ICT use in teaching and learning
VIRTUAL MOBILITY: TRANSFORMING ADVANCE LEARNING TO NEW LEVEL IN ICT TEACHING AND LEARNING
Miss. Rashmi Guru Vagadurgi
Assistant Professor Pillai College of Arts, Commerce & Science 10, Sector-16, New Panvel-410206 E-Mail: [email protected]
Abstract
There is a necessity to maintain competitive abilities that have emerged due to extraordinarily rapid development of information communication technologies (ICT) in the entire world. Recognition of virtual mobility, accreditation of study outcomes acquired by virtual mobility activities, implementation of organizational and administrative structures are some of the proofs that universities have become open and flexible. This means that those universities acknowledges face-to-face academic learning as well as creates land of knowledge. Thus, building bridges between various cultures and diverse academic world. Hence, the aim here is to analyze the virtual mobility and define its characteristics from educational point of view in order to prepare an international virtual learning course in new future for the Indian classroom.
Keywords: information communication technologies (ICTs), virtual mobility, diverse academic, virtual
learning, education.
Introduction: Virtual mobility is rather a new phenomenon and has been influenced by the development of ICT very much. ―Virtual mobility‖ concept consists of the word ―virtual‖ that is referred to ICT and the word ―mobility‖ that means movement. Although from the first sight it might
not be seen as related with education, but as the purpose of physical mobility can be academic experience, the same relations can be drawn here with virtual mobility.
This study focuses on the educational perspective of the virtual mobility concept, but the concept analysis is discussed from different approaches of the phenomenon.
Virtual mobility concept from different perspectives:
1. ―The collaborative communication between a faculty member and his/her counterpart(s) mediated by a computer. More often, these meetings will be interactive and take place across national borders and across time zones‖ by S. Van de Bunt-Kokhuis (1996, 2001).
2. ―Virtual mobility in terms of an emerging form of internationalization where students follow courses offered by institutions abroad and interact with students and teachers, libraries and databases in other countries. Also the use of ICT as expanding the possibilities for cooperation and competition between institutions, and providing students and academic teachers that are not able to travel extensively with opportunities to benefit from internationalization.‖ by M. van
Wende (1998).
3. Virtual mobility is defined as a situation within university which implies a ―possibility to attend classes, seminars and other events held in a place located anywhere in the world; the possibility to access reference materials and contents at a distance, by using ICT-based solutions; the possibility to communicate with other people located anywhere‖ by HUMANITIES project
(1995)
4. In the HUMANITIES project, ―virtual mobility is more specifically constituted of the following elements:
Transnational lectures and/or learning materials.
Cross-border recruitment of students.
Intensity of communication flows.
PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE & SCIENCE,New Panvel, New Mumbai-06 Page 76 Multilingualism.
Complementarity between virtual mobility activities, traditional lectures, and physical mobility.
International recognition and accreditation of study achievements‖ (Spot+ project team, 2001, p. 12).
Virtual Mobility Tools
To analyze and discuss various information and communication tools (ICT) that could be used and applied for learning in a virtual mobility case. Virtual mobility tools as interactive communication tools in general are often categorized into two categories:
1. Synchronous tools
2. Asynchronous tools
This categorization is not considered to be exhaustive but contains the main tools used in this context. According to eds. Op de Beeck et al (2008), we classify the tools in the following categories:
Reflective tools Portfolio, Weblog
Collaborative tools Wiki, Blog, Discussion Forum.
Communication tools Chat, E-Mail, Video-Conferencing, Web-
Conference.
Social networking tools Social Networking Based on Personal Web
Pages, Media Sharing, Social Bookmarking
Learning platform Moodle-LMS & CMS, WebCT Blackboard
Research Methodology
The Research paper uses secondary data available in journals, research papers and websites.
