What he said
Amen to what AKMA says about teaching getting in the way of learning.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Amen to what AKMA says about teaching getting in the way of learning.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
1 Comment
nichthus commented on 15 October 2007:Hi Mary,
I wanted to post this below AKMA's original post, but I can't find any 'comment' option. So much for me being an e-learning specialist...
I appreciate AKMAs sentiments, but I can't help voicing the objections that students pay tuition for structured learning experiences, and that AKMA has generalised a somewhat cynical view of formal education.
Firstly, our students are self-selecting, and they choose formal education environments - and, on the whole, they perceive good value. Not all students need to be coaxed through the abbatoir either; in my own experience the average student has been a 'joyful journeyer' through a carefully designed series of learning experiences.
Further, formal education does not stop exploration, invention, or discovery. Nothing stops a student from exercising their curiosity as they study, or from exploring topics of interest further. The tension is to what extent we as tertiary educators should offer the whole experience, rather than focusing on the contribution we ourselves can make to a student's individual lifelong learning journey.
The problem with any educational utopia is that all students are very different and educational processes are extremely complex. Experiments in 'graduated complexity', without a corresponding increase in personalised facilitation and coaching, are inevitably wooden and unsatisfactory. The ideal is probably something akin to Oxbridge (or AKMAs home schooling), but who could afford to offer it on the scale we already work to...? The best examples of what AKMA describes already take place within classroom environments (he will find Ecto of interest!) so progress is being made but the element of teaching still remains.
For further thoughts -
http://ebcnzer.blogspot.com...
Heading "Why not lecture?"
http://ebcnzer.blogspot.com...
Heading "ECAR study of undergraduates 2007", with links.
A recent post by Leigh Blackall, who is also wrestling with what it means to be a teacher (Leigh has similar concerns to AKMA) can be found at http://learnonline.wordpres...
(Note particularly comments)
End soapbox!
Greetings from Down Under,
Mark.