EDCI 339

This week’s readings were very interesting and taught me things I’d never have the chance to learn without taking this course. As I refer back to the course learning outcomes, in my opinion, #4 “Examine and reflect upon the potential for equitable access for all learners in online and open learning contexts” is one of the most important to remember. I believe this is the most important learning outcome because of the findings we have made as a group for our Digital Equity & Perspective project. For Example, There are many “longstanding and unresolved issues regarding Canada’s colonial history and Indigenous peoples, especially their histories, culture, language, education rights, and access to various resources.” Our group’s persona was named  Isla who would be classified as having a low socioeconomic status, as she’s a single mother supporting her children on a single income. By having limited financial resources, distributed learning is often favorable as it sometimes makes use of open (free) learning resources. Not only do open resources attempt to break down barriers to education by addressing issues of affordability and access, but they also serve to greatly enrich the public knowledge domain. 

Ryan’s introduction for the week allowed me to instantly relate to what he was explaining, especially on the topic of confusion between “open” and “distributed” learning. When I look back to my first discussion post in the course and my description of what I believe “open” and “distributed” learning to represent, I almost laugh at my answer! From weekly readings to discussions with my group and other members of the class, my knowledge on the topic of learning has sprouted and grown in multiple ways. It makes me appreciate the time and effort we’ve all put into learning this course.

The most interesting information I learned from the “Open Pedagogy” reading was the 5 R’s used with the topic of OER’s or acting as ingredients to the knowledge. Reused, Retained, Redistributed, Revised, and Remixed are all 5 present within the reading. Open Educational Resources, in my opinion, are the future and what should be available. From what I learned in the readings, the benefits of an OER are much more than a closed resource. On this topic, The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states “higher education shall be equally accessible to all.” The authors of the reading go on to state that the chances of earning a college degree heavily depends on a student’s family income. To me, this is a horrible truth within the educational system. The use of OER’s would help combat this issue and add more value to a student’s life. 

Mays, E. (Ed.). (2017). A guide to making open textbooks with students. Rebus Community.

Open license – Creative Commons. (n.d.).https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Open_license

This week’s reading was very interesting to me and got me doing extra research after I was finished. 

The introduction caught my attention right away and acted as the “hook” to continue reading. The discussion of open pedagogy in many ways was intriguing and highlighted the many views that can be placed on the topic. In my opinion, the most thought-provoking discussion point was stated by Mai (1978) who relates open pedagogy as an “informal classroom where children might be trusted to learn by exploring according to their own interests, instead of being bored, demeaned, and alienated” (p.231). 

As someone who isn’t looking to become a teacher and has opened a whole new section of knowledge from taking this course, I believe Mai is definitely onto something. If I were to be a teacher, I would incorporate a balanced approach to educating my students. I would hope to find a way to use open pedagogy along with a structured system. Although this would be very difficult to achieve complete success as each student and class have a variety of differences in learning styles, there would be many benefits to offering a blended style of teaching.

Another part of the reading I found interesting and could relate to was the list of examples of “OER-Enabled Pedagogy”, specifically the first. It covers the example of students being “offered extra credit to create tutorial videos, chapter summaries, and review games for a particular topic.” This reminds me of the opportunities my classmates and I were given in high school, which consisted of quiz making, summarizing topics, and creating homework packages that could possibly be used for the next class to take the course. After completing these and being given approval by our teacher, we were given extra credit towards our course grade.

This week’s readings were very interesting and taught me things I’d never have the chance to learn without taking this course. As I refer back to the course learning outcomes, in my opinion, #4 “Examine and reflect upon the potential for equitable access for all learners in online and open learning contexts” is one of the most important to remember. The readings this week had a strong relation to not only this learning outcome but also many others which is why I believe they are important to understand while completing this course.

Ryan’s introduction for the week allowed me to instantly relate to what he was explaining, especially on the topic of confusion between “open” and “distributed” learning. When I look back to my first discussion post in the course and my description of what I believe “open” and “distributed” learning to represent, I almost laugh at my answer! From weekly readings to discussions with my group and other members of the class, my knowledge on the topic of learning has sprouted and grown in multiple ways. It makes me appreciate the time and effort we’ve all put into learning this course.