Indian teaching and learning within classroom structure:
Education has always been accorded an honoured place in the Indian society. The recommendations of the Education Commission (1964-66) marked a significant step in the history of education post- Independence. Since then there has been a considerable expansion in the educational facilities all over the country at all levels. However, it is in the last few years that education has been the prime focus in India. The essential driver has been the shortage or lack of skilled workers in several sectors of the economy due to a weak higher education system. It is difficult to sustain the growth momentum of the country and maintain competitiveness unless problems with higher education are fixed. To address the issue, the Government of India has taken serious steps in the Eleventh Five Year Plan to increase opportunities in higher education.
India recognised the importance of ICT (interactive classroom technique) in education as early as 1984-85 when the Computer Literacy And Studies in Schools (CLASS) Project was initially introduced as a pilot with the introduction of BBC micro-computers. A total of 12,000 such computers were received and distributed to secondary and senior secondary schools through State governments. The project was subsequently adopted as a centrally-sponsored scheme during the 8th Plan (1993-98). The budget for this programme has been substantially increased in the last 10 years and implemented via the education departments of the State governments and the SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) chapters in States.
Some tools used in Indian Classrooms:
Projectors with interactive whiteboards
The new age teaching through interactive technology is an initiative by the government to incorporate interactive classroom technique in a teaching scenario. In recent years the blackboard has given way to the pairing of short throw projectors with interactive whiteboards, allowing the group interactivity
PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE & SCIENCE,New Panvel, New Mumbai-06 Page 77
of the blackboard to be merged with the content of the PC to form a powerful learning and teaching platform.
Interactive classrooms – ICT enabled classrooms
Interactive classrooms offer tremendous potential for improving the learning process. It is a complete technology-enabled classroom solution that revolutionizes teaching and learning of subjects like mathematics, science, social sciences and English. It allows the teacher to not only make the teaching process interactive but also engaging by using visual means which enables them to create question papers and analyse students' performance.
Virtual Science Lab
Furthermore, it gives the teacher the flexibility of bringing a virtual science lab right into the classroom. Lesson plans may be easily captured and shared online enhancing the interaction with students and engaging them with a visual component to the intellectual stimulus. This helps the students of higher classes to firstly get motivated, logically think, collate and learn with interest. Virtual Mobility is relatively low in India, some of the public documents such as the national knowledge commission encourage mobility of students and staff within and outside the country (National Knowledge Commission, 2006). The 10th five year plan emphasized on improving the mobility of students and staff and allocated additional funds for the same (Planning Commission, 2006).
Virtual Mobility has been often associated with brain drain and co-modification of education. It is viewed that most Indian students who leave the country for study abroad seldom return to the country. The presence of foreign universities in India is often attached to profit making and as a threat and competition to Indian universities. Yet around 150 thousands of Indian students are studying abroad and several foreign universities are already operating in India through twining, study exchanges and various other forms of partnership. Many private as well as public institutions have signed memorandum of understanding (MOU) with foreign universities.
Western teaching and learning process: Internationalization Through Technology
American Council of Education (ACE) has promoted the use of technology to help students acquire global competencies: the attitudes, skills, and knowledge to live and work in a multicultural and interconnected world.
The experience of traveling and studying abroad can be transformative, but less than 10 percent of four-year undergraduates in the United States have that opportunity (Institute of Inter-national Education 2015)
The table below indicates some of the other ways institutions are using technology to advance internationalization.
PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE & SCIENCE,New Panvel, New Mumbai-06 Page 78 Erasmus Student Network (ESN) is a Europe-wide student organisation. Its goal is to support and develop student exchange on a local, national and international level. It is composed of around 13,500 members in over 530 local sections in 40 countries in Higher Education Institutions, including universities, polytechnics, and university colleges. The network offers its services to around 160,000 international students.
ESN facilitates the social and personal integration of international students. The local ESN sections offer help, guidance and valuable information to both exchange students and students doing a full degree abroad. ESN provides information about academic exchange programmes and student mobility in general.
According to World Economic Survey, The e-learning market was worth an enormous $166.5 billion. It‘s been estimated that this will grow to $255 billion by 2017. Its growing financial value is matched only by the swelling numbers of students choosing to follow an online course.
