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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 8, No. 7
Publication Date: July 25, 2021
DOI:10.14738/assrj.87.10474. Ezeala-Harrison, F. (2021). The Significance of Cyberlearning in Economic Education. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
8(7). 26-34.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
The Significance of Cyberlearning in Economic Education
Fidel Ezeala-Harrison
Department of Economics and Finance, Jackson State University
1400 J.R. Lynch Street, P.O. Box 17760, Jackson, MS 39217
ABSTRACT
We analyze the potentials of web-based and mobile-based digital technology to
disseminate, inform, transmit, instruct, and exchange course content in the
teaching of economics. Cyberlearning is the use of networked computer technology
to enhance the mode of educational content delivery to learners, and involves
personal, social, and distributed learning that is mediated by a variety of rapidly
evolving computational devices such as computers, tablets, and smart phones, and
involving other media such as the Web, and the Cloud. Yet cyberlearning is not only
about learning to use computers or to think computationally; social networking has
made it clear that the need is much more encompassing, including new modes of
collaborating and learning for the full variety of human experiences mediated by
networked computing and communications technologies. Educators have
continued to search for answers about how new digital tools and environments can
be utilized to enhance learning among students of our contemporary “New Age”
generation. In the present paper we examine the potentials of cyberlearning and
the opportunities it offers for promoting and assessing learning, made possible by
new technologies; and how it can help learners to capitalize on those opportunities
and the new practices that are made possible by these learning technologies. In
particular, we examine ways of using technology for economics education to
promote effective learning that result in deep rooted grasping of content, practices,
and skills that will ultimately shape attitudes and contribute to enhanced policy and
progress in economic matters of society.
Keywords: Information technology, International competitiveness, Cyberlearning,
Globalization, Economic education
INTRODUCTION
This paper analyses the transformational potentials of the integration of modern technological
advances with the delivery of learning in general and economics education in particular. It
seeks to examine how students can learn economics with the help of technology, and how the
application of technology can be harnessed productively to help students learn through
individual and collaborative mediations within the technological milieu. We analyze the
potentials of web-based and mobile-based digital technology to disseminate, inform, transmit,
instruct, and exchange course content in economics. The work is motivated by at least two
prominent studies on how cyberlearning can massively impact educational achievements: a
study by Monfort and Brown (2012) that thoroughly examined the meaning of cyberlearning
and how the term is construed and applied by the various agencies at the center of educational
policy making and policy implementations; and also a call made from an NSF (2008) report on
the potentials of cyber technology in the delivery of education -- a report that calls for the
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Ezeala-Harrison, F. (2021). The Significance of Cyberlearning in Economic Education. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(7). 26-34.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.87.10474
cyberlearning community to incorporate the additional expertise of disciplines such as social
and organizational sciences, political science, economics, and others that have not traditionally
engaged with learning. We examine how students’ learning potentials can be better fulfilled
through the use of technology to facilitate such learning activities as accessing and collecting
economic data, analysing and sharing economic theory and literature, and the interactive and
collaborative study of these materials to advance learning.
Cyberlearning is the use of networked computer technology to enhance the mode of
educational content delivery to learners; it involves personal, social, and distributed learning
that is mediated by a variety of rapidly evolving computational devices, (computers, tablets,
smart phones), and others such as Web, and Cloud. But cyberlearning is not only about learning
to use computers or to think computationally; social networking has made it clear that the need
is much more encompassing, including new modes of collaborating and learning for the full
variety of human experiences mediated by networked computing and communications
technologies.
Educators have continued to search for answers about how new digital tools and environments
can be utilized to enhance learning among students of our contemporary “New Age” generation.
Montfort and Brown (2013), while stressing that there is little agreement as to a precise
meaning of the term “cyberlearnig”, have defined it as the interactions of technology and
education, especially with respect to the use of networking and information technologies.1 It is
proposed that cyberlearning can facilitate how and under what circumstances learning
phenomena happen. For economic education, cyberlearning can not only access and promote
learning, but also can have the potential to significantly advance opportunities for learning,
amplify, expand, and transform opportunities for learning, and can better draw in, motivate,
and engage learners. Much interest has been expressed in the application of technological
advances that can help promote greater personalized learning initiatives and experiences
(Morisy, 2012; Thinqs, 2011). This will particularly be of immense help to individuals and/or
groups in society who have not been well served and continues to not be well served by the
traditional methods and delivery practices that dominate the current educational system.
