Week 1 Choice...Gender Differences

There are a number of gender differences to consider. Different parts of the brain function differently between the sexes and therefore impact men and women differently. For example, the cerebellum contains neurons that connect to other parts of the brain and spinal cord and facilitate movement, balance and speech. There is a much stronger connecting pathway in the female brain between the brain parts therefore females have superior language and fine-motor skills while males tend to be less intuitive. another example of gender differences is in the cerebrum. The cerebrum is the upper or main part of the brain controlling conscious and voluntary processes. Females use more volume than males therefore resulting in females being greater at multitasking. Lastly, neurotransmitters which are biochemical substances that transmit nerve impulses at the synapses clearly affect differences in how males and females brains process data.

Given these biological brain differences one could assume that learning differences will occur between the genders. With Females being more verbal and males more spatial, a need to consider how to train the combined genders so effective learning can take place is imperative. Most studies have shown that there is little differences in how men and women learn yet there is still many other studies that can show marked differences in the brain and behavior that contribute to the differences in how the learning takes place within the brain.

If females tend to better at verbal abilities and rely heavily on verbal communication then the need for web 2.0 communication technologies is imperative to the communication necessary for learning to take place. Whereas males tend to be heavily right brained and show better spatial abilities such as measuring, mechanical design and geography. These spatial cues can be brought forward to the learning table to allow the male learner the opportunity to learn successfully.

Week 1 Project of the Week

Week one's project is the content proposal which is due the first part of week two. Having listened in on the wimba session to get a better understanding of what is required I am now ready to begin the task of writing the proposal. My thesis is "Gender Differences in Online Learning: A Biological Factor". The problem proposed is that men and women learn differently due to biological factors from birth and therefore there needs to be more gender neutral training that greatly reduces the differences. One of the solutions is to incorporate web 2.0 technologies that encompass both verbal and visual learning while stimulating kinesthetics to induce the various forms of learning styles. Another solution is to raise overall expectations of individuals to increase their success to learning.
Bringing these solutions to a working project that endorses the solutions will be challenging for me. My thought is to conduct a Utudu training module that contains various movies, podcasts, interactive assesments and learning aids while guiding the learner to a better of understanding of the gender differences and how to overcome them. My objective is to give a cognitive leraning domain where knowledge is the key to learning.
I am going to find the proposal to be the easy part of the entire project. Putting it all together will be the real reward and hopefully I can put it all together succesfully.