Cindy on her soapbox | Putting the "F" in E-Learning

I remember watching the 2009 Star Trek movie and thinking how brilliant it was to see the younger students learning in their own pods-each student benefiting from an advanced teaching method customized to meet their individual learning needs.

Unfortunately today’s classroom teaching is very linear: teach this, learn this, teach that, and learn that. But what happens when a child is too advanced for the linear course? Well, one of two things will happen, children will either 1. Get noticed and guided individually or 2. Children will get overlooked and act out. I predict the same outcome for a child struggling with the course.

Personally, I look forward to when e-learning catches up with the Next Generation. In order for e-learning to be an effective learning tool the software must cater to the strengths and weaknesses of its user. For example, if I were taking an online course on Photoshop and was doing particularly well, it wouldn’t be necessary for me to click through long drawn out theories and tutorials. Instead, I’d benefit from customization, controlling the depth of information at the level I required.

Too often, in the past, I enrolled in e-courses and found that the information was too familiar; it was as though the curriculum designer doubted that I even held the capacity to turn on my computer. Click here, go there, move your mouse and click on the left mouse button. Not only did I find that annoying, but I couldn’t skip through the program without picking up all of the laid out bread crumbs.

Maybe in the year 2077 our children’s, children will look back at our education model and laugh at how unsophisticated it was. But…for now, I’ll just continue to click on the next button, and go at the pace of my Professor.

Stepping down from my soapbox,

Cindy

Before stepping off my soapbox – Why is it that the first day of class is only used as an introduction and a chance to pick up papers? I paid for this – so teach me! Let’s get down to learning!

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