Week 10 reflection

*Gulp* I swallowed hard when I open Means document... 90+pages! And I need to print all the readings in hard copy to read while I flew around for business trips. Alot to read and I've killed many trees - bad for the earth :(
What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as the results of what you learned this week?
I think I've learnt alot this week, not only about the researches for online learning, but also about research itself. I am a firm believer of research and development, but not an expert in it. Though I've used techniques of meta-analysis, this is the first time i come across this term! And, many statistical terms are coming back to me now. And though I used to study stats as a minor, I've not been using this domain knowledge for many years, thus terms like p-value, confidence interval, effect size, etc. were all so distant (have to do some basic search for the definition of these terms to understd the reports properly!).
From the reports and the forum discussion, it struck me that more research has to be done for online learning given very good motivation (like trend of rapid increase in online learning). And more research means more resources (like budget) required. And I wonder which organisation would be willing to commit more resources to research on online learning?
I feel that research is a very important aspect to development. For there to be improvement in the practices of online learning and the impacts of it, I guess research is the best bet to inform pedagogical practices, content, curriculum, strucutre of delivering, etc. and help us make the much needed improvement.
Furthermore, I am surprised to see 4 out of the 5 optional readings on Mathematics. Why not other subjects? Is it that many online courses are in Mathematics and not other subjects, due to the nature of content? Or is it that there are many other researches on other subjects, just that I m ignorant about their existence? Hopefully, when we embark on out research projects from Week 12 onwards, we can dig further into research in other subjects (espcially non-scientific subjects).
One main learning i got from this week is with regards to the effectiveness of online learning. I think the conditions and the impact on student achievement are informative. And certainly good points to consider if I were ever to manage or design online courses. These research findings are very much in sync with the what we've learnt from the past week :)