I. Introduction
York university in Canada once created a web site called York University Student Center Online. This web site concern about the student activities on campus and outside. First lunched in 2001, the aim of York’s website is entertainment and media publication. It has a good reputation among other Canadian universities’ websites. The web site archives many of the student activities since its launch till today. Some of the website activities are holding online orientations for new students, weekly newsletter about student clubs and organizations, collecting donations, web register for events and concerts, online discussion with professors. The article York University Student Center Online says that lots of York’s students has got active in the university from behind their computers screens only. These students where in some day in the past the typical character of the passive students. The articles also claims that many crimes came about from behind the website. Students misused the other students properties and tried to steal their work and ideas that they have published on the website (yorku.ca). These disadvantages appears to the surface always with the existence of a new web technology. York’s website is an example of what so called an online community for college students. This new form of a web site can also be applied at AUS. Although an online community for AUS students may have some disadvantages, it is beneficial for four main reasons.
II. Online communities background
Community is an odd and rich term in the world of Internet public life. Like many key conception of the social sciences, it has specific and rigid meaning for scholars, and broader connotation when it is used in the information technology language. According to Christian Crumlish, an online community or virtual community “is a group whose members are connected by means of information technologies, typically the Internet” (Crumlish, p. 142). By this definition of the online community, the Internet is the term behind the internationally connected computers that link the people all around the world into online discussions by using the great CMC (Computer-Mediated Communications) technology. This general definition fulfills all the possible activities that can be done in an online community. Howard Rheingold in his book The Virtual Community claims that the important thing to keep in mind is that the worldwide interconnected telecommunication network that we use to make telephone calls in sharjah and Dubai can also be used to connect computers together at a distance, and you don't have to be an engineer to do it (rheingold.
In “Can You Be Educated from a Distance?” by James Barszcz, the author attempts to pinpoint the negative aspects of distance education compared to traditional classrooms. At the beginning of the article, he first describes the basic format of online courses, which results in a vast minimization of face-to-face communication of students with instructors. He then touches on some of the beneficial qualities of online education, and the reasoning for its quickly growing popularity among students and schools alike. He mainly attributes this trend to the overall convenience that is promised to students by online courses. These courses allow students to learn material in the comfort of their own home. Barszcz also considers the financial appeal for universities. Having an increasing number of students enrolled solely in online classes allows schools to save money on electricity, as well as decrease the amount of staff they employ. Also mentioned is that many strong advocates of distance...
Community is like a Venn diagram. It is all about relations between a finite group of people or things. People have their own circles and, sometimes, these circles overlap one another. These interceptions are interests, common attitudes and goals that we share together. These interceptions bond us together as a community, as a Venn diagram. A good community needs good communication where people speak and listen to each other openly and honestly. It needs ti...
The particulars surrounding the relatively new cyber space attendance have been left vague, and there lacks clarification and guidelines. Clear boundaries and expectations have been omitted deliberately. The author uses this device to infuse a sense of individualism into the policy. For example, he does require his students to "fully participate in this class by making connections with other instructors and students through e-mail and threaded discussions on the Internet," [3, Course Description], but he does not stipulate the extent to which these connections be made. Some form of communication is considered valuable, but the amount has been left to student discretion.
Many colleges have failed in achieving the perfect education by the excessive use of technology. Hacker and Dreifus support the use of technology in many cases, such as having interactive question where the software can give the chance to review your work or giving hints to find the right answer (182). Nevertheless, they are completely aware that the use of technology needs to be supported by a good instruction inside the classrooms (183). The University of the Ozarks’ technological resources out of class are a great advantage to improve the learning process in students’ free time. Online discussions, submitting assignments, and taking online tests are the most common online activities for students in this university, this activities challenge the knowledge acquired in class. Moreover, using technology outside the classroom provides the opportunity to use all the class time to go on new topics, to discus, and to answer questions. Nevertheless, the University of the Ozarks is not using all its technological resources appropriately. Most of the classrooms are provided with interactive boards, speakers, and projectors that are hardly ever used. If the university used every technological resource at its maximum, the positive results of learning would
A community can be seen as a group of people who share a common interest or live in the same location, sharing the same beliefs. A group of peo...
Hordila, E., Vatamanescu, E., & Pana, A. (2010). The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. The Application of the Communication Accommodation Theory to Virtual Communities: A Preliminary Research on the Online Identity. International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 5(4), 279-290. Jones, E., Gallois, C., Callan, V., & Barker, M. (1999).
