Humanizing an online learning environment: issues and strategies.

New Learning Environments 4/1/2012

Josefina Quintero Universidad de la Sabana

Humanizing an Online Learning Environment: Issues and Strategies

Technology has been influencing and changing in many aspects our educational

field that sometimes teachers and a large community around it have felt things may start

to get out of control or turn into a different thing than being useful. In some cases

teachers have misunderstood the relevance of migrating the course content to the Web.

In some others, students have not taken advantage of the presence of personal,

networked devices for the academic benefit. In this short reflection I would talk about

some issues and some strategies both teachers and learners can change for better

professional development and life-long learning.

As Ken Graetz (2006) states in his article “The psychology of learning

environments” technology has appeared to change the learning environments directly or

indirectly. Therefore, educational institutions should take care at the moment of taking

decisions to implement a new design for their curricular programs with the benefits or

distractions technology comes with. It is not that technology is bad in itself, however, its

use in the different scenarios of learning. Nowadays it is not hard to find courses and

lessons taught online. They have been adopted by many institutions with the purpose of

distance or F2F teaching and learning. One of the possible misunderstandings with the

presence of wireless laptops and cellular phones in the classroom is that some teachers do

not know what to do with them or have not worked on the idea of turning them into their

friends.

Since then, students and teachers have been suffering because of lack of ability to

use them for their good. In some situations these

electronic devices were taken as distractors and

objects which dehumanize understanding and

relationships among “normal” people. Due to other

perspectives social life started to experiment with

the new generation. They seem to be less open

when being face to face than when sending instant

messages and texting their friends. In order to

humanized online education many considerations

were put into practice as teachers commenced to use

networked devices in meaningful and engaging

activities related to students’ own learning. At that time virtual learning started to make

sense and build a new community which had the necessity to establish ties by combining

the traditional classroom with other learning spaces.

To illustrate a little what I want to say in the previous paragraph, I would like to

take some situations of mine as examples of understanding and bringing into context the

incredible potential technology may have in my own teaching. First of all, I realized I was

not aware of who a digital gener was and what it meant in traditional education. Devices

in their hands were just part of their isolation and absenteeism from society, brains wired

and called to be unsuccessful people. Fortunately, my perspectives and knowledge about

this new generation were tuned in the right way and time to be a facilitator more than the

provider of content I used to be.

Another issue that seems to dehumanize online learning environments is the poor

value some teachers could have given to the classwork itself. While some teachers were

complaining about the negative results wireless devices had in the classroom, there were

some others who started to unveil the real academic purposes by using them. Instead of

making the mere migration of course content to the Web, teachers understood how to

design their classes to facilitate learning and students engagement. It was just a matter of

perception: from a teacher-controlled class to a more class-related discussion and

collaborative work ( Graetz, 2006). Also, it was just a matter of training teachers and

administrators for a better use of management systems and other tools easily found and

explained on the Internet. That is to say, inexperience with virtual worlds had been the

cause for ineffective and unsuccessful teaching. Solutions such as the correct use of

platforms brought different

views of what technology

was for. In addition, the

problem of boring classes

has also been tackled when

students found a sense of

mystery and enchantment

in what they were doing in

any of the two learning

environments they pass

most of their time: brick-

and-mortar and bits-and-

bytes as Ken Graetz called

them.

Michael Brown (2005) refers to those learning environments as they can happen in

real time or asynchronously. The difficulty here points at which one becomes in more or

less degree an advantage toward collaboration and real contact with the human side of a

person. Once more social aspects seem to worry the normal development of relationships

among participants in a virtual environment. Nonetheless studies have shown that

cooperation and collaboration can take place in both types of delivery of knowledge. The

issue here is to provide students with tools to connect what is happening in face to face

sessions with what happens in virtual spaces. Also, the agreement between the

institutions´ objectives and teachers and learners’ goals might be thought as if one or at

least strongly related to achieve their purposes.

Furthermore, the way we understand the transference of content and instruction

into online environments might assure us succeed or failure of our learners (LaBonte, R.,

et al., 2003). One aspect this author explains when working with students in virtual or

physical spaces is that both have to keep the social interaction in order to continue

favoring the human side of learning and working together.

Finally, students need to take responsibility of their own learning process.

Meaning that the teacher can act as a facilitator, but if the learner does not bring their

part to build knowledge, not many positive and enriched outcomes can come out from

that relationship (LaBonte, R., et al., 2003). Succeed in learning and teaching depends on

both parts. Technology alone is not enough to experiment succeed. It is important and

imperative that education be planned and directed to the engagement and enchantment

of all members of the educative field.

References

Brown, M. (2005). Learning spaces. Chapter 12. In Oblinger, D., & Oblinger, J.

(Eds.) 2005. Educating the Net generation. Available electronically at

www.educase.edu/learningspaces

LaBonte, R., Crichton, S. & Allison, D. (2003). Moderating Tips for Synchronous

Learning Using Virtual Classroom Technologies. Odyssey Learning Systems Inc. Retrieved

from http://odysseylearn.com/Resrce/text/e-Moderating%20tips.pdf [Available as an E

resource]

Ken A. Graetz. The psychology of learning environments. Chapter 6. In Oblinger, D.

G. (Ed.) (2006). Learning spaces. Available electronically at

www.educase.edu/learningspaces