nedublog

For my design project, I am creating a PLE for the online portfolio requirement that GMU asks of its PhD students.  The requirement basically asks for an online site to showcase work in an easy, accessible place for members of the PhD committee to review. What I would like to do is make it not only a place to showcase my work, but to provide access to my research links and project ideas, to indicate the websites and resources that are current and exciting to the field of Instructional Technology, and to provide a blog to document the process of a PhD student. I hope that it will allow me to generate interest in my work, establish communications with others that share simliar interests, and help others who are going through the same process.

With that, I have been looking into a foundation for for my PLE. I am staying away from social networking circles such as MySpace and Facebook, as I believe it is more a place for friends and social interests than for a professional showcase. Flickr and YouTube would also not be choices I would use for the foundation, as my PLE should first and foremost allow accessibility to display documents and text, and these are more media-based web tools. However, I can definitely see myself incorporating feeds from these sites into my PLE.

I have been trying out the Epsilen environment to see if it could be a possibility for my PLE base.  It is actually toted as a web tool for ePortfolios, which is what drew me towards it in the first place. It’s a professional environment (you need an .edu email address to get your free account) that allows you to upload and share your files and work to share among friends, colleagues and potential employers. A promising feature is that you can create Access Keys and give them to specific people that you would want to view certain parts of your account.  Today I actually began to test out this feature of the keys and was able to set up my Pictures folder to only be accessed by those who had the key. Take a look at the account I have been experimenting with and go to the right-hand side for Shared Objects. To access the Pictures folder, you will need to enter in code 2034.

Some limitations of the environment, however, is that it is very rigid in the format. The only thing you can change are the colors. The layout is as it is, which is very boring. There does not seem to be a lot of help featuers on the site either, so you need to figure out features on your own. (Many of the “Tell Me More” sections are “Coming Soon!”) I experimented with creating a resume on the website using their own wizard. Once I created one, I could see it in my files but it would not link up the Resume link on the left-hand menu. It took me some playing around to figure out that I had to go back into it and save the file in a specific folder. Then, once I did that, I clicked on Resume and the formatting was not what I had been able to see in the preview; it had extra characters inserted into my resume. This seems to only be the case with the Firefox browser; with IE, it looks fine.

I know the Epsilen environment has a lot of potential, but the truth is, I’m not going to bother playing around with it anymore. Had I not been introduced to Edublogs thanks to this class, I may have taken more time to experiment with it. But I believe I will be using Edublogs as my PLE base.

Online learning environments are popping up everywhere. There are online universities where one can get a degree without ever stepping foot on campus and it is quite common for mainstream universities to offer online courses these days. (Even high school classes can be taken online.) Some research studies have shown, however, that dropout rates for online classes are much higher than those for on-campus classes. Why is this the case? Many reasons have been offered, including the educational status level of the student, the motiviation of the student, student demographics, the level of engagement offered by the faculty.

I am in the camp that a student who wishes to take and succeed in an online environment must have certain qualities, namely that of being a self-directed learner. There is a great responsibility on the student’s part when one enrolls in an online classroom. That includes signing in to the class frequently, keeping on top of readings and assignments, turning in those assignments (of course), but most importantly, knowing when to take a moment and ask for help. In an on-campus classroom, an instructor may see a puzzled face and realize that something is not clicking. In an online environment, that doesn’t happen until it’s too late and the assignment is considered incomplete. By that time, most likely, the next set of readings and assignments is under way, and the student may not yet have grapsed the basic foundations.

Thus, a self-directed learner needs to have some kind of management system, in order to keep track of what is required during the week and start early in order to have to time work out any issues before a deadline approaches. I feel that with today’s technology, online environments can get better at providing tools for students to get them to take on this responsibility and move towards being self-directed. One research study offers a self-monitoring tool that allows students to associate their grades with their study habits, getting immediate feedback in order to understand what works for them and how to improve the next time.  In this study, students volunteered to use this tool for purposes of the research, but one also wonders if a student has little motivation and self-direction to begin with, would a tool like this be something that would even be used?

Hello World.