User:Inawe/drafts/vce

Brain Storming

• Low Image Repeatedly I meet young people in developing countries who believe that virtual education is cheap and unreliable. Many tell me that according to their experience most content in the Internet has to do with games and/or the virtual, unreal world. Consequently on-line education for them looks like entertainment, a game not being related to serious life challenges. They would prefer the brick-and-mortar classroom, text-books, and printed diplomas that can be shown to family and friends.

• Simplicity Methodology, structure, and curriculum of on-line courses must be as simplistic and easy to understand as possible. Complex systems and learning applications will be dropped by most students after the first curiosity is satisfied.

• Narration must be the prioritized method of presenting learning content in philological and social sciences. Analytical/systematical processing of content appears to many to be something theoretical that has nothing to do with real life and is therefore not taken seriously.

• Plagiarism and the concept of private intellectual property is unknown to many students of developing countries. For those students copying from others is not seen as a crime but as sharing common knowledge. The instructor will be challenged to introduce a new concept to willing students. The recent Indian WP Education Project fiasco shows how different concepts and values can be.

• Hi-Tech equipment like smart-phones, net-books, and computers in general are not available for all interested students. In rural areas Internet access in cafés and booths is expensive and not necessarily reliable. Print and snail mail must therefore always be a possible and respected alternative. Courses must therefore also be provided in print, and the students must be given the option to send in home-works handwritten and via snail mail. Pen and paper must never be discriminated compared to digital tools. A hybrid approach can be to provide content in wap format on simple cell phones.

• Tutoring of beginners by older and more experienced students can have better learning results for both parts. The concept of "receiving and giving" can be of great effect in the overall learning process.

Inawe 16:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)