The Role Of Online Education In Puerto Rico
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010The role of distance education in Puerto Rico must be one which promotes proactive integration with Student – student and Teacher with students in a completely professional.
Online education in Puerto Rico is a trend that surrounds us every day more, for this reason is useful and necessary, as teachers have an open university clarify some concepts that guide the work of teachers. This paper presents some ideas which aim to place the teacher in the context of a distance education model and understand what their role and responsibility in student learning and success of an educational program.
Elements of the process of distance education
Distance education models are based on three elements:
a. educational materials
b. advice or guidance of a teacher or specialist in the field
c. evaluation as a means of accreditation.
These elements are complemented by administrative infrastructure, management systems, university centers, information sources, among others, which are integrated into a teaching model as a complete and complex system of relationships designed to fulfill one goal: to educate. The actors in this process are the teachers, students and the institution sponsoring the program, we have an educational process comprising the universe of relationships that may arise between the actors and model components.
The teacher is responsible for conducting the process, tracing the lines of learning that must follow the student and provide necessary educational resources, their work is reflected through the development of materials and advice, their participation is vital because of its correct performance depends on the success of the program, either in terms of assimilation of content, as attrition rates, student satisfaction and approval.
The student is the center of the educational model, it is routed to all actions and efforts of teachers and the institution. At a distance model is necessary to be clear that the student is the protagonist of his own background, is he who, through effort and perseverance in reaching goals that will mean their whole degree. The formative nature of self-care educational materials, implicitly, the work of the student learning is largely autonomous and self-regulating. It is autonomous because it is he who develops the various activities, assignments and readings for each section which includes the subject, is self-regulated, because it is he who marks his own pace according to their possibilities of time, distributing the workload over time in order to complete the total of activities within the prescribed deadlines.
The institution, for its part, is responsible for the academic support, legal and infrastructure of educational programs that are offered. The institutional obligations can be grouped into two. The first group refers to all those logistical, organizational, technological, together constitute the necessary platform for the educational process to develop properly, the second group consists of academic and legal aspects, which give the rigor, quality and validity to the program.
The harmonization of the elements and actors of the educational model is a complex task. On each of these elements and actors is affected by numerous factors that can cause imbalances when operating together. The operational details, academics and methodology are of great importance and significance to the success of a program. Hence, the need for clearly defined roles and responsibilities of the actors and especially that they know the model and the role that he met others involved in the process. Integrating the work of actors, facilities and resources that present model elements achieve an integrated and interrelated whole affected by a set of interdependent variables whose impact is crucial to the performance of other system components.
Educational models and distance
They are a complex set of processes aimed at achieving a more meaningful learning in students. It consists of a set of subsystems with specific functions that involve interrelated and interdependent variables. From an overall perspective, the educational model can focus their attention on the teacher or the student, in the first case, the educational models focusing on the teacher are used by educational institutions, training providers face in the second case, the educational model focusing on the student, are used by institutions offering distance learning.
The traditional educational models are characterized by face focus development in the teaching process, relegating the student to be an observer and listener in most cases. Such models weigh a lot more learning and teaching that its applicability is limited to face environment. The teacher plays a leading role in combining the use of some resources, mainly the board and his voice through these, achieves what is commonly known as “transfer of knowledge” rather than actual learning, the result being a low level assimilation and resulting in “a temporary knowledge which tends to forget easily. The student, meanwhile, is a recipient of the transmission performed by the teacher, their learning is limited in many cases, what is memorable as a result of “listening and observing.”
Distance education models, by their nature, lack of a teacher to guide the process in person, so they are forced to separate the leading role of the teacher and the student pass, he does through an appropriate methodology and means to a dialogue didactic, strengthens their own learning and development. Learning is based on the work, whether through reading, learning activities, group work, formative assessment, and so on. This work has the advantage of learning activities raise the level of assimilation of the content, as it learns and assimilates what we do better than those who simply hear and see. A student-centered model is conducive to self-learning and the transmission of values, their different components orient their efforts to facilitate student learning, providing it with resources, complemented with previously scheduled activities, adequate monitoring and support of the teacher can achieve a more effective and meaningful learning.
