The Art of Knowledge

 
First Search, First Page - Elearning - A New Role 2003


I threw in "New in Elearning" in google and got this page. Ironically enough it is a little dated. It has some decent things to say about the importance of human interaction with any learning system.

Think to yourself about what aspect of the human interaction causes a system to be stronger and what about them causes a system to be weaker.

Stronger -

Human deduction and reasoning allows for logic gaps to be bridged

Non-autonomous recognition of issues

Personable interaction with learner can cause positive motivational relationship

Growth

Weaker -

Human error

Inability to give accurate non-subjective reports

Variable lessons and deliveries cause inexplicable curves of progress and failure

Personable interaction with learner can cause negative motivational relationship

There are many others but those just came off the top of my head. I don't think the teacher should be taken out of the picture, and I'm not a huge proponent as of yet to the "guide" theory. I believe human interaction is vital to educate other humans. The key is that the metrics have to match up so that skills and processes can be assessed on the same playing field.

Here are some interesting excerpts from the article.

Learning is social. People learn from one another. The Internet turbocharged learning because it brings people together.

I like this allot. People always assume the Internet is so great because of the amount of information that it has on it. The Internet does have googolplexes of data. It has so much that there is no way to even get your mind around it. Despite that fact I don't believe that that is what wholly brings people to their computers for 4 hours a day. What attracts people to the Internet are two things. One is speed of processes. And two, and most important, are other people. You looked out on the Internet in 1998 and it was nice. There were websites. You could pay a bill. Maybe jump on a message board that was poorly thought out and add your two cents. And most importantly there was email. Now you have blogs, and IM, and cell phones that can call people anywhere at any time via online info. You have away messages that pinpoint where people are at all times. You have a plethora of human interactive features and that's what brought people to the Internet as a way of life, the human interaction. The incestuous need to want to be around people. The desire to be human is what the Internet capitalizes on best.

Interaction among students, between facilitator and learners, and between the learners and the learning materials, (including the larger community on the WWW) as managed by the instructor makes or breaks the class.

There's too much focus on the class in this statement. The class no longer exists. What's important is the skill attained and the ability to track the processes users used to attain it and then streamline that for later use and improvement.

Use Interaction to Motivate, Engage, and Involve Learners Facilitating Web-based training is like being the host of a very lively talk show. It is your job to keep your viewers motivated, engaged and involved....Engage Learners Engage learners by asking them to participate verbally and intellectually. As a facilitator, the easiest way to engage students is to ask direct questions frequently. Ask learners to comment on a presentation, share their observations, or answer a direct question. Turn the tables by encouraging students to initiate questions to the instructor, as well as to other learners.

These are excellent practices I'm sure. There's no doubt that these are modern and have helped during the late 90's bloom a more organic learning atmosphere. But this is not the future. The future is more rigor surrounded by a path based on talent. We need to stop thinking in terms of 'classes', and 'teachers', and 'students'. Turn your attention towards collaborative goals forcing people into opportunities to learn.

Link posted by JVMM : 5:24 PM