Throughout the short one-hour Cultural Differentiation lesson online, I am glad that I have enriched myself and have picked up many useful points and information that would aid me in my understanding towards this elective. I believe that through such online lessons, we are still able to provide our output regarding the discussion topic and to bring it further; we can conduct research and at the same time improvise on our answers to make it better by providing solid evidence to back up our points, hence voicing out constructive opinions.
Also, I particularly like the part when we were supposed to research on what problems China and the US are facing and how they can learn from each other to solve these problems. Before this online lesson, frankly speaking I did not have much idea on how China and US could learn from each other and solve the problems that are surfacing in their country. However, after some research and reading through of my classmate’s views, it has shed light on how China and US could actually use each other’s methods of governing/management so as to bring about more growth for their country.
Specifically speaking, I learnt a lot when I was digging out information from the net about collectivism and individualism and how these two factors affect the East and the West. I realized that collectivism in China is not that bad after all as it help to promotes a sense of harmony amongst the Chinese and this can help foster a closer bond between each other and make the society a much more peaceful and harmonious place for everyone to be in. Furthermore, in collectivistic cultures a direct confrontation will be always avoided instead, expressions or phrases are used which describe a disagreement or negative statement instead of saying no as people understand that saying no would mean to destroy the harmony in the group. Thus, by enforcing such measures, people are less likely to get into conflicts.
Thereafter, in my point of view, I definitely feel that this online lesson has gave me an opportunity to explore deeper into the branch of collectivism vs individualism and how these two factors play a part in modern China and US.
For the next part of this reflective journal, I would like to give my feedback about this online lesson and how it could be further improved so that our juniors can enrich themselves even more and be able to share the valuable information they have gathered with the class.
Firstly, I feel that the duration for this online lesson is just nice, meaning that it has provided enough time for me to commit to some research and draw up my outputs for the topic that we are discussing about. Also, I particularly like the idea of typing out our answers on Google Docs as Google Docs instantly display what our classmates has wrote and we can gain access to their replies immediately. Furthermore, this usage of Google Docs has allowed us to be able to scrutinize the answers provided by our classmates and after reading through all of them, I feel that it has brought my understanding towards how the East and West could learn from each other to a higher level.
However, I would also like to make a suggestion so as to make this online lesson more enriching and enjoyable. Perhaps we could introduce group projects into such online lessons and through group work, I believe students would be able to express their ideas more freely and discuss with their peers to structure their answers in a much better way. As the saying goes, “two heads are always better than one”, I am sure that students would be able to generate more constructive ideas and we could also bring in the school value “teamwork” into group work.
In addition to the issue of group work, I raised a point just now about peer reviewing. Peer reviewing in the group would act as a filter for those unconstructive comments and students are able to produce work of higher quality. The inspiration for me to suggest this idea is in fact, from the Google case study that the class did at the start of the elective as Google’s peer reviewing system is proven to be very effective and I believe there would be no harm for us to try it out.
In a nutshell, in my opinion, I feel that this online lesson has been a success as it is has achieved its aim by providing us with new knowledge which would be useful for future lessons especially during class discussions where we can raise up points provided by our classmates and this would fuel students to develop a higher understanding towards the topic.
- Tuea Jia Wen 3L2(11)
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