The most interesting information I learned from the “Open Pedagogy” reading was the 5 R’s used with the topic of OER’s or acting as ingredients to the knowledge. Reused, Retained, Redistributed, Revised, and Remixed are all 5 present within the reading.   Open Educational Resources, in my opinion, are the future and what should be available. From what I learned in the readings, the benefits of an OER are much more than a closed resource. On this topic, The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states “higher education shall be equally accessible to all.” The authors of the reading go on to state that the chances of earning a college degree heavily depends on a student’s family income. To me, this is a horrible truth within the educational system. The use of OER’s would help combat this issue and add more value to a student’s life. It makes me wonder why this movement hasn’t been “snowballing” for a while considering its positive impact.

Mays, E. (Ed.). (2017). A guide to making open textbooks with students. Rebus Community.

Open license – Creative Commons. (n.d.).https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Open_license

The very first thought-provoking piece of information I noticed was the number of interchangeable names given to forms of teaching online. In the reading by Major (2015), terms such as “e-learning, web-based teaching, internet-based teaching, computer-based learning, and virtual learning” are mentioned as different ways to describe online teaching methods. This example really gets me wondering, “are these just competitive terms used to glorify one service over another?” Or “are all these terms needed because there can never be one singular route/way to learn online?” It’s very interesting to think about in my opinion, and can see many possibilities in thinking as readers come across that example.

After reading the text by Major (2015), I must say I have a more diverse thought process when the topic of online learning comes to mind. Table 4.1 referred to as the “Classification chain of online course structures” sparked my mind map of breaking down Online Learning into its separate stems. This is a way of thinking of never had before and lead me to do further research. Complicated isn’t the correct term to describe the components of online learning but it is on the right track. From the ingredients of “Enrollment, Amount, Timing, Platform, and Pathway”, I now have a much different approach to my online classes through university and beyond. This is most important when deciding on specific classes for my schedule, for example, “Table 4.1” (Major, 2015) easily establishes the differences between the structures of online learning.

Arcos, B. de los. (2019, August 27). Openness and education: A beginner’s guide: GO-GN. GO. Retrieved July 12, 2022, from https://go-gn.net/research/openness-and-education-a-beginners-guide/

Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching Online – A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874 (pp. 76-108)

These readings had no shortage of information crammed into them. Some I found to have the information I already knew or content that I could relate to my knowledge gained from other courses. I found myself drawing information from many different areas or experiences within school. The readings I could relate to the most were “Passphrases Tips” and “Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry.”

I was immediately chuckling as a read the line in the introduction, “Use the following tips to help you practice good passphrase hygiene.” I was unfamiliar with the term “Phishing” before reading this text, even with having it happen to one of my coworkers last month. Unfortunately, he received a call from someone posing as a representative from his bank… long story short he had fraudulent charges placed on his credit card not long after he finished the phone call. Along with that, this reading reminded me how I am at risk of my information by storing my passwords in plain text. Not only was I able to relate to the reading on Passphrases, it inspired me to make immediate changes; clear my passwords off my phone and come up with new ones.

As seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, “Blended Learning” is a common topic among all levels of students and educators. I must admit it was one of the most frequent topics of conversation/debate at family dinners in my household (to the point where it got annoying). The reading “Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry” touched on some of the points I remember from those evening conversations but was more informative and interesting to read. In my opinion, blended learning has changed the entire atmosphere of university learning and the challenges we students are faced with in our studies. Similar to this opinion, the authors of the reading state, that the goal of blending face-to-face with “text-based online asynchronous” learning is “to academically challenge students in ways not possible through either mode individually.” (Vaughan, Garrison, & Cleveland-Innes, 2013) On the other side, I cannot come to fully agree with the idea that balanced learning is difficult to teach. Although I see the difficulties of an experienced teacher trying to incorporate a foreign method of teaching into their own practice, I believe online teaching methods have their benefits and can make it easier for teachers. In many cases, I can see people wanting to stick with what has worked for them and resent the new style of text-based online work. However, some programs once figured out can lessen the load, stress, and time needed for teachers. For example, one of the longest processes for a teacher is marking. Having an online program such as “Brightspace”, professors at UVIC can simply enter the correct answers to a quiz once, and have the program automatically mark their student’s submissions in relation to the answers provided by the professor. This is one of many helpful resources associated with offering a “blended learning” style of education.

Vaughan, N. D., Garrison, D. R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. AU Press. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://read.aupress.ca/read/teaching-in-blended-learning-environments/section/ac46044a-ecde-4fc4-846d-8c17fe8bf712

UVIC. Passphrases. Passphrases | Course Hub. Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://teaching.madland.ca/passphrases