Online Education and Virtual Organizations Steve McCarty Professor, Osaka Jogakuin College JALT Osaka Chapter Tech Day Plus Hannan University, June 19, 2011

Definitions, Fields and Disciplines From fields, only certain areas and disciplines develop. Definitions tend to be circular or two-dimensional. How can they be made multidimensional, like a bilingual-bicultural dictionary on the Web could be? Definitions of most technical terms change over time. They are not absolute but relative to certain contexts. Therefore, in order to have meaningful definitions, terms need to be contextualized to a sufficient degree. The author has proposed defining terms in fields multidimensionally, by including their cultural, disciplinary and temporal contexts. [1] Examples are given for the fields of e-learning and EFL.

Cultural, Disciplinary and Temporal Contexts of e-Learning and EFL FieldCultural ContextDisciplinary Context Educational Technology, particularly e-Learning * Cultural attitudes toward educational technologies * Institutional culture (of the university or school) * IT infrastructure * Learners’ ICT skill levels Distance Education (including correspondence education) * e-Learning (digital) * Online Education English as a Foreign Language (EFL) * Cultural attitudes toward English language learning * Institutional culture (of the university or school) * Learners’ English levels * Individual motivations (which can change) [2] * Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) * Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) * Network or Internet-Based Language Learning

Virtual Organizations Existing organizations expand into virtual domains, or, since about 1998, wholly virtual organizations emerge. The Internet provides subject matter as well as media. Choice of organizational structure: formal or informal, NPO, NGO, or not needing authorization, bylaws and parliamentary procedures for elections and business. Choice of organizational type: academic society or interest group, specialist or pan-disciplinary, local, regional or global, volunteer or paid staff, free by donations or charging membership dues. Venues for meetings and channels for communication. Example of the World Association for Online Education.

World Association for Online Education

Perspectives on Web 2.0  Web 2.0 represents an era of access to people as well as to information, links and directories (Web 1.0).  Web 2.0 technologies are largely free and easy to use, most fully characterized by social networking services.  However, are Web 2.0 technologies all related or just contemporaneous? What happened to Second Life, while some Web 1.0 technologies remain essential?  Wikipedia and other definitions of Web 2.0 terms do not go much beyond the affordances of social software.  There are other perspectives such as social media [3], viewing the technologies as media through which people pursue their needs, desires, and aspirations.  Multiple and broad perspectives are needed to understand Web 2.0 phenomena, along the lines of the analytical method of multidimensional definitions outlined for e-learning and EFL.  In addition to social software and social media perspectives, this presentation takes an organizational perspective.

References 1.McCarty, S. (2005). Cultural, disciplinary and temporal contexts of e-Learning and English as a Foreign Language. eLearn Magazine: Research Papers. New York City: Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved from 2.McCarty, S. (2009). Social networking behind student lines in Japan. In M. Thomas (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning, pp Hershey, PA: IGI Global. 3.McCarty, S. (2010). Social media to motivate language learners from before admission to after graduation. In W.M. Chan et al. (Eds.), Media in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning, pp National University of Singapore, Centre for Language Studies. Online Library of publications: