Education and new media
XU LINGYI(Kathy) 53186196
In the past, when a student needs to search for information,
they would head to the library.
Nowadays, students will definitely take out their mobile phones and
search on google. In the times of technology, students learn with brand-new
technologies such as Weibo, Wechat, facebook and smartphones.
1. Ways of
collaboration between education and new media
1) Online
courses
“This would
enable a way of innovation, because amazing talent can be found anywhere, maybe
the next Albert Einstein or the next Steve Jobs is living somewhere in a remote
village in Africa, and if we could offer that person education, they would be
able to come up with the next big idea, and make the world a better place for
all of us.”
----Daphne Koller
Thanks to the modern and popular technologies, we can enjoy
the best education from the top universities in the world. And the key word of
it is “online course” and MOOC.
Interactive online classes from the world’s top universities
are offered for free on the internet, which are taught by the professors from
MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley and many other famous universities. The topics of the
courses include economics, finance, electronics, engineering, music,
philosophy, physics, science, food, nutrition, history, humanities, biology,
business, chemistry, computer science, law, literature, maths, medicine and
statistics and so on.
More importantly, it is very easy for us to find those
attractive online courses because most of the renowned universities offer
online classes through their school official websites. One can do a simple
search to find out which university offer general education requirements,
prerequisites, and even your entire degree plan.
There's no doubt that a growing number of students are
pursuing their studies online. A survey points out that just one-third of
higher education students (more than 6.7 million students) take at least one
course online, and according to the data, the number of college students who
are enrolled in at least one online college class increased for the ninth
straight year.
One point that should not be ignored is the role of
free-translating organizations in mainland China, which are formed by some
language enthusiasts, who translate the online courses from English to Chinese,
and share them via social network and BBS. Without their great contributions,
Chinese people cannot enjoy the world’s first-class education with Chinese
subtitles.
2) Social
Networking Service
Social Networking Service (SNS) is the abbreviation of
social networking service. A SNS is a platform to build social networks or
social relations among people who share their interests, interesting moments,
activities, thoughts. Social networking is web-based services that allow
individuals to create a public profile, and then to create a list of users with
whom to share connection, and cross the connections within the system. Popular
SNS includes Weibo, Wechat, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and Facebook.
With the development of technology, social network becomes
more and more popular in China. Based on “Chinese netizens social networking
applications research report of 2013”, the users of SNS climbs up to 12,400,000,
which remains one-thirds of the total number. It also points out that, among
those who used SNS, 50.3% of them are students, which indicates that college
students have become the major users of SNS.
Social networking sites allow students to explore their
interests on a global scale and discuss their interests with a wide range of
people. This poses huge benefits to self-learning, because information and
resources are much more available than they were in the past.
2. Introduction
of new media
1) Weibo
Weibo refers to mini-blogging services in China, including
social chat sites and platform sharing and other social web-based functions. It
uses a format similar to Twitter with key difference being that it is used almost
exclusively by Chinese language speakers. Weibo users can set up real-time
information sharing communities individually, and update their information in
140 character blocks.
The collaboration between Weibo and education are more and
more popular. Weibo can benefit students and teachers in a multitude of ways.
Methods like following the famous professors, following the subject with tags,
building an e-learning community, are all good ways of self-learning.
2) Wechat
WeChat is a new mobile text and voice messaging
communication service developed by the IT giant company-- Tencent in China,
first released in January 2011. The growth of WeChat has revolutionized the way
the smartphone owner in China communicates with acquaintances, friends, family
members and even strangers, as well as the ways of information receive. The app
is available on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Symbian, and OS X
platforms. Languages supported include traditional/simplified Chinese, English,
Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Malay, Japanese, Korean, Polish,
Italian, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi and Russian.
WeChat provides multimedia communication ways, such as text
messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast messaging, photo and video
sharing, location sharing, and contact information exchange. It supports social
networking via shared streaming content feeds and location-based social
plug-ins to communicate with other WeChat users.
One point should mention is the differences between WeChat
and traditional media tools.
Platform
Traditional
media tools: have many different platforms, such as TV, broadcast, newspaper.
WeChat:
mobile-only, which means that you can only use WeChat on your smartphone.
