Thanks to the flexibility and autonomy, the online learning education becomes more popular in the high education. For example, online MBA gets more popular among many busy individuals in the world. As a result, Self Directed Learning also becomes a core topic in the online learning. Applying the management perspective on this topic, I believed educators should tailor/establish more personalized online learning environment/context to cater for different learners/group of learners' attributes and needs. Coincidently, it has the same purpose of segmenting target customers in the marketing strategy to better serve the needs of customers and successfully deliver the value to customers (learners/students). Motivation is a key in self directed learning. By making the analogy with the marketing promotion method, educators could see themselves as a marketer in the promotional campaign. Through out the campaign (delivering the online course), educator may use various method to give more incentives to learners to motivate them become less procrastinated and be more active/participated.
On the other hand, in order to motivate learner to be more Self-directed, educators could utilize more other media technology such as flash and vedios. Here is links to two web sites in Chinese language(Sorry I couldn't find any web site like this in English version) which provides free tutorials of using computer software.
- Flash tutorial for Adobe photoshop: http://www.jcwcn.com/swf/newflashplay86.asp?url=/swf/qilianshan/shouhui/yuncai/jiaocheng/&num=001
- Flash tutorial for version of Microsoft office 2007: http://www.enet.com.cn/eschool/zhuanti/offices2007/
1 comment:
I think the analogy of the marketing promotion campaign you used is very suitable to describe self directed learning. Students’ motivations can be enhanced through learning new knowledge in a more comfortable/ familiar context. To create this familiar environment, educators are definitely the key person to make it possible.
Also, I agree with your point that media technology will be a useful tool to motivate students in online learning. As technology is growing rapidly in this generation, more and more people enjoy using media technology such as flashes and videos to learn new knowledge because it can reduce lots of reading materials. Moreover, these flashes and videos are not too difficult to produce as more tutorial and software become available online. In addition to the Adobe Photoshop you have suggested, Adobe Photo Impact is another excellence tool to use.
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