http://www.vickcopy.com/images/Transparency.jpg
By S贸nia Valente e Telma Jesus Janeiro 2010
Transparency in Online Education
2010
“I’ve gained much from being a transparent learner. Over the last nine years – on blogs, wikis, and recently Twitter – I’ve expressed half-formed ideas and received the benefit of constructive (and critical feedback). I generally focus on what I’ve gained, but I suspect readers of my sites and articles have gained something from the experience as well.” (http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=122)
Keywords: transparency, cooperative learning, social networking, communication
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Transparency “Jones uses the concept of networked learning and draws a direct line between networking and learning. He stresses the importance of facilitating “connections between learners, learners and tutors, and between learners and the resources they make use of in their learning” (in Dalsgaard). This connections can provide a cooperative learning. Paulsen argues that transparency is a prerequisite for distance students to work cooperatively. “Transparency means that students are visible to each other as potential partners and resources”; teachers can monitor the process and progress of their students and be part of it. Transparency can be considered as a strategy that reach, catch, hold, motivate, and inspire students. “Transparency means that you and your doings are visible to fellow students and teachers within a learning environment. (…) students and teachers are made aware of and have access to each other’s interests,
thoughts,
concerns,
ideas, writings, references, and assignments.
The
purpose
of
transparency is to enable students and teachers to see and follow the work
of
fellow
teachers
within
students a
and
learning
environment and in that sense to make
participants
available
to
each other as resources for their learning activities”. (Dalsgaard & Paulsen, 2009) http://ttoes.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/school-transparency.jpg
“Transparency is also an important driver for improved quality. It has the following three positive effects on quality: Preventive quality improvement - We are prone to provide better quality when we know that others have access to the information and contributions we provide. Sónia Valente e Telma Jesus
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Constructive quality improvement - We may learn from others when we have access to their data and contributions. Reactive quality improvement - We may receive feedback from others when they have access to our data and contributions.� (Dalsgaard & Paulsen, 2009).
(h ttp://toonlet.com/archive?i=11247)
"Transparency may reduce the number of low quality contributions and may make high quality work more accessible as paragons for others. In transparent online learning environments, poor contributions from teachers and course designers cannot be hidden easily behind closed doors. It is important to realize that transparency must be handled carefully with regard to privacy issues. The users must be confident that their privacy is assured. They should be able to choose their preferred privacy level and understand how this choice controls how much of their personal data and contributions will be available to others." (Paulsen and Dalsgaard, June 2009) In this way Jones concept of networked learning is present in transparency concept. We can consider transparency between students and between tutors (as colleagues and as members of a Education Institution), between learners and tutors, and between learners and the resources - as users and creators (in this point share that resources and tools is part of transparency). This exchange and sharing is considered to be the basis that develops cooperation.
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Transparency between students in online education “Transparency between students means that they have insight into each other’s work, thoughts, and productions”
(Dalsgaard).
All
the
process
is
important to colleagues: research, notes, tools, conclusions,
links, bibliography; they can find
inspiration and motivation for their own work, task or self-education process and provide a source of inspiration for each other. “Transparency should serve the purpose of supporting and encouraging participation
by
making
student
opinions
and
thoughts available.” (Dalsgaard, 2009) (http://conversamos.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/dearpaper.jpg)
Exist a voluntary cooperation between students into online community, but in a social networking site each student has a personal page (with they personal information), which they own develops, modifies and publishes. “online students serve as mutual resources without being dependent on each other” (Dalsgaard & Paulsen, 2009). This learning process does not claim direct communication or collaboration. “This creates a kind of indirect or “passive” form of communication and sharing (…) that communication within social networking sites is a matter of awareness and transparency. The principle is that you communicate by editing, developing or updating personal services.” (Dalsgaard) For students beginning the transparency process there’s 4 steps to follow used in NKI’s
learning partner experience (Paulsen, 2009): Make a personal presentation (with several information about themselves, pictures, previous educational and professional experiences, interests, hobbies. In this point is important define transparency level) ; decide who may access it (define the privacy of information, who can see the personal information’s? colleagues, teachers, friends, everybody?); search for potential learning partners (see the others presentations, look for affinity and commons interest) and invite someone to become your learning partner (and start the transparency adventure of learning cooperation).
