In this chapter we have discussed different approaches to designing online courses to address the issues of diversity where diversity is viewed as a strength to be exploited rather than a problem to be solved.
We envisage that in the near future mashups of different technologies will be easier, and students will be able to create their own learning environment by dragging and dropping different tools into one common platform, and access their personalized learning environment with one login.
The online learning environment should be flexible with respect to time and pace of learning. It should provide different forms of active learning and ways of assessment, and give control and choices to the learner. It should allow for the synthesis of formal, informal, and non formal learning to address the issues of diversity.
There is a major issue in that everyday informal learning is disconnected from the formal learning that takes place in our educational institutions. For younger people there is a danger that they will increasingly see school as a turn off—as something irrelevant to their identities and to their lives. Personal learning environments have the potential to bring together these different worlds and inter-relate learning from life with learning from school and college (Pontydysgu, 2007).
Social software and Web 2.0 technologies are increasingly allowing people to create their own learning environments, creating and publishing material, sharing ideas with people, and receiving feedback from not only the teacher or peers but from anyone, anywhere. Our future online courses will have to be dynamic and process-oriented to address the fast-changing nature of the electronic age.
More research, innovation, and developmental work are needed to cater to the demands of future learners. We need to work on developing theories of e-learning to guide teachers and developers of online learning environments (Bhattacharya, 2007). In future students will develop their own personalized learning environments and build their learning communities. Students will be equal partners with teachers in designing assessment activities. Students will have the freedom and right to choose how and when they would like to be assessed.
