Diversity in learning approaches

Now that technology Is developing Rapidly, it changed the way of our living style in so many different approaches. As the passing of knowledge to the newest generation is critical in our society, education became a key factor that people have put their effort into integrating it. After reading the Basic philosophies of online learning I discovered some fascinating thoughts and concepts out of it that are new to me.

Instructor-centered versus student-centered learning 

As an international student who grew up in China, I experienced synchronous learning and did not have choices on the courses that need to be taken each term. The province publishes a version of textbooks and materials designed to make every single kid in the same grade learn the same topic at the same phase of a term. After I came to Canada, I was surprised that Canadian high schools allow students to decide which 4 courses they wanna take in one semester. This way, courses become very flexible and students also learn to plan for their future. And one day, I heard about the website called khan academy which covers diverse topics and is open for everyone, which is on another stage of asynchronous learning. EDCI339 is the first online course that I have taken in. I am fascinated by the idea of A because I believe that every people have their preferred ways of learning. Through asynchronous learning, I no longer have to force my self to take notes flying and end up with unreadable messy notes just to catch my professor’s handwriting speed.

Asynchronous versus synchronous learning 

In my opinion, the largest difference between a typical high school course and a university course is that A high school course is usually instructor-centered and a university course is often a mixture of instructor and student-centered. In the previous years, There were not many resources for the instructor to utilize and therefore it was not realistic for them to teach any knowledge other than the textbook contents. Slowly due to the development of the internet, the instructors can not only pass the knowledge to students but also helped the students to gain the ability of self-learning. There are always great resources online that can be used to improve one’s knowledge. I have taken several courses that direct the students to work on a certain project in a group. This way, students often need to research the topics on themselves and gradually learned how to learn things on their own.

 Connectivism

Connectivism is one of the most critical learning theories in this era. With its help, learning can be accomplished in a much more efficient and enjoyable way. In a few words, Connectivism indicates that one can gain the information that he/she obliges through numerous resources on the Internet. He/she can then pass the knowledge He/she has learned along with his/her new opinion to other people online or in-person. for example, GitHub is a perfect Connectivism platform for programmers to discuss the difficulties in programming. in my opinion the pros of Connectivism burden the cons. On the Internet, people can gather knowledge from everywhere in the world on almost every topic, and everyone’s thoughts can be distributed online through the network.

The network has promoted the development of open learning, and open learning supplemented our ability to discover everything we are curious about. I truly believe it will persist beneficial to me in my entire life.