I selected a course from Open Culture, entitled “Math E-222 Abstract Algebra,” located at the following website: http://www.openculture.com/.
First I would like to say, I am ecstatic with the initiative of open courses. I had no knowledge that such a thing was available. Open source software is free and available to anyone as long as the uses are in agreement with Open Source Initiative (OSI) (Simonson, et. a1, 2009). Yet, I am enthusiastic with the likelihood that eventually I could go online and enroll in some of these courses in order to expand my knowledge on different variety of courses that are offered. I feel these courses are beneficial to anyone who is acquiring online experience at no cost. Open Culture provides free and open access to an assortment of courses from the world’s leading universities taught by Harvard and other top professors. Open courses, without a doubt, have a place in an enormous array of learning probabilities, especially autonomous learning, nevertheless when it comes to good instructional design for distance learning, the course is somewhat lacking visuals and some resources. Simonson et. al, (2009) indicate that visuals help students simplify information. As stated on the website, “Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community.” “Its whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it” (Open Culture website). Given these are courses taught at Harvard and other top universities, being made available to the community for free as independent learning, yet some of the features of a well designed distance learning course are missing.
As Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek (2009) point out, “the instructional environment should be viewed as a system, a relationship among and between all the components of that system—the instructor, the learners, the material, and the technology” (p.126). The course I reviewed does not somewhat comply with this statement because there are no instruction/teaching guidelines. Education learning is certainly feasible, but the course itself does not appear to be designed inside the parameters for best practices in course design for distance education. This course introduces students to the language of modern mathematics through a study of groups, group actions, vector spaces, linear algebra, and the theory of fields. For its purpose, a self-directed course on abstract algebra, I think it is magnificent. A course syllabus is included so students have direction regarding what will be expected. The course is divided into 14 weeks with recorded lectures videos and notes following each lesson. The QuickTime and MP3 formats are available for download, or you can play the Flash version directly. Each week has 3 lectures that are 50 minutes each.
Bearing in mind some of the best practices in course design for distance education as outline in our text, I find some of these practices missing in this course. The course activities implemented by the instructional designer do not maximize active learning for the students. This course lacks some of the aspects that Simonson, et al. (2009) recommend for distance delivered instruction consider to be imperative for students’ learning consist of organizational guidelines, assessment guidelines, content guidelines, and instruction/teaching guidelines (threaded discussions, chats, and emails). Although this course was designed as a face-to-face course which was then put on the website, no communication amid other students or teachers is available. Therefore collaboration with others is not feasible although this is a good way to learn. I do not acknowledge multiple learning strategies to be planned in this course. This course is basically recorded videos lectures, with incorporated class materials such as notes and problem assignments. I find this course to be self-directed therefore the learner are responsible for coming up with ways of assessing his/her progress. In conclusion the only forms of media such as videos, QuickTime and mp3 are only use for lectures.
As I indicated above, I found evaluating this course to be very interesting and will someday in the future obtain time to go evaluate the diverse lessons although I do not feel they are incompliance with the definition of distance education. In the text, distance education is defined as, “an institution-based, formal education where the learning group is separated, and where interactive telecommunications systems are used to connect learners, resources, and instructors” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009, p. 7). I feel this course will have to be designed if taught inside the definition of distance education. An instructional designer will have to redesign this course using the ADDIE instructional design technique methodology in order for this course to be successful.
References
Open Culture (2009) Retrieved May 31, 2011 from http://www.openculture.com/.
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.
