Week 11 The virtual university

 

 

(Tuesday) TOPIC: The virtual university and globalisation of learning.

 

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Re. Last week’s assignment, to send your question/answer to the Irianian.com was well written. What I find interesting is that the writer of the article, Naghmeh Sohrabi (received his PhD from Harvard recently) responded to one of us, Megan Bogart’s piece (http://www.iranian.com/Letters/2002/November/nov5.html#3) was replied to in length by Sohrabi (http://www.iranian.com/NaghmehSohrabi/2002/November/Film/index.html) it is well worth the read and fits with our topic on globalisation and especially films –

Online discussion

 

Discuss which is best; doing your uni degree totally online from another place in the world or as you are presently doing it – why?

 

Readings.

 

Reading 1.

 

Lipman, Pauline.  Bush's Education Plan, Globalization, and the Politics of Race. http://eserver.org/clogic/4-1/lipman.html Viewed 7 November 2002.

 

 Question 1

 

The pressure to succeed rapidly in English on standardized tests in American schools takes away from cultures that have English as a second language according to Lipman. Discuss why the privatization of education will erode cultural diversity in America which ultimately will make American education a global product, which I believe is not a good thing. However, if you believe this is a good model feel free to express that. As I say often, don’t be affected by my world-views – having your view is fine but quote something in the article to back up your view.

 

Reading 2.

Cogburn, Derrick. GLOBALIZATION, KNOWLEDGE, EDUCATION AND TRAINING IN THE INFORMATION AGE.  http://www.unesco.org/webworld/infoethics_2/eng/papers/paper_23.htm Viewed 7 November 2002.

 

Question 2

 

How does the Fordist—Taylorist development model fail or encourage to impart formal knowledge? Take a stand.

 

 

Question 3

 

 

Anderson, Khadija.  Western Education vs. Muslim Children http://www.jannah.org/articles/westernedu.html

 

What is the difficulty within an Islamic household when sending them to local public schools?  For example, my wife is the music teacher at an Albany private school and two of her students (one Muslim and one Hindi) said that she had too many Christian songs in her program for their Christmas production. Of course she said ‘fair enough’ (as Australians tend to say) and took some out – however, her thinking is that as Christmas is a Christian holiday taking out that genre of music makes it no longer Christmas.

 

 

 

 

(Thursday) Group discussion: Is one culture’s educational system better than another?

 

Preparation for your presentation