance education universities: Central Queensland University (CQU), Charles Sturt University, (CSU), University of New England (UNE), University of Southern Queensland (USQ),” (see http://wikieducator.org/DEHub)  …and now Massey University, New Zealands leading provider of university-level distance education.

The DE Hub coordinates a number of projects related to distance education in the Australian context.  Have a look here for a list of current projects.

What does this mean for Massey and for the hub?

I am cautiously optimistic about collaboration between NZ and Australian institutions in DE and I generally think three is great potential in such collaboration, but time will tell about the dynamics between an Australian gov’t funded centre and links to NZ interests.  Can we make it work? Surely!  Will we make it work?  Time will tell.

Emerging Technologies in Distance Education is getting closer to completion. It will be nice to be able to read the other chapters and see how they compare to what BJ Eib (my colleague who wrote the “Imagining multi-roles in Web 2.0 Distance Education” chapter with me) and I had to say about our views on collaboration in education.

George Veletsianos (the editor) says the book will be available this June. He’s currently looking for feedback on some cover designs.

Here’s a link where you can vote on your favourite:

http://www.veletsianos.com/2010/02/20/help-choose-a-book-cover/