Blog #3 – Session 3 – eLearning Trends in Higher Education

For me, this session itself is trendy! J

I have learned something trendy and useful from this session. The following eLearning trends were covered to some length – learning analytics, BYOD, mLearning, virtual reality, augmented reality, makerspaces, and assessments.  

The concept of action analytics in learning is crucial for teachers and students alike. It helps determine the capacity and behavior of our students (Norris, Baer & Offerman, 2009). These are insightful for instructors to make informed and productive decisions. Ultimately, it will help us productively work toward desirable outcomes. At our University here in the Solomon Islands, learning analytics technologies and applications haven’t been utilized. I will work with my faculty to find out if we can exploit its usefulness. As it stands, we are wasting time, energy, and money on learning strategies that we do not have immediate empirical evidence to predict the success of the learning strategies.

Concerning BYOD and mobile learning, I believe their applications in learning fit well in our PICs context. The Islands are scattered across the vast ocean. Hand-held devices are convenient to use in such settings. Almost all of my students have smartphones, but only a few own a personal computer. Providing mobile apps to access learning services is a worthy investment for all PICs.

As far as Human Anatomy and Physiology is concerned, virtual and augmented reality is a game-changer. However, it’s not accessible and affordable for our young growing university. I only plan to include the videos and 3D imagery displays for my students in class. At least, they get to experience the dynamics of virtual reality to some extent.

The introduction of makerspaces will also be a big deal for us. From primary up to university our curriculum is too teacher-centered. Students need to be allowed the opportunity to build their own knowledge and meaning. To be able to apply it in our real world.

This brings me to assessments. It’s good to be re-introduced to the concept of ‘assessment for learning and authentic assessment. It will help me focus more on student improvement. To provide realistic and authentic learning activities and assessments. I will now focus more on designing assessments that test learners’ higher-order thinking skills. Assessments that are based on performance. One such assessment is ePortfolio. Its advantages couldn’t be understated. They test more than one higher-order thinking skill – evaluation, synthesizing, analysis and application. For this reason, I have designed an ePortfolio that I will use next semester.

I am equally grateful to understand the importance of rubrics. Since I was first introduced in ED401, I now realized that MCQs and short/long answer questions are certainly not the best forms of assessment. Among many benefits, rubrics help will my learners improve their performance. They will take more ownership of their learning. In fact, the available OER on rubrics has helped me design a rubric for the ePortfolio. Indeed, this session has proven useful.

It has been an insightful and useful session!

Reference

Norris, D., Baer, L and Offerman, M. (2009). A National Agenda for Action Analytics. National Symposium on Action Analytics, Minnesota: USA.