Disadvantages Of Working Collaboratively In An Online Community
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Throughout the unit Learning and Communicating Online through Swinburne University my role as a consumer, producer and sharer of information for professional and academic communication has developed greatly by studying learning methods, ways of communicating online and sources of information. My work throughout the unit involving Metzger’s criteria has helped me to understand how to evaluate the credibility of online sources of information in an academic environment. I have also been able to exploit the advantages and overcome the limitations of working collaboratively in an online community.
My role as a consumer, producer and sharer of online sources of information has developed during the unit by studying sources of information, methods…show more content… Learning in the digital age has had a huge impact on how we learn and the information available to us. We are no longer limited to sitting in a classroom at a set time of day, learning from people and with people who live in the same area as us. We are not limited to the resources we can obtain because with access to the internet we can obtain information from all over the world (Edutopia, 2013). The flexibility of being able to study online meant that I could study at a time that suited me and if this option wasn’t available I wouldn’t be able to study at all as I work full time. Also, the wide variety of different forms of online communication available to me throughout this unit, for example, Skype, Facebook, Google Docs, Wiki, etc created ease when contributing to group work because I was able to contact team members or adjust our project at any time of day even if the other group members were not available at the same time, since whatever I wrote or changed on a document was ready and waiting for the rest of the group to look at and add to when they got a chance (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). These forms of communication make it possible to work together with people anywhere in the world which makes online learning largely based on the social constructivism approach to learning. This approach to learning along with the different forms of communicating used in this course were new to me but have been a great experience. Collaborating online allows us to share views and opinions with a wide variety of other students and be able to learn from their experiences. This was encouraged with the weekly activities we completed on the discussion board as we answered the questions based on our own knowledge and then were encouraged to read and comment on others answers to