Ideas and social networking has evolved to fight the constant moral erosions and sense of obligation that ceased to exist in many American communities and small towns. Community is the idea of guardianship and service outside of oneself; therefore, it is in direct opposition to greed and the self-preservation movement of me, myself, and I.
The definition of community is varied among many individuals. However, community is a sense of cohesiveness among a group of people. For generations, community has played a pivotal role in the success of a functioning society. These associations are common in almost every country worldwide and can often be discovered with diverse backgrounds, cultures, and institutions. Alongside having the proper resources, a community has the support to provide people the essentials to be prosperous in society. When the sense of a community is strong, it benefits the contemporary society; grants camaraderie, helps an individual discover who they are, and prevents isolation that can occur due to a detachment from others.
Inside the majority of American households rest the unlimited territory of the internet. The unlimited and always advancing possibilities have unlocked powerful new tools in communication and socialization. Tools such as: long distance visual communication, international circulation of personal thoughts, and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) have all led to a closer but more distant community of people. The positive side can attribute to the fact that the younger generation seems more in tune with their international counterparts. Youth have the ability to anonymously communicate with others through various message boards, mostly governed by one policy, freedom of speech. The anonymity of the internet has created a community where social outcasts mingle freely with others; a society where jocks can converse with geeks without fear of reprisal. This community releases people from the bounds of their own flesh. Yet, technological advances have pushed society into the next dimension of communication and socialization that seemingly override traditional and more personal vessels of communication.
Technology has had a large impact on the field of education. The proliferation of multimedia resources and limitless amounts of information available through the Internet has fundamentally affected the learning process. Students no longer search through cards and stacks for magazine articles; almost everything is at the click of a finger. Multimedia resources are increasingly utilized in the classroom to help instruct students. Some professors are making conscious efforts to use new technology, so as to introduce and familiarize their students with it. The significance of technology in education is now being elevated to a new plateau. Education through the Internet, the great equalizer, may make it more widely distributed through the phenomenon of online courses. It is the thesis of this paper that online courses are not an effective means to educate traditional undergraduate college aged students (people from 18-22 years old).
The Role of Community in Society Communities are an essential part of our society, because we all depend and interact with each other. Communities are groups of people that help an individual to learn and develop new ideas. A society is where people’s relations with each other are direct and personal and where a complex web of ties link people in mutual bonds of emotion and obligation. The idea of community has provided a model to contrast to the emergence of more modern less personal societies where cultural, economic and technological transformations have uprooted tradition and where complexity has created a less personal and more rationalized and goal directed social life.
In order to gain a better perspective of online communities I had no other choice but to join one. I looked at several different sites such as MSN.com and YAHOO.com that had discussion boards available to join but I just couldn’t find one that fit my interests. I then logged onto MTV.com where I found a discussion board all about my favorite TV show: The Real World. The board was a community of people who shared a common interest in the show and could come together to discuss its characters and storyline.
their dorm room or apartment is sit down at their computer and go online. They proceed to either, read their e-mail, check their online courses for new assignments, or go on one of the many communication websites or programs that are available currently to this generation. None of this would be possible without the readily available Internet access that we often take for granted. The Internet has proven not only useful for entertainment purposes, but has also dramatically changed the educational approach, for both students and educators, and the way knowledge is being obtained.
Over the years it has been seen that education has taken up several forms. With the advent of technology, education has also been integrated with technology. Previously it was seen that education was achieved through written forms of paper with pen or pencil. The use of pen and pencil can be dated back to the Roman Empire. However, with the developing pace the traditional means of attaining education are changing. The introduction of information technology has brought forth a new way of learning through the internet. E-learning is the new form of education introduced by IT which helps people to attain knowledge through the use of their computers. A portal is introduced by the use of information technology which the students are able to access and to take tests. However, this new technology also brings with it other ethical issues of plagiarism and social contact. Online education is an inadequate alternative for traditional, classroom-based teaching for several reasons: there is no interactive communication between the student and the instructor, potential employers do not value online course work, class offerings are limited, instructor feedback to the student might be delayed for days, and group projects are nonexistent.
Some students within society need to have online learning to complete college degrees due to their lifestyles. While it is good to have online learning as an option if one chooses, it should not be the only option available to some students. Some may argue that online education is not creating discrimination within the educational environment. Furthermore, some may suggest that online learning is benefiting our students in society. There has been a breakthrough in time and geographical limitations of education via online courses (Ho, 2009).