Online learning and cultural issues - Research Paper Example

Also effect sizes were found to be larger for studies that had the online instruction as collaborative or instructor-directed, as compared to those where online learners worked independently. Student learning outcomes were least impacted in the way in which various studies conducted online learning. Across various content and learner types, the effectiveness of the approaches of learning online appears to be massive. Another research of experimental and semi-experimental studies that compares various types of online learning standards report that candidate learning is usually comparable in both distance learning and face to face learning if a study compares a mixture of both to purely online conditions.

It also concludes that objects such as video feed or online tests do not seem to impact the amount that students tend to learn in online classes. Online learning can be made effective by giving students control of their interactions with media and requesting for learner interaction as well. When a couple of students group together to learn online, support techniques such as guiding queries usually impact the way students interact, but does not influence the amount they learn (Means, et al., 2010).

There were about half a dozen studies conducted from 1989-2004 that actually met the criteria for experimental validation to compare online and traditional courses. Based on this, the National Survey of Student Engagement research concluded that online learners have deeper approaches to learning as compared to classroom-based learners and they also claim to have experienced better use of polished thinking skills, combine thinking process and reflective learning (Susan and Allison, 2009). Another study describes strategies to build and maintain online learning communities.

They suggest the effectiveness of setting aims, tasks and their results, role of an instructor, enhancing social comfort and scaffolding. The issues they addressed were cultural and individual differences, verbalization, and intimidation of technical skills to operate and interact online. They conclude by suggesting not to expect a radical change overnight to address the issues but further research on overcoming the issues from both the instructor’s end and the learners’ end (Ruth and Wing, 2002).

Applications: There are many applications in use today for e-learning. They all emphasize in providing the qualities that would provide ease in communication and to bridge gaps between the student and teacher by employing effective techniques. eFront is the most widely used as it provides features to instructors as creating and managing lectures via visual content editors that support images, video and sound. It also provides a file sharing space which is organized by a file manager. It also provides the flexibility to assign assignments and generate surveys.

Another tool is Moodle and its popularity is attributed to the fact that it is open source. Apart from course management features, it provides support for chat between teachers and students. Dokeos is a tool that provides video conferencing capability along with chat and course management features. Claroline is the only tool to be translated in 35 other languages. It