Cyberlearning allows for access to learning and learning resources anytime and anywhere that
can help students better tap their innate capabilities that would otherwise tend to be dormant.
Such a new form of educational practice introduces a means of renewed interest in the learner
that result in the awakening of a more actively engaged and productive individual.
Central in the design of economics education is the awareness of the society's central challenges
that are the amplifying, expanding, and transforming of the opportunities people have for
learning and more effectively drawing in, motivating, and engaging young learners (NSF
Taskforce on Cyberlearning, 2008; Navarro and Shoemaker, 1999). Educating for economics
knowledge, and subsequently for engaging actively as a citizen and productively in the
workforce, requires understanding the broad variety of concepts in economic theory and
analyses, and possessing the ability to collaborate, learn, solve problems, and apply those skills
to make informed and relevant decisions.
In the present paper we examine the potentials of Cyberlearning and the opportunities it offers
for promoting and assessing learning made possible by new technologies; and how it can help
learners to capitalize on those opportunities and the new practices that are made possible by
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 8, Issue 7, July-2021
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
these learning technologies. We examine ways of using technology for economics education to
promote effective learning that result in deep rooted grasping of content, practices, and skills
that will ultimately shape attitudes and contribute to enhanced policy and progress in economic
matters of society.
CYBERLEARNING: SOME PREVIOUS LITERATURE
The increasing interest and widespread utilization of cyberlearning is a reflection of not only
the increasing prominence of this approach in the delivery of educational services, but also
reflects an important shift in approaches to educational technology. Dede et al (2005) as well
as Donovan and Bradford (2005), have observed that whether learning is facilitated in school
or out of school, and whether learners are youngsters or adults, to develop such knowledge and
capabilities, learners must be motivated to learn, actively engage over the long term in learning
activities, and put forth sustained cognitive and social effort. The National Science Foundation
(NSF) Taskforce on Cyberlearning published a report in 2008 that is often described as the
origin of the term, and provides an insightful and thorough meta-analysis of the literature and
general movements in educational technology that led to the authors’ adoption of the term
(NSF, 2008). The Taskforce defined cyberlearning as “...the use of networked computing and
communications technologies to support learning” (p. 5). The authors explained that although
the prefix “cyber” has come to be associated with computer technology, there is also a sense in
which it can be used in its original connotation, which was “...built etymologically on the Greek
term for ‘steering’.” They state that although the focus is clearly on the networking technologies
that are defining the modern age of information technology, (such as cloud computing and
social media), the authors deliberately left the term open in order to refer to any form of future
technology that mediates the human interactions that are at the heart of education. They argue
that there is need to steer the inevitable changes that technological developments bring to
education and learning in the positive direction; noting that cyberlearning fundamentally
brings changes to how people seek knowledge and skills, and should be used as a lifelong
learning resource that can provide access to disadvantaged or disconnected individuals, thus
addressing society’s need for full workforce inclusion.
An earlier NSF study had declared Cyberinfrastructure as the medium for Continuous
Collaborative Computational Cloud (C4) environment, which supports the preparation of
professional careers that require high level and interactive thinking (NSF, 2001). The report’s
authors presented their vision for how the concept of an integrated C4 environment could
potentially transform our educational systems to more seamlessly blend the formal and
informal learning worlds. They noted that the tools and technology of the C4 environment
would seamlessly connect networks, servers, personal devices (such as laptops, tablets, smart
phones, and others) and super-computers; and that they would help provide just-in-time access
to the personalized knowledge individuals need, and could replace textbooks with dynamic
learning environments better suited to the continuous advances that will confront the Net
Generation workforce. Thus, cyberlearning fundamentally changes how people seek new
knowledge and skills, and could reduce barriers for those who are disadvantaged or
disconnected.