Communication mode
Traditional
media tools: one to many
WeChat: one
to one
Efficiency
Traditional
media tools: moderate
WeChat:
high(with 100% arrival rate)
Interaction
Traditional
media tools: little interaction with audiences
WeChat: users
can interact (talk, reply, ask questions etc.) with some famous brands’ public
account, and share the information with their WeChat friends
Role
Traditional
media tools: information spreader
WeChat:
information spreader + social tool + e-commerce platform + consumer database
All these differences above makes Wechat outshines other SNS
tool and take the leading place of sina weibo. And one point that Wechat
succeed in maybe the trust-building. It is because the relationship between
Wechat users is stronger that other SNS’ uesrs, Wechat can become a leader in
SNS in mainland China.
3) Wikipedia
Wikipedia is the largest and maybe most useful resource
database on the internet. Rather than using encyclopedias from a library or
buying expensive encyclopedias with limited information, Wikipedia provides a
free encyclopedia with lots of information in different languages. It is
created in 2001, and now has over 16 million articles. Wikipedia is written by
thousands of volunteers who write on their topics of expertise. One would think
this would lead to biased or inaccurate information or to poor writing.
However, processes and controls within the community continuously improve the
quality of Wikipedia, allowing the site to provide neutral, quality
information.
Wikipedia is a unreplaceable resources for e-learners, for
its extraordinary abundant contents and quick-updated speed.
3. Collaboration
between education and new media
New media pose positive effect to education
New media not only revolute the ways we communicate with
others, but also change the ways we learn. Some SNS, like weibo and wechat, can
be used as tools for e-learning in the following ways.
a) Follow the
famous professors
Nowadays, not only the youth use weibo, but also some famous
professors have their weibo account. For example, Li Ao, the famous writer,
social commentator, historian, and independent politician in Taiwan, who is so
far away from the general public in mainland China, has invited to use sina
weibo. He shares his opinions, thoughts and life on weibo, so that we can know
his daily life, which cannot find on any books.
Additionally, many professors in universities has started to
use weibo. Take myself for example. I have followed my professor who taught
operations research in universities, and we communicate both academic question
and personal career issues via weibo. Without weibo, I can hardly enjoy such an
opportunity of communicating with my professor, who you can only find on the
class.
b) Follow the
Subject
“Tag” is a
vital function of Weibo. User can search a topic by searching the tags.
Tags function can be used in education. For example, s
teacher is giving a lesson on fire safety. The hashtag could be #fs or #fire.
Then anyone can track the hashtag and stay up on the latest info. Of course you want something that is both
somewhat unique and short so you don’t take up all of your characters.
Once you have a course hashtag, you can use Weibo to provide
additional content after the course. You
can also use it to get your students to respond and provide feedback. They could add some ideas or comments that
they want to expressed. This helps the teacher make adjustments to the course
content and it’s a creative way to get another level of evaluation.
c) Build a
Community
There’s no reason for not using SNS to help facilitate a
community for learners, for the reason that the core value in SNS is in
community building where you’re able to connect people who share similar
interests and get them to exchange ideas.
It is popular to form the learning groups on QQ, the most
famous instant messaging software service in China. Take myself for example. I
have taken part in a multitude of learning group, such as English learning
group. Although I do not know the members in the group, I communicate with them
in English, ask about IELTS tips as well as sharing some English books in the
group. And the learning atmosphere is quite good there.
d) Use Weibo as
a subsidiarity education tool
In Nankai University, a professor in politics department,
comes out an idea that use SNS to boost the effect of teaching. He organized
two online activities, which calls #China I love you and #let there be love,
and ask his students to pose the stories with pictures with the tags. In the
end, there are 378 people takes part in the activities and 460 posts have been
sent, over 10,000 click in total. His creatively combines education and new
media together and improve his teaching.
Here’s another example of using Weibo as a subsidiarity
education tool. A history teacher comes out an idea to boost the effect of
teaching. He creates some Weibo accounts for those famous person who represents
the topic he teach. Then he ask the students to follow these accounts. It is
funny to read the tweets of someone like John Adams responding to some of the
debate in Washington D.C. today. The result of teaching proves to be good,
based on the feedbacks from students.
e) Create own
Weibo account
Another good example is the weibo account of library Beijing
University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The library use weibo to improve
its service since 2011. Since the weibo
spread out information very quickly, those who follow the library official
account can get the information as soon as possible. Thus, the number of people
takes part in the activities organized by the library is growing
dramatically.
f) Create a
learning platform
Apart from Weibo, Wechat also plays a vital role in
education.