Educational models and new technologies
It is important to understand that there is a difference between distance and attendance system supported by technology, areas in which each applies are different, and therefore the effects on the educational community are also different. Additionally it is necessary to be clear that the technological aspect is an element that is subject to the requirements and institutional needs and in no case has a defining character lines on policy or institutional action. In this sense we can say that technology is only half the work easier and opens up possibilities in many cases, but is not a straitjacket that determines the educational work.
The technologies have evolved educational models regardless of their approach, have affected both models to-face training as a model for distance learning. In regard to the latter, the change has occurred in its three basic elements.
Teaching Evolution
The way of teaching is the one that has been affected, the teacher’s role has changed, now having to contemplate additional functions that require primarily skills and motivation, the teacher’s activities have diversified and new general conception of the role has acquired can be summarized with the word “manager” of learning. This new task must be tempered with qualities and skills that together allow for adequate performance and help guide the learning of a group of people. Mentoring made by the teacher to address those concerns that may arise in the student learning during development, has become more flexible. The use of tools such as email, discussion forums and virtual discussion spaces have fostered a new concept of “group learning” which uses the knowledge distributed in each of the students and faculty to create new knowledge based on reading, reflecting, through exchange of views argued.
The main advantage of the use of these tools (discussion forums and virtual) is on the asynchrony, the participants of a forum or debate can log their views at any time within a given period, but generally large (one or two weeks) and the recipients have access to each share and may respond as they saw. In the case of email, the application eliminates the problems of saturation of the teacher with phone calls and gives you more freedom and time to prepare more elaborate responses and aid, while able to respond within a reasonable time to all students of queries.
The student role has also been affected, consider that the distance student is an entity with assets and facilities of communication technologies that have the potential isolation of the victim was, and no longer can assert virtual spaces to interact and build their own knowledge as a product of discussion and exchange with peers and teachers in managing group learning.
Institutions should consider the possibilities that technology opens up the teaching and preparing teachers to meet the challenge of combining technology and learning opportunities aimed at enhancing student learning which the target of ongoing efforts is.
Evolution of materials
There is a misconception that the use of technology for learning, means less burden from the student activities. The reality is that this distance is hard work and is based on activities and reading content. Printed materials, though it seems hard to believe, not out of fashion, even the most important universities in the world have this medium as a basic element of their educational models. It is very common that students receive textbooks, teaching guides including printed and virtual universities using the same scientific articles that are not physically sent when they are downloaded from the Internet by students, who are responsible for printing. Digital educational materials such as electronic books, multimedia applications, among others, are considered elements of support, very useful but not essential in a distance learning process supported by technology. Such materials have a scope within the context of a course or subject, should be framed to cover those aspects in which the benefits of the implementation is practical and effective.
The technologies have enabled educational materials are acquiring new shapes and presentations, interactivity can be achieved with multimedia applications, the portability of eBooks, audio and video are elements that have great advantages for a more meaningful learning . The use of these advantages lies in its strength within the content, but mostly right mix experience ensures a better outcome in the satisfaction and level of assimilation of the student.
Evolution of the evaluation
The evaluation of distance education is taken in two ways:
a. the first one as a learning strategy
b. the second a means of accreditation of knowledge.
In any case, the technology applied to personalize the site evaluation process and meet the student’s skills. Are used interactive self-assessments, which argued, immediate feedback is very important and useful for the student to know the level reached the correct time and know the areas in which content must focus more. The online evaluations are common for certain types of programs, they will have a period of time to answer a questionnaire with questions selected randomly and be objective, but not the referent of the knowledge gained by the student. Despite the technological development achieved can not be certain that the person doing the online assessment is who should be, for that reason the online assessment is applied as a learning strategy that leads the student to apply what learned and yet to know what their weaknesses.
Conclusion
It must be clear to teachers as an educational institution at university level should be open-minded considering that the model applies is student-centered and therefore the task of teaching to be a comprehensive guide, motivator and facilitator, and is limited in his starring role in the process and must consider the student as a receiver of knowledge. Being one of the elements of a distance education model involves a willingness to coordinate teacher training and resources and consider the student not as an isolated issue but as a central part of the proactive education community.
The distance learning student is based on what they can develop and build through learning activities, lectures, development of self-assessments, group work and with the help of the teacher and distributed through its teaching materials, advice and feedback. The combination of these efforts is reflected in the acquisition of skills, abilities and knowledge development.