And - how can technology be leveraged to enhance online learning?
This particular question is really at the center of my own hesitation and discomfort with on-line learning. As a classroom teacher, I am accustomed to regular, personal contact with students, in which tone, body language and eye contact make communication more tangible and emotionally based. This environment is physically exhausting to me, but I have grown to believe it is the best or only way to teach... that is, until I encountered an actual online learning habitat this summer. In F2F learning, the teacher/student experience is interactive and immediate, but is also fleeting, fast, and cursory. Online learning can provide more individualized learning and more inquiry at a slower, more flexible pace... but only for really engaged students and teachers. One of the problems with online learning is that is can be wonderful for people who are self motivated and disciplined to work alone, but may be isolating and frustrating for people who need immediate feedback and connection to others "live" to experience effective problem solving.
Technology can help aid online learners who experience this isolation, however. One of the things I believe as a F2F teacher I do effectively is what Prof. Sam Wineburg (Stanford University) calls modelling "historical thinking" - that is, modelling the ways of reading and researching common to the discipline live in front of the class. This week I was introduced to three systems that may help online learners experience this, or at least feel more "connected" to teachers and students. First, I used Skype for the first time, to talk to a college friend living in Australia, and even the voice only option (I had a camera but she didn't) was immediately comforting and allowed for a vibrant real-time conversation. Online learners can schedule discussions with study groups, peers or teachers using Skype to break out of isolated learning. Second, I accessed a free trial of Elluminate software and saw that it is a more formal way to web/video conference with students and could be a part of an online course when a hybrid option isn't a workable solution for face to face time. When I experimented with the Elluminate software, I recognized that I had seen it before - when I had experienced a webinar earlier this year.
This leads me to my third idea - that webinars as a component of online learning can be extremely beneficial to the student/teacher relationship. I believe that a critique of webinars was originally a required part of my elearning class, but I think it was dropped... I did, however, take a few webinars recently just to experience them and will share some thoughts. The webinar using Elluninate was in May, and it was put on by a text publisher and featured the author of the book discussing the course the book supported. My school is adding that class this year, so I logged in and joined teachers across the nation in listening, learning, and discussing the points the author brought up. It lasted over an hour and was actually a very rewarding experience - and distilled a lot of information to me in a short amount of time. Likewise, a webinar I watched on http://www.slideshare.net/ about "what is instructional design?", which logged in at 16 minutes, and was a great overview of the field using learning theory, social context and design as a 3-legged triangle metaphor. The webinar advocated the business solution aspect of instructional design, but did not ignore the good pedagogy that supports real learning. The problem with this webinar, and the last one I looked at ("elearning" on the Adobe website") is that they were static and video format, so students could not interact with the presenter. That makes them more like class lectures than true webinar experiences. Regardless, technology can help to integrate learners in online classes and can provide some of the benefits of F2F for elearning situations.
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