Article
Educating values in virtual learning environments: reality and myth
Josep M. Duart

Director of the Office of International Projects(UOC)
jduart@uoc.edu


Abstract:

Education is not a neutral act. Ethical values are to be found in the reason for and objective behind the act of educating. To learn is above all to educate oneself, to form one's own self. And that is a process that unfolds permanently throughout our lives. The introduction of information and communications technology into the learning process has meant the creation of a new space for education, a space with new rules and that requires new roles, but which is a space in which ultimately it is possible to learn. Technology forms the framework for learning, and as people we take those roles on as such, with our feelings and emotions and the objectives we wish to attain. It comprises in its turn a new ethical space, a new space for real values in a virtual world.

This article presents the education of values as a reality in virtual education, that is to say networked learning with intensive use of information and communications technology. Feelings, a fundamental part of learning ethics, are also present in these new educational spaces through the people that comprise them. The challenge now lies in designing virtual learning spaces that can provide situations that make for formative ethical experiences.

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Nota*:

Artículo publicado en la revista Apertura, número 2, de diciembre de 2002, de la Universidad de Guadalajara, México.
Nota1:

Esta definición parafrasea la clásica de valor de M. Rokeach. (1973). The nature of human values. Nueva York: Free Press.
Nota2:

Entendemos por espacios de vivencia aquellos que se producen en los entornos educativos capaces de generar procesos de sensación valorativa.