UNIT 4: Humanizing Learning Environments

After watching this video, I started to reflect about the things that parents and teachers must do for our children and young people before it is too late... We need to continue being human...

I would like to start with a statement that summarizes the shift which we as educators must face in the current globalized context we are living, concerning online learning environments:

“As our classes become increasingly computer-mediated, as our students become increasingly computer-literate and willing to take courses online, the dislocations caused by these sea-changes must concern us as teachers.” (Haefner, 2000).

Such dislocations require actions to be arranged by us, to meet students’ needs while allowing them feel we are affectively near, supporting and truly exchanging factual information for their benefit, and acting as if we were face to face (F2F). Either in a synchronous way (e.g. through chats, using skype, twitter, exchanging information with a database, Wiziq sessions/tutorials, video-conferences), or in an asynchronous way (e.g. e-mailing, newsgroups, forums, video-taped classes/ conferences), it is our duty to offer students a sensible and warm atmosphere for learning to take place. It is clear, at least for me, that no machine or external artifact will replace the teacher in a classroom. Humankind needs others’ presence to really interact, enrich and empower themselves. And how to make this presence be tangible, motivating, and balanced in an online learning environment is what follows…

One basic element to keep in mind when humanizing an online learning environment is planning with creativity and flexibility. Giving the students various options and opportunities to interact with the teacher and classmates will surely make the tasks more appealing and enriching. However, the flexible feature must be carefully explained to students: they have to exercise their autonomy in order to manage times and schedules. This refers to the constant ‘presence’ (attendance in a physical sense), and also participation they have to show in their course(s). Otherwise, the connection among students and tutor(s) will be lost, and consequently, the online program or course will not succeed. It is certain that flexibility benefits students’ own work pace, and also, elicits shy students to participate more actively, but again, it is an issue of commitment, responsibility and real involvement.

A second element, derived from the above, is follow-up and feedback. Actually, they are two different processes but they are so closely inter-related that I will refer to them as only one. During and after participating in the tasks proposed, there must be a place for advising each other: student-student, teacher-student, or why not, student-teacher. Through the exchanges of information, thoughts, opinions, ideas, innovations, knowledge starts to be built, in a collaborative way. Collaboration is indeed a key term that I best understand as stated by Agostinho (1997):

“Collaboration is an essential ingredient in the recipe to create an "effective learning environment" as it provides learners with the opportunity to discuss, argue, negotiate and reflect upon existing beliefs and knowledge. The learner is "involved in constructing knowledge through a process of discussion and interaction with learning peers and experts." (Harasim, 1989, p.51, cited by Agostinho, 1997).

Collaboration would then be the third element that arises when participants have had the opportunity to engage in a topic, develop it, reflect upon it, propose other ways to deal with it or to solve it –in case the topic is a problem-, to finally reach consensus about the best options to address it and implement it. This process can be done through synchronous and asynchronous ways, as explained at the beginning of this paper. The clue is maintaining the environment stable, solid, reliable and ‘alive’, at the same time, offering constant support and guidance.

Once the three mentioned elements are clear, then, it comes the most difficult part: making teachers and students aware of the relevance of making the online environment a means of assertive communication, respecting some rules and norms to belong to a community, as it has to be in any human group safe interaction, favoring life-long learning as a value added. Knowledge constructed together will hopefully remain in each person’s life. To make this happen, changes of roles started to be evident and, as a result, the need for adapting already in-use strategies and create new ones became an urgent requirement.

Concerning the changes of roles from the teachers’ side, they essentially needed to empower their students instead of being the ones who controlled everything: the information, the means of instruction, the discourse. Now, students require teachers to be promoters of how to get information, facilitators, presenters of critical questioning, and moderators of various learning styles. Having this in mind, strategies for teachers to create the awareness discussed above could be:

Establish policies of use, rules and norms concerning interaction, supporting openness and honest attitudes.
Support the implementation of the online course by being a model, which guides, trains, and monitors students in the use of the required tools.
Include meaningful and practical contents and goals in the planning, as well as a well-structured agenda/schedule, with the possibility of being flexible whenever it is required.
Assign roles for each individual, according to his/her talents and preferences.
Engage students to be active participants in oral tasks, by listening and seeing each other (e.g. synchronously, through Wiziq sessions, video-conferences).
Encourage learners to explore beyond the given materials in order to appropriate them for their own enrichment and benefit.
Promote spaces for reflection and self-assessment (e.g. asynchronously, to make them deeper).

Turning to the students’ side, they passed from being information gatherers, passive vessels, receivers, outside observers to be active learners, and protagonists of their own learning process: Students act as problem solvers/questioners/researchers; they are contributors, constructors, builders…They are independent learning managers but equally, they are collaborative participants as members of a community. Based on these statements, strategies for students to become aware on how to take part on a human online learning environment would be:

Participate actively in all tasks proposed, although they do not match their learning styles. This could be an opportunity to explore hidden likes and talents.
Manage motivation (intrinsic/extrinsic).
Be aware of responsibility with own work and others’.
Be autonomous.
Encourage partners, tutor and other participants’ discussions.
Be open-minded.
Be sincere (express what you feel –questions, doubts, queries, whenever necessary. No one will blame you or laugh at you; all people are always in a learning process).
Be team-oriented.
Be inquisitive, critical, and reflective.

As a conclusion, humanizing online learning environments entails keeping track of an ongoing process that people involved experience, including constant interaction, peer review for feedback, guidance from tutors, management of tools, that to maintain it alive, it calls for our nature: being human.


REFERENCES
Agostinho, S. (1997). Online Collaboration for Learning: A Case Study of a Post Graduate University Course. Third Australian World Wide Web Conference. etrieved April 16th, 2010 from http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/proceedings/agostinho/paper.html

Haefner, J. (2000). The Importance of Being Synchronous. Academic Writing. Retrieved from http://wac.colostate.edu/aw/teaching/haefner2000.htm

LaBonte, R., Crichton, S, & Allison, D. (2003). Moderating Tips for Synchronous Learning Using Virtual Classroom Technologies. Odyssey Learning Systems Inc. Retrieved from
http://odysseylearn.com/Resrce/text/e-moderating%20tips.pdf