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(http://toonlet.com/archive?i=11245)
“Transparency enables students to be visible to each other as potential partners and resources an important objective is to support an individual’s consciousness and awareness of the activities of others. This can be achieved by making a variety of information transparent, for instance by developing student catalogues and learner profiles, by encouraging learners to become partners, and by sharing personal learning tools. Whereas discussion forums and other tools for direct communication and collaboration focus on direct sharing, social networking can support students’ indirect sharing of resources, thoughts, ideas, productions, writings, notes, etc. The pedagogical potential lies within developing social networks in which students’ activities are visible to other students. The potential is to support transparency through a combination of personalization and socialization and through sharing personal information and tools within social networks (Dalsgaard 2006)". Paulsen and Dalsgaard (2009) considered that "Student catalogues are important tools for showing students that they have access to a learning community. A comprehensive catalogue that provides relevant information about students is crucial to students acquiring an overview of the learning community. Student catalogues usually provide information about all students enrolled in a course; however, if students can access information about the students enrolled in other courses offered by the institution, they may benefit from taking part in a larger learning community. Moreover, a catalog that includes alumni could be of interest to students who seek advice on courses they are considering or on future employment. To facilitate cooperation, a student catalogue should include information that makes it easy to initiate and maintain communication, such as e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, chatting identities, etc. It may also Sónia Valente e Telma Jesus
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include information on geographical location (e.g., zip codes) to facilitate identification of potential partners for occasional face-to-face meetings. Similarly, it may include progress plan information so that students can identify peers who are working with the same study unit. Finally, one may argue that student catalogues should include CV-type information to make it possible to search for peers who have special competencies.” “The basis for social interaction in social networking sites is a personal profile, which often consists of a personal webpage on the networking site. “A personal profile/webpage provides an opportunity for the user to create his/her own page with content such as pictures, videos, links, texts, etc. “The personal profile can be seen as a space for individual creation and expression”. (Dalsgaard) Each student have the opportunity to be the author of his process and give his contribution for development of his studding area “(…)hard-working and successful students are willing to share achievements and experiences in an open, online catalogue is valuable for the field of online education. At the same time they can improve their knowledge whit the partner’s contributions” (Paulsen, 2008). The discussion forums are the opposite of this type of personal page and are a place where students send comments, posts, messages or documents in order to communicate or share. Having a personal page (weblog or other...) is a form of socialization since it is connected to other personal pages and the individual is notified whenever a page is modified. In general it is built a network of personal relations. This is what is happening with us in this master. We are able to follow the work of our colleagues
and
be
aware
of
the
activities they are developing and even make use of the information that we consider important. Everyone should be voluntary engaged to a network and contribute to the learning community. A commitment should be established so that the individual can serve as a resource for all the learning community. http://images.google.pt/imgres?imgurl=http://www.diseno-art.com/images/transparent-canoe-kayak.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.disenoart.com/encyclopedia/strange_vehicles/transparent_canoe-kayak.html&usg=__Twxc_O0CM4JiPSwJEvgW-_go5Rs=&h=343&w=400&sz=68&hl=ptPT&start=3&um=1&tbnid=M2H3Qf98gnS4KM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtransparen%2Bkiak%26hl%3Dpt-PT%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
What is the potential of social networking within cooperative online education? Sónia Valente e Telma Jesus
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“As a passive form of communication and sharing, the Social networking does not
necessarily involve communication, dialogue, or collaboration”. (Paulsen and Dalsgaard, June 2009).The Social networking services are most important example of transparency. People can see what other’s do, their actions and have freedom to read and to use other’s work as a form of cooperative work. As a consequence people have a more careful attitude in doing their work once they notice that other’s will be able to see it. “When someone decides to share their thoughts and ideas in a transparent manner, they become a teacher to those who are observing. Social technology – such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook – opens the door to sharing the process of learning, not only the final product” (http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=122). (http://zackhayhurst.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/social_networking_sites1. jpg)
Students can find contributions and engage knowledge reading other’s contributions; it is in the communication (direct or indirect) and in the sharing point of view that you can construct new knowledge and find innovation. Transparency in online education brings us a new possibility to discuss and build knowledge with partners around the world (with different experience, point of view, cultural issues, and education characteristics).
Transparency between Tutors in online education We considered that the transparency between tutors has two important points for analysis: transparency between tutors and transparency between tutor’s institutions. The transparency between tutors is similar to transparency between students; and has similar goals. As Paulsen and Dalsgaard say (2009) “The pedagogical potential of social networking lies within transparency and the ability to create awareness among students [and we say that tutors are students too in a lifelong learning](...).
The basic assumption is that
transparency is important to cooperative online education. People can cooperate only if
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they know about each other and have access to some common information and services." The educational institutions have too many interests that their tutors learn and have more tools and resources to increase the quality of the institution.
