Week 7: Distance learning: The LOI (The Netherlands)

The LOI (Leidse Onderwijs Instellingen > Leiden-based Educational Institutions) is a privately owned educational institute providing distant-learning only. I feel it needs pointing out that the city of Leiden is home of the prestigious Univerity of Leiden (www.leiden.edu) and that therefore the name of the city is usually associated with higher education. The LOI always put great emphasis on the fact that they're from Leiden in their promotional campaigns, however, the LOI have nothing to do with the university, which is one of the oldest universities in the country.

The origins of the LOI lie within the city's "Institute of Trade Sciences". In 1923 this institute started doing their first (postal) distance-learning programme: a course in book-keeping. Ove the years the the institute has started running several other courses and in 1941 (So, surprisingly, in war time) the institute teamed up with a number of Leiden-based colleges to run distant-learning courses on their behalf, all under the LOI-banner.

In 1953 the LOI started providing audio-based language courses (on good old fashioned casettes) and in 1988 the LOI started experimenting with something called "digimail", a computer-based form of distance-learning, the technology of which seemed to be quite similar to what we would later become familiar with under the name E-mail. In 1996 the LOI introduced what they called the "LOI campus", an online, web-based learning environment. Originally the campus provided only written lectures, later video-lectures (some also streamed live) and downloadable audio-lectures became available. Since 2001 most of the courses are almost completely web-based with lectures ebing given through audio, video and text, seminars taking place in forums and online audio/video conferences and most assessments being submitted online. The LOI provides students with their own personal tutor (or I-coahc, as they like to call them) with whom they keep in contact through both email as well as instant messenging.


In 2002 the LOI started doing a small number of full university degrees, completely through distance learning, which up until then these were only provided by the Open Universiteit (Obviously the Dutch equivalent of the Open Univerity). The two however are not really in competition though, as these two distant-learning giants provide different degree courses. The reason for this is probably because the LOI would find it hard to compete with the lower tuition fees of the government funded Open Universiteit. Nonetheless, the LOI-brand has pretty much become synonym with distance-learning in the Netherlands and some of the open university's online services are clearly inspired by the LOI's online campus.

Reading week 4 | Visionary communities

CHAPTER 3.6: Visionary communities
On page 173 the book discusses the summary of (somewheat pro-technologic) claims from Jones (1994:26) that computer mediated communications will:

1. Create opportunities for education and learning.
Well yeah, I can see what point is being made here and yes, even though this book was written WAY before technology of this kind made it to the classroom Jones was right in suggesting that CMC was a good platform to use for educational purposes. It has become one of the main forms of communication in higher education, for example, on our course e-mail has become the main way to contact lecturers outside of lectures and seminars. Or, a more intense example: this very unit which is, bar the weekly lecture, completely internet-based.

2. Create new opportunities for participatory democracy.
It seems that democracy, and voting particularly, is still a bit of a non-mover. Several countries are doing tests with online-voting (I once participated in a test-session like that in the NL myself, gotta love dual citizenship!) but hasn't become the norm anywhere as yet. However, the internet IS a popular platform for campaigning and expressing political views and agenda's. Including those that not normally would have been published in any other type of media due to the small scale or individualist character of them.

3. Establish countercultures on an unprecedented scale.
Yes, it does, but, like I mentioned before, it enables these different counter-cultural norms of behaviour within a specific, smaller online community. A sub-culture is still a sub-culture, even online, the main difference is is that CMC makes subculture a lot more accesible for those interested.

4. Ensnarl already difficult legal matters concerning privacy, copyright and ethics.
I Jones by this means what I think he means then yes, people are more like to entangle themselves in these matters. And indeed, not exactly making them any easier, but at least people get actively involved with these matters rather than just following the norm entirely.

5. Restructure man/machine interaction.
Well, I suppose. We have become more dependent of machines, that's one thing that's for sure, seeing as we rely on it to communicate to others. But still, it's the other produser that's interacting with us though these technologies. It's not the actual machine, so... Not really.

Week 2: Topic 2 | Blogs

NAVIGATION | Navigation around the blogs is quite easy, especially since I already had experience with Blogger in particular. It easy to keep track of new posts on blogs of your peers, making it easy to respond to each other's posts. Also, the actual posting-part of the website works very intuitive and is easy to use.

EXPRESSION | Well, originally the essence of blogging is publishing your thoughts and musings to the world, and it is noticeable how blogger is clearly designed to make it as easy as possible but at the same time enables more advanced functions like HTML-support and custom layouts for those "in the know".
In this case it works very well as it enables us to put our different findings in different posts and make it easy for people to find similar posts by using tags.

INTERACTION | It's nice to have an on-the-spot comment-option here on blogger enabling people to comment immediately after reading the post without having to go elsewhere. Hopefully over the next few weeks the blogs will become a places of in-depth discussion and fiery debates! It's a nice thing to be able to read back what people are on about, something you can't do in a real-life discussion without having to ask and halting the process of the conversation when doing so.

TIME | The same goes here as what I said about this this specifgic topic about the forums, really. It is nice to do the work at a time when you are at your best, whether it's at 10 AM or 10 PM, the site works the same and people can respond to your posts anytime after you've posted them!

