Are you willing to pass-up e-learning?
There are plenty of doubters about e-learning and e-training. You hear them all the time saying “we are not there yet”. They allude to lack of bandwidth, willingness to go study from a screen, and barriers to communication. I do not argue those things aren’t true. I would even add a few things to that list such as lower then expected enrollments and higher than expected dropout rates. Yet, we still need to prepare for the new reality.
Think where you and your organization want to be two to five years from now. How competitive do you want to be? Do you really think you can get there without e-learning or e-training? Today I heard that there are students, including, some medical students, that have gone almost entirely digital. These products of the digital age think different, acts different, learn different. If this is true about some medical students today, it will be a trend, if not a reality, two to three years from now almost everywhere.
Based on the above, are you willing to pass up e-learning? If so, what will you use to reach and teach and train these digitally minded individuals? I suggest we should move with care but do so with urgency, developing learning approaches and anticipating the technical trends for 2 to 5 years from now. While this is a challenge, weigh the alternatives and decide if passing up e-learning and e-training is something you can afford.
posted by Gray Harriman @ 10:07 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I read a blog about the trend for students at all levels becoming e-learners. Researching, training, reading, comprehension, and communication are all becoming transmitted online. As a classroom teacher, I find it fairly difficult to deal with the reality that I will one day be teaching students from my home computer. Of course, at that time, my home computer will be equipped with the latest video cam and interactive software to communicate with my students at the speed of a cable modem.
As a Technology Education teacher, I feel that I lack training with all of these new communication tools. It is extremely difficult today to keep up with all of the new updates for my own software and new machines. Our contracts with our drafting software changes on an annual basis. The newest features from 2007 I have yet found time to learn. At the end of the summer when things finally calm down I’ll have a couple of weeks to learn the updates. One week after, the technicians will most likely install version 2008 in our labs.
I find the same frustrations to be true with the e-learner. I need to find the time and programs so that I can be trained in these new technologies. I have bairly been keeping up with my current online course. How does everyone find the time to balance teaching their own classes with learning these new methods?
So, the gentleman’s question about whether or not I’ll become educated in teaching online - my answer to him is yes. I hope to find a balance to update myself in both my current curriculum and that of the future. All teachers in every subject should eventually be able to keep up with all of th newest technologies to not only teach but also reach our students.
In spite of rapid changes in technology there are still teachers who doubt e-learning and e-training as if it were a passing fad. Instead of taking the time to understand the e-learning environment, teachers complain about barriers to e-learning in terms of its ability to proximate the classroom. Some teachers focus on the economics of e-learning and are so determined to prove that there is a need for f2f delivery that they hardly give e-learning a positive thought or a stretch of the imagination. However, if teachers have biases or don’t know how to integrate technology into their teaching, it becomes harder to engaging digital minds. E-learning calls for creative teaching and more time to investigate how students learn. Some teachers who have been teaching their courses for years using obsolete technology might not see the need to change if they are achieving their lesson objectives; however, what matters, is how many teachers are matching their teaching strategies with the learning styles of the digital generation. Are you willing to pass-up e-learning?
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