Online Project Spaces Towards Participatory Learning

By Ethel Agnes Pascua Valenzuela

Many of us are new to technology-based assisted pedagogies. Mentors like us, who were taught in the 80’s most likely still use passive learning, traditional and face to face interphase. But today, due to the COVIUD-19 pandemic and the advent of Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0, active learning that leads to enhance participatory learning is a necessary tool for teaching. One interesting insight from this class is the use of Online Project Spaces for participatory learning.

An Online project space is now becoming utilized by mentors from all over the world when kids are in lockdown and many of the platforms used by teachers are zoom, google classroom or cisco webex. To foster collaboration among the learners, we can utilize Online Project Spaces to achieve participatory learning. Online Project Spaces refer to a virtual place where learners, collaborators or your team can discuss and plan the projects in a safe space which can only be accessed by the members (British Council).

Some social and collaborative platform spaces include, but not limited to:

• Active Collab- helps the group get organized
• Appear in- free tool to easily organize video conferences
• Asana- it provides a platform to track the team’s work and outputs
• Basecamp- it is a web-based tool that let you manage and track projects or ideas
• BuddyPress- a social platform that one can use yo set up a social network for the school or a team
• Confluence- this offers a platform to create, organize and discuss your work with the team
• DeskAway- is a smart web-based project collaboration software that provides teams with a central place to organize, manage and track work
• Google groups- is a place to set up a group space that lets you discuss online over email, crate rich custom pages and customize the look and feel
• Slack- collaborative tool for free options
• Mindup- tool for creating easy-to use shareable custom design
• Microsoft teams- is a chat-based workspace in Office 365
• Propulse- project management and task coordination tool with a common goal

In order to empower learners to share analyze and enhance their knowledge, a mentor can utilize online spaces to achieve results. Participatory comes from the word participation which refers to action of taking part in activities and projects and the act of sharing in the group (Dominguez, Roberto,2012). This approach though is nothing new. But the 21st century approach using Online project spaces is the one that makes participatory learning novel. Teamates can now literally be 100% online and complete a task or a project assigned to the them, with more flexibility, and tapping every individual member’s contribution to reach a common goal.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic when learners in Southeast Asia are increasingly using online learning, Online project spaces can be an incredible tool to facilitate powerful connection with better learning and results. However, many of our learners do not have good connectivity or data to keep them afloat and online most of the time. Internet-based communication tools which are very promising can bring the team or groups right away in some advance countries.

Some challenges in the use of Online project spaces include communication flaws or the technical issues that affect the quality and richness of Online Project spaces output. As a seasoned teacher, I can say that not all students are active and many of the learners do not always tend to speak out even in this platform which may overshadow the possibility of participatory learning. The group leader and the teacher should always watch out for this signal so as not to lose the valuable ideas of everyone.

References:

Dominguez R.G. (2012). Participatory Learning, In Seel N.M. (eds). Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, Springer Boston MA

22 Online Project Spaces.www.virtualmissfriday.com

64 Best Online Collaboration Tools of September 2020. Biz30.timedoctor.com