Here Here is the first in a a series of podcasts that I want to call ‘Beyond E Learning’. In this recording I took an impromptu approach to share ideas that have been on my mind.
I believe we’re at the early stages of a learning revolution, the likes of which haven’t been seen since Gutenberg’s movable type. We’re finally leaving behind the limitations that the old man left us. Books are (mostly) ‘text only’, linear, one-to-many, teacher centric, static, etc. But now we have a non-linear alternative that is multi-dimensional, inclusive, dynamic, and learner centric.
In the post-network society, there is no more scarcity of information, so the the new learning has to accommodate this fact. This new reality puts the power to create and share content into the hands of the individual. We’re moving towards a more learner centric world, with new channels and a multiplicity of media to inspire the various learning modalities.
Surprisingly, however, this revolution is not at all obvious. First of all, we’re simply too close to it to see it for what it is. The internet has changed radically in the last 10 years but for the user the experience is subtle and cerebreal, while the change is incremental and almost imperceptible. The true educational significance of the internet is only starting to emerge.
In one conception, the new communication tools turn out to be incredibly effective learning tools. This does depend, however, on how we define learning. People like Jay Cross and George Siemens are doing just that – offering new definitions.
Each new tool is almost like it’s own medium, with its own unique learning qualities. It is the job of the instructional designer to explore these and figure out how they can be used. What a time to be in the learning industry!
The editing towards the end is slightly choppy – I did it myself. It shouldn’t affect things too much.
Ken Carroll
The Learning Revolution at The ChinesePod Blog with Ken Carroll
2 years ago
[...] reposted the link the my new Beyond E Learning podcast [...]
海�? / Henning
2 years ago
Hm Ken,
actually wanted to post some sceptic reply once again but then was grabbed by a different thought:
if you understand *research* as a concatenation of learning (understanding new stuff) and teaching (making stuff explicit) – what consequences does all this have for research organizations (e.g. Universities) in the long run?
Mike in Jubei
2 years ago
Ken
First great idea for us that you will collect your thoughts on the changes in learning in one spot. All of what you said I can not agree more. I have two points.
First, it seems that most e-learning is individual driven. In other words I am not sure if any of us have our premium subscribtions picked up by our company or we are requested to sit during office hours to learn Chinese. Equally veery few companies support something like The University of Phoenix (in the US) where many people over the net obtain a real degree as a means to keep their staff valuable. Why? I think e-learning truly becomes a revolution when corporations or perhaps even countries adopt e-learning as a way to advance vs other.
Second while I find learning on my terms and the portability of e-learning tools great. I love books. Our house is full of books. There is no better way for me to spend leisure time than in a good bookstore. So my point is can we trust Google to be The National Museum (UK) or The National Archive (US) or other institutes around the world that are a repository of man’s thoughts ?
I worry about this even on a personal level. We all carry cameras now but the images often remain electronic. Will my grandchildren long after I am gone be able to see pictures of me as I can see pictures of my grandfather as a child sitting on his father’s lap?
So the point is e-learning is for “NOW” but do we lose the possibility of going backward (history of thought development) for a specific subject when so much of e-learning and in many other areas as well is stored on the net.
As a final point on this even if the info is carefully stored on pc’s around the world sooner rather than later Mr. Gate’s operating system may not be backward compatible. I have no doubt there will come a time when it will be impossible to “read” something written in Vista or OSX operating system as it is today to find an 8 inch floppy and read it.
Mike in Jubei
Lantian
2 years ago
VAPOR – I already lament the loss of comments and content from the Japanese Cpod and blog, the ZH.Chinesepod comments, and images from V2 banners. I guess that’s why companies still make so much money from printer cartridges.
I still hope for a day where there is a printer that can print and bind myself a little book. I’m sure I’m gonna want that function when the grammar guide comes out, and I’d love a book of Amber and John’s comments to browse over Sunday brunch. If my Mac hadn’t keeled over, I’d make it myself.
Henning
2 years ago
Hi Lantian,
now how do you print out the old Advanced-podcasts? Hex? Or do you copy them on old tape cassettes?
Nothing beats good old-fashinioned backup.
And I want to reiterate the wish for a sub domain “mueseum.chinesepod.com”.
Ken Carroll
2 years ago
Henning,
I believe the role of the teacher will definitely be affected. If they try to fight it they’ll most likely lose, but by embracing it they can benefit from it enormously. We certainly will need experts, specialists, researchers, and teachers. It’s just that they will operate in a world that knows no information scarcity. In the not too distant future, almost anything a professor says in class can be immediately checked/verified by the people with wikipedia in the classroom. The question becomes one of the teacher’s role. My view is that he becomes a learning facilitator.
