After reading Veletsianos’ (2015) Digital learning environments, I reflected on how he sees the digital learning environment. It is not often very well defined and it could include any kind of educational software, digital learning tool, an online study program, or learning resource; it can and should be broad and inclusive (Veletsianos, 2015, p. 242-243). Digital learning environments can offer ways for how information can be collected and analyzed and displayed by the learning environment to improve teaching and learning (p. 243, 2015). He acknowledges that we need to carefully consider how to design a DLE and that we have not been able to effectively or engagingly do this (p. 243, 2015). I agree, however I think this could be said for many learning environments, whether elementary, high school, face to face, blended/hybrid or fully online. I have taught all grades from kindergarten to post secondary, online, blended and face to face, with students from all over the world with varying abilities and backgrounds in education. I have also attended a number of universities for part-time studies here in Canada.
Take Royal Roads, for example. Have they not taken into consideration the digital tools and resources being used along with how to engage and motivate its students? As soon as I started the MALAT program I felt this was the right program for me. The program’s continuum of openness, its adoption of the principles of universal design for learning (UDL) and its student-centered approach, were and still are extremely important to me. I had been searching for a university that shunned the typical cookie cutter model of teaching and learning. Dry, boring, textbooks and tedious essay and exam writing. In comparison, two other graduate programs I was accepted and enrolled into were sorely lacking. I dropped them both (years apart, I might add). Yes, I was “shopping” for the program that fit me, not how I could fit the program.
(This is not my unit 3 reflection. I’m still working on that).
Reference
Veletsianos, G. (Ed.). (2016). The wiley handbook of learning technology (wiley handbooks in education).
In Digital Learning Environments (1st ed., pp. 242–260). Wiley-Blackwell.