RESEARCH PAPER TEMPLATE

North American University

Education Department

M.Ed. in EDLE & CUIN

EDUC 5324: INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY INTO EDUCATION

Name: IBRAHIM ERGOREN Date: JULY 26, 2019

Topic Selected:

What are some of the innovative tools that research says is suitable and works great for

distance education? Choose one or highlight several tools that works in distance

education according to research.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW:
What does the literature/research say about this issue/topic? By using NAU Library
or Online Search engines, conduct a literature review.
• You need to include 5 different sources (book, journal article, web article
etc.) in your review. Try to use current sources as much as possible.
• You need to summarize and synthesize your sources by discussing a common
theme or issue.
• You don't need to critique your sources
• You don't need to evaluate your sources (if the sources are trustworthy,
weather the author has a bias or not)
• You need to provide background information such as history and definitions
Brief Literature Review: Distance education is one of the popular choices among the

student's community (Ramachandran, 2018). A big number of students are enrolling into

different distance education courses. Distance education is a form of education in which

there is normally a separation between teacher and learner and thus one in which other

means—the printed and written word, the telephone, computer conferencing or

teleconferencing, for example—are used to bridge the physical gap (Keles & Ozel, 2016).
Development of technology has created a new avenue in distance education. It has been

one of the primary modes of education for people who were looking for flexibility in time

and place of education. it has existed in many forms such via post, radio, tv, videos,

internet. Web technologies have become the mainstream choice of technology for

distance education (Ramachandran, 2018). It is necessary to have a reliable way of

communication between lecturers and students. It was 18th century when first distance

education was began called correspondence courses. ‘Caleb Phillips’ was looking for

student by a newspaper advertisement to teach weekly by sending. After introducing

some technical devices in 1900’s technology based distance education started (Holmberg,

2005). Therefore we can say that technological distance education has a history of a

century.

Learning management systems are known in the literature by several different names.

These include course management systems, virtual learning environments and e-learning

courseware (Kats, 2010). There are a lot of distance education and communication tools.

I will share some of the most widely used, popular and well known tools. These tools

give chances educators and students to create courses and give access only to those who

are involved courses. They give chances to upload and share materials easily, to have

online discussions and chat forms, to crate quiz and survey, to collect assignment and

review them and grade the works, etc. Many instructors upload their syllabus,

lecture notes, reading assignments, and articles for students to access whenever

they want. Forums give your students more time to generate their responses and

can lead to more thoughtful discussions. Chats, on the other hand, give you a way to

quickly and easily communicate with remote students. They can be used for project

discussions between groups of students or for last-minute questions the day before an

exam. Online quizzes can be graded instantaneously. They are a great tool for giving
students rapid feedback on their performance and for gauging their comprehension of

materials. Online assignment submissions are an easy way to track and grade student

assignments. An online grade book can give your students up-to-date information about

their performances in your course. Online grades can also help you comply with new

privacy rules that prohibit posting grades with personal identifiers in public places. (Cole

& Foster, 2007).

These are the some of the tools which are used for distance learning:

Angel: The Angel Learning Platform was developed at Indiana University-Purdue

University, Indianapolis in 1996 and incorporated in 2000, first as Cyber Learning Labs,

and later as Angel Learning. Angel’s focus has been on how to enhance teaching and

learning in academia, with over 90% of its client base in schools, colleges and

universities (Angel Learning, 2009).

Desire2learn: Desire2Learn (D2L) holds a unique place in the short history of learning

management systems. While D2L’s rapid growth during its first half decade has been the

topic of a number of favorable articles (Kats, 2010).

Pearson eCollege: A division of publishing giant Pearson Education, operates under a

business model that differs from that of other LMS vendors. While most companies offer

the LMS software as a product, with the options for self hosting or vendor hosting and

support, Pearson views itself as the provider of a total institutional solution for distance

learning (Simba information, 2007).

ATutor: ATutor is a free and open­source course management system that has a simple

and straightforward structure. It is a web­based learning content management system

under the GNU General Public License. It was prepared such that it can be easily used in

any type of computer system and all operating systems. ATutor has been used in many

universities, institutions, research centers, and educational institutions ( Keles & Ozel,
2016)

Claroline: is an open­source e­learning and e­working platform. It can work on both

Windows and Linux server systems. Claroline provides the ability to manage public

education activities on the web and to create effective online courses. There is a large

community of users and software developers worldwide (Opensource CMS, 2018).

Moodle: Moodle is a web-based tool you can access through a web browser. This means

that in order to use Moodle, you need a computer with a web browser installed and an

Internet connection. You also need to have the web address (called a Uniform Resource

Locator, or URL) of a server running Moodle. Moodle is an online course management

system that is widely known and freely available. The word Moodle stands for “Modular

Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment”. Moodle is utilized by both institutions

and individuals. The list of the former is long, including universities, high and primary

schools, governmental departments, military, and healthcare organizations as well as

airlines or oil companies. Homeschoolers, independent educators, and

special educators are among the individual users (Keles & Ozel, 2016).

Moodle has a lot of features such as Creating and managing content, managing class;

forums, chats and classes; quizzes, assignments, lessons, wikis, grades and scales, and

surveys (Cole & Foster, 2007).

2. REFLECTION:
• What is your personal opinion on this issue? Do you agree with the research?
If you agree or disagree, please explain why?
• Provide examples/experiences regarding this issue from school perspective or
If you are not working in a school, from your profession. Be specific with
your examples. You can mention software/hardware names, specific methods
that you plan to use, etc.
• How would you implement this research in your career? (At least 1
paragraph)
Reflection: I am a big supporter of distance education although there are some
disadvantages. We cannot compare advantages with disadvantages because difference is

huge on positive side. I have shared some tools about distance education and each one of

them has different importance, features and usage area. There is no way of being agree or

disagree about these tools because they all beneficial for human being. Currently I am

having my Master’s Degree online. We are using Moodle platform for the courses as

course management system. Moodle has almost every opportunity for both educators and

learners. Currently I am working in a primary school I do not have chance to use this

platform for students but as administrator I am planning to create a way for teachers to be

active in Moodle. Beside Master program I am taking some other online courses from

different platforms to improve myself. When I complete this program I am planning to

continue taking other distance education course. I do not have time and chance to attend

regular classes physically so that distance education is very important way for self-

development.

3. REFERENCES:
• Cite at least 5 References in APA.
• You may use http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-journal for citing
your sources in APA style.
References:

Angel Learning. (2009). About angel learning. Retrieved from

http://www.angellearning.com

Cole, J., & Foster, H. (2007). Using Moddle (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.

Kats, Y. (2010). Learning management system technologies and software solutions for

online teaching: Tools and applications. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Keles, M. K., & Ozel, S. A. (2016). A review of distance learning and learning

management systems. Virtual Learning. doi:10.5772/65222.

Holmberg, B. (2005). The evolution, principles and practices of distance education.

 Germany, Oldenburg: Bibliotheksund Informationssystem der Universityat.

Opensourcecms. (n.d.). Claroline demo and information. Retrieved from

https://www.opensourcecms.com/claroline/

Ramachandran, V. (2018). A framework for making most out of online communities of

practice tools for reforms in distance learning. Asian Journal of Distance

Education, 13(1), 146-156.

Simba Information. (2007). Pearson expands with eCollege. Electronic Education

Report, 14(10).