Will learners soon dictate their learning qualifications?

That option could soon be coming our way if universities follow the research of Philip Duchastel, Nova Southeastern University. He says that university education needs to adapt to the new eLearning technology in a number of ways.

Instead of the traditional approach, he proposes a new learning model that includes:

1. Students who define and pursue specific learning goals as opposed to learning explicit content such as from a textbook
2. University course creators who accept diversity of outcomes as opposed to demanding common learning results
3. Students who produce their own researched knowledge rather than the regurgitation of course content
4. Evaluation tasks that demonstrate knowledge application as opposed to knowledge assimilation based on routine course tests
5. Students who can demonstrate they can build learning teams (collaborative learning) as opposed to exclusive individual learning
6. Universities actively encouraging global communities (virtual scientific communities) made possible by internet technology

“This new interactive model of learning is most suitable to online education. The explosion in information makes ‘creating knowledge’ by learners themselves more important than the traditional imparting of knowledge by instructors, whether in the classroom or elsewhere,” he says.

An online model of learning based around discovery learning removes the onus on course leaders or tutors to define what are legitimate knowledge and approved sources. The students working in collaborative teams would have to provide the evidence that their arguments (presentations of information) come from legitimate sources. And, that the conclusions drawn from their research are logical given the evidence they have gathered.

Checks and balances
There are several checks and balances inherent in this model of learning.

1. First, there is the learning team. The online environment allows some quite rigorous debate to take place because there is no body language involved to skew the frankness, unless it’s taking place in a video format (like Skype groups). Team members will understand that allowing someone to come up with poor research will not aid their case. They will want to challenge and analyze the research themselves, and will follow-up anything that could be suspect.

2. Second, the students’ evidence of success is not so much on the amount of content or evidence they have gathered, but the conclusions they have drawn from the evidence or research. Any tutor worth their degree will be able to sit through a presentation and discern whether the evidence is sufficient and whether the conclusions drawn are valid. Very little marking involved.

Tutors would become brainstorm leaders and guides when groups were stuck. They would teach critical thinking skills rather than facts that students could find out anyway. Their weekly (online or face-to-face) tutorials could be model presentations of their own research, and their teaching goals would be to show how they applied scientific method to ascertaining the credibility of the evidence.

The issue of credibility of research and information is a valid one. We just have to look at the victims of online hoaxes to know that if everything looks legitimate we are likely to accept that it is. We have only to read about ‘rogue investors’ to realise that while everything looks like we would expect, we will overlook indications of wrong doing or ‘tall stories’. We also have to quickly ascertain what is purely for entertainment and what is worth giving time to. Critical thinking is a skill most needed today, online or off.

Strange bedfellow as it is, I would propose that intuition is also a human quality that deserves more credit in the way we evaluate knowledge. It can let us down badly, because we rarely want to disbelieve old knowledge or be forced to take on new knowledge that lies contrary to what we ‘know to be true’. However, the greatest advances in science have come from the scientists, explorers and astronomers who trusted their intuition and refused to be bound by old knowledge. They took a very little new knowledge (observation) and allowed their intuition to move them forward into the unknown. Intuition is to be encouraged in our new learners.

I believe the vast knowledge library provided to us through the internet will encourage the world to take dynamic strides into a new way of living, if we are prepared to accept it. What needs to happen is that the old way of judging a student’s worth, through his/her accurate regurgitation of theory from old books, has to change. And it has to change whether the course of study is provided online or off.

Online Nation, a 2006 report by Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, looked at ‘Five Years of Growth in Online Learning’. The authors say that in the US about one-third of higher education institutions account for three-quarters of all online enrolments. “Future growth will come predominately from these and similar institutions as they add new programs and grow existing ones.”

These figures seem to imply that the early adopters of online (eLearning) have become the industry giants among universities. However, how are they taking hold of the opportunities that eLearning provides, rather than turning old books into online copy, is unclear. Online courses need to include strategies that hook students in. The learners must become active partners in the learning process rather than empty-vessels-that-must-be-filled.

