In his Editorial section of The American and Journal of Distance Education of last year Michael Moore said:
“This is that this potential benefits of Web 2.0 technologies will only add marginally to the quality of our North American teaching, if, as seen too likely, energy and money is invested primarily in adding them on to current methods for designing and teaching distance education courses. Indeed, the overall effect of the new technology will be negative and counterproductive, if interest in the technology draws attention further from the need for reform in the way design our courses…” (2007: 188)
I half agree and disagree with Moore’s statement. The agreement in this statement for me is as Distance Learning courses add more and more technology, or invest in energy and money in these courses, the traditional feel to learning will change. On the contrary, DL is not face-to-face learning, thus, there should be a different between the two. If you are learning online, Web 2.0 technologies will enhance the experience. Being someone who enjoys audio and video, I think these technologies will add special feature to the class; especially, those courses that are a bit…how do I say it delicately…boring…
Regardless of what we say, some courses are pretty boring…and you just want to see something new and exciting to the course. Web chat, camera, microphone, animations; all of these Web 2.0 technologies add to the excitement of the course. It doesn’t take away anything from our learning methods or what we are learning as part of our knowledge management.
Having said that, if you are one of those old school learners-or just hate online courses as a whole- then Web 2.0 would become a nuisance because you are already having a hard time navigating through the course in the first place. I think this line, “the overall effect of the new technology will be negative and counterproductive,” would take on a different meaning from each of us. Some will find the technologies as negative while other will find it as a positive. It’s all up to each of us on how we achieve our learning and what resources we use.
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I think what he is saying is if we don't take the time to properly design the course to take advantage of the Web 2.0 technology, then there will be the tendancy for the course to be ineffective. It is kind of like throwing up all kinds of graphics on a web site because the web developer learned how to use Photoshop - it doesn't necessarily make it better.
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