The Online Educator: People and Pedagogy by Open University (Week 1)

This time, I am joining MOOC The Online Educator: People and Pedagogy which is offered by Open University and this MOOC course can be found in the FutureLearn website. This MOOC is divided into four weeks. It is about disruption and design, innovation and accessibility, evidence and ethics, and the last is about the importance of online identity for educators. In this occasion, I will write my summary of what I learn in the first week. The first week is clustered into three categories and those are the myth, hype, and reality in online education, put people first, and from people to pedagogy. 

As we know that there are some changes in education and there is also the evolution in higher education all over the world. There are more opportunities for students to learn, such as gamification, social and international experiences. Institutions also must be attentive to faculty autonomy and students agency, to ensure that data and technology complement human judgment and personal experience.

Leigh-Anne Perryman, the qualification director for Open University in Master program online and distance education, has begun teaching online a couple years ago. The other educator in this MOOC is Martin Weller, he is a professor of educational technology at the Open University and his blog is blog.edtechie.net. There is also Sue Lowe as course educator in this MOOC.

Farrow (2015) mentioned that an analysis which emphasizes a state of crisis in education is often accompanied by the idea of some sort of salvation through technology in the form of disruptive innovation. The term of disruptive innovation itself comes from the business administration which was used by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen in 1995. Then it related to education when it was started used by educational technologist and commentators to represent traditional ways into more effective practices. 

Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn predicted in their book 2008 book Disrupting Class that by 2019 half of high school classes would be taught via the internet. MOOCs make education borderless, gender-blind, race-blind, class-blind and bank-account-blind and similar fables. The course also talked about Second Life. It appeared firstly in 2007 and then regularly declined as mentioned by Patrick Hogan (2015).  In my opinion that virtual world, like Second Life, is still possible to use in education, like in gaming. People can learn new vocabularies through the games that they played and how to pronounce the words by listening to what the speakers said in the games.

Based on the survey, MOOCs (38%) will have the most enduring impact on online education. The others were artificial intelligence (17%), virtual reality (16%), online rooms such as Adobe Connect (16%), Facebook (8%), and virtual world (3%). 

Audrey Watters in her conference speech in 2014 mentioned that formal learning setting does not offer flexibility and does not let the students take control of their learning topics.  Mor and Craft (2012) defined learning design as the act to devise new practices, activities plan, resources and tools to achieve educational aims in a certain situation. Based on Copper (1999), when using persona in a teaching, it should be specific, having a name, put faces and be precise rather than accurate. I tried to make my own persona.

Name: Ralia

A Jakartanese and lives in Central Java. She likes outdoor activities, such as gardening, hiking, and biking. She got her BA in education and MA in language teaching. 

Currently, she is teaching English as a foreign language in a local school and teaching Indonesian as a foreign language as well. She tries to integrate technology in teaching and learning languages. 

Her technical skills are computer skills but limited to Ms. Office, emails, and social media, like Facebook, Instagram, and Tweeter. 

Her subject domain and knowledge is an excellent teacher, teaching language for specific purposes, and good in dances.

Motivation and desires: She wants to be a better language teacher for her students and her country.

Goals and expectations: She wants to improve the quality of education and gain qualification as a professional language teacher accredited by the institution. 

Obstacles: limited facilities and access to the resources

As a teacher, it is good to be considered to focus on technology and then pedagogy will follow. As mentioned by Statistics from March 2017 that there were almost 3 million apps available for an android phone and about 2 million in iTunes. There was a survey from 52 countries that there were 200 top tolls for learning for 2017 by The Centre for Learning and Performance Technology. For those who want to learn more about pedagogy, 2017 innovating pedagogy report is a good site t read. 

When choosing the technology for learning activities, teachers should consider some aspects and those are individual/isolated-social, active-passive, information-experience, and informal-formal.