Introductions, Privacy, and Building Relationships & Social Interactions in Distributed & Open Learning Environments- EDCI339 blog1

In 2020, needless to say, face-to-face education has been totally changed by COVID-19. Even if in most of countries, they have continued face-to-face education in Sep, 2021, the development of e-learning is inevitable and unstoppable. With the significant fast development of e-learning, safety and quality, two main aspects should be considered before fully participate e-learning.

e-learning’s safety

Speaking of e-learning’s safety, it is hard to say people are not under threatened. When we are talking about e-learning’s safety, which is online safety, it is basically users’ privacy. According to user’s privacy, the biggest concern is data disclose. Whenever people search, watch a video, leave a comment on others’ article etc, data disclose may occurs. Although governments have professional organizations to governance devices that circulate on the market, data disclose still happens. Whenever people are using any applications and whatever devices are being used, background processes is uploading data to publisher’s server. And people never know when and what data is being disclosed. Data privacy is such a fetal problem and still unguaranteed that people have to value it. Also, it could be the most significant disadvantage of e-learning, compared with face-to-face.

e-learning’s quality

Another aspect I would like to discussed is the quality of e-learning. How to guarantee the accuracy of the delivered knowledge in e-learning context? People are gaining information from variety resources, and inaccurate information is a serious problem, especially in e-learning context. People are participating e-learning mainly from universities and colleges, although there are many online courses from other sources. Lacking of authority and reputation, some certification obtained from online would not be trusted by job interviews or universities. The quality of e-learning could be enhanced by integrating possibly more online resources. “One of the interesting aspects of e-learning was the consideration of costs. As we saw earlier, the idea of an infinite lecture hall gained much interest, because as Noam (1995) put it, “a curriculum, once created, could be offered electronically not just to hundreds of students nearby but to tens of thousands around the world” (p. 249). (Weller, M, 2020, Ch.6) As of notesbooks or learning material, online learning would not be a suitable manner for children, communication might be the best education method, especially face-to-face communication. However, for higher education, in e-learning context, there is no time restriction, no area restriction, even no language restriction. Most importantly, editing material is quite flexible in e-learning context. “It was possible, although not always realized, to spend less in production, because digital resources were now replacing physical ones, and there was a greater potential for reuse.” (Weller, M, 2020, Ch.6) The cost of people acquiring knowledge is significant reduced. Less costs means better quality, thus, the quality of e-learning would be the best reason we need e-learning.

References

“Weller, M. (2020). Chapter 6 – 1999 E-Learning. 25 Years of Edtech. AU Press.