FINALLY!! I’ve been working all semester to get a rise out of you people!! Overlooking the disconnect between “distance education” and “distant learning” — remember there is no such thing as distance learning and all education is at a distance — this is an excellent question.
From a Comment on “Organizer.”
I sometimes am trying to figure out, am I in a Distant Learning Class in the area of Education Technology or am I taking Philosophy 101?
One of the problems we face as distance educators and educational technology is dealing *first* with Education. When dealing with teachers in general, the challenge is to break them out of complacency and to challenge well established systems of belief which are antithetical to the deeper understandings necessary to adopt and adapt to the world of “distance education.” This is not a criticism but an acknowledgement that the theories and practices established over many years — sometimes decades — are well established and deeply imbedded. This is important because dealing with distance requires a shifting of philosophical under-pinnings from those well established paradigms.
We’ve been dealing with those as we go along, starting with the notion of what constitutes distance while we dealt with the tools needed to overcome it and the historical foundations of the field. We moved on to a detailed exposure to the various tools from the simple to the most complex and ending that module with some ideas on how they might be combined. That week wasn’t as effective as I might have hoped, but some units just aren’t. We’ve been addressing the role of teacher this week as we look at roles and practice and we’ll be going to the role of student and some of the theoretical foundations. In the last instructional module, we’ll be looking at the larger issues of assessment and research in educational environments before we finish up with the capstone projects.
The organization is actually fairly logical as we move from the foundations level, to the tool level, to the person level, to the system level, and then put it all into practice in the final module with your application of the knowledge during the last 3 weeks. At each step, during each week, I’ve given you a set of tasks to do. The tasks expose you to different aspects of the domain. What I have *not* done — and what a few of you find objectionable — is explain what it is I want you to learn. I appreciate that this violates several of your long-standing and well-established beliefs. It’s also a valid strategy and very effective for getting complacent students out of their comfort zones.
I will share an objective with you at this point:
The students will be exposed to, and be given practice in an online delivered environment that demonstrates the opportunities for consistent engagement with the content base. This will be accomplished by creating an online learning environment that engages the student several times a week for relatively short periods of time, by using a variety of tools and techniques to engage the students with the content, with each other, and with the instructor, and by demonstrating valid educational strategies that are not commonly used in classroom based environments.
One of those strategies is ‘learner centered design’ and another is ‘discovery or exploratory learning.’ Many of you are thrown off by the fact that I refuse to tell you what I expect you to learn because that violates your understanding of what a teacher does. But if I *were* to explain it — in detail and in advance — then you lose the opportunity to shape your own understanding in ways that are significant to you.
Rephrased - If I explain it to you, you begin to think like students and not like learners.
In a certain sense you *are* taking Philosophy 101 because learning to deal with these technologies requires you to reset a your understanding of what you believed education to be in order to be effective — not only online, but in every environment where education is at a distance.
And remember that all education is at a distance.
October 6th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
So basically, you are stating that all that “WONDERFUL” education stuff that Morehead has taught us has been CRAP?
October 6th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
No come one, it can’t all be crap, I paid almost $900 a course, surely crap doesn’t cost that much? Why is it that all classes lead back to Philosophy? Which by the way, wasn’t my favorite $900 class.
October 6th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Not at all.
I’m saying that there are no absolutes in education. Teaching is not about following a recipe. There are not magic bullets. What works for one situation is not appropriate for another. Fill in your own cliche here.
Most teacher educators have never dealt with distance and even most distance educators have not faced up to the reality of the philosophical underpinnings that we’re dealing with in this class. We *are* dealing with it and it’s, understandably, disconcerting.
So, debate me. Show me where I’m wrong. Construct your own knowledge from the content domain by engaging with me and your fellow students. You may convince me. I may convince you. We’ll all learn from it.
October 7th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
I don’t have a problem with discussing philosophy, because it is basic to everything in life. All teachers have dealt with it in their education classes and other subject areas as well. I admit that a lot of the philosophies out there are useless and boring, and I’ve done assignments with it that seemed pointless. I can, however, see how talking about what a teacher really is and does (especially now that we can speak from experience) can help us become better teachers and use this technology more effectively.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:19 am
I get so tired of hashing and re-hashing this same stuff over and over when it comes to educaton. My opinion of teaching is: it’s a “fly by the seat of your pants” occupation! There really are no guidelines on what works and what doesn’t because everyone is different. And I do believe in different learning styles because it has been proven to me on many different occassions with my students that students learn differently. This could be based on how they were “taught” to learn but none the less, they do learn by doing things differently. I have some students that learn by being actively involved and being tossed into the middle of a problem and working their way out by experimenting, etc. And then I have other students that that type of environment would cause them to jump off a bridge because they need more direction. It “IS” my job as a teacher to determine how my kids learn the best and work with them not the way “I” think they should learn the best!!!!!!