PPEL – “Profiling online students”

Morten (2007). Profiling online students, available at http://www.eden-online.org/blog/?s=profiling. Accessed on 15-01-2010.

In this post, Professor Morten tells us about the NKI transparency system.

All 9500 students have personal presentations and 2,5% of those had chosen the global visibility option, so everybody can access their presentations.

Many students like to share information with friends, family and colleagues about how their work in the course is going and some others use it as an online CV.

The fact that so many students choose to show their presentation to everyone is a valuable resource for NKI because prospective students can have access to information.

This transparency is also important for online education as it shows the work done throughout an online course.

This show us how important for online students transparency is. Online education would not have the same learning effects if we would do everything only for ourselves without sharing. Transparency is a valuable factor for learning. We can all learn from the fact that the course is open and transparent. If the students would not get any advantage with that why would so many NKI students want to share their profiles and assignments? Transparency contributes to online communication and contact with others. Communication and contact promote successful learning.

Morten, FP (2008). Transparency for cooperation. Available at http://toonlet.com/archive?m=s&i=11245. Accessed on 15-01-2010.

In this cartoon professor Morten mentions the importance of transparency for learning and the importance of the level of that transparency being set by the student. The student can decide on the privacy settings so only some people (or all) can have access to the information he wants to make public.

In my opinion transparency is a very important factor in online education. If an online course is not transparent how can we share ideas and learn from each other? Isn’t communication and connectivity some of the principles of learning online nowadays?