I don’t know about you, but I have always found the classroom and the social interaction between a teacher and students a more satisfying experience than the typical e-learning course. And, most people I talk to agree. I enjoyed the physical activity of going to the classroom, chatting with fellow students and anticipating what the teacher would do.
Don’t get me wrong. The classroom can be a boring place. Teachers regularly move at their pace, not that of the student, and present concepts that are either way too simple or way too hard. Some students dominate the classroom or disrupt it.
Even so, the experience is often better than what is offered in online course These are so well designed and present everything in such a linear way that they become downright boring. A friend of mine equates the classroom to two-lane country roads that offer a feast for the eye – nice views, villages and farms, crazy turns and twists and lots of excitement. E-learning is more like the interstate highway – straight and true, passing through often unvaried terrain, and similarly boring.
Yet, I think there are ways to use technology to make course content more exciting and diverse. So far, course developers have translated what they think happens in the classroom – the transfer of information — into electrons. What they get wrong is what they think happens in the classroom. Not a whole lot of information gets passed along in a classroom – that happens in the readings, labs and homework. What happens in the class are the social and networking opportunities that are missing from the online learning experience. Teachers answer questions and clarify concepts. If you observe a high school math class, at least half of the time is used in taking roll, opening books, passing homework in to the teacher or back from the teacher, answering questions about homework or in discussion. There are only a few minutes of actual new content presented.
Is there any way the online environment can duplicate this process or even make it better?
The Internet gives us so much power that we are just starting to understand how to use it well for learning applications. And, while we don’t have to duplicate the classroom environment, here are a few things that can be done to most online classes to make them more effective:
- Build courses within a context. I know I learn best when material is presented within some application that I can relate to and understand. Calculus started to make sense to me when a teacher showed me that I could figure out how much water there was in a butterfly-shaped swimming pool by using some of the concepts derived from calculus. Classes can be built around a scenario or a question that gets the student involved in discovering the answer in an active way. Providing answers is the linear and passive way and rarely leads to real learning. I firmly believe we only really learn when we have to do something that requires some knowledge we don’t have. A few students could be involved in seeking the answer to a question, or each student could have something to find and present to the class to stimulate discussion. Classes could be prefaced with a story that puts the events and learning into a framework.
- Use the power of the Internet to get people involved with each other. Every class should offer a way to network with others taking the same class. There can be instant messaging or there can be a chat room that sits beside the content but is easily accessed. Lack of interaction and the ability to share experiences is most often the reason why people say they don’t like online learning. For most of us, learning takes place in casual conversation, over a coffee or beer or in a meeting. There needs to be a way to give and receive feedback from an instructor or coach. Some classes might find synchronous communication effective and others asynchronous better. The most important thing is to make sure that students get involved with each other and that passive students are asked questions or invited to participate by the class facilitator or instructor.
- Let the student go off on a tangent by building in lots of hyperlinks to things not directly relevant to the main content. For example, in a class on genealogy there could be links to genetics or links to articles about inherited characteristics. With the techniques of windows-in-windows the student could still remain attached to the main content. This ability to go down unusual roads adds richness and diversity to the whole learning experience. And the power of bookmarks and links gives the Internet a unique advantage over any other medium. Most of us want to learn – not just to digest a bunch of information or data. It seems like most e-learning course builders find it a lot easier to plow straight ahead rather to follow the contour of the material they are presenting. As each student can move through the course at their own pace, taking these side journeys can be rewarding and motivating. Students could be asked to provide summaries of what they learned.
- Use the power of computing and the Internet to engage students in trying out the concepts and ideas presented. Chemistry classes can build-in online labs, electronics classes can build-in circuit simulators, and history classes could let a student play a role in a simulated event. The possibilities here are endless and would truly raise online learning above what can be done in the classroom. The power of simulation is just beginning to become possible on home computers, but the military has been using simulation to teach pilots and submariners for decades. Simulation is probably the most effective way to teach that there is because it is almost identical with actually doing it. Course developers need to focus on adding this, even in bits and pieces, to the classes they develop.
What makes learning effective is involvement and motivation. By adding context and interaction you raise involvement and by using simulations and links you create motivation and excitement. The concepts and ideas I have outlined are far from new or original, but they need to be incorporated into the new classes that are being developed.
