Stephen Downes
Stephen's Web
Long Live Instructor-Led Learning
Saul Carliner,
eLearn Magazine, March 30, 2009.
For the record, I agree with Saul Carliner: instructor-led training is not on the verge of disappearing, and will still be around in 2019. But not for the reasons he cites. He suggests that informal learning will remain weak because (a) it is sparodic, and (b) it might be inaccurate. So, at best, we'll see a sift to online classrooms, not informal learning. Of course, like all things, it depends on how you count it. As I write at this very moment, informal learning has vastly outpaced formal learning. The evidence lies in billions of web pages being created and read every day. This is data not refuted by surveys of students or of five (count 'em, five!) bloggers. Bad data leads to bad predictions. Yes, instructor-led training will hang around, because people change slowly. That's all. More responses to Carliner from Harold Jarche and Tony Karrer.
Comments
Re: Long Live Instructor-Led Learning
All said and done nicely, I feel that in the light of the status of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) world-wide, it would be befitting if its is captioned "Distance Educators are dying and Long Live Instructor-Led Learning", as still, in vast majority of cases, the growth and contributions of Distance Educators is monitored by the "experts from the formal system" (FSE). These FSE has little or no understanding of ODL. That invariably propels Distance Educators to project themselves as experts of their parent discipline and not that of the system and discipline of ODL. The conflict between parent discipline and professional discipline is so harsh that probably has deterred even vast majority of Distance Educators even in IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University) to refer area of specilisation as their parent discipline and not professional discipline, ODL. Hence the caption Distance Educators are dying and Long Live Instructor-Led Learning" II serious thinking is required to create consitions for the growth of distance Educators [Comment]
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Re: Long Live Instructor-Led Learning
Hear, hear! [Comment]
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Re: Long Live Instructor-Led Learning
Saul Carliner has got it totally right. The problem with informal learning is that the informal learner's zone of proximal development is mostly decided by the informal learner - that is to say, from their state of ignorance they plan their own progressions. Their impression of mastery is precisely just that: an impression. Of course if you are learning something in a cognate area this is not a problem. The c sharp expert can quite correctly and efficiently describe the stages necessary to become proficient at java. But what about becoming proficient at radiography, or chinese or literary criticism? How can s/he possibly know what are the stages necessary? What are the blind alleys?
And also, deep learning is essentially a narrative of progression. If learning is only understood as a sequence of sudden just-in-time "hits" - it is true that a kind of instrumental learning will occur, but nothing deep, broad, awe-inspiring and rich. This is the beauty of having a great tutor. A person who can intuit your (or your class's) Zone of Proximal Development - who has some intuitive sense of your own darknesses (a term I prefer to Laurillard's over schematic "misconception"s) is an extraordinary resource.
Also, in a good online course, the role of the tutor is so important - in that they can set the tone for the interactions that take place. An environment that genuinely becomes a "learning" environment - in my experience - arises through the interactions between the tutor and the most active students.
But of course - webpages and blogs are good - but they are primarily for learners who are essentially supplementing a well established versed-ness in their field. For instance I would not need a tutor to get from Actionscript 2 (where I currently am) to actionscript 3. However, I would need a tutor to learn Arabic. Once of course I am upper-intermediate in Arabic - I will again - no longer need a tutor. But I might need a tutor to give me motivation to continue studying.
And this is the ultimate problem: instructorlessness implies a variable which is taken for granted: motivation. But that won't always be there. And to transmit motivation - is to transmit the core values and joy of your own area. Transmitting the beauty of equations, or of elegant code, or of classical chinese poems - is something best done by the voice of a living person with whom you have continuous and repeated interactions.
steve [Comment]
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Re: Long Live Instructor-Led Learning
Stiv writes as if the 'competition' for instructor-led learning is informal learning. This is not the case. There is all manner of formal learning on offer which is not instructor-led. I design some of it as my day job! [Comment]
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Re: Long Live Instructor-Led Learning
Karyn
It was Stephen who made the original opposition between instructor-led vs informal - not me.
But there are problems with instructorless formal learning. Only a sensitive mature and skilful instructor knows how to guide weaker and less motivated students through a complex and rich learning journey. If having difficulty with the instructorless materials you design - to whom do they turn? The weaker ones probably to peers. And this could indeed be effective. But only to a point. A peer's advice would always (obviously) peer-to-a-peer - they will not be looking at the learning from the standpoint of the destination (mastery) just from that of fellow-travelling (and at its worst could be the blind leading the blind!). And as for the less motivated - well they wouldn't have even asked their peers anyway.
Moreover, the lack of an instructor means the lack of narrative glue in a learning journey. Its rather like an ipod playlist of one hit wonders as opposed to a chronological sequence of a major artist. Sure some one hit wonders are marvellous - (from my own ipod - "Sleeping Satellite" - Tasmin Archer, "Video Killed the Radio Star" - Buggles, "I Don't Care" - Transvision Vamp) - but if you wanted to learn about making great music - those wouldn't teach you anything because there is no narrative of progression. If on the ohter hand you had the greatest hits of Bob Dylan - you have his derivative early period, the political phase, the experimentation in "another side", then the big three albums, then the flirtation with country, then the awful early seventies stuff, and then the return to form with Blood on the Tracks. Watching that progression you learn about influences, experimentations, things that worked, things that didn't. In other words, a narrative makes learning inevitable. [Comment]
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Re: Long Live Instructor-Led Learning
We are speaking as if this were and either or proposition. That might be so if all there were to teaching and learning is what is described in Bloom's Taxonomy of Objectives in the Cognitive Domain as Knowledge and Comprehension. Of course there's much more.
I see no good reason why the self-directed learner cannot consult the many established curricula and follow one or the other of them verbatim or tweak it as they will. This is not secret knowledge.
However, even the self-directed learner might find it necessary or more efficient to interact with an experienced teacher and other students in pursuit of those higher level objectives (application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation). This is the point at which self-direction can falter.
I consider it a great waste of scarce and precious resources to see college professors pursuing low level objectives that most students can achieve on their own. Those college professors should be more fully engaged in the greater challenges of teaching and learning. We all, students and professors, need to kick it up a notch or two.
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