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According to the Flexible learning for open education (FLOE) Project website, I have some new understandings of online learning. For me, the most important issue of online learning is how to maximize learning outcomes. This website provides me some good ideas.

The first concept I would like to talk about is how to solve learner’s barriers while they are learning online. As the author of the website mentioned that all learners might meet barriers such as a certain learning product that does not match learner’s needs, expectations, and the environment. For instance, when I study online, I watch a video about the Pythagorean theorem in a noisy coffee shop and I do not have a headphone with me. I could not learn anything because I could not hear anything from the video. At this moment, the capital caption can help me to learn in a noisy environment. We can expand this idea to more solutions to help learners learn online such as the website mentions: text to speech for blind people, font size adjustment for elderly people. These simple functions of online learning products can help learners boost better learning outcomes.

（picture from

https://pixabay.com/photos/business-desk-document-hand-1868015/）

Another important concept that comes to my mind is “co-creation”. What is “co-creation”? From my perspective, in this context, co-creation stands for multiple departments of people to develop a learning product together. As mentioned on the floe website, co-creation stands for instructors, content creators, and web developers to develop a learning product together. Co-creation is beneficial to learners because all contributors can give suggestions to make the learning product perfect to use. For instance, as I co-op at an IT company before, there is an important role called Program Manager. A program manager’s job is to co-create a product with developers and users. The co-created product can meet more learner’s needs.

The third concept I think it is interesting and useful is to embed learning into web games and simulators. It sounds very fun and interesting. This function can help learners engage in a learning program, especially for kids and younger learners. When I was a kid, there is a software on my computer to help me learn vocabularies. It was a game, I was a frog in that game and need to jump to a lotus leaf by typing the vocabularies on that leaf to go across the river. I memorized vocabulary very well because of that game. It is important to keep learners engaged and absorb knowledge without resistance.

（picture from https://www.sohu.com/a/259647064_739398）

There is a concept that I am confused about. The three dimensions of inclusive design part 3. It is about a complex adaptive system. This concept is very broad and complex. 

The question I have about online learning is can reward mechanisms boost better learning out in online learning? As we have known, a reward can stimulate learner’s passion for learning. How can we make the reward system com true in online learning?

The most memorable online learning experience I have was when I took an online course about resilience psychology at Thompson Rivers University. It was a course about what factors that help people who experienced traumatic events “bounce back”. The format of that online course was asynchronous. Students can finish the course at our own pace within 30 weeks after registration. I was asked to read the assigned course readings, watch interviews of psychologists and write reflections base on those materials. I studied that online course effectively because the course materials reduce my learning burdens, my teacher maintained good communication with me and I connected many relevant topics to my own life.

Like chapter 5: effective practices say, it is important to keep learners engaged with the learning materials(Crosslin, 2018). My online course instructor did a very good job of organizing learning materials to reduce my burdens. The instructor provided no only related journal articles, but also some videos that can explain a concept in a simple way. Can you imagine reading five 20-page articles in each module? I bet you might want to drop the course right away. Therefore, the mixed formats of course material reduce my learning burden and boost better learning outcomes.

(Here is a video the instructor provides to help us understand the concept of resilience. It is short and simple, very comprehensive. )

When I need help, I emailed my instructor. She replied quickly and solved my questions effectively. Again, according to this reading, communication is extremely important in online learning. Because it was an online course provided by Thompson Rivers University, which is located in Kamloops, I could not meet my instructor in person to talk about the issues I met. I emailed my instructor a lot. Despite sometimes I might as some dumb questions, she replied to me quickly and patiently. Just like this reading says, unclear communication can cause learner’s frustrations and confusion. I can not imagine if my instructor never replied to my email. Therefore, one of the factors that I gained success in that course was clear communication between the learner and the instructor.

I connected many course topics with my real-life experiences. For instance, my dad was a soldier who experienced the Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. He has been suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) for many years, but he did not know it was a psychological illness. When I did my homework, I always used my dad as an example. And when the topic was about what interventions can help people to gain resilience, I would think of my dad. Beach my instructor encouraged me to think of how the topics and my real-life related to each other, it helped me to gain success in that online learning experience.

As the author says in chapter 7, media itself is just media, it is about how learners and instructors use it to boost a better learning outcome (Bates, 2019). What we need to focus on is to reduce learner’s burdens by mixing different forms of course materials, communicating effectively, and encouraging learners to think of their own real-life experiences when they are learning a certain concept. It was my most memorable online learning experience and what I have learned from it.

Reference

Crosslin, M. (2018). Effective Practices in Distributed and Open Learning. https://via.hypothes.is/https://uta.pressbooks.pub/onlinelearning/cha pter/chapter-5-effective-practices/

Bates, T. (2019). Understanding technology in education. https://via.hypothes.is/https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadi gitalagev2/part/chapter-8-understanding-technology/

(Most of the pictures were found on Pixabay, which is royalty-free.)

To determine the differences between online educational content and openly licensed educational content, it is important to give clear, common-language definitions to them. From my opinions, online educational content is a very broad concept. Online educational content stands for online learning materials that are free access to learners and are not under any restricted copyright license. For instance, Wikipedia is a very typical online educational content. Wikipedia is free for everyone. In contrast, openly licensed educational contents are under strict copyright policies. Although learners can also access to openly licensed educational contents, learners are not allowed commercial use or derivative works from the materials, they have to cite the contents if they use them. For instance, my organizational psychology professor Dr. J. Gibson, he writes his own textbooks. His textbooks are openly licensed, but we are not allowed to use it commercially and we have to cite his works when we are promoting his ideas.

There is an open educational resource called the Khan Academy. It is my favorite online learning resource. Khan Academy provides free video lectures. Khan Academy teaches contents from as early as kindergarten (such as counting, addiction, subtraction) to university (such as calculus, hypothesis testing). The instructor presents concepts and procedures clearly, so that it is easy for learners to understand. I am never good at math, but I passed my statistic courses by watching Khan Academy lectures as my out-of-class tutorials.

Here is an example of a lecture from the Khan Academy. It is a lecture about Pythagorean theorem. The instructor clearly illustrates in what conditions we can use Pythagorean Theorem and its formula. My younger brother and sister are currently learning the Pythagorean Theorem, but they needed extra help outside of class. They do not live in Victoria. I cannot tutor them face-to-face. I sent them this online lecture, and they found it is very helpful!

https://youtu.be/AA6RfgP-AHU

There is a clear evaluation of online learning content on the OER Africa website. The evaluation convers all the aspects of when learners are using online learning contents. From the very basic evaluation indexes such as “is the information understandable”, “is the layout interfaces easy to navigate”, and to advanced evaluation indexes such as are learners allowed to modify the contents. This evaluation chart provides learners a good evaluation standard when learners are using online educational contents.

(Picture from OER Africa  https://www.oerafrica.org/book/how-evaluate-open-content)

There are many practical applications of online educational resources. In China, my younger brother and sister are not allowed to go to school currently because of the Coronavirus. Therefore, their teachers look for online educational resources for my brother and sister, so that they can study at home. Online educational resources can help those people who do not have time to attend full-time classes to study in their leisure time. For example, housewife, full-time workers. For students, online educational resources are helpful. When I need extra help outside of lectures, it is convenient to look for tutorials online.