The Websites Dynamic Learning Areas - Case Study Example

Project Goals The following can be attributed to the goals of this project: 1. To create an e-learning environment website design that can be developed into a fully functional website in future. 2. To target as many people as possible, however to identify the targeted visitors for this website. 3. To create mechanisms that will allow users to personalise their profiles, upload their own dynamic content for others to view, comment and review. 4. To research different methods in use by other websites that allow consistent traffic to appear on the site and find method that can be used on an e-learning site. 5. To research how other businesses increase the lifetime value of their customers. 6. To research handheld learning devices and their impact on lives. To research a similar device for its appropriation for this website as a way of viewing the dynamic content from the website 7. Conduct a questionnaire to explore the interest areas being involved in a learning community on the internet. Questionnaire is appropriate for this method since I need to collect a lot of facts and opinions of a large number of people and the data needed is fairly straightforward. Description of the problem area to be solved and the various ideas and applications of methods and techniques that will be taken to reach a solution. There is an increasing occurrence of individuals using computers for watching videos, listening to music, grocery shopping, communication and writing blogs. This increase of tasks being completed on computers has grown rapidly since the use and speed of broadband which reached the public at an affordable price. The area of e-learning has had development on the internet but it is an area that most people are not using for entertainment value. This is an important issue to think about when creating an e-learning website. People would not visit a site for fun; they will however visit for a specific purpose and choose not to use it again. To resolve this issue, visitors registering with the website should be welcomed and instantly facilitated to see the various communities in action. They may then choose to subscribe in one of them. Since learners are now engaged with computers, they lack a natural social outlet which can lead to feelings of isolation.  Because isolation is a major contributor to attrition (Morgan & Tam, 1999), one potential strategy for reducing users leaving the site is to encouraging users to support each other and a sense of belonging to a community.  The task of this paper is to structure the website so learners have mechanisms to connect with each other and form communities. Selznik (1996) identifies seven elements of community: history, identity, mutuality, plurality, autonomy, participation, and integration. With respect to virtual learning communities, Schwier (in press) adds: an orientation to the future, technology, and learning. Some of these characteristics of community will be present from the beginning. Others, the cohort will have to grow into. There is an importance to detail these 10 characteristics, and discuss how they can be used for purposes of this website. Selznik notes that communities are stronger when their members share history and culture, rather than simply abstract general interests. They build an identity and sense of belongingness. Schwier’s suggested strategies for fostering identity include team-building exercises, developing community logos, and public acknowledgement of individual and group accomplishments within the community. He also noted the importance of articulating the “focus or purpose of the community” and outlining the requirements and rituals. The structure of the course allows for frequent and obvious reiteration of community focus, and events such as orientation can help the group define its own rituals and norms. Having defined some of the particular characteristics of a virtual community, the next stage will now unfold some basic strategies for creating a community. Palloff and Pratt (1999) recommend these steps: Clearly define the purpose of the group Create a distinctive gathering place for the group Promote effective leadership from within. Define norms and a clear code of conduct. Allow for a range of member roles. Allow for and facilitate subgroups. Allow members to resolve their own disputes (p. 24) One of the most important indicators of a learning community can be summed as follows: When users communicate not only on an academic level but on a personal level. Working together towards the goals of the course is what they are “supposed” to be doing. When they begin to talk about their personal lives (families, hobbies, jobs), their triumphs and trials with being a distance student (scheduling, technical problems, disagreement with pedagogy), When they seek each other’s counsel for other areas of their life (job change, which elective course to take next, family issues), this is the point at which they are comfortable as a community. There is a good chance that not everyone will be everyone else’s best friend. However, when a majority of the members feel they are in a safe enough space to “speak up” about things in the public forum, rather than in individual e-mail messages, then this is evidence of a successful community. There may be a few members of the community who do not feel that the Online Café is an appropriate place to discuss non-academic subjects, and it is the role of the mentor and the community members to make the Café a welcoming place for this type of discussion. As in every type of community, there will be some people who opt out discussions, or even out of all “non-official” discussion, but this is quite normal. There will probably be smaller communities within the larger online class, people who form bonds and discuss the various subjects and their lives, but not on the general forum. These differences can appear for a variety of reasons; Eastmond (1995) found divisions on age, gender, experience, and learning style lines. However, he also found that the groups often transcended age and gender, for example, two characteristics that might, in a traditional classroom, be impediments. The final step in creation of an online community is to evaluate whether a community has formed, and if so, in what ways has the community aspect contributed to learning. Our project will address methods for performing the first evaluation of whether community has formed. The three levels of interactions can