Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

4 – Addressing Diversity in Design of Online Courses
pros and cons of different technologies. Students and
faculty agreed upon a set of tools which would work for
them. The process of selecting tools, particularly criteria
for selection, preferences, and justifications for using
particular tools provided useful data for identifying tools
and technologies to mashup to suit different purposes.
Examples include Skype, Googledoc, Googlechat, or
Skypechat for collaborative group assignments for an
online and distance education course. WebCT discussion
forums were used for asynchronous interactions
among group members. In this course all the synchronous
interactions were recorded for future reference and
feedback.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have discussed different approaches
to designing online courses to address the issues of diversity
where diversity is viewed as a strength to be exploited
rather than a problem to be solved.
We envisage that in the near future mashups of different
technologies will be easier, and students will be
able to create their own learning environment by dragging
and dropping different tools into one common
platform, and access their personalized learning environment
with one login.
The online learning environment should be flexible
with respect to time and pace of learning. It should provide
different forms of active learning and ways of assessment,
and give control and choices to the learner. It
should allow for the synthesis of formal, informal, and
non formal learning to address the issues of diversity.
There is a major issue in that everyday informal
learning is disconnected from the formal learning that
takes place in our educational institutions. For younger
people there is a danger that they will increasingly see
school as a turn off—as something irrelevant to their
identities and to their lives. Personal learning environments
have the potential to bring together these different
worlds and inter-relate learning from life with
learning from school and college (Pontydysgu, 2007).
Social software and Web 2.0 technologies are increasingly
allowing people to create their own learning
environments, creating and publishing material, sharing
ideas with people, and receiving feedback from not only
the teacher or peers but from anyone, anywhere. Our
future online courses will have to be dynamic and process-oriented
to address the fast-changing nature of the
electronic age.
More research, innovation, and developmental work
are needed to cater to the demands of future learners.
We need to work on developing theories of e-learning to
guide teachers and developers of online learning environments
(Bhattacharya, 2007). In future students will
develop their own personalized learning environments
and build their learning communities. Students will be
equal partners with teachers in designing assessment
activities. Students will have the freedom and right to
choose how and when they would like to be assessed.
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