Facoltà: Ingegneria Gestionale per la Produzione Industrial
Collocazione: 11064
Autore: Colombo Valentina
Data: 21/12/2012
Titolo: Singapore's e-learning case as an evidence of social impacts of technology
Relatore: Mari Luca
Correlatore: Ravarini Aurelio
Autorizzazione per la consultazione: SI
Le tesi si possono consultare unicamente in sede
The objective of the analysis is to exemplify that the technology inserted in didactics can bring a lot of benefits and positive impacts on both students and professors, especially in universities’ context. The education sector will be the main focus, in which we’ll often use the Singapore Management University (SMU) experience to bring an example of the introduction and the well-going usage of e-learning, especially blended learning. E-learning means that the introduction of technology in the learning process is a key factor, but the focus is not put on the technology’s usage but on the positive effects created. In order to show the benefits of the e-learning, we have brought two graphs mapping: at first the benefits created by all applications/supports and, in the second graph the Interactivity – Response Time, in order to show that technology applied to the educational sector, i.e. Universities context, could be useful in both learning and teaching process. The methodology that we have used is “Bottom-Up” because we started from the Singapore case, in which we have presented the various Masterplans and Programs that this country has launched to reach a high level of education. After a presentation of Singapore’s case we moved towards e-learning, its role and then we have chosen between the two parts of this new characteristic: the technology. Consequently we moved to definition of the analysis’ limits to better tailor the analysis and the researches during the elaboration of the thesis; after a presentation of the context, we have shown what Singapore did in term of education and technology, i.e. the Masterplans launched by the Government and then the last Masterplan called IN2015. Therefor we considered the e-learning, bringing the difference between its meaning and distance/online learning and then, it’s presented the concept of blended learning, with some definitions and citations that allowed us to better clarify the meaning of the term, using different points of view. Moreover we focused our analysis to technology side of e-learning, in which were presented the available applications/supports and devices enabler of the introduction of technology in the learning/teaching process. Then we shown benefits coming from the usage of technology in the teaching and learning process, divided in two parts, respectively regarding the people impacted: students and professors. Finally we have brought some future outlooks in which we have presented some new possible solutions, with some evolutions of e-learning and supports available, in order to fill the gap given by the introduction of the online course methods. In conclusion we can affirm that e-Learning is a continuous modality of learning and, this is mean that it’s not enough to use the Web as a simple source of information but, as a tool to use for re-design the learning materials and, to modify the storage and organization modalities, as well as the teaching process. So, it’s more than the technology inserted in the education process.
