Transparency in online education - Annotated Bibliography

This annotated bibliography aims to bring together a set of ideas that result from a survey about "Transparency in Online Education”, conducted in the UC Processos Pedagógicos em e-learning.
It is alphabetically organized.


• Dalsgaard, C. (2008); "Social networking sites: Transparency in online education”. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf

The aim of this paper is to discuss the question: “What are the pedagogical potentials of social networking sites?”
The author argues that a central feature of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Ning, is a combination of personalization and socialization, which facilitates the transparency between the students. This transparency refers to the ability to observe "the work of each other's thoughts and productions, though working on distance and individually.
The author compares the social networking sites with discussion forums, while in the first 'actions within a social networking site are clear" since the starting point is a personal page and profile of the individual in its own develops and changes, in the seconds " in which communication always takes place in a shared fórum”.
Thus, in this type of social interaction the point of departure is the work of students and their personal pages that are shared on a social network.
Social networking sites has a pedagogical potential and should be considered a supplement to other tools.


• Dalsgaard, C. & Paulsen, M. (2009); “Transparency in Cooperative Online Education”. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1267

The article discusses the following question: “What is the potential of social networking within cooperative online education?”.
It´s explained the concepts of Social Networking and Cooperative Learning related with learning theories. In this point it´s presented the theory of cooperative freedom.
The authors argue that transparency is a unique feature of social networking services and would not necessarily involve communication, dialogue, and collaboration.
Transparency “enable students and teachers to see and follow the work of fellow students and teachers within a learning environment and in that sense to make participants available to each other as resources for their learning activities.”
This article demonstrates how cooperative learning can be supported by transparency, “It may further include work students and teachers provide in online notebooks, blogs, and discussion forums as well as results from quizzes, surveys, and assignments”.
Discusses how social networking and transparency can be used in cooperative education online and gives “examples of social software that are relevant for online education are blogs, wikis, social networking sites, RSS, and social bookmarking”.
The authors defend that “communication within social networks, to a large extent, is a matter of awareness and transparency”.


• Hill, C. (2009); “Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality”. Retrieved January 4, 2010, from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/principles-for-improving-online-transparency-quality/

This post describes an initiative "Transparency by Design" which is based on the premise that a well informed student is a benefit. It is intended that the student has access to the results in order to make informed decisions about his education.
Merle Harris, president of Charter Oaks State College, and her associates concluded that there were a few basic principles for institutions that really want to be transparent. They are:
1. Make distance education a central element of your mission
2. Accountability to stakeholders
3. Responsiveness
4. Faculty competence
5. Institutional integrity
6. Excellence in student services
7. Integrity in marketing
8. Curricular quality


• Paulsen, M. (2009); “Transparency in Cooperative Online Education”. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from http://home.nki.no/morten/index.php/component/content/article/3-artikler-uten-kommentarer/86-transparency-in-cooperative-online-education.html

Paulsen argues that transparency has the following three positive effects on quality: Preventive quality improvement, Constructive quality improvement and Reactive quality improvement.
Transparency improves quality in the way it could reduce the amount of low quality contributions and make high quality work more accessible as paragons for others.
The author also argues that transparency promotes cooperation in online education, if people see information about each other they are more likely to cooperate.


• Tanimoto, S. (2005); “Dimensions of Transparency in Open Learner Models”. Retrieved January 3, 2010, from http://www.cs.washington.edu/ole/111tanimoto.pdf

The article discuss the advantages of open learner models in the way they may encourage valuable metacognitive activity and thereby help a learner to learn more effectively and permit modelling errors to be detected more readily so that they can then be corrected.
It´s discussed Transparency and Validity in Learner Models.
There are three dimensions where “the designers of a learner model may strive, through an appropriate mechanism, to achieve a balance between the needs of individual students and the need for consistent, reliable systems”: quantitative dimension, interpretive dimension and validation dimension.


• Richardson, W. (2009); “Transparency = Leadership”. Posted in Weblogg-ed. Retrieved January 5, 2010, from http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/leadership-transparency/

The author calls upon educational leaders to build a "learning as transparent as possible for those around you."


• “Teaching as transparent learning”. Retrieved December 28, 2009, from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=122

The author of this post claims to have won in being a transparent learner. Through blogs, wikis, Twitter, by expressing his ideas received constructive criticism, feedback, and then he can evolve.
The work we put in blogs, articles, manuals, ... are not an announcement of he knows but one way of sharing and proposed to participate in the discussion.
"When someone decides to share their thoughts and ideas in a transparent manner, they become a teacher to those who are observing."
The author refers to some names that somehow contributed to his learning "by being willing to share how they develop and advance ideas."


• Michael, S. (2009); “An Interview with Morten Flate Paulsen: Transparency in Online Education”. Retrieved January 4, 2010, from http://www.educationnews.org/michael-f-shaughnessy/8076.html

In this interview Paulsen argues that transparency has the following three positive effects on quality: Preventive quality improvement, Constructive quality improvement and Reactive quality improvement.

Transparency improves quality in the way it could reduce the amount of low quality contributions and make high quality work more accessible as paragons for others.

Paulsen also argue that transparency promotes cooperation in online education, if people see information about each other they are more likely to cooperate.