Holistic Findings: Through the Lens of Carpe Diem

What we know?

Technology is growing at a rapid rate and advances taking place in the domain of ICT’s, digital networks, mobile computing, handheld devices, social networks etc. has made an impact on the way we work today.

These technological leaps have transformed the way we communicate/interact with the technologies themselves and how we use these technologies to communicate/interact with others socially. Technology has shown us the potential and given us the tool to shift from a ‘teacher-centric’ to ‘learner-centric’ environment at learning institutions.

To think about?

Most of us would agree that these technological leaps have started to play a significant role in our lives, but the question that some of us would like to ask is, has such leaps made a quantum leap at learning institutions? Learning institutions like the Universities for years has been revered as the epitome for disseminating information, knowledge and wisdom to learners of all ages.  To this day, learning does take place in the same format as that of 14th Century, why hasn’t technology changed it? Or rather Why is technology ‘slowly’ making its way through the traditional learning and teaching mechanism? This is something to think about!

Power of Online Learning

Online/E-learning could be perceived as a mechanism which can give its users the ability to reach out to learners irrespective of time & place, which has the empathetic ability to address different learning needs, which acts a catalyst to address different teaching needs. Overall online learning acts as a juncture where modern technology and traditional teaching meets. Technology enabled learning systems for over a decade has shown us its quirky nature to adapt itself to any learning environment and the one who could carry the true motto of learning on its shoulder around the globe 24x 7 unbiased & undeterred by challenges. 

Carpe Diem Model

Based on a simple observation carried out in learning institutions in India and UK, it became evident that the usage of technology for learning and teaching is rather elusive. There is more to it than that meets the eye. But the problem, I was facing was summarizing it. While looking through the pool of academic literature, I came across the Carpe Diem Model derived from a study conducted by Armellini (2008), which upon reading gave me the feeling as the framework upon which I could summarize some of my findings. As per the Carpe Diem Model, there are three stages in the design of online learning (represented in the figure above). Each of the three stages re-presented in the figure above brings to light some of my empirical findings, which tell a lot about the model components themselves.

So based on the model above, the empirical findings are summarized as follows,

The findings highlighted in the table above, are gathered by looking at the learning and teaching process (combining formal/informal teaching + use of Learning Management Systems (LMS)) adopted by ten different and prominent learning institutions providing business education to both under-graduate and post graduate students in different parts of India and UK.

These findings just gives us the glimpse of different facets, of Technology enabled Learning (TEL) in learning institutions, of student-teacher role relationships, of how the whole notion of using technology as a part of the existing learning infrastructure is dealt with by stakeholders with mixed feelings, of how learning and teaching is undertaken with/without technological interventions.

Reference

Armellini,A., Jones,S., (2008) , Carpe Diem : seizing each day to foster change in e-learning design, Reflecting Education, Vol.4, No.1, May 2008, pp 17-29.

 Additional Reference

Journal Articles:

JP 5. Nair,U.,(2015), Soft Systems Methodology For Personalized Learning Environment, e-Learning and Digital Media,Vol.12, Issue. 1.Editor of the Journal Prof. Michael Peters. <under Print>

JP 4. Nair,U.,(2014), Integrating ‘Ubiquitous Technology’ into online learning, International Journal of Science and Research, Vol.3, No.9, pp: 1863 – 1867 (impact factor 3.36).

JP 3. Nair,U.,(2014), Channelling Contemporary e-Learning Practices at Universities in UK towards ‘personalized learning environment’, International Journal of Advanced Research,Vol.2,No.6, pp. 767-776 (impact factor 1.66)

JP 2. Nair,U.,Singh,P.,(2013), Food for Thought: Can Social Media be a Potential ‘Learning tool’ for Universities ?, Educational Quest : International Journal of Education and Applied Social Science, August.2013,Vol.4,Issue.2,pp 115-119.

JP 1.  Nair,U.,(2013), A Brief Introduction to current e-learning systems , Third Degree : The working papers of Doctoral Seminar Series,Feb.2013,Vol.1,Issue 1,pp 15-17.

Magazine Articles:

A 6. Nair,U.,(2014), Systems Approach to E-Learning, EdTech Review,June.2014.

A 5. Nair,U.,(2014), ‘EduÆTorium’ (Pronounced as Edu-‘I’-Torium) – An Architecture for a PLE, EdTech Review,April.2014.

A 4. Nair,U.,(2014), Experiment with MOOCs : A Case of Coursera,EdTech Review , April.2014.

A 3. Nair,U.,(2014), Instructional Design Models in the 21st Century: A Review,EdTech Review , March.2014.

A 2. Nair,U.,(2014), Learning , Teaching and Technology in Higher Education, EdTech Review, March.2014.

A 1. Nair,U.,(2013), Ubiquitous Approach to e-learning, EdTech Review, September.2013.