Online Nation describes the barriers to universities taking on online courses as:
1. Cost (both cost to develop online courses and the costs to deliver them)
2. Lower retention rates for online
3. That students need more discipline to succeed in online courses
4. Whether online degrees will be acceptable in the job market
5. The level of acceptance of online instruction by faculty members

Allen and Seaman say: “it is not clear whether these are long-standing or more recent concerns, but survey responses suggest that these concerns are likely factors that have kept them (non-engaged universities) from introducing any online offerings.”

The first objection has largely been addressed by increasingly clever software. The second and third need a change of attitude about what learning is, as discussed in this article. The last two objections sound like pure reluctance to let go of what we currently ‘know to be true’.

H Sylvawood

Bringing eLearning into your training

Cost has been a prohibiting factor when businesses consider the possibility of adding or shifting training into the realm of eLearning. Creating the content, images, written maaterial, videos, audios - it just seems all too much. Then, of course there is adding the cost of the Learning Management System (LMS) to record the student/learner results and the horrendous cost of the software to bring it all together.

However, the news is not all bad. There are many tools today that have been designed to be low cost, or existing tools that have been adapted by clever people to create eLearning design opportunities. Besides, the users and creators of eLearning have realised that the delivery has to change to meet the emerging needs of the new learner. No longer are learners happy with information delivered to them as if they were empty vessels ready to be filled with all they need to know. It doesn't matter how whizz-bang the delivery, they want the chance to contribute/participate in the learning. In other words they want to feed back information.

It's all this social media they've been involved with since teenage years!

That new socialisation is forcing some changes in the way eLearning is created. First: it needs to include some measure of social media (wikis, facebook pages for comments, forums or chatrooms) where the learning is critiqued; second: it needs to be cheap and adaptable for the changes that will inevitably happen in such a dynamic environment.

In the past the reaction has been for software to integrate refinements into a larger and larger and more expensive package. And many of the refinements were not required by most of the users. So it was refreshing when I uncovered the following blog site:

More Information


It's full of ideas and options for creating cost-effective eLearning and learning games - the software, how to adapt existing commonly-used software, where to get royalty-free images, how to create storyboards and access templates. As you are already reading a blog, you probably understand the power of social media, so your next step is to start thinking outside the box and making a plan to integrate it into your training.

I will certainly be sharing the Free-eLearning link above with the course creators on our community of eLearning site eBrainz.net.

A couple of interesting books I have been reading that might give you counter-arguments for detractors from online learning are:
1. Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth - Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning. Jane focusses on training for soft-skills and business skills, but mentions many that could be transferred to more practical learning.
2. The New Social Learning by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner - A Guide to Transforming Organisations Through Social Media. This book includes actual answers for the objections that might be raised to reject eLearning and including social media in online courses.

So now you have all the tools to make a change in your delivery of learning. I'd love to hear how you succeed!

Is it worth training reluctant learners?

I don’t think there is a hard rule about that … it really depends on what causes the learner’s reluctance.

If they're reluctant because they’re afraid that they won’t cope with the course, then some confidence building with pre-course material and tutor-to-trainee work can certainly engage them in further studies.

If they just can’t be bothered, but they have to do it for money, because the boss says so, or it keeps them in a job, then it may not be worth the energy you’ll need to spend to keep them focused. You would be better advised to concentrate on the ‘reluctant-because-they’re-afraid’ learners.

Having said all that, sometimes you just can’t tell ahead of the course. One course we trialled included some beginner trainees. When they arrived, they barely said anything; they pulled down their beanies and avoided eye contact at all costs.

The course was full of experiential activities as well as the tutor-directed learning that had to be done for them to learn enough to achieve the performance criteria. The young men played the games, they were forced to join groups and discuss topics, they were forced to lead groups and report back findings. At the end of the course (3 blocks of 2 days) they stood up at the front and delivered a report using presentation aids on a production issue they had researched. It was a major triumph.

One of the tutors knew their manager well and asked how they’d gone since they'd returned to the worksite. The ‘boss’ was delighted to report how much they engaged in work meetings. They asked questions and wanted to know “why?” This manager was not at all fazed by their new-found confidence. He saw it as a plus for the organization because these young men are likely to continue to think laterally and their asking ‘why?” will lead to improvements on site.

So perhaps the answer to the question: “Is it worth training reluctant learners?” is: “It depends on the course and the potential of the trainees.” And that potential you don’t get to see until they’re being forced to move out of their comfort-zone.