Take practice oral English for example. “nowspeak” is a
Wechat public account that aims at provide a platform to let users practice
their oral English. The process is very simple. After following “nowspeak”, it
will push a topic to your mobile phone every night, with the relative materials
in both Chinese and English. You can find your partner by replying it. Then,
“nowspeak” will find a partner who also reply it at the same time period, based
on his or her oral English level and gender. Then the two people can add
friends with each other and practice oral English by using the voice message
function of Wechat.
Nowadays, “nowspeak” has already over 20,000 users in
mainland china and the number keeps growing.
2) Online courses
With the development of technology, there have been more and
more opportunities for us to enjoy higher education on the internet. And
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is an online course website aimed at
providing unlimited open courses on internet. In addition to traditional course
materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive
user forums that help build a community for students, professors, and teaching
assistants. MOOCs are a recent development in distance education.
For many students, online course work makes it possible to
pursue an education that might otherwise be out of reach:
a) Flexible
scheduling: need to work, or care for the kids? Log in to school whenever your
schedule permits.
b) Telecommuting:
if you don't live near a college or university, online classes are as close as
your Internet connection.
c) Cost
savings: tuition for online courses is typically lower than brick-and-mortar
classes. Plus, students mostly eliminate costs like gas, parking, and campus housing
and food.
d) Flexible
pacing: online students can move at a quicker or slower pace than the rest of
the class.
4. Conflicts
between education and new media
New media can uncover some negative parts of academia in
china
In 2011, China Agricultural University slides into the
academic scandal. On Chinese most famous microblog, sina weibo, a man call @方舟子 sends a tweet that four
professors in China Agricultural University uncover Shi Yuan Chun, both the
president and academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, has fraud in
academic. Specially, Shi Yuan Chun is accused of stooling the academic result
of treatment of saline soil from other scholars, and defraud numbers of
national and provincial awards and Tan Kah Kee Science Award agriculture and science
& Agricultural Sciences Award.
Next, he list four sins of Shi Yuan Chun, including:
1 falsification on academic; stole other scholar’s theory
and say that they are originate by himself, stole others’ studies results
2 Abuse of power
3 regardless of objective facts, contribute the nature
affect
Since @方舟子
is a celebrity on Weibo who has 4,878,980 fans, the tweet spread out quickly
and the news soon become a heated topic among the society.
Then, Wangyi, another big internet media, invite @方舟子 to join the discussion
forum to talk about academic corruption in China. The discussion forum attract
hundreds of Chinese citizens to take part in and successfully arouse the public
awareness from online to offline. Finally, the government reacts to the scandal.
A deputy of the National People’s Congress, is quoted in official media as
saying that “academic misconduct seriously impacts on the social credibility of
scientific research and provides a hotbed for corruption.
“Academic
cheating has widened from academic papers to the high-tech fields, which not
only involves young students but also senior experts,” said Yan.
5. Conflicts
management
According to “Conflict management -- Lessons from the Second
Grade”, Bonnie Hagemann and Saundra Stroope have said that, everyone need to
give up something to come to a quick solution.
As Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Hughes mention in Want
Collaboration? Accept-and Actively Manage - Conflict, CLASHES BETWEEN PARTIES
are the crucibles in which creative solutions are developed and wise trade-offs
among competing objectives are made. A direct solution of the conflicts between
new media and education is concession of either party. For new media, they can
reinforce the control of information, because sometimes new media is a horrible
rumor communicator without enough information management.
However, from where I stand, the major reason for the
conflict between new media and education is the Chinese academia itself. The
more open, the more dark side would come out. Actually it is not the fault of
new media, but the fault of Chinese academia. It is because there are too many
academic corruption in China, including plagiarism, fabrication, deception,
cheating, bribery, sabotage, professorial misconduct and impersonation, the
public get angry for the inequity and injustice. Weibo, as well as other new
media, just provide a platform for them to know the true and express their
voices.
Therefore, the key point of managing the conflict between
new media and education laying in eliminating academic corruption.
For government, it is necessary to take actions now,
otherwise the proliferation of academic scandals is affecting the global
reputation of China’s universities and research. The more scandals come out,
the more preconception foreigners will view with. According to Alice M. Tybout
and Michelle Roehm written in their paper Let the Response Fit the Scandal,
scandals can very easily extend beyond the original perpetrators and affect
other companies in the value chain. They also may spill over to businesses
outside the value chain that are viewed as similar to the alleged guilty
parties. Hence, in order to save the reputation of Chinese academia, it is time
to take actions.
First and foremost, effective measures should be taken.
