Transparency in Online Education - Activity 1 Unit 3

Realized that the readings in this activity I would highlight two aspects that are important and fundamental:
1)The use of social networking and Web 2.0;
2)Student Profiles (NKI’s) Online Catalogue.

For Christian Dalsgaard and Morten Paulsen transparency is important to cooperative online education. People can cooperate only if they know about each other and have access to some common information and services.
Transparency means that you and your doings are visible to fellow students and teachers within a learning environment. For instance, transparency could mean that students and teachers are made aware of and have access to each other’s interests, thoughts, concerns, ideas, writings, references, and assignments. The purpose of transparency is to enable students and teachers to see and follow the work of fellow students and teachers within a learning environment and in that sense to make participants available to each other as resources for their learning activities.
Transparency is not a given, especially within online education. Students might work at a distance and individually, and, thus, they are not necessarily aware of the activities of other students. In their individual work, however, students write notes, search for literature, find relevant websites, write assignments, etc. This information and these products are relevant to other students. A central aspect of cooperative learning is to enable students to make use of each other while at the same time maintaining individual freedom.
Transparency implies that users to a certain extent can see and be seen, but it is important to find a suitable transparency level. Transparency is also an important driver for improved quality. It has the following three positive effects on quality:
Preventive quality improvement
We are prone to provide better quality when we know that others have access to the information and contributions we provide.
Constructive quality improvement
We may learn from others when we have access to their data and contributions.
Reactive quality improvement
We may receive feedback from others when they have access to our data and contributions.

For Morten and Dalsgaard student catalogues are important tools for showing students that they have access to a learning community. A comprehensive catalogue that provides relevant information about students is crucial to students acquiring an overview of the learning community. Student catalogues usually provide information about all students enrolled in a course; however, if students can access information about the students enrolled in other courses offered by the institution, they may benefit from taking part in a larger learning community. Moreover, a catalog that includes alumni could be of interest to students who seek advice on courses they are considering or on future employment.
To facilitate cooperation, a student catalogue should include information that makes it easy to initiate and maintain communication, such as e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, chatting identities, etc. It may also include information on geographical location (e.g., zip codes) to facilitate identification of potential partners for occasional face-to-face meetings. Similarly, it may include progress plan information so that students can identify peers who are working with the same study unit. Finally, one may argue that student catalogues should include CV-type information to make it possible to search for peers who have special competencies.
Student catalogues must address privacy issues appropriately. Some information in student catalogues may be regarded as sensitive and may require student consent. Some students may also be opposed to inclusion in a student catalogue. The challenge is to find the balance between providing as much relevant information as possible to stimulate cooperation without trespassing students’ privacy thresholds. A viable solution is to ask students for permission to make the information available to the staff, to the students enrolled in the actual course, or to all students in all courses.

For Morten the benefits of Student Profiles (NKI’s) Online Catalogue are:
Firstly, it seems like many students appreciate the opportunity to share information about their online course activities with family, friends and colleagues. Others seem to use the presentation as an online CV to support job applications. In any case, most presentations act as favorable personal homepages that focus on the students’ achievements.
Secondly, the catalogue appears to be a valuable resource for NKI. The users are excellent ambassadors for NKI when they share their presentation with others. They provide a lot of relevant information for prospective students and key words for the search engines. All the positive and trustworthy testimonials from current students and teachers will probably have a positive effect on NKI’s future course enrolments.
Thirdly, the fact that so many serious, hard-working and successful students are willing to share achievements and experiences in an open, online catalogue is valuable for the field of online education. Traditionally, distance students tend to be quite invisible compared to other groups of students. They are so dispersed and so busy with their courses, jobs and family obligations that they seldom form action groups or student unions. Online student catalogues may help these students become more visible as a group that deserves more attention.

And the riscks are: Risks: inappropriate content, copyright issues, criticisms from dissatisfied students, student who explore too much personal information. But on the whole have had few issues and problems.
Paulsen believed transparency improves quality, error correction, preventive quality, learning quality. Also it promotes cooperation.

I was curious and went to see some of the Student Profiles (NKI’s) Online Catalogue (http://www.nki.no/pp/EikelandAnette ; http://www.nki.no/pp/SiriKverneland ; http://www.nki.no/pp/kvalvikt ; http://www.nki.no/pp/skogbergetr). I found it interesting to confirm the profile of the majority of students online (employed, married with children, living outside the major cities, who for various reasons did not continue studies when young and now have an opportunity here to do it).
I believe that the disclosure of the profile can encourage other students.


References
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1267
http://home.nki.no/morten/index.php/component/content/article/3-artikler-uten-kommentarer/86-transparency-in-cooperative-online-education.html
http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2340
http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf
http://www.eden-online.org/blog/2008/10/01/profiling-online-students/