Journal of Online Learning & Teaching

After browsing through a variety of journals, I settled in on the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching – JOLT.  I chose this journal for a variety of reasons, primarily of which is because I feel at this point my research topic for my doctoral dissertation will most likely revolve around this area.  I would like to combine my expertise with the IT field and my interest in teaching methodologies when I do my research.  The field of online learning and teaching is growing rapidly and quite new.  JOLT itself has only been in publication since 2005.

After reading through a few journals I enjoyed both the subject matter of the articles submitted along with the writing styles and general feel of the content.  After these first three weeks of classes I’m starting to see that most academic works falls into one of two categories:

• Dense bibliographic writing that continually cites theories, practices, and prominent figures
• Direct learning driven writing that employs first person accounts, surveying, etc.

While I understand it’s necessary, the latter does not particularly appeal to me as I feel it is disconnected to people and more concerned with “how things should be” instead of getting down in the dirt and finding out “how things are”.  JOLT has a much more practical tone to it.  The journal is peer-reviewed and perhaps the tone and style are indicative of a cultural shift or demographic bias in the field of online learning.  Being such a new topic, I’d imagine many of the proponents and invested researchers are relatively younger than other fields.  It’s an emerging frontier and I want to be in the mix of things if not leading the charge eventually.

Moreover, JOLT contains a range of article formats and not simply research and observation papers.  Each issue has research papers, case studies, concept papers, and position papers.  Having this variety will help me synthesize a “world view” of the field and come to meaningful conclusions that are not myopic.  Continuing on a personal level, I digest case studies and position papers better than research papers.  They feel more real in regard to case studies and position papers give me the opportunity to either agree, disagree, or a combination to the position stated.  JOLT is also a free publication.  Obviously this is a plus in terms of me not having to pay, but they make a point to state that they wish to be “open source” to promote the flow of information, this is an ideal that I strongly believe in.

The primary article I read when choosing the journal was a case study about Google’s collaboration tools being used in a teaching context.  Some of the points such as the ability to easily access the work not only by the instructor but other students raised very interesting points.  This also gives students an action-oriented approach to learning about emerging concepts such as cloud computing.  Concluding the article, I was left wondering about the idea of ownership and intellectual property.  With all of the collaboration and group-think that occurs online, I feel like the boundaries of ownership are diminishing and there is a rise in the idea of a global knowledge.  In my Ways of Knowing course, we discuss viewing the world through different “lenses” often culturally dictated.  In a global setting how will these lenses become blurred?  Or will new characteristics of each culture arise?