Transparency in Online Education

From the study that I did about Transparency in Online Education, I considered the cartoons from Morten Flate Paulsen about Transparency for Quality and Transparency for Cooperation very interesting and useful for the understanding of these issues.

Transparency for Quality by Morten F.P.

Retrieved on May 19, 2010 from Http://toonlet.com/archive?m=s&i=11247

Transparency for Cooperation by Morten F.P.

Retrieved on May 19, 2010 from Http://toonlet.com/archive?m=s&i=11245

The approach of the Transparency for Quality and Transparency for Cooperation in these cartoons is clear and objective. The first cartoon talks about the importance of transparency in improving the quality of online education, pointing out that the quality of work increases when we see the work of others and when they see ours and give constructive feedback. The second cartoon is about the importance of transparency in the cooperation between the students of this kind of education. However, it also addresses the importance of students’ privacy and whether they are free to choose the level of transparency they want in order to protect their privacy.

It is also very instructive the observation of Visualizing Students’ Profiles through NKI's Online Catalogue and Student Network, from Morten Flate Paulsen.

Visualizing Student Profiles through NKI's Online Catalogue and Student Network

View more presentations from Morten Flate Paulsen.

Retrieved on May 19, 2010 from http://www.slideshare.net/MortenFP/visualizing-student-profiles-through-nkis-online-catalogue-and-student-network

The slide reveals the importance of the NKI Distance Education allowing students the opportunity to share information. Transparency in information facilitates cooperation among students. Some students share information about their online course activities with other people, others use the presentation as an online CV. This slide still addresses the risks inherent in transparency, for example, inappropriate content, the rights of authors, unsatisfied students remarks and students who expose too much personal information.

The blog about Teaching as Transparent Learning ( Siemmens, G. 2009) is also very important.

Retrieved on May 19, 2010 from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=122

This blog is a personal report about the experience of being a transparent student. This blog discusses the importance of seeing others learn, emphasizing the fact that when we observe others learning, we learn from them, and when we share information in a transparent way, we also teach others.

To explore this theme I considered useful to read the following documents.

Dalsgaard, C., & Paulsen, M. F. (2009). Transparency in Cooperative Online Education. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 10 (3). Retrieved on May 19, 2010 from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1301

Dalsgaard, C. (2009). Supporting Transparency Between Students. The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace 2009. Retrieved on May 19, 2010 from http://person.au.dk/fil/16581515/Dalsgaard_Supporting_Transparency.pdf

Dalsgaard, C. (2008). Social networking sites: Transparency in online education. Retrieved on May 19, 2010 from http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf

The first document has got twenty two pages and talks about Transparency in Cooperative Online Education. In this document the authors, Christian Dalsgaard and Morten Flate Paulsen, explore the potential of social networking within cooperative online education. The authors say that a social networking does not necessarily involve communication, dialogue, or collaboration. They argue that transparency is an exceptional feature of social networking services. Christian Dalsgaard and Morten Flate Paulsen show how cooperative learning can be supported by transparency with examples. The document discusses what resources social networking and transparency can use within cooperative online education. The pedagogical potential of social networking is supported by transparency that facilitates the production of knowledge between students.


The second document contains four pages and talks about the Transparency Between Supporting Students. In this document the author, Christian Dalsgaard, presents the results of a case study that explores the potential of weblogs and social bookmarking to sustain transparency in a university course. The objective of the case was to empower students by providing them with tools that would be evident to the other students in the course, thus, making students’ ideas, thoughts and questions perceptible to the other students in the course. The document concludes that the use of digital media for transparency can sustain empowerment of students and motivation between students in a course, but that the challenge is to create an equilibrium among personal tools and tools for collaborative group work that are also proper for transparency between students.

The third document contains six pages and talks about the pedagogical potential of social networking sites. In this document, the collaboration and users created content are, frequently, appointed as major potentials of Web 2.0 technologies. The author, Christian Dalsgaard, says that a central characteristic of social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Ning is a combination between personalization and socialization that facilitates the transparency between students. The transparency is a dominating feature that allows the students to see each other work. The social networking sites do not necessarily involve communication, dialogue or collaboration. This document argues how social networking can be used in university education by students to share information and resources developed for themselves, but made accessible to others. The communication on forums always takes place in a shared forum and in social networking sites the social interaction is originates in one person.