Meanwhile, any research paper could, potentially, benefit from a collaboration with peers, learners, or anyone else. Your expertise as a professor can only be enhanced by that. Web 2.0 is not a threat to the academics unless they themselves see it as such.
Mike,
Good points about corporate e-learning, Microsoft, and the fact that we all love books. Books ahvea future. I’ll always continue to buy them. Amazon are not going out of business. We just have more options now.
Lantian,
I too see tremendous value in the lesson discussions. Never thought about a book of them, though.
Ken
Ken Carroll
2 years ago
Henning,
To your first point, one of my favorite quotes, from Eric Hoffer:
“In times of change learners inherit the earth, while
the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world
that no longer exists.“
Ken
Henning
2 years ago
Ken,
unfortunatelly there is still a scarcity of students who is willing to delve into that sea of information and challenge what the teacher said. The predominant question is still the classic “Is it relevant for the test?”. I have to admit that both sides can arrange comfortably in that zone, but this is not what I believe higher education is all about. Good students challenged the professor way before the times of wikipedia. And that is what adds the spice to teaching.
Of course the teacher is a facilitator. In many domains the main point is not teaching factual knowledge (which obsolesces at a crazy rate) but slowly building up ways of understanding and thinking, strategies to frame and tackle problems.
But my original post was actually aiming in another direction: Are the predominent structures in the research domain really compatible with the new networking opportunities?
The world of journals and conferences with the key performance indicator “paper” in the center? Driven by individual profilation, defined personal career pathes, closed interpersonal networks of specialists, incentives that build walls between teaching and research, an almost utter absence or true cross-methodology or even cross-disciplinary research?
It is still all based on units of paper.
Ken Carroll
2 years ago
Henning,
I’m afraid I have no earthly idea about how research and academic publication is carried out. So, let me ask someone who does know about it – you! How do you think it will be affected?
Ken
Henning
2 years ago
Just some fuzzy utopian ideas, brainstormed without further consolidation or proof. It is build vaguely upon the concept of “communities of practice” and bolstered by some positive individual experiences of mine in the last couple years.
I could imagine that application oriented research could be conducted in open, large-scale, loosely coupled, international communities, binding together practitioners, students, and researchers alike – across domains and sectors (because from my experience this is the most fertile ground for groundbreaking research). The focus is not defined by the *fields* of specialization of its members but by the jointly defined *object* of interest.
The network does not only connect people but also structured data feeds (results from panel surveys, sensor networks, data of electronic market places…), multimedia material of all sorts (e.g. videos depicting certain phenomena, lecture slides), and tools/services (esp. for data analysis and visualization).
Research can be conducted both with qualitative and quantitative methods, it can be analysis-oriented or construction-oriented – but results (data, prototypes, reports) as well as the documentation of the respective research processes are fully fed back into the rest of the community for further investigation or “docking”.
The researchers should only form a small core of the network, guiding the community, structuring and verbalizing central results, not dominating or directing it – otherwise the risk increases that focus is lost and specializations diverge again. Core competence of a researcher is to build up, nurture, and evolve those communities from the perspective of his own field of experise.
Students will be introduced to the network in a structured fashion and slowly learn how to handle the real world by *applying* theories and concepts they learn in class.
On the technical side the trick is to build a common data-integration layer based on lose-coupling.
Now this has to become compatible with established and proven resarch realities, but I think those researchers who establish the first according communities will outperform in the classical realm as well – in the long-term.
Ken Carroll
2 years ago
Henning,
Hank has just posted a fascinating interview with David Weinberger that touches on a much of this, The Re-Ordering of Everything.
Ken
Kien
2 years ago
Mike in Jubei observes: “So the point is e-learning is for “NOW�? but do we lose the possibility of going backward (history of thought development) for a specific subject when so much of e-learning and in many other areas as well is stored on the net.”
Perhaps “learning” really resides in the hearts and minds of the individuals making up a community, not in books or the Internet. It forms part of our “human capital” and is passed on from one generation to the next (which each generation adding to it) through culture. Human capital is resilient. Witness the remarkable post-war recovery of the German and Japanese economies, notwithstanding wholesale physical destruction.
Perhaps the interesting thing about e-learning is that it resides in the hearts and minds of a “virtual community” made up of individuals who are geographically dispersed. The human capital belonging to this community transcends state boundaries. If the physical infrastructure sustaining this virtual community were somehow destroyed, it would not take long for the infrastructure to be recreated, perhaps even improved.
Let us not think that the point of learning is the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. The point is love, compassion, kindness, gentleness, etc – i.e., regard for others, regard for future generations, and regard for the beauty of the earth and all creatures that reside on it.