Bridging Formal/Informal Learning

According to Bernard Bull in e-learning process,"In order to create an engaging learning experience, the role of instructor is optional, but the role of learner is essential." Learning is the tool that connects people with the world of knowledge. According to thinkers in ancient India, Vivid / Knowledge / learning / education was considered the "third eye" of man, which gives him on insight in to all affairs and teaches him how to act; it leads as to our salvation in the mundane sphere, it leads us to all round progress and prosperity [1]. One of the most impressive uses of ICT is the advent of e-learning. In recent years e-learning has changed sophisticatedly in teaching methods in higher education. The success of e-learning depends on the following circumstances:  Learning effectiveness  Cost effectiveness  Institutional commitment  Faculty satisfaction  Students/learner satisfaction etc. This paper examine the concept of open course ware which is one of the effective new types of e-learning systems raised in recent years. The aim of OCW to provide learners an opportunity gain knowledge beyond their physical classroom. These are in digital form which can be accessed online, breaking the concept of time and distance. The OCW provide the facility to access the knowledge anywhere, anyone, anytime without boundary walls.

One of the most impressive uses of information and communication technology is the advent of e-learning. The current E-learning system mainly plays a role of learning assistance such as providing learning content or learning information, and sometime it provides channels or platform in the learning environment for discussion and interaction. In recent years E-learning has changed sophisticatedly in teaching method in higher education of Asian countries. The success of E-learning depends on the some circumstance like learning effectiveness, cost effectiveness, institutional commitment, access, faculty satisfaction, and student's satisfaction. Accessing has become more widely permitted through the open courseware. Open Courseware is one of the effective new types of E-learning system raised in recent years. This paper discusses the importance of e-learning system in higher education, and universal access to knowledge and information in the network and digital environment through Open Courseware. Some of the major initiatives and the targets segments covered by the online education have also been studied in this article.

Tezukayama Internet Educational Service (TIES) has been providing distinctive TIES e-learning tools as educational portals for its own community members. This educational TIES community is now comprised of 83 universities across five countries and regions. The members share the e-learning systems and their educational contents including the online courses. At the same time, they disclose them for the purpose of Open Education.

Open Educational Resources (OER) play a growing role in formal and informal learning settings -in the form of software, open courseware, open access publications and e-journals or information resources of the Internet. This paper focuses on the design of particular information resources: online portals which compile information on a specific topic and, thereby, offer a focal point for incidental, informal learning activities. These websites have implicit or explicit educational goals: They aim to give comprehensive information on their topic and they usually support knowledge exchange in a community. This paper provides an overview of typical components constituting educational portals. Basic elements are identified in an explorative website analysis survey.

2005

Shinshu University Graduate School of Science and Technology on the Internet (SUGSI) is established in 2002 as the first Internet University in Japan. In SUGSI, students can learn every lecture using a CAI system featuring drills on the web, and get supervising about a master’s thesis from faculty adviser via network. Therefore, students can complete a master course and get a master’s degree without commuting to the school. We manage SUGSI on day school system, and we developed some student support systems as well as learning contents with CAI. In this paper, we mention about the learning system of SUGSI: its CAI contents, a student management system, and the profile of enrolled students such as their age structure and their learning style.

2004

Abstract Internet-based self tests, drill & practices and tutorials are commonly produced for the students at the Open Education System in Anadolu University. The Open Education System is a candidate as the biggest institution in Turkey that performs the publishing of educational content on the Internet when the target audience is considered as a main factor.

2009

This paper presents a framework as a foundation for facilitating informal learning in an on line learning environment. This environment is created by exploiting information and Communication Technology innovations such as web 2.0 paradigms and the effective and efficient use of an open source Vle -Moodle that has number of sophisticated features for a learning Management System (lMS). This framework is built based on the Virtual learning environment (Vle) as the learning gateway and on the use of a number of rich interactive learning Objects (rilOs) that are tailored to provide three important levels of learning, namely: one way information flow, interactivity and collaboration. rilOs are used to achieve expected learning outcomes of a certain life long informal learning domain.

Open Praxis

Awareness about Open Educational Resources (OERs) and the purposes for offering and adopting OERs and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were analyzed using a detailed survey of higher education across Japan, which was conducted in 2015. A comparison with a similar study conducted in 2013 revealed that awareness of OERs has increased slightly and the number of MOOCs offered has increased significantly in the intervening two years. The increase of offerings and adoption was low for OERs but high for MOOCs. OERs are used to improve the learning environment for students, while MOOCs aim to promote lifelong learning. Only one-fifth of the institutions surveyed in 2013 offered MOOCs or advanced their plans to offer them in 2015, and institutions that did offer MOOCs or advance such plans to offer them after the previous survey tended to provide MOOCs for society and for promotional purposes, not only for themselves because Japanese institutions are self-sustainable in terms of open educ...

In Turkey, the open education opportunities for higher education are provided by Anadolu University. The basic instructional materials were books, TV programs and face-to-face tutorials when the Open Education System was first established in 1982. In the 2000s, as the number of students began approaching one million, and with the advancement in educational technology, Open Education Faculty began to provide e-learning services to enhance students' learning process. Some of these e-learning services offered are internet-based practice exams, exercises, course books and television programs, on-line tutorials, multimedia CD ROMs. Hundred thousands of Open Education Faculty students make use of these e-learning services regularly. This study presents the developments and implementation of e-learning services provided by the open education system at Anadolu University.