I would like to talk about three different systems I have personally experienced. Two of them are similar to each other in a sense that they both serve as the learning management system (SLM) of university and the other one is a self-learning course dedicated to getting a certificate.

 

   iNTU and NTULearn

When I was an exchange student at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, I mainly used iNTU and NTUlearn, which is very similar to UVic’s Mypage and CourseSpace. One for course registration and finance and one is for class materials such as assignment and textbook excerpt. Personally I think UVic’s system works a little bit better because everything is integrated together whereas NTU separates each portal and I did find it confusing when directing myself to the page I want. The other system is the Canadian Security Course website to which people purchase the access and read the text book and do practice question.

 

CSC website

 

Below I will analyze the three in Major’s five aspects.

Enrollment

While the CSC is an open enrollment course nationwide, the other two remain closed enrollment for their students only. Anyone with one thousand Canadian dollar and access to a computer with internet is able to take the CSC.

Amount

CSC is a fully online course during which you don’t interact with anybody except the interactive practice questions.  NTU and UVic offer similar learning experience mingling online and face-to-face. One thing notable is NTU teachers tend to upload the lecture recording more often.

Timing

Both NTU and UVic offer synchronous meaning student attend class at the same time. CSC is achromous and student allocate time completely on their own, as long as they take the test within one year of registration. However a lot of university student choose not to attend class and study on their own and end up passing the class, which makes it less synchronous by definition.

Platform

NTU students use iNTU and NTULearn and UVic folks use Mypage and Coursespace.  The former is Moodle and the latter is Blackboard, both other similar experience. The CSC has its own website that provides online registration, textbook and practice question.

Pathway

Like we mentioned about NTU and UVic offer similar LMS and they are both centralized system. The CSC system is also a simple centralized course as everything happens through the website and you don’t really need to go anywhere for the study.

Bottom line

Despite the differences among the three, students get to adjust the method they learn given more flexible and versatile platform and the border between different learning is diminishing. We can see a general trend that the traditional fully offline teaching is stepping off the stage and the technology is playing bigger and bigger role in our everyday life and hence our in learning too.

References

Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching online: A guide to theory, research, and practice. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.