Dede et al. (2005) suggested that cyberlearning research introduced the processes by which
people learn with advances in information and communications technologies to advance
understanding of how to cultivate a citizenry that engages productively in learning, both in and
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Ezeala-Harrison, F. (2021). The Significance of Cyberlearning in Economic Education. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(7). 26-34.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.87.10474
out of school and throughout a lifetime. Such progress provided the knowledge and capabilities
to make informed decisions and judgments about the multifarious problems of life. They
observe that cyberlearning innovations will not effect transformations unless they are
substantively integrated into authentic learning environments; and that integration of
technologies into learning environments may change those environments, prompting a need to
understand, predict, and design for those changes. The expectation is held that some technology
designs and some ways of integrating technology into learning environments may challenge
conventional educational practices.
CYBER-ECONOMIC EDUCATION IN THE CLASSROOM: DISSEMINATING ECONOMIC
THEORY AND GLOBAL AWARENESS
Economic education is about training students for success in the business world. Business
success is often measured in terms of the bottom line, namely, continued business efficiency
and sustained business profitability. These criteria of business success and equipping students
with the proficiency to pursue and attain the skills needed for them, is the central focus of
economic education and training. The new world of the era of global competitiveness challenge
calls for continuous pursuit of the business bottom line, and this challenge calls for the need for
creating and disseminating a culture of global awareness within the body frame of students in
the economics classroom. And nothing facilitates the creation, development, and continuous
dissemination of this culture of global awareness more than the cyberlearning infrastructure.
Yet there is the need to raise the importance of connecting the classroom activities to the
realities of the outside world in which students will live and work. The void should be filled
between the new cyber infrastructure and cyberlearning and education strategies to achieve a
workforce that is technologically competent and competitive.
Through cyber technology, students are able to immediately engage the real world instantly to
delve into practical economic and business procedures and practice. Key economic and
business data such as the growth rates of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), income
distribution, relative prices, employment and unemployment rates, and just about any State
and national level micro and macro data as needed, can be promptly accessed and downloaded
and analyzed for more effective study and applications. The main benefit here is the efficiency
and effectiveness of delivery of the lesson and procedure one wishes to direct to the students.
Thus the major facilitating properties of the cyberlearning mechanism include:
The Interactive Format of Cyberlearning
Cyberlearning provides an innovative learning tool and methodology that can foster students'
interest in collaborative and interactive learning needed to improve the effectiveness of
teaching. It uses communication methodologies of personalized just-in-time learning modes as
compared to conventional teaching modes of fixed learning systems, as well as life-long
education instead of the system of one time front-ended delivery; and the emphasis would be
on results oriented learning rather than the conventional classroom teaching mode. The
students using the techniques of cyberlearning are held to a unique interactive level of
consciousness, which presents an additional personal challenge to uphold an expected level of
standard of learning achievement because the platform of distance online network does not
present the opportunities to interact physically with the teachers and other classmates. This
means that it would be essential for students of cyberlearning to quickly rise to knowing and
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mastering the basics of subject in order to meet the individual challenges of maintaining the
level of expectation.
The Promptness of Interaction
Cyberlearning provides an infrastructure where the educator and students can engage in
instant network of contacts through response and feedback exchanges that occur in interactive
learning. Time is saved within and between the processes of content delivery, response,
feedback, evaluation, and assessment. Such a mode can only quicken the pace of learning and
result in greater student achievement. And this approach can be complemented with an
interactive class videoconferencing between multiple locations, something that mimics the
conventional classroom experience, but only delivered under the setting of cyberlearning. This
setting enables learners to experience things that simply would not be possible under the
conventional setting, for example, by providing learning scaffolding that helps students do
things they could not otherwise, and grow in their capabilities through it. It allows for rich,
timely, and personalized feedback during the learning process; and enables learners to connect
and network with each other and with communities in ways that would otherwise no be
feasible in dialogue and shared learning. And with regard to students’ assessment and
evaluation, cyberlearning enables individual student competencies to be automatically
recorded and tracked, thereby negating the requirement to conduct laborious and time
consuming manual assessments along with the collation and reporting of results.
