A fellow classmate posted the 2012 Horizon Report. This is the third or fourth Horizon Report that I’ve read and this is probably the first time that I’ve truly thought about the implications of the technologies discussed in the report, as it relates to costs and economics. I thought about the distance education institutions that are currently struggling with providing their students with basic distance education services and wondered how or if they would ever be able to implement some of these “fancy” technologies in their distant classrooms.
This made me think about the fact that distance education has been implemented by many institutions, such as the Open University, in order to provide access to all those who seek an education, but who do not have appropriate access to the educational institutions in their communities.
This made me think about the fact that distance education has been implemented by many institutions, such as the Open University, in order to provide access to all those who seek an education, but who do not have appropriate access to the educational institutions in their communities.
The notion that distance education is an equalizer may not be so true because all distance education institutions are not on the same playing field. The institutions that may be able to implement some of the more complex technologies such as gesture-based computing for students and learning analytics for instructors will, by using these technologies, provide their students and instructors with a technological advantage over students who are using less-recent technology resources in order to complete their online classrooms.
In thinking about this topic, I realized that as an Instructional Designer, by day, and an online student, by night, the technologies that I use for these two segments of my life are totally different. By day, I use Blackboard, which many see as the “gold standard”, to create courses for various universities, including Walden University. By night, I use the less advanced WebTycho, which many students complain about in almost all of the courses that I’ve taken here at UMUC. The fact that UMUC is still using Webtycho is very confusing to me, especially since I’m enrolled here in a Distance Education program. I realized that if I were in a different work position in which I didn’t have access to and experience using more advanced technologies, such as Blackboard, I would probably not be as enriched as a student.
So my question is--how do smaller, less financially able institutions compete in the distance education world with institutions that provide students with online learning experiences that are enriched by the use of highly interactive and advanced technologies?
In thinking about this topic, I realized that as an Instructional Designer, by day, and an online student, by night, the technologies that I use for these two segments of my life are totally different. By day, I use Blackboard, which many see as the “gold standard”, to create courses for various universities, including Walden University. By night, I use the less advanced WebTycho, which many students complain about in almost all of the courses that I’ve taken here at UMUC. The fact that UMUC is still using Webtycho is very confusing to me, especially since I’m enrolled here in a Distance Education program. I realized that if I were in a different work position in which I didn’t have access to and experience using more advanced technologies, such as Blackboard, I would probably not be as enriched as a student.
So my question is--how do smaller, less financially able institutions compete in the distance education world with institutions that provide students with online learning experiences that are enriched by the use of highly interactive and advanced technologies?
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