AUTHORITY AND IDENTITY | THe person who's blog it is is sort-of in charge I think. But more like a discussion leader, if anything. He/She brings up the points of discussion and the conversations go from there. For the rest of it I think the same sense of equality is on the blogs as there is on the forums.

SPEECH & WRITING | The same applies as to the blogs, I feel. The mode of address is quite informal as there is no requirement to use formal "essay style" writing. It is merely a platform to raise topics and share your findings with others. It is even possible to just say that you really don't get or really don;t agree with something that's written or taught on the course.

Week 2: Topic 2 | Forums

NAVIGATION | The navigation around these specific forums is rather basic, but in this instance that's fine as they have a very specific and sober purpose. Some other web forums have more advanced navigation options but these often also feature posts containing images and other types of multi media. But the basic navigation and the sober appearance of the forum fits the to-the-point purpose of the forum and doesn't allow people to be distracted by things that simply do not matter.

EXPRESSION | Of course posting on a forum is different from just saying things in a group meeting or actual seminar. For one thing user's would've thought more about HOW they are going to make their point before they start typing away. I don't think the views expressed themselves are very different though. Also it allows people to have a good hard think about what is being said and come back later to respond. Something you can't to in real-life as, well, you would've left by then.

INTERACTION | It is sometimes hard to get how people MEAN what they say. Are they being sarcastic or do they ACTUALLY agree? On many online communication platforms they have emoticons (smileys) to help get your point across, but out forum doesn't. This doesn't always make it easy to understand how to interpret what is being said sometimes.

TIME | One of the great advantages of using a forum ios that they are available all the time, you can whack a question onthere as soon as it arrises and you can respond to it whenever you've thought of an answer. It's also handy as some people are morning people while other, like myself, are definitely NOT and function better at night.

AUTHORITY AND IDENTITY | Every one is equal on the forums, there is no way somebody can shout over you as all opinions get the same space and the same amount of attention. Talkative people and those who are less confident to speak in "public" are both able to express their opinions like equals.

SPEECH & WRITING | The tone of the forum is quite informal, so the way we all interact onthere is not too different from how we address each other on a day to day basis.

Online lecture Word-file - Part 1: Digital vs. Analogue (The science bit)

http://mchome.lincoln.ac.uk/newmediacultures/WEEK%201%20online%20lecture.doc

This article/lecture's first main argument seems to function mainly as an introduction to the concept of "new media" and points out that in this unit "new media" basically refers to "digital media".

Digital, as opposed to analogue means that actual "stuff" is being translated to code. DIGITal is called that because it's made out of DIGITS. Whereas analgue data actually gets physically stored, be it by picture (on an old fashioned film roll) or ridges (on a gramaphone record.)

Digital is a much smaller/streamlined/FASTER and much more precise way of saving and sending files and data. The data is translated into a code made out of 1's and 0's and transferred to the other end where it gets translated back into actual stuff. Of course there can be glitches where the code doesn't arrive 100% correctly which can then lead into a file having a little mistake in it which can cause it to not work at all.

Most of all digital enables to send much more data in less space, if that makes sense at all.

For example: Analogue telly where the airwaves send the actual pictures can only broadcast 5 channels (and in some areas only 4) where as the digital freeview terrestial technology enables 30-ish channels to be sent through the airwaves because they are turned into code first. But in order to receive them you need equipment that can translate the code back into the actual channels. In this case the infamous freeview box we all love so much. But because the broadcast has been turned into a code first and the whole code is translated back to visual/sound the data arrives much clearer which is why digital usually has a sharper picture than analogue. However, sometimes some part of the code can't get picked up properly by the aerial which then causes little parts of missing data which results in those little squary bits on the screen we see sometimes or the picture freezing for a moment. Luckily the box arrives data all the time so the error usually doesn't last very long whereas an error in the sending of one particular file could result in the whole thing not working.

Because things like the internet and mobile communications require a lot of data to be sent continuesly, there is no way things like the internet (esp. broadband!) could've worked if it was based on analogue technology. So yeah, it pretty much can be said that we owe a lot to digital technology and that the arrival of digital technology has changed our daily lives a lot, considering how many things we use every day (mobile/tv/internet, or even mobile TV though the internet!!) wouldn't have existed otherwise!

More to come soon! Esp. more things of how it affects us and stuff.

Lecture 20/01/2009

Today's lecture, which for our particular group happened to be after our first tutorial-thingy, was a basic introduction for this unit.

We need to keep up with out blogs on a week-by-week basis as they really will be assessed per week. In our blog entries we are required to address the findings of our research and our own opinions of it. Then fellow group members can respond to it, hopefully turning the whole thing into a bit of the discussion about the whole thing. After 10 weeks we'll drop this method in favour of an essay.

We were told that even the whole title of the unit "new media" is one that can be questioned as every form is media can be regarded "new" when they were first introduced.

We also got told some stuff about "netiquette" (how you're supposed to behave in our online communications) and the meaning of the term "RINCY" (Read it, no comments yet.)

Also, we were asked to post blog entires about this weeks reading/lecture as found on MC home.