Closing Thoughts
I have now finished my learning contract assignment examining the differences between how science is taught online and traditionally. It can be found here, on a wiki. Overall I have found this project very interesting, eye-opening and educational. It is encouraging to see that there are a range of different and developing methods of teaching science which go beyound my fairly limiting experiences as a science student. I am hopeful that within the next few years there will be a particularly strong shift to embrace online technologies and fully integrate them into science teaching methods and curricula.
I was concerned as the writing stage of this assignment drew to a close that I had not closely followed my learning contract enough. However, upon further consideration I think this is actually to be expected, as learning takes one down new and different paths, and as I read more and learned more I found my learning journey took me in a slightly different direction to the one I had first proposed. Despite this, I still feel that ultimately I have answered the original question – how is science taught traditionally and online? – as well as many more questions which arose during the process of the assignment. To close, I found the research I conducted in the process of this assignment of great value to me; I feel it has given me a much better background knowledge with regard to educational theories and frameworks and a general background in science education, as well as how technology can be applied to science education. As someone from a highly technical background but little educational background, this was an important task to add to my knowledge and understanding in this field.