Those who dishonest in academy should be punished more heavily. The more
harshly punishments, the less professor would be dishonest in academy. New laws
to clamp down on academic cheating at China’s universities is in great need
now.
Moreover, China's government should assume stronger
leadership in scientific integrity. It is suggested to set special agency to
inspect the academic integrity in Chinese universities.
Last but not the least, the loophole of the related law
should be revised. The latest draft regulations set out punishments to be meted
out, but do not define what constitutes plagiarism or fraud. For example, the
State Council (roughly equivalent to cabinet) or provincial academic degree
committees can revoke universities’ rights to grant degrees if multiple
academic fraud cases are found.
Xiong Bingqi, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
was quoted in Chinese media as saying administrative punishment was not enough
to root out rampant plagiarism and other misconduct. “To standardize academic
norms is more important,” Xiong said.
Academic cheating has widened from academic papers to the
high-tech fields, which not only involves young students but also senior
experts,” said Yan. Thus, for Chinese academia, it needs both the universities,
the professors and students’ contributions also.
Last but not the least, new media should be used as a tool
to academic anti-corruption.
The power of Chinese netizens as an anti-corruption force
has been demonstrated after many cases similar to the Shi Yuan Chun case.
Actually, @方舟子 has done
similar behavior already. “Xin
Yu Si” (http://www.xys.org) is a
website created by @方舟子, which is
the first academic anti-corruption website in China. The website includes a
public forum for people to leave opinions and suggest proposals, in addition to
submitting queries about anti-corruption efforts. It is a good example of using the power
Internet to conduct academic anti-corruption. As far as I am concerned, Chinese
government should also use new media to manage the situation. It is better for
the government to provide an official platform for people to submit tips on
current investigations or suspected cases of academic corruption. Besides, the
public can access the party’s database of anti-corruption laws, to determine if
corruption crimes are being committed.
6. Future trend
To sum up, the relationship between new media and education
is two-faced.
On one hand, new media pose positive effect to education,
let more and more people enjoy the education more easily and more convenient.
On the other hand, new media can uncover some negative side
of the situation of education in china.
In the future, the collaborative between education and new
media will be more and more frequent and close due to the improvement in
technology. Because as Don Tapscott, Tammy Erickson, Lynda Gratton, Rob Cross
and Frank Capek mentions in Building the Collaborative Enterprise, At its core,
collaboration is about bringing ideas together, about sharing perspectives and
insights and effort, for the purpose of getting useful things done.
As KIRSTIE McALLUM mentions in Workplace Conflict: Three
Paths to Peace, conflict is not always a bad thing; sometimes it can be a
positive spur for organizational change. The conflict between education and new
media will be confront with a more bright future, since the government has
already taken actions now.
Reference
From the Internet and other resources:
1. Gold, Larry;
Maitland, Christine (1999). Phipps, Ronald A.; Merisotis, Jamie P., eds. What's
the difference? A review of contemporary research on the effectiveness of
distance learning in higher education. Washington, DC: Institute for Higher
Education Policy. Retrieved 23 January 2011.
2. http://www.degreescout.com/business-degrees/the-role-of-new-media-technology-in-education
3. http://select.yeeyan.org/view/370724/349576
4. http://www.rmlt.com.cn/2013/1220/202609.shtml
5. http://balau82.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/daphne-koller-what-were-learning-from-online-education/
6. http://www.degreescout.com/business-degrees/the-role-of-new-media-technology-in-education
7. http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/three-practical-ideas-for-using-twitter-in-e-learning/
8. http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2010/07/academic_fraud_china
9. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120807160325397
From the readings:
10. Alice M.
Tybout and Michelle Roehm. Let the Response Fit the Scandal, Harvard Business
Review,December 2009
11. Jeff Weiss
and Jonathan Hughes, Want Collaboration? Accept-and Actively Manage – Conflict,
Harvard Business Review,2005
12. Bonnie
Hagemann and Saundra Stroope, Conflict management -- Lessons From the Second
Grade, Harvard Business Review,2012
13. KIRSTIE
McALLUM, Workplace Conflict:Three Paths to Peace, Harvard Business Review,2013
14. Building the
Collaborative Enterprise(Ten Questions to Ask about Business Opportunities
through Collaboration), Don Tapscott, Tammy Erickson, Lynda Gratton, Rob Cross
and Frank Capek, Harvard Business Review,2009
15. Robert F.
Hurley, The Decision to Trust, Harvard Business Review,2006
