With the rise of social networking portals such as facebook, twitter and myspace, the masses congregate and exchange ideas, ideologies and knowledge more liberally and more frequently. As an increasing number of learners as well as educators turn to social networking for education, Open Distance Learning (ODL) also needs to evolve to ride the wave in this fast paced flow of information.
Many ODL as well as conventional institutions rely on Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as moodle to facilitate teaching and learning in cyberspace. The success of these LMS are largely dependent on the learners and educators proactively pulling information from them which requires them to access these systems consistently on a regular basis. This has been found to be challenging as the frequency of the users accessing these systems consistently is not vey high. However the frequency of users accessing social networking portals such as facebook has rapidly increased over past few years.
“faboodle” or facebook for moodle is a facebook application which enables educators and learners to keep track of their courses and interact on moodle forums from within facebook. The application, built using FBML, ASP.NET and VB.NET utilising the moodle architecture, serves as a gateway between moodle based LMS and facebook where users can (i) securely login to their LMS from within facebook, (ii) check for updates in their courses and (iii) participate in the moodle forums.
This paper describes the rationale, development process and the workings of faboodle. It also discusses the implications of implementing the system in a real world environment.
Abeywardena, I.S. (2011). Development of
faboodle to Interact on moodle through facebook. Proceedings of the 24th International Council for Distance Education
World Conference, Indonesia (http://library.wou.edu.my/vertical/vf2011-25.pdf)
Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Implementation of facebook study groups as supplements for learning management systems (lms) in adult odl environments
Being an Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution, Wawasan Open
University (WOU) employs a blended approach for delivering courses to
its undergraduate and postgraduate students who are entirely adult
learners. In this approach, the use of a Learning Management System
(LMS) is absolutely crucial for student support as well as the
enhancement of the whole learning experience to compensate for the lack
of face-to-face interaction between the students and the academics.
WawasanLearn, the Open Source moodle based LMS system used by WOU, is a
comprehensive online tool which enables students and academics to
effectively interact in a virtual environment. However, the analysis of
data from several semesters shows that the rate of student interaction
is low on WawasanLearn with respect to sharing of knowledge.
In order to qualitatively and quantitatively identify the factors contributing to the rate of participation of students in WawasanLearn, a survey was conducted among the undergraduate students studying in various disciplines including science and technology, business administration, liberal studies, education, languages and communication. Feedback regarding what manner of support students expect from WawasanLearn was gathered from close to five hundred and fifty students distributed throughout Malaysia. Another aspect of the study was to identify whether and why students are drawn to participate more frequently in social networking platforms such as facebook (facebook.com).
Resulting from the findings, a pilot project was implemented to study the use of facebook groups as study groups for supplementing WawasanLearn. These study groups were run in parallel to WawasanLearn for seven course modules over a duration of two consecutive semesters. This paper discusses the findings of this pilot project with respect to the implementation of facebook groups as supplements to LMS in an adult ODL environment.
Abeywardena, I.S. , & Tham, C.Y. (2011). Implementation of Facebook Study Groups as Supplements for Learning Management Systems (LMS) in Adult ODL Environments. Proceedings of the 25th Asian Association of Open Universities Annual Conference, Malaysia. (http://library.wou.edu.my/
In order to qualitatively and quantitatively identify the factors contributing to the rate of participation of students in WawasanLearn, a survey was conducted among the undergraduate students studying in various disciplines including science and technology, business administration, liberal studies, education, languages and communication. Feedback regarding what manner of support students expect from WawasanLearn was gathered from close to five hundred and fifty students distributed throughout Malaysia. Another aspect of the study was to identify whether and why students are drawn to participate more frequently in social networking platforms such as facebook (facebook.com).
Resulting from the findings, a pilot project was implemented to study the use of facebook groups as study groups for supplementing WawasanLearn. These study groups were run in parallel to WawasanLearn for seven course modules over a duration of two consecutive semesters. This paper discusses the findings of this pilot project with respect to the implementation of facebook groups as supplements to LMS in an adult ODL environment.
Abeywardena, I.S. , & Tham, C.Y. (2011). Implementation of Facebook Study Groups as Supplements for Learning Management Systems (LMS) in Adult ODL Environments. Proceedings of the 25th Asian Association of Open Universities Annual Conference, Malaysia. (http://library.wou.edu.my/
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