The field of learning technology is enhancing learning and training with technology. My research study is directed towards learning and training with the technology that will facilitate developing countries, underdeveloped societies and rural areas with solar-powered energy using the Raspberry Pi and MoodleBox technology. Having built the technology part, my next major concentration is how to analyze these populations’ learning and training needs and how well I can evaluate the outcomes. I am directing my initial training toward students and adult learners from rural areas in the US and aiming to build training modules for learning that can be useful for the learner’s day to day life. Some of the modules that I intend to go forward with are English learning for customer service, skill development of cognitive, socio-emotional and digital, personal development skills, and cyber security are some of the training modules.

In creating these programs, I like to use the theoretical framework of a community of inquiry COI developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer that considered three key elements for an educational experience cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence for a favorable learning experience. A community of inquiry aims to build a solid foundation of teaching and social presence to stimulate cognitive presence. The teaching presence will facilitate learning activities and provide timely and supportive feedback. On the social presence, the learning to be created with videos to recap the learning content, develop course activities, and collaborative design activities, and on the cognitive presence, the design by identifying the takeaway from the course, activities that students could test and give feedback, activities for practice skills and encourage experimentations. The COI model will be helpful in the classroom, online, and blended or face-to-face, which is beneficial for both the learner and the teacher. The COI will be helpful as my research is directed towards the classroom, online, and massive open online courses.

The technology model that I built needs to be acceptable to the learner. As such, the technology acceptance model2 developed and expanded by Venkatesh and Davis is used to determine whether the solar-powered Raspberry Pi, MoodleBox system is accepted by the users, whether it is felt useful for learning, and seen as ease of use. The model incorporates the social processes with the cognitive instrument. The model shows that the results will be varied based on the type of users. I will also use the phenomenological approach to effectively describe the insights, beliefs, motivations, and actions and show the research participants that the elements of research make it exciting and meaningful for understudying social structures, practices, and policies. Although this is much work trying to conclude and move fast into the dissertation hours will give me time to concentrate more and get this moving with the support of my major professor, committee member, and the AGF, who have encouraged me all along to pursue my dream. I am confident that their help and support will be as I try to complete my dissertation in one year.

References

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. The internet and higher education, 13(1-2), 5-9. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/D-Garrison/publication/248540829_Researching_the_community_of_inquiry_framework_Review_issues_and_future_directions/links/59eb8ae0a6fdccef8b0c59cf/Researching-the-community-of-inquiry-framework-Review-issues-and-future-directions.pdf

Zaineldeen, S., Hongbo, L., Koffi, A. L., & Hassan, B. M. A. (2020). Technology acceptance model’concepts, contribution, limitation, and adoption in education. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(11), 5061-5071. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Samar-Zaineldeen/publication/345004753_Technology_Acceptance_Model’_Concepts_Contribution_Limitation_and_Adoption_in_Education/links/5f9c0445299bf1b53e514fa8/Technology-Acceptance-Model-Concepts-Contribution-Limitation-and-Adoption-in-Education.pdf