Skip to main content

Are There Limits to the Affordances of Online Learning?

 

Have you ever used online learning to achieve your potential and realize your own capacities?

Even with almost 20 years of experience in corporate training design and consultation, particularly in eLearning, I can't say that I have personally utilized online learning to achieve a long-term learning goal focused on self-improvement or self-advancement that was self-initiated. For example, I recently assumed the role of product owner in Dell's Education Services department. This week, a group of us are attending online, synchronous certification training, but this was a business requirement. So while it does represent a self-advancement opportunity, it wasn't one that I was internally motivated to pursue.

Yet, I consider myself an avid online learner. Much of that comes in the form of just-in-time learning to address a particular short-term goal. I've watched YouTube videos to repair our dishwasher and stop our car from honking continuously after I replaced the battery, consulted herpetology and etymology sites to identify backyard bugs and snakes (and whether I should run inside and close the windows), and referenced 'best of' lists as I wandered aimlessly down endless isles of wine. I find that this sort of informal, motivated learning is perfectly suited to easily accessible online, mobile platforms.


I do utilize sites like Khan Academy and LinkedIn Learning, but not for realizing my personal potential. Rather, I usually visit these sites as refresher opportunities before I help my daughters with their math homework (and I am nearing the end of my ability to keep up). I may have watched enough videos to pass the Khan Academy Algebra 1 test, but that wasn't the purpose of my inquiries. Maybe I will identify a learning path that I would be interested in completing, and see how effective it is at some point.
I am taking a coding class this semester and we are using several online sites for code training. They have been surprisingly helpful so far. Enough so that perhaps by the end of the semester, I will have expanded my expectations about the extent of the possibilities of online learning. I will keep you updated!





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is Authentic Instruction a Key Element to Successful Online Learning?

Our development as teachers consists of a process of self-awareness and acceptance, coming to see that we cannot be all things the Good Teacher is expected to be, and understanding that who we are as human beings is at the core of becoming an authentic teacher.   -- Patricia Cranton      What the late Patricia Cranton, a key contributor to the development of  transformative learning theory (and a Teachers College professor), is describing is a journey of personal discovery that directly impacts the relationship between teachers and students. The result is a re-negotiation of the power balance within the learning environment and a recognition that the classroom, real or virtual, is a supportive, communal learning space where everyone can contribute and unique knowledge can be constructed through these social exchanges.      This type of supportive environment, as Lee et al. (2011) describes, is a key element in the optimization of studen...

Imagined Worlds: Education in the Year 2045

...the first task of futures research must necessarily be to critique the assumption that there is an inevitable future to which we must simply adapt or resist. Keri Facer and Richard Sandford’s 2010 article exploring the possible directions education might take 25 years into the future offers both an interesting look forward as well as a fascinating look back to see what possible worlds were in the minds of researchers a decade ago. The article is an informative piece of educational prognostication. Many of the trends and future challenges the authors identified have emerged as predicted - even the challenge of a post-crisis education dictated by a pandemic (that’s pretty specific!).😷 What really impressed me was the litany of critical insights and evaluative frameworks the authors provided to consider the possible futures of education intertwined with technology.  As the opening quote observes, when considering a future for education, particularly when it’s framed through the l...

Technology or Humans: Who's Pulling the Strings?

  Are we compelled to walk through the doors technology opens, or is technology a tool we use to build the doors we want to walk through?  Do we control technology or does it control us? Does technology change us or reflect us? Or both?  The debate over whether technologies emerge from complex cultural dynamics, or define and continuously shape those dynamics has been on-going for nearly a century with no signs of resolution, and for good reason. Transistor-based technologies are ubiquitous within our culture and have integrated themselves so quickly into our lives, it's hard to see them as anything but a force moving according to its own inscrutable designs. It sweeps us along like a digital king tide upending our social conventions and reshaping the rules of our personal relationships while we struggle to stay afloat.  If these technologies are so uncontrollable and relentless and leave us powerless to resist their impact, do we really want them in our schools? Sha...