In the latest Global Shapers Survey of 25,000 young people from across the world, 77.84% of respondents reported having taken online courses in the past.
Fig 2. According to World Economic Survey, Oct 2017
Introduction of Virtual mobility in Indian classroom:
To better understand Virtual Mobility, it would be worth mentioning the challenges and opportunities for cross-border education listed by UNESCO and OECD. There are both opportunities and challenges for cross border education. The opportunities are the increased supply of higher education, greater access for students, support for the knowledge economy, development of joint degrees, fusion or hybridization of cultures, growing comparability of qualifications, increasing role for the market- based approach, economic benefits for education providers, and diversification and generation of new academic environments.
The challenges include concern about quality of provision, inequality of access leading to a two-tier system, the growing problem of physical and virtual brain drain on the developed country-developing country axis but also on other routes, homogenization of culture, weakening role of the state in establishing national policy objectives, growth in market-oriented programmes such as business and information technology, and decline in some liberal arts and pure science disciplines.
In higher education too, the blended approach holds promise. India is the second largest country of origin for students taking MOOCs (massive open online courses, that bring world-class education remotely to millions) offered by Coursera and edX. The problem with MOOCs is few students stick with them: globally only 7% to 10% of students complete an MOOC class. Lack of interaction with peers, teachers, and facilitators is a major reason why. In response, assisted or facilitated MOOC models are emerging, in which students are required to listen to lectures online, but then attend classes, where professors use face-to-face time to discuss the material and work on problems. In some universities, HOOCs, or hybrid open online courses, allow online students to listen in on campus- based seminars
PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE & SCIENCE,New Panvel, New Mumbai-06 Page 79
Fig 3.According to authors of McKinsey Global Institute
In Virtual mobility, increased global visibility by reaching new target groups in an international context can be achieved.
Conclusion:
This study is defined as an activity or a form of learning, research and communication and collaboration, based on the following characteristics:
cooperation of at least 2 higher education institutions;
virtual components through an ICT supported learning environment;
collaboration of people from different background and cultures working and studying together, creating a virtual community;
having a clear goal and clearly defined learning outcomes;
having, as its main purpose, the exchange of knowledge and improvement of intercultural competences;
as a result of which the participants may obtain ECTS credits and/or its academic recognition will be assumed by the home university;
providing visibility of university in higher education area, capitalization of educational process;
leading to the integration of ICT into their mainstream academic and business processes.
encourages institutions to adapt and further develop their pedagogical models: change of content delivery and the change of learning tools require changes in pedagogy and didactical models (Bijnens, H.; Op de Beeck, I., 2006).
provides an international dimension to those learners who, for different reasons, are not able or willing to go abroad. In that context, ICT can be used for ―electronic twinning‖ and for virtual platforms, for teachers, other ―multipliers‖, interested individuals, interactive communities, open source initiatives, etc.
However, there is another side of the coin wherein access to ICT is still limited to many places in the country because of lack of physical infrastructure, economic constraints such as extreme poverty; lack of educational limitations such as illiteracy and lack of relevant content in the local language. Ensuring strategies to combat these obstacles will allow us to explore the true potential of ICT in near future.
PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE & SCIENCE,New Panvel, New Mumbai-06 Page 80
References:
Humanities project report. (1995). Retrieved March 3, 2011, from http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/research/humanities/humanities-report.html
Spot+ project team. (2001). Training Module 2: A Virtual Erasmus Student. Retrieved November 30, 2010, from http://www.spotplus.odl.org/downloads/Training_module_2.pdf
Eds. Op de Beeck, I., Bijnens, K., & Van Petegem, W. (2008). Home & Away. Coaching exchange students from a distance. A best-practice manual on blended mobility. Heverlee Belgium: EuroPACE ivzw.
Development: The UNITE Approach. Sixth European Conference on e-Learning (ECEL 2007), ACL publications, pp. 683-692.
