MEETING NEEDS OF DIVERSE LEARNERS WITH TECHNOLOGY
"People who have strong beliefs in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than threats to be avoided. Such an affirmative orientation fosters interest and engrossing involvement in activities".
Creating active learning solutions in higher education to ensure a high quality education for diverse learners seems to many educators a daunting effort. Universities throughout the world and in the Middle East are experiencing increasing populations of learners who are global thinkers, diverse and complex in their learning needs due to language, gender, ethnic, cultural, and other physical and learning disabilities or differences. Creative solutions to bring desired learning outcomes will require integrating information and communication technologies into learning and teaching in ways that draw connections between instruction, technology, diversity, content and assessment. Developing an understanding about the context for driving change in higher education will require time-out from educators and administrators shaming and blaming each other about educational inequities and problems that exist to transforming into learning organisations that work together to find long-term, affordable and sustainable solutions. One of the most pervasive arguments in research is that active teaching environments, learning technologies, and weblearning 2.0 communications convergence can help educators, and their students achieve higher levels of excellence. Such communication tools can also be a conduit to support global relationships through digital dialogue that can open opportunities for faculty and students to understand how to use differences to enrich learning and teaching.
The first step in bringing about change in education to improve the performance of diverse learners involves creating an awareness of the problem and potential solutions.Today,we must ask important questions. I attempt to address five such questions:
- Who are the new global diverse learners?
- What makes these learners different or diverse in their learning needs?
- What factors can ensure learning diversity needs be met in new learning environments?
- What are the characteristics of differentiated learning and teaching?
- What is the solution to global differentiated learning in higher education to create active and engage learning in diverse students environments?
- What are the instructional needs in educational settings to empower learning and build literacy in a digital age?
Reference: Published article on website: Didactics World (2008) Feature Article.
http://www.didacticsworld.com/feature/index.php?pid=010804