Share
is
an
effective
method
(research’s, documents, reports, all kind of knowledge) and cheaper. http://www.coneinc.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/0/f8d7f4d84684529a183e6be275b32918/misc/transparent_globe_in_hand.jpg
Transparency between Learners and Tutors in online education Transparency in a pedagogical relationship provides a shared vision about the effort and development of the learner. The tutor can provide ongoing assessment, (re)oriented student work, help to correct errors and motivate. Is a constantly and effective work. Students felt being followed in process and motivated to improve and share their efforts.
(http://portalamazonia.locaweb.com.br/sites/amazonsateducacao/img/upload/elearning2a.jpg
In transparency within cooperative online learning a central challenge for tutor “is to enable students to follow the work of their colleagues.” (Dalsgaard & Paulsen, 2009) "This transparent information may include personal information about the users and statistics related to the users’ deployment of the online tools. It may further include work Sónia Valente e Telma Jesus
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students and teachers provide in online notebooks, blogs, and discussion forums as well as results from quizzes, surveys, and assignments." (Paulsen and Dalsgaard, June 2009). But the authors say too “Student catalogues must address privacy issues appropriately. Some information in student catalogues may be regarded as sensitive and may require student consent. Some students may also be opposed to inclusion in a student catalogue." We can analyze some questions: how is created that relationship between tutors and learners? When each individual creates a personal profile in a social network site, he has to think who can see that information, because it can define the relationships within the learning community. Has to think: How the personal information’s about me (learner) can influence the teacher’s objectivity? or How the personal information’s about me (teacher) can influence the way learners see my competence? So we can ask: Can a teacher be student friend in a social networking? What are the boundaries? How much information can or want to share with he’s students? How can this influence the pedagogical relationship?
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Transparency by Design
(http://www.wordsellinc.com/wp-content/uploads/word-sell-sales-transparency.jpg)
"One of the requirements for implementing Transparency by Design is the development of a new set of best practices for participating institutions. “You want to make sure things are in place at the institutional level”, says Merle Harris, president of Charter Oaks State College, who has been instrumental in developing just such standards. “Collectively we went back and we looked at best practices that have been put out by other organizations for online learning and then we developed our set based on those" she says. "Most important, Transparency by Design reports includes outcomes at the program specialization level, allowing prospective students to assess how well a program will prepare them for their professional pursuits."(Hill, October 2009) Christopher Hill discusses issues like: What are the benefits of every online student be well-informed." A key focus of the plan is providing program-specific outcomes data that allows students to make informed decisions about their education investment" and the benefits for everyone. “To meet the education needs of adult students, we must provide them with trustworthy and transparent ways to choose among many available options and to gauge the potential of each one to further their careers.” The goal of the program is “to lead universities and colleges toward greater accountability and transparency.”, said Michael Offerman, president of Capella University. Sónia Valente e Telma Jesus
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All types of transparency in Online Education are
very
important,
aspects
like
student
demographics, completion rates, costs, student engagement, and knowledge and skills learned are essential information for students. This kind of data can be viewed in institutional annual reports. http://www.ecampus.lhup.edu/images/keyboard_transparent.jpg
“Harris and her associates concluded that there were a few basic principles for institutions that really want to be transparent: 1 - Make distance education a central element of your mission: Distance learning really has to be central to what the institution is doing. If it is viewed as an add-on and not part of the central mission then very often it doesn’t get the resources that are needed to carry out a quality program. 2 - Accountability to stakeholders: Who are the primary stakeholders in a transparent institution? The prospective student and the enrolled student. “One of the reasons we feel it’s important to have accountability measures and to report on those regularly is because prospective students who are making a decision about where they want to go to school, where they want to take courses should have information,” Harris says. Accountability to prospective students includes providing adequate information about the program, what it contains, and who’s teaching it. But it also includes measuring what happens to students who go through the program. Harris’ group looks at things like graduation rates, retention rates, what alumni say about the program, and measures of student engagement, with the aim of making this information readily available to prospective students. 3 - Responsiveness: In practice this means nothing more or less than good customer service, so that when there are issues and questions students can get quick answers. Responsiveness in the academic process means that faculty respond quickly to a student, so that a student who’s learning online can get an answer to a question or feedback on an assignment within 24 to 48 hours, depending on the institution’s policy. Administratively, responsiveness means that if there are questions about grades going
