Thinking about e-learning, one question that comes up to my mind is: What would take place of the so called Parents’ days if we implement an e-learning system? In the present education system, we have the students going to schools and the teachers keeping up-to-date records about them. These records are then shown to parents on parents’ day to know what progress their children are making and where they have to improve.
Can the parents know this if the students get involved in an e-learning system? In my opinion, yes there have to be some kind of parental involvement in the e-learning system that would be implemented. One example of engaging parents into e-learning might be the involvement of e-portfolios where the students upload their work. These e-portfolios would be used for the parents to know their students’ progress and also to be able to comment and give feedback on their children’s progress which might be of a great benefit to their children as they would be able to know what their parents think about their work. The advantage behind this is that this system might become a social experience where the parents are able to discuss education with their children. They would be able to ask questions, understand, praise and give feedback to their own children.
However, the problem is that parents are not really good at giving feedback when it comes to their own children because they tend to praise them too much or conversely they would be too critical about their children. Both of which situations do not help the process to improve learning. On the other hand there might be some parents who do not contribute at all. The reasons behind this might be that parents do not have time to view their children’s work online, or even that the parents do not know how to use a computer on their own. Due to this most of the parents would have to view the portfolio together with their child where the child would act as a teacher leading the parent to the e-portfolio. Following this one would probably find that parents of older students would not give too much feedback or none at all, as we all know that at a certain age the relationship between parents and students tend to be in a disappointing situation!
This is the only method of parental involvement that came up to my mind so far. Do you have any other ideas? If you do, please do share.
I think that parental involvement, would be more facilitated, if a good e-Learning system is in place. By defining 'good' I am taking some chances here as 'good' can be interpreted in a number of ways. In this case, parents need to be involved into the design phase of e-Learning, they need to be considered as stakeholders within this environment because it means that they are involved in their children's learning progress.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say that the implementation of the e-Learning environment, would affect in any direct manner, the 'parents' days' for example. e-Learning in the local Maltese context is not meant to replace the face-to-face contact and in any case any online/virtual implementation, although theoretically possible, will not replace physical communication. It may on the other hand, augment, or rather enhance such communication structures as well as the information flow, across the various stakeholders.