The sharpest tool in the box? Considering online tools in supporting BOE students

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog post by yours truly – Joe Bloggs. Last week I looked at cultural diversity considerations in the support of students in BOE, in which I considered the ever-expanded list of online tools and the extent to which cultural/political factors influence student opportunities to benefit from them. However, in more general terms, I still wonder which tools are actually more suitable and relevant to supporting the students and how important are tools in driving student support in the online learning environment? Well, my fellow BOE-ers, this is the focus of this week’s blog post.

My personal feelings towards online tools are initially met with a healthy dose of trepidation on account of my minimalistic use of them for purely academic purposes. In fact, many online tools such as WebEx conference calling, Moodle forum discussions and online blogs represented entirely new experiences for me when I made use of them for this BOE course. However, my primary feelings of unease and uncertainty over the “unknown” have actually transgressed into feelings of comfort and support, as I’ve acknowledged the WebEx and Moodle tools especially as channels for which I can derive interaction-based support from both the course tutors and fellow students. Even the blog posts have incorporated a support element because it provides the facility for feedback and comments from teachers and students alike – and I have received and appreciated this type of engaged support via this tool. My experiences of these and other tools revisit my first question of what are the most suitable and relevant tools for supporting students? Are there actually universally recognised preferential tools or is it invariably arbitrary? Often, the pedagogic literature naturally gravitates towards the merits of one tool or another. For instance, Fu et al. (2013) expounded the virtues of wiki-based tools by describing them as beneficial for younger learners in the context of collaborative tasks and enhancing their learning interests. Alternatively, McLoughlin and Lee (2007) focus their veneration on blogs – which they describe as enabling “the affordances of idea sharing and interaction” (p. 666) (echoing my own sentiments regarding the engagement aspect of this support tool).

Millar and Schrier (2015) initially advocate the use of the e-textbook tool by suggesting that educators can use it to engage with students on multiple levels. However, they also concede that “if students are not willing to be engaged, the only way to change that behavior is to try to learn why the students are not engaged” (pp. 167-168). This point highlights my second (and arguably more pertinent) question of how important in practice are these tools when considered in isolation? The truth, as insinuated by Millar and Schrier, is that these tools are often context-specific and should perhaps be considered from the perspective of their overall application in practice. For example, Stewart (2010) envisions the contextual implications of online tools for students as supporting them in terms of overcoming geographical barriers, facilitating real time interactions and sharing information such as media and opinions. To me this final particular affordance signifies a key attribute as I also strongly feel that my new experiences of certain tools have opened the gates to learning-by-sharing as a new and innovative approach to student support functions. But is learning-by-sharing in BOE the best approach and what are the implications for students and teachers? Well that, folks, will be the subject of next week’s blog post. Stay tuned.

 

References

Fu, H. J., Chu, S., & Kang, W. X. (2013) Affordances and Constraints of a Wiki for Primary-school Students’ Group Projects. Educational Technology & Society, 16 (4), 85–96.

McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. (2007) Social software and participatory learning: Pedagogical choices with technology affordances in the Web 2.0 era. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007, 664-675.

Millar, M. & Schrier, T. (2015) Digital or Printed Textbooks: Which do Students Prefer and Why?, Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 15 (2) 166-185.

Stewart, V. (2010). A classroom as wide as the world. Curriculum 21: Essential education for a changing world, 97-114.