Blog post 1 _ online technology

I am currently working for Human Resource Development Center at  Samsung Electronics and our team has been working on how to establish "blended learning" system and make the employees utilize it. For it, I experienced Canvas, Cornerstone, and Lynda.com.

I discussed with the vendors and developed a tester platform. First of all, I found that the employees do not voluntarily use LMS after the classroom training. What we expected was, if we guide them to use LMS, they will share their opinions and upload the materials by themselves after the offline course. What actually turned out was, however, that they do not activate the LMS as we expected. We tested three different factors through the systems: user-friendly design; diversity of related materials or other courses provided by the vendor; social media function.

What our team concluded that, that three factors are not that much critical to the effectiveness of blended learning. :( It does not mean that LMS has no powerful effects by itself, but more deliberate and delicate intervention might be needed, such as cultural factors of the workplace. 

What I found interesting is, in terms of learning, when online and offline communities go parallel, offline relations become more firm and strong. For example, if there is some established and power, participants sometimes are not willing to participate "open mind" but try not to go against the "dominant/legitimate opinion" provided by the certain person. More interestingly, participation rate itself is affected by social relations outside of the computer. I have no idea whether it is affected by Asian culture of the country, but at least it is what I experienced. As a result, decoupling between online and offline communication arises and in the end, online communication decreases. 

I think if learning community is purposed to "share" thoughts and ideas rather than debate or deliver the knowledge, social interaction in the environment of computer-supported collaborative learning can prosper. Since through sharing, participants need to share their own lives than knowledge itself, and with exchanging lives, learners can establish distinctive social interactions online. Without it, the interaction does not occur or sometimes extremely hostile during net-debate. Online collaborative learning is in nature very responsive to the precedent argument, therefore, interaction has sometimes become exaggerated and extreme. 

In addition, if there is some kind of power relations, the instructor needs to correct it and balance the relations.