User:Vincentooi808/Blended learning/Alyssagpp Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Vincentooi808


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vincentooi808/Blended_learning?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)

Evaluate the drafted changes
Hi Vincent!

Overall, your draft looks near complete and I can tell that you've done a lot of thorough research. It seems like its on the right track to becoming a great holistic article. I have added some comments on certain parts of your draft below. My comments are bolded, and I have adjusted some of the sentences in text. The content looks great and I think it just needs minor fine tuning before you can call it finished!

Let me know if you have any questions about any of the comments that I've left :)

Definition
Blended learning is a specific type of teaching within the educational technology industry that combines face-to-face instruction, web-based learning, and independent learning into a single category that synchronizes these efforts of each. It requires the physical presence of both teacher and student, with some elements of student control over time, place, path, or pace.

History
edits for the section The Origins of Online Education and its Rapid Expansion into the New Age:


 * According to the scholarly source “Shift happens: online education as a new paradigm in learning” by Linda Harasim, an article that covers an overview on the history of online education as well as a framework for understanding the type of need it addresses, the concept of distance learning has already been invented for many centuries . I would just state the information here as its own statement and just cite Linda Harasim's article here


 * With the rapid spread of online education in mainland United States, Hawaii, as it’s 50th state, also welcomed the idea of online learning starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s.


 * Hence, the history of the relevant needs in online education started from a global context, where major institutions and companies sought to expand distance learning and educational services across the world, to a local one for Hawaii Technology Academy. Avoiding transition words like these would help with encyclopedia voice.

Institutions/Organizations Using the Blended Learning Model
Hawaii Technology Academy: "Hawaii Technology Academy (HTA) is a tuition-free, WASC-accredited, public charter school that aims to transform education to meet the demands of an ever-changing world. Our educational approach is founded on the belief that learners learn best by doing and by engaging in relevant learning experiences that help them make connections between themselves and the world."

'''not sure about direct quotes? I think you should paraphrase and make sure it doesn't say "our".'''

The Omniscient Tutor: The Omniscient Tutor, also known as iTOT, is an online educational non-profit organization established to assist low-income students from underprivileged backgrounds using an online network assisted by group tutoring, instructional videos, wiki/forum-based learning, virtual/augmented reality systems, and an instructor team consisted of undergraduate students from the top 100 universities. The organization has a strong emphasis on supporting low income students and their desire to go to college with modern tools in technology, making it convenient for them to develop the skills needed to succeed in middle and high school to prepare them for a college education.

'''^ I like that you have this example of an additional org, wondering if there is an org like this specific to the bay area! would be cool to find out'''

Disadvantages
The Issues of Online Education for Low Income Students:

Although online education has provided a new alternative to advancing students’ learning, it also has many major pitfalls. According to author Shanna Jaggars and her article on “Online Learning: Does It Help Low-Income and Underprepared Students? (Assessment of Evidence Series),” she explores the ways in which online education can “hinder progression for low-income and underprepared students” (Jaggars 24). Jaggars introduces her paper through a commonly brought up question: “why are online course completion rates lower?” (Jaggers 19). Here, she addresses the technical difficulties and complexities behind an online educational network. Many teachers and faculty members believe that this type of network not only lacks a concrete structure, but also a simple way to provide students with the support they need to complete their coursework in a remote setting. In addition to these difficulties provided by a socially distanced learning approach, there are many technological and cost barriers that low income students have to face.

Make sure you are citing properly using wikipedias "cite" button at the top.

Because of their low socioeconomic status and lack of financial resources, many of these students already do not have enough funds to buy food/water for survival. It’s highly unlikely that they would be willing to invest their money into buying a computer or any kind of technological device due to these cost barriers. Jaggars argues that many schools allegedly believe that implementing an online educational program would help mitigate the lack of access to education as well as the issue of educational inequality, but most of these institutions have not considered the fact on how these low income students would receive these technological resources in the first place, much rather learn how to use them. A large amount of these students have families that cannot provide any financial capital for them to buy computers. Thus, the responsibility rests upon the schools to provide this option. However, many of these institutions receive less and less funding each year—making this issue even more difficult to solve.

This last section has less of a neutral tone- I think that you could get a similar point across but be careful in your wording as to not imply bias.