be compared by several characteristics, as in the table below:   blank Communication Cooperation Collaboration Learning Information transmission Knowledge transmission Knowledge generation Inquiry Individual inquiry Delegation of tasks Common inquiry Decision-making Agree to disagree Vote (majority rules) Social negotiation to consensus Goals/agendas Multiple goals/ multiple agendas One goal/ multiple agendas One goal/ one agenda Accountability Individual accountability Individual accountability Group accountability Learning relationship Complete independence Partial interdependence Complete interdependence As one of the goals is to create and sustain a community of learners. This task will be achieved using a variety of resources. The website would target at every age group. However most of the appeal could be shown by students, teachers and quiz masters. Students would use the site purely to allow others to add genuine content and not contribute much it. Students generally would not get involved with the site and wouldn’t be members of the site for the long term. However there would be a large volume of traffic coming from students so the website would have to attempt to attract these users for the long term and attempt to get them to upload some content of their own. Teachers would also use the website’s dynamic learning areas for interest sake, but they are also more likely to add content to the site since they are domain experts. The website could also appeal to quiz masters who enjoy competitions. There are already large online communities for this section of public and it would be a great idea to borrow some ideas from them. Since they are experienced users on other communities they would contribute greatly to the site. It is also of their interest to use the site since they are constantly seeking to learn more. It is important that the website has some unique mechanism to encourage users to quickly bond with each other at the beginning of the program; creating an online café for off-topic discussions and personalizing their content. Initial work carried out. There are initial ideas for the website’s foundation. 1. It must be kept in mind that the site is for fun and must be innovative in approach. A sense of freshness would encourage visitors to register and update their content. Development of a logo was the first task that was undertaken. This is to ensure an identity to the community is unique. The logo was created whilst keeping in mind the goals and objectives of the paper. Shown below is the initial logo that will be used on the site which will ultimately be the identity of the community. 2. A forum for the website has been created. This is however just an experimental area at the moment. The address of this forum is http://ulearn.forumotion.com The other initial tasks that are required to be carried out would start with direct research. Research is a key area that will be undertaken to develop new ideas. Research is due to start on 09/02/09. Initial Ideas The site must be interactive and have a simple layout but most important of all it must be fun and addictive. Research of other sites and different learning games must be undertaken in order to realise what makes these games fun and what makes people want to come back and use the site regularly. The initial thoughts on what can contribute to the e-learning website functioning would be some kind of score system. For example, some web forums that exists today have ranking systems and score systems where the user can earn points for every post they make or at milestones of 100, 1000 posts etc. Instead of making posts a user could add their own quiz about a specific subject they know a lot about. For adding a quiz or test to the site the user would earn points which can be redeemed for extra functionality on the site. Each quiz that is uploaded must have similar formatting so users would not feel confused and overwhelmed with extra information. There needs to be familiarity with every aspect of the site. So there has to be specific rules when creating a quiz or animation. The use of a template that can be downloaded could be of good use to people who want to upload to the website. Several innovative approaches like adding tutorials of various content like Horoscopes, art, science, computers, management subjects and many others. It would not only enrich the site but would attract various types of users. The site may also add an Answers and Questions section which can be entertained by the admin or the moderators for solving the number of questions. The feature of Yahoo answers would be a great idea for the website. Active participation to solve others educational and personal problems would encourage better interest in the minds of the users and a sense of achievement. The online sharing of video’s can be made possible through the website like You Tube or Uploaded. TV which would add dynamicity for the visitors. Video tutorials and various sections on subject knowledge would ensure better use of the website. Paid online classes on various subjects of interest are of real good. Small games can be made and uploaded to the site like that of Facebook would encourage users to participate to the website for better communication and enhance the communication. Some other ways would be to provide freelance jobs to the users so that several online job and extra earning potentials are increased at a large scale. This would add genuine users to the site and ensure better response for the sites features. Changes to the initial plan. There was one large change that was made to the initial plan of the project. At first I was going to attempt to program the site and try to make it live throughout the project. However after seeking advice from a tutor it was agreed that it would be a much better idea to develop a design of a website that could be created in the future since programming the site would be very time consuming. The design of the site and how it would function needs a lot of thinking about since I am attempting to undertake a new original website. Possible risks to the successful completion of the project and measures you are taking to minimise these. The risks the project has: 1. Being unable to see clearly a problem with the design of the site that would hinder its success 2. Research methods could develop problems in its reliability. Wrong conclusions could be made. 3. Not enough responses from questionnaire. Not enough information from public to generate ideas. Read More