JISC (2008). Effective practice with e-portfolios: Supporting 21st century learning. HEFCE. Retrieved January, 13, 2011, from
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/effectivepracticeeportfolios.pdf
Technology glossary (2006). Retrieved from Real Virtual Erasmus on January 7, 2011 from http://reve.europace.org/drupal/?q=book/print/187
Social bookmarking. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking
Media sharing. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_sharing
http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Internationalization-in-Action-Special-Edition-Connecting- Classrooms-Using-Online-Technology-to-Deliver-Global-Learning.aspx
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/ppdljgMHFmfeFfJBkdxEAL/Empowering-teachers-and-trainers-through- technology.html
PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE & SCIENCE,New Panvel, New Mumbai-06 Page 81
EFFECTS OF ICT ON STUDENT TEACHER RELATIONSHIP & CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT
Zahra .H. Mithaiwala
Burhani College of Commerce & Arts [email protected]
Abstract
In the 21st century, all of us in the educational system the policy makers, the teachers and the students are
grappling with profound changes in the way education is imparted and received. With the advent of ICT, there has been a dynamic shift in the relationship between teacher & student. There is a need to study this change to find how it affects learning, and finding the way forward in terms of practical implementation in education. We have studied responses from 40 students for this study. 20 current students & 20 who have completed their education. We have interviewed 10 teachers currently in the system by way of a questionnaire to gauge their feeling and beliefs on the changes of student teacher relationship after introduction of ICT. Research has shown that though the student teacher relationship has undergone a change but students and teachers both overwhelmingly feel that blended learning is the way forward.
Keywords: Student Teacher Relationship, Information & Communication Technologies, Blended learning,
Social constructivism Goals of this study
The overall focus of this study was on the effect of ICT on the Student Teacher relationship. I wanted to investigate the topic widely from different perspectives, of teachers and that of students.
I had the privilege to observe several teachers & students in their everyday life in the classrooms as they were implementing the pedagogical practices and technologies. Besides the data collected on observations, my research consists of statistically analyzed surveys which are conducted in order to find out the teacher & student‘s relationship before ICT was implemented into our educational system as compared to now the change in the attitude of students and how easy was it for them to adapt to the concept of ICT and Blended learning.
Introduction
Everyone in the educational field has aspired for a change in the existing system. Now with the advent of ICT the entire way we look & execute our education is undergoing a major overhaul. At this stage it becomes imperative to find how the change is affecting learning.
Why Study the Student Teacher Relationship?
The relationship that students develop with their teachers is very much essential for their academic growth. Marzano (2003) studied the practices of effective teachers and determined that ―an effective teacher-student relationship may be the keystone that allows the other aspects to work well‖. Nothing
can replace a teacher, a positive relationship with the teacher would help the student work independently cause, he knows when things go wrong the only person to guide the student and help him find his problem is the teacher. Downey (2008) writes that ―teachers need to know how their everyday works in classrooms can be infused with interactions and instructional strategies that research has shown can make a positive difference in the lives of students who are at risk of academic failure‖ Not the traditional one way communication really works though. But nor does a complete independent student work as well. What‘s important here is that one to one interaction & exchange of thoughts that help the learning process. Mohrman, Tenkasi, & Mohrman, (2003) assert ―lasting change does not result from plans, blueprints, and events; rather change occurs through interaction of participants‖.
What is Social Constructivism?
Knowledge is something that is socially constructed. Individuals need to create meaningful learning through interactions with others. Hallinan (2008) writes ―Learning is a process that involves
PILLAI COLLEGE OF ARTS, COMMERCE & SCIENCE,New Panvel, New Mumbai-06 Page 82
cognitive and social psychological dimensions, and both processes should be considered if academic achievement is to be maximized‖.
In a constructivist classroom environment the student is urged to give in his inputs, and no more does a teacher keep giving out information for students to merely just accept. ―Constructivist teachers do not take the role of the "sage on the stage." Instead, teachers act as a "guide on the side" providing students with opportunities to test the adequacy of their current understandings‖ (Open Education Resources of UCD Teaching and Learning, University College Dublin).
Hence we understand the fact that it‘s imperative for any learner to have a social dimension to his