Information Technology Reference
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and the lecturer is only involved as a last resort. This process also addresses the criticism
directed at unitary organizational approaches, which fail to recognize power, politics, and
conflict. This process embeds the concepts of plurality, which recognize different worldviews.
The approach also provides flexibility for the lecturer, in that the weekly assessments can be
conducted online from any physical location with Internet access. The model also helps to
address the increasing issue of text currency, as increasing volumes of textbook and
application information is produced and becomes easily accessible. Also, the model ensures
that the work for the lecturer is the same, regardless of class size.
It allows for increasing understanding across cultural groupings.
Because the
students are geographically isolated within groups, meaning is negotiated every week within
the context of the subject matter. This ensures that different ethnic backgrounds can be more
easily accommodated in the learning process. The process of discussing meaning of
applications allows the terminology to be contextualized and shared meaning to be developed
within the learning subgroup, and subsequently, within the whole class group.
It accommodates regular and timely asynchronous interaction.
While asynchronicity
has been a component of traditional distance learning for some time, some online approaches
have, in fact, provided pressure for synchronous availability of student and lecturer. This
is often out of step with modern requirements, which need to accommodate different time
zones, employment status, family commitments, etc.
It mitigates issues of power and social presence.
Social presence has been found to
be an inhibitor to communication, understanding, and learning. Personal salience molds
interaction and filters out messages and meaning (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Culnan & Markus,
1987). Social presence also fundamentally affects how participants sense emotion, intimacy,
and immediacy and depends not only on the words people speak but also on the verbal and
nonverbal cues, body language, and context (Rice, 1993). Social presence is also ethnically
heterogeneous. In researching online groups, Wellman et al. (1996) found that limiting social
presence is a factor in removing inhibition, increasing creativeness, and strengthening weak
social ties in narrowly focused groups such as learning groups. Hence, the nonvideo-based
online medium is likely to increase learning outcomes across class, culture, gender, and age.
It strengthens hard and soft skills.
As discussed above, a pluralist approach is being
posited as a more appropriate mechanism for learning and living in an increasingly globalizing
world. Hence, there is a need for education to provide skills that suit such an environment.
The model outlined here not only provides content and the ability to contextualize this across
a range of situations and cultures, but it also provides training in processes that facilitate
increased learning through collaboration, discourse, and different world views. Students
learn important online skills, how to be citizens of an online community, and how to contribute
to a virtual team, including dividing the work between the team members, resolving conflicts,
developing ideas and projects, and providing positive feedback to others about their work.
RELEVANCE TO FUTURE TRENDS
This discussion has provided a philosophical framework and an example of the delivery
of an online course that addresses the emerging trends in demand for subject-based and
