Social engagement in the complex, all the time - anywhere information age offers learners an unprecedented opportunity to learn and teach simultaneously within a vast array of online environments. The use of a stakeholder model has been proposed as a mechanism for understanding the intertwined roles of teacher and student, recurring in rapid succession. As the stakeholder wades through multiple sources of information online, relevant s are subsumed and shared back into the information collective to await the discovery by other stakeholders. This allows for knowledge to build in a cumulative manner and for personal interpretations of information to evolve with each passing iteration. The blurring of the distinction between information and knowledge in online education can have profound implications on the role of the stakeholder, particularly as educational objectives move from generating understanding of facts to acquiring functional knowledge about systems (Karamat & Petrova, 2009). The cyclical nature of stakeholder engagement promotes deeper levels of understanding through the process of refinement, reflection and critical evaluation. Thus, it is through this mechanism that stakeholders develop the skills to more fully participate in civil discourse and assume a rightful place in global contribution.
展开▼
