There is an academic and business movement that views the
growth of elearning and mlearning as sounding the death-knell for the
industrial-age classroom and its teaching model. This view is held both for
education in schools and colleges as well as business training. I don’t know if
we will see everyone transition to distance learning during this century, but I
can see that distance learning is becoming increasingly popular right now. This
wind of change that is gathering strength across business training is driven by
the opportunities offered by technological development. Computer-based training
in the workplace gave way to elearning across the Internet and elearning has
now morphed to mlearning, as unprecedented telecommunications access from
smartphones has engulfed and enabled the world. The single apprentice became
the class of students which became the virtual learning environment (VLE).
The classroom is dead; long live…hmm?
We are in need of a term for what the (brave) new world of
education and training has to offer. Massively Open Online Courses, or MOOCs,
have appeared over the past couple of years, with private companies and
traditional educational establishments offering courses to a mind-boggling
number of students at the same time; MITx
had a reported 120,000 students register and 10,000 work on an electronics
course. Personal Learning Environments (PLE) are defined by their ability to
let the student take charge of their curriculum. I would suggest that it won’t
be long before someone coins the iMOOC (Independent Massively Open Online
Courses) which will mix the two…the acronym even has a catchy ring to it.
Students will be able to pick and choose the components of a number of MOOCs to
create their own, personalised learning experience.
The problem is that we seem to be assuming that the
classroom is just a place where you learn a subject. From my school days I
recall learning (some) subject matter in a classroom, but I also think that I
learnt rather more about social interaction, formulating opinions in a dynamic,
interactive, real-time environment…a discussion with my mates, in old speak. In
adult training sessions I have taken and delivered, the discussions and
exercises were always the most interesting part of any course; though in the
latter students often cited the lunches as the best thing about the course.
So what do we need to learn from the classroom as we move
into uncharted educational waters?
- Learning works best in a social environment. There is a big push to emphasise the value of collaborative learning. Hardly new thinking. In 5th century BC Greece, Plato, Aristotle and their students worked in the Academy where they could discuss their ideas in order to challenge and refine their thinking and arguments. When working through an exercise team working engenders problem-solving skills and the social interaction that is the bedrock of any society, community or team.
- Students learn best from expert mentors. While I can read and learn from a text or by watching a video, the most effective learning is mentored by an expert. This is particularly the case for the student who is starting to feel lost. A good teacher can see who is struggling and intervenes before the student loses motivation, providing alternative thinking or examples.
- Students learn by asking questions. Student questioning, both of the teacher and the peer group, is critical to the formulation of new ideas and clarifying understanding.
- Students develop stronger memories by doing. Classroom exercises, be that in a school chemistry class, a university research lab, or a business training session on fire safety, cement a student’s understanding of a topic covered.
What do these classroom benefits mean for your distance
learning training design? The classroom is expensive, so just as books and
newspapers will inevitably move to electronic formats (in a hundred years
people will shake their heads when they talk about us killing trees to make
books) training, and possibly (to a lesser extent, because of a number of other
societal needs) statutory education, will move to distance learning based on
technology. If you want your distance learning to be more effective you should:
- Include social communications in all distance learning. I do not believe that MOOCs have fully come to terms with this yet. 10,000 interacting on Twitter? This would become a storm of one-liners where there is lots of talking and no communication. For those who are looking at a more manageable number (say 100 staff in an organisation) split the class into groups. Ten people can, just about, hold a conversation or maintain a thread. And Twitter is not the only option. If you are staying open or free, you may try Google Hangouts or something like that. If you have your own training environment you need to see how it can encourage social interaction through discussion forums, synchronous chat, microblogs or video discussions.
- Include mentor interaction. Where possible—and if it isn’t possible you had better set both student and organisational expectations accordingly—you should have an expert mentor available. This may just be for time periods, but that subject and training expertise can prove the difference between you training being an educational resource and an effective training course. Both have educational validity, but only one is a course. As a mentor one needs to engage with individual students. If you treat the group as an entity, rather than a group of individuals with individual needs, then you will lose some students along the way.
- Provide as many options to question as possible. Good training is a two-way process. There is instruction that provides base-level information but there is also investigation and discussion. Discussion may be synchronous, in a VLE format, or it may be asynchronous, through a Twitteresque platform or a discussion forum, but there has to be student-teacher, teacher-student, and student-student interaction, just as there is in a classroom. As a trainer, you must respond to questions quickly. Set a time where you answer questions that come up. If they require more than a text response then organise a Skype or Hangout chat or tutorial. Where possible encourage a community of practice, where students can answer each other’s questions and gain status or recognition for contributing to the community. This approach was adopted by MITx.
- Provide practical experiences (if practical). The somewhat maligned (by me) Learning Pyramid puts doing as one of the best ways of learning, and it is right. You have to insert practical sessions in your course. This may be a computer simulation or a directed task or a Hands-on-Lab, but you need them. Clearly there are limitations. If your training is on first aid I would not recommend that you direct your students to inflict and then dress a wound. But you can create a simulation where they have to identify the steps in the process. This is a realistic scenario, it is easy to see whether the student take the correct options and it can even be turned into a game, by setting a timer on the actions they need to select or complete. Just like classroom activities, you must provide feedback. This may be computer-generated or assessed by a trainer. Unless they get worthwhile responses they will be less likely to engage with subsequent exercises.
