Contrast Table
This contrast table may oversimplify
and exaggerate to make a point. The contrasts are not always polar
opposites. Rote learning is not the opposite of problem solving.
The contrast is simply to indicate the kind of learning that should be
emphasized not the total elimination of rote and other traditional forms
of learning.
Highly individualized competition
does not seem to be consistent with today's emphasis on work teams and
group problem solving. Thus, the emphasis on cooperation and collaboration
within the group that competes against a real or imagined team of competitors.
Most college faculty would support
more emphasis on information age education but would be uncomfortable with
some implementations designed to achieve such goals. Going from the generalities
to the specifics is where the real work is. The devil is in the details.
A Vision is not an Agenda
The table indicates the kind
of value system and part of the vision that Dr. Bett would advocate.
It indicates a vision that would be promoted rather than a specific agenda.
What the school supports and how it supports it will largely depend on
what the faculty wants or can be inspired to develop. This is leadership
by shared values and common goals rather than by command. Richard Saul
Worman once defined learning as simply remembering what you are interested
in. Conversely, what you or any other student was not interested
in probably didn't stick. It was learned for the test and quickly
forgotten. Something similar to this applies here. Very little of lasting
value can be achieved if there is not across the board "buy in."
This is not a narrow technocratic
vision. For instance, collaborative learning is not technology dependent
-- Very few methods of teaching are.
Technology Changes the Equation
What technology does, however,
is change the equation. Many approaches to education have been abandoned
in the past because they were too costly and administratively inconvenient.
These can now be re-evaluated in terms of the tools that are now available.
What was "unmanageable" before may now be manageable. What was prohibitively
expensive, may now be affordable. What was utopian may now be practical.
The availability of emerging
technologies changes the ranking of cost/effective approaches to the task
of providing appropriate educational opportunities. The new order includes
the potential to put a greater emphasis on customer service and client
satisfaction - i.e., the university can be more student oriented and student
centered without increasing costs.
-
The new approach has the potential
to change student attitudes toward subjects from
hurdles to be jumped to
doors to be opened and invitations
to join the community of scholars.
The approach also has the potential to...
reinstill a sense of wonder and curiosity
focus attention on important questions
rather than textbook answers
Desired Outcome: A Self
Directed Learner
The concept of a self directed
learner and independent scholar have been around for some time. (M.
Knowles, ...) They are rarely stated as the goal of a liberal education
but the emphasis on the ability to reason suggests that it is certainly
part of the earlier vision. The issue in distance learning is whether
or not the kind of value shift that is required can be achieved in remote,
isolated, asynchronous interaction. I think it can.
The goal of developing a self
directed learner - one who continues to set his or her own learning goals
- is quite different from the traditional approach to content oriented
educational objectives. The content goal is still there but it is
no longer the sole focus.
Active learning may be a hard
sell particularly to students who have become acustomed to letting the
teacher set the goals and do the research. An article in the June,
1999 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education provides anecdotal evidence
that many students do not want to take responsibility for their own learning
beyond taking lecture notes. They want to be passively "infotained".
Active learning takes a lot more time and effort.
TOC
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It would take at least another
six pages to unpack the concepts found in the contrast table. For
a further development of these ideas, see Dr. Bett's chapters in the new
book from Stylus Publishing, Internet Based Learning, 1998.