The Perpetuation Factor
The ability of students to reach the professor, and vice versa, at anytime without the confines
of the limited classroom time and space perpetuates the learning process. And more
significantly, unlike the traditional classroom setting, the use of cyberlearning enables students
learn at their own pace -- a conventional classroom environment often contains a variety and
range of learner competency levels which means that the teaching tends to be either conducted
too quickly (in regard to slower and/or less advanced learners), or too slowly (in regard to
faster and/or more advanced learners). It provides students with unlimited sources of
information and a cost-effective way of providing individualized instruction that
accommodates different and diverse learning styles. The self-paced learning environment that
is cyberlearning to the student is one of the strongest assets of this infrastructure.
The Low Cost Factor
The kind of network environment that cyberlearning provides for a course promotes learning
by "spreading" information and course content more extensively across the student population
of the class, with significant reduction if not total elimination of any course related travel,
accommodation, and other related logistics costs. The instructor is enabled to interact with very
large group of students across hundreds and thousands of miles, and different time zones, at
virtually zero marginal cost. This low cost aspect of it results in reaching a lot larger and more
diverse student population than otherwise would be affordable; thus cyberlearning enables
students who would probably never have been reached and interacted with to be reached and
interacted with, by simply lowering the cost of reaching and interacting with them over
hundreds and thousands of miles and across various time zones. Moreover, by lowering the
costs of interaction, cyberlearning is able to greatly increase the volume of content that is
delivered, which, in economics facilitates the ability to use data to analyze and illustrate
theoretical and empirical models to students.
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Ezeala-Harrison, F. (2021). The Significance of Cyberlearning in Economic Education. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(7). 26-34.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.87.10474
As the economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based and more dependent on technology,
our economic thinkers need to be equally versatile and competent in the use of cyber
technology to avoid a mismatch between education and curricula, and the workforce needs of
the economy. The current educational system was designed with a view to providing all
students with a standard and common set of educational skills and knowledge -- the 4R’s
(reading, writing, arithmetic, and rote learning) notwithstanding. But such standardization of
learned skills was relevant and suitable when the economy was comprised of occupations in
industrial mass production in which workers needed to be trained initially and then needed to
remain in performance of similar tasks over their life careers. The present age, however, is
different from such. The new knowledge-based economy needs new and changing sets of skills
continually, and standardized skills may not properly fit the needs of students under such a
system. This requires an educational approach and paradigm shift that promotes individual
learning for people throughout their lives as they continually need new skills and knowledge.
The paradigm shift needs to address the new need -- to upgrade skills through individualize
learning -- that is created by a pervasive C4 environment.
GLOBALIZATION AND THE BUSINESS BOTTOM LINE
Globalization is the unrestricted mobility of products and resources (capital and labor) across
countries, prompted, enabled, and driven by the onset and permeation of Communication and
Information Technology (CIT). This phenomenon has led to the internationalization of most
economic and business activities that used to be typical domestic activities, and meant that
every modern economy today is heavily impacted by its international trade sector. This has
given rise to the New Trade Theory (termed the Strategic Trade Theory), to the effect that, due
to globalization, a country can only benefit from international trade if and only if it adopts
strong trade strategies, namely, the strategies of sustained (1) Competitive Advantage, and (2)
International Competitiveness.
Due to globalization, the gains from trade no longer depends on comparative advantage of
nations, but rather on the competitive advantage of nations. Therefore, international trade no
longer yields a win-win outcome between trading partners; but rather, results in zero-sum
outcomes between trading partners. A zero-sum outcome means that there must be winners
and losers, whereby the winner’s gain (positive) and the loser’s loss (negative) add up to zero.
Domestic firms can no longer count on continued loyalty and patronage of traditional local
markets and consumers; that is, foreign firms are able to dominate the market supply of
products within a country.
The critical factor in disseminating (in the classroom) and practicalizing (in the real world)
these strategic trade initiatives is none else than the cyberlearning infrastructure.
Cyberlearning is an inevitable catalyst needed to prepare a country to successfully participate
as a player in the global business bottom line, within our present day knowledge-based global
economy. For example, cyberlearning prepares and exposes us to the reality that countries have
become more interdependent in economic, business, social, cultural, and even political
activities such as human rights, democracy, labor standards, etc. Also, cyberlearning can
prepare us for the realities of such events as international outsourcing -- key business strategies
required for firms to pursue lower production costs to achieve competitive advantage --