And finally, the last post for this batch of reflections. I’m going to focus on my particular interest: how the look and feel on an online digital environment aligns with the content of the educational project. I’m deeply interested in the phenomenological reading of online digital environments and thinking about how these enhance and enrich the educational endeavor, or how they distract or constrain the user’s experience.

As a direct result of my experience of WebCT and this course, I have undertaken a scholarly investigation into this subject. It isn’t that this experience has been the single motivation for this work, it is more that this experience has acted as a catalyst of a subject that I have been talking about for some time and now the talk is moving to a new level of action and research.

My interest in the subject translated into a presentation at the recent conference on Complexity Thinking and Educational Research held here at UBC http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/conferences/2007/information.htm. I asked the question, if not WebCT, then what? With that question in mind, I started an online environment for the presentation that incorporated some of the elements that I feel deprived of.

Here is the link to that site, a word of instruction – the hand written text on the left of the screen are links and lead the reader to different pages on the site. The site is not finished, you will know when you get to the unfinished parts.

http://www.jennyarntzen.com/complexityconferenceve/

In the discussion in class, it seemed that the questions and answered were guided by an assumption that WebCT was the only application or instructional approach that could be used, and that there might be ways to improve access to the application or make suggestions to WebCT for changes to incorporate.

My point is that we need to expand our notions of what is possible for providing online educational digital environments. We don’t need to use a one size fits all approach, we don’t need to use the same thing everytime. From a pedagogical, aesthetic, phenomenological and curricular perspective, I wouldn’t bother making suggestions to WebCT for change, because the software itself carries embedded assumptions of the dominance of text, authorization, control and expertise.

My proposal is that anyone that wants to take the trouble to figure out how to use WebCT might be the same person that could figure out how to create their own online teaching and learning environment.

Contrary to popular opinion, our occupation of digital online environments does not have to be driven by templates and ideas of ‘expert’. I encourage everyone to explore their beliefs and assumptions about what is possible in constructing online learning environments, especially ideas about what looks ‘professional’.