Final Reflections

 Reflecting the IERW class of this semester...

  I think I have improved my writing this semester. For me, the top best 2 aspects of this course is formal essays and a blog. I learned how to organize each paragraphs and the format of formal writing. As there were many writing opportunities through blog and essay, this helped a lot for me exercise writing, proofreading, and revising based on professor's detailed feedbacks. Although all could have a hard time writing a full, long formal essay, this remains in our writing ability, experience, and the data. I will keep up extending the writing exercises through attending class and continuing the blog. This was my first time I kept a blog and I enjoyed piling up my records of writing. This seems like a diary that show what or how I thought about something such as articles from the book and recent issues. I think it is meaningful work to keep on doing the blog. For these reasons, I would definitely recommend this course to others.

Formal Essay #2 Rewrites

Hyunmin Sung

Prof. Kyle Brebner

IERW (03)

08 December 2015

Problems of Full Online Degree

According to KOSIS, Statistics of Korea, 31.8% of 2014 online lessons is operating in unilateral way. Compared to 2011 when the figure was 18.7%, the level of one-sided online lessons increased a lot and this trend is continuing. The direction of universities’ education toward allowing students to earn a full degree without taking any on-campus courses is the trend. Although some might argue it is possible to have active online discussions, recent courses are not much created in that way. Therefore only taking those one-way online lessons and getting the degree without taking any on-campus class have many disadvantages in the aspect of activity, communication, educational quality, and Korean educational environment so that students should not take full online courses.

The effect of education is strengthened through activities of real experiences. Online study cannot provide various actual learning experiences at the same level of on-campus study, and then it would deteriorate learning efficiency. In general, some on-campus lessons contain assignments such as presentation and team projects. These assignments drive students to find and study deeply on their own, and give them a chance to announce their opinions or information they studied and share ideas in front of class, which encourages them to keep up the stream of lessons they learned and be passionate about the class. Even though people can do active online discussions, the effect is totally different between debating in real circumstance with facing each other and just through computer screen with typing in the facet of attitude, environment, and experience. In addition, some necessary activities can only be implemented in off-line. For example, specific areas such as science, cooking, art, music, and physical education especially require off-line lessons because many elements are needed. Some materials and facilities that cannot be arranged individually should be prepared to experiment and practical training should be tested with personal feedbacks. However, with online classes, they cannot be furnished and merely theoretical approach would exist. This might cause heuristic and realistic problem, which can lead students to learn by rote.

The lack of communication in online modes of studying exerts a significant influence on students in many ways. Firstly, communication is related to students’ participation. Students tend to participate in on-campus class rather than online because, in case of no-face-to-face courses, no one actually cares whether taking the class or not and they can just play and not listen. They also tend to lose their motivation to continue when they missed or did not follow the course. Yeo-gak Yun, a professor of Korea National Open University pointed out that remote education has many cases of suspending or abandoning the study and one of the reasons is because they missed the academic schedule. With face-to-face courses, however, professors check for their attendance and attitude during the class. This lead students to attend the class at least because of the grade and as the attendance is the basic element before participation, on-campus lecture has more possibility of participation than off-line.  In this regard, students can earn direct impact in participation rate. Moreover, there are also indirect effects in that exchangeable communication has a considerable difference in the aspect of spontaneity and one-to-one relationships. On-campus professors often ask abrupt questions and offer feedbacks based on students’ understanding. Students can also raise questions during or after class and the answers are immediately provided. Through these processes, professor can recognize which students took his or her class and know approximately how much effort each of those students invested in the study. This builds familiarity and personal emotion between professors and students based on human contact, which can give students a purpose to actively take part in classes. All these factors elevate their satisfaction and concentration. Therefore, prompt and vigorous communication works positively to students’ participation rate that is related to their contentment and concentration to the class.

             The quality of education is the most controversial matter in this issue. To begin with, online courses typically convey content-oriented lectures. Sang-jin Lee, the former Vice-Minister of Education, mentioned that Korean online education has acted as a supplementary way to enlarge opportunities of higher education, but, with regard to degrees, it faded original ideology that is based on learners’ free participation and voluntary study. He worried qualitative debasement. Recent online lesson continues to deliver mainly lecture-based content without utilizing various media. Jong-sun Park, a professor of Seoul Cyber University emphasized, “Only content delivery focused on knowledge is being repeated and this recognizes online lectures as low quality education.” Both professors pointed out about dilution of the quality of online lecture and more diverse methods should be capitalized on. Besides, some courses simply transcribe book content as it is. In this way, the contents are being linearly designed and operated. It is no different from reading books by themselves but paying money. The quality should be enhanced in the part of contents, and also this whole procedure has to reflect Korean passive educational culture.

             The circumstance of Korean education is passive. As most students are raised in academics, they are not used to autonomous learning. This background is not commensurate with students to fully learn from the internet, so if students gain their degree in that way, the outcome would be nothing much left in their brain but the degree in their hands. A study by Jin-Tae Chang(2008), A study of Multimedia Efficiency, Autonomy and Interaction through on-line Language learning also shows Korean authoritative-centered culture has a problem with learner-autonomy and some external assistance such as regular off-line meetings and tutoring systems should be entailed for those students who had dilemmas with self-directed learning.[1] This implies that only online based learning would bring about more of bad and negative impact on earnest school work and teachers’ guidance of traditional lessons is a prerequisite of students’ ardent school work, considering Korean teaching style.

             In conclusion, it is worthwhile to prevent universities from approving students to obtain their degrees only by means of online lessons for four reasons; practical exercise, interaction, educational quality, and Korean passive educational condition. This does not mean 'online course is bad so do not take it at all.' As taking classes only through online is inefficient, it has bad impacts for students to earn a university degree without ever stepping into the campus. For our countries’ prospective educational setting, structure should be formed into learner-centered design instead of lecturer-centered. Although this would take a long time to be stabilized and firm, once it does, juggling online and on-campus lecture in good balance would inflict immense ripple effect and lead students to fulfill deep and extensive study actively.

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[1] Jin-Tae Chang(2008), A study of Multimedia Efficiency, Autonomy and Interaction through on-line Language learning, pg.10-11