CECS 6100 – Week 16

The requirement of the paper (10-pages), I think I surpassed the requirement. I developed a new instrument ‘one item each’ based on other three validated instrument ‘also one item each’. As I said in one of my previous blogs, I decided to write about the diffusion of innovation theory by Rogers to explore how many users have already adopted the Blog technology and how those users fall-in Rogers adopters’ distribution model. I think the paper will produce good information regarding this technology and how users are incorporating this technology into their lives. The reason that I developed a new instrument is to obtain the scores of participants and then correlate my instrument with the other three instrument and find out if blogs users will have similar adopters distribution model or not.

CECS 6100 – Week 15

This week is the dead week and there is no class, students prepare to turn in final projects.

CECS 6100 – Week 14

This week class meeting was online using World of War-craft (WoW) platforms. WoW is an online video game that users pay monthly subscription to be able to play. The instructor has provided the class with 10-days trial version so that we can log in and explore this environment. Our main purpose for the class is to figure out whether or not this environment efficient for learning? Will students appreciate it as a learning medium? All in all, WoW was a good experience as a game, but I don’t believe it will be a sufficient learning tool.

CECS 6100 – Week 13

A meeting was held with the instructor to discuss the group project ‘deformation of communication’. One forum was provided to analyze how this technology has deformed the communication among students. The idea behind this analysis is to classify each statement on the forum to: strategic, constative, normative, and dramaturgical. The classification process will divide the statements into four groups which will help us as project developers to uncover why the communication has been deformed in this forum. After statements classification is completed, the group members will look for consistent literature reviews to support our claim that technology can deform communication.

CECS 6100 – Week 12

In this week students were assigned to write a paper based on the readings that we have done thus far in the semester regarding: what the experts believe that distributed/distance learning is. Students need to formulate their own theory of distributed/distance learning. The paper has to be minimum of 10 pages to express literature supported theory of distributed/distance learning. The paper organization will include: a brief introduction to your theory (1 page), a brief (3-4 page) literature review or relevant articles, an explanation of the basic ontological, epistemological, and methodological principles underlying the theory (1-2 pages), an overview of the core theory of distributed/distance learning and learning in general (2-4 pages), an explanation of how this theory will impact instructional design of distributed/distance learning (2-4 pages), and lastly conclusion and summary. I have decided to write about the diffusion of innovation theory by Rogers to explore how many users have already adopted the Blog technology and how those users fall-in Rogers adopters’ distribution model. I think the paper will produce good information regarding this technology and how users are incorporating this technology into their lives.

CECS 6100 – Week 11

This week class was a detailed discussion of Dr.Warren learning theory ‘Teaching and learning as Communicative Actions’ (LTCA). The purpose of this theory is to develop a practical means of understanding and improving what is at the center of the both this theory and instruction: effective human communication towards a goal. It is an interesting learning theory that would guide the whole class to start developing our individual learning theories for the next assignment.

CECS 6100 – week 10

After the instructor has divided the class into three major groups to complete three projects by the end of the semester,. I was assigned to ‘Deformation of communication in online teaching and learning: How do technology systems used for teaching and learning enhance or degrade education? As a group, we have decided to choose forums as a type of communication and find out how technology has some-how deformed this type of communication. There are quite few means that can cause the deformation of communication within forums, one of which is the technology connection over the internet. The internet connection can get disconnected due server crash or power outage. Another mean of deforming communication is that students don’t read the instructions for every class module leading to a major misunderstanding within the forum. The third mean of deforming communication is the hidden feelings behind the typing, sometimes, words don’t express the exact intention of a forum post. Our group will look closely at the means that affect communication deformation.

CECS 6100 – week 9

This week is spring break and I was waiting on it since the beginning of the semester.

CECS 6100 – week 8

During this week, the instructor has divided the whole class into three groups. I was assigned to ‘Deformation of communication in online teaching and learning: How do technology systems used for teaching and learning enhance or degrade education?’ group as its leader along with other three students. I was able to complete the IRB which was mostly filled out by the instructor; I also emailed the group members a copy of the IRB to make sure that there was no typo mistakes or other wording issue. The idea behind this research is to explore whether or not if communication through modern technological systems enhances or degrades communication in teaching and learning and indeed has affected the communication process negatively or positively. The topic is new to my knowledge and I find it to be interesting to learn more about communication tools that we encounter on our daily lives from email to facebook. I am looking forward to reading the final results of this study.

CECS 6100 – week 7

In this week, the instructor has divided the class into three groups and each group will work on a designated study/project. The three studies are: self-regulation in distance teaching and learning, Deformation of communication in online teaching and learning, and Psychological features of the human mind. The first study is already taken by four students, the second and third studies are still open. I will choose the second study deformation of communication in online teaching and learning because technology has introduced new forms of communication some of which are good and others are bad. Technology is somewhat has dehumanized communication in general because it is a human communication not a technology communication. Therefore, I decided to pick the second study. The study’s title has catched my attention to an ongoing problem ‘online communication’ that we suffer from but couldn’t do anything about. I believe the online communication standards have been unintentionally violated by the misusage of technology tools. I am hopeful that the study I will participate in is going to bring a new understanding of online communication so that readers in the future can consider it as a basic guidance in their online communication.