Wiki Communication and Collaboration

The elements of collaborative interaction and communication have evolved through technological innovation to extend beyond borders and span distances in order to facilitate global diversity. These three elements of technological communication have facilitated many types of interactions among people as life-long learners, and promote continued discussions among individual as well as groups.

Such an example would be that of a wiki. Wikipedia is a prime example of taking limitless subjects for constructing collaborative definition. This is a prime example of a tool which facilitates interactions among its users, promotes the collaboration of collective meaning and encourages all to communicate, argue, persuade, etc. in order to come to common terms and understanding.

As this global market of Wikipedia users and contributors works, so may the learning community. Educators need to seriously take into consideration the role technology plays in creating meaning through collaboration. This type of collaboration wouldn’t allow for the individual to be left out. Each member of the learning community is encouraged through interaction to participate within the wiki space. With this type of encouragement, individuals can be lead to research and comment, create and respond, through higher levels of thought and investigation. Facilitated by an educator, this is a tool which would create and maintain accountability, and truly assist is assessing individual growth and learning. Through thoughtful design, a facilitator would be able to post inquiry based learning opportunities, follow threads of discussion, and assist in promoting further research, action or collaboration depending on the outcome. Design of the program along with the facilitator taking on the role appropriately would be the key to the success of the wiki used as a collaborative communication tool in education.

Evolution of Distance Education

The evolution of distant education is underway. As with any other type of evolutionary movement, there is survival of the fittest. In order to assure successful evolution with the learner in mind, instructional design (ID) needs to meet the needs of all learners, at every level. How this instruction is designed will guide the learner, as well as popular opinion of programming, towards successful transformation. With respect to the diffusion of technological innovations, Simonson believes that “distance education is approaching critical mass acceptance”, and is in need of “significant promotion” (Simonson, 2008) in order to reach its potential as a respected form of instruction.

Through the approach of learning communities, Huett, Moller, Foshay and Coleman (2008) propose that distance education can answer the need of teacher shortages, alternative methods to meet NCLB requirements, and can assure districts and parents that children are being presented material and learning experiences which meet state standards through ID.

“The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to offer alternative schooling options to students attending schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress.” (Huett, et al, 2008). The online learning environment would allow for such alternatives. Through ID, students could engage with others within their online learning community in order to continue to build upon information and education which is received through the classroom. Teachers have greater opportunity to engage with each individual student, as well as parents, in order to guide, inform and evaluate progress being made.

The need for distance education promotion and design is essential in order to meet the needs of the learner, whether it is corporate training, higher education, teacher training, or K-12. The need for implementing standards based design is of the utmost importance in order for the e-learning environment to be more than isolated instruction or a how-to manual. This type of environment requires engagement between learners through facilitation of an instructor, and engagement with many different modes of investigation and production tools. Meeting the needs of all learners at every level of learning is essential to the success of e-learning.

Moller, L Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, May/June). The Evolution Of Distance Education: Implications For Instructional Design On The Potential Of The Web (Part 1: Training And Development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70-75. Use the Academic Search Premier database, and search using the article's Accession Number: 33281719.

Moller, L Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, May/June). The Evolution Of Distance Education: Implications For Instructional Design On The Potential Of The Web (Part 2: Higher Education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66-70. Use the Academic Search Premier database, and search using the article's Accession Number: 33991516.

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W & Coleman, C. (2008, September/October). The Evolution Of Distance Education: Implications For Instructional Design On The Potential Of The Web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5). 63-67.

Simonson, M. (2008) Prinicples of Distance Education Video

EDUC 8842 Welcome

Hello,
I'm new to blogging. We just began a blog with our first through 5th grade students, and they are very excited! It mainly consists of adding comments to lessons at this point. I cannot wait to begin with all of you.

Thanks for leaving any comments.
Jeannine