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out, about registration, about fees being paid the student will get very quick response either by email or by telephone. 4 - Faculty competence: First, and most basic, the faculty that are going to be teaching online must have the content background. But beyond that they have to get the appropriate training to teach online. They have to understand online pedagogy and they have to understand the technology they’re using. You need to be able to certify that the faculty have the appropriate skills. Then you need to constantly update the faculty on those skills. Finally you need to have a faculty evaluation system and use that information to feed back into the courses. http://viu1.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/online-education-diploma-thumb3091362.jpg
5 - Institutional integrity: Again, starting with basics, the institution must be accredited. Regional accrediting agencies are your allies in ensuring institutional integrity. They will help you look at what you say you’re going to deliver and what you’re actually delivering and help you make sure they match. Institutions must be rigorous in establishing outcomes for programs and courses and measuring their effectiveness—are you achieving those outcomes? “You say you’re going to do something and you show that you’re actually doing it,” says Merle Harris, president of Charter Oaks State College. Here, too, a key point is to make this information easily accessible to students. “You have to be upfront about it and make sure that people know that you are going to be upfront about it,” Harris says. 6 - Excellence in student services: The guiding principle is that you have to recreate online all the services that are offered on the ground. You have to be sure that students can get online advice and counseling. You have to make sure they can get complete information about their courses in advance. The online registration process has to be efficient. Students must have access to library services online. Online tutoring services should be available. You have to be able to accomplish financial aid transactions at a distance. Since the students are using technology they have to have a help desk. Not only must you recreate the services that students could walk to on campus—in most cases you actually have to do a better job because often enough students have a difficult time connecting with services on-campus. Sónia Valente e Telma Jesus
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7 - Integrity in marketing: Make sure you’re giving a clear and accurate message about what you actually can and do deliver, so that you’re not making promises that can’t be fulfilled. As with other aspects of transparency, integrity in marketing has to do with providing relevant information on your website—what the graduation rate is, what the alumni say about the program, etc. 8 - Curricular quality: “We have to make sure that there is quality in the content,” Harris says. For example at my institution courses are reviewed by other faculty members both before the course is offered, and the first time it’s offered, and then it comes up for review again within at the most five years—it could be earlier.” This periodical review is necessary to be sure that outcomes are clearly stated and that the students are achieving those outcomes. “The keys are disclosure, transparency, the ability to interact with students easily and the quality of the curriculum. So that we know what we’re trying to achieve and we regularly measure it.”
http://www.cognitivedesignsolutions.com/images/elearning_TreeOfKnowledge.jpg
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Conclusion Is important remember that one of the problems of transparency is the level of transparency. Students and tutors have to find balance between transparency and privacy, and this balance depends of each person and those personal and social characteristics. The more transparency in all its aspects, the more cooperative work will be done by all those individuals involved in the online learning process. Transparency means open learning process, fellow students can see and follow work, researches, tools, reports, assignments of others. Each one can provide important learning opportunities for others. "I learn so much from my fellow students. Everyone brings in a different perspective and experience. Being in the Masters of Non-Profit Management program, it's great to network with other nonprofit leaders across the country." – Brian Laskey. Transparency brings the opportunity to improve knowledge quality with less effort, because exist many people to work and sharing for the same goal: learn more, learn better, in less time!
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Bibliography
http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/media_literacy_digest_georgesiemens_irrodl_new_issue_id34856591.jpg
More Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality
By: Christopher Hill in Distance Learning - Connectivism networked and social learning (2009): Teaching as transparent learning. In http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=122 - Dalsgaard, Christian (2009): Supporting Transparency between Students in http://person.au.dk/fil/16581515/Dalsgaard_Supporting_Transparency.pdf - Dalsgaard, Christian . Social networking sites: Transparency in online education. In http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf - Hill, Christopher, Online Course Design Should Consider Learner Characteristics, in http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/online-course-design-shouldconsider-learner-characteristics/ - Hill, Christopher, More Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality, in http:// www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/more-principles-for-improving-onlinetransparency-quality/ - Dalsgaard, Christian & Paulsen, Morton (2009): Transparency in Cooperative Online Education. In http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1267 - Linder, Kathryn (2009): Students and Social Net working: Should You ‘Friend’ Your
Students? In http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/trends-in-higher-
education/students-and-social-networking-should-you-friend-your-students
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- Paulsen, Morton (2009): keynote at Cambridge International Conference of Open & Distance Education. in http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2340 - Paulsen, Morton (2009): Profiling Online Students. In http://www.eden-online.org/blog/ 2008/10/01/profiling-online-students - Shaughnessy, Michael (2009) . An Interview with Morten Flate Paulsen: Transparency
in
Online
Education.
in
shaughnessy/8076.html
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