Paradigm Shift

I’m sharing something I read today which is a great follow up to my earlier post – Online Teaching: Confronting Pedagogy.

Elliott Masie was asked by the Chronicle for Higher Education for a short comment on the effectiveness of online education. His response presents a vision that requires a shift in our mindsets about the classroom and teaching and learning.

“Online education in higher education has grown in deployment and acceptance – primarily on the value proposition that it can provide scale and flexibility.   In fact, in the early stages of online education, we are seeing too much modeling after the physical classroom.  We have tried to replicate the key elements of a traditional classroom – lecture, discussion, office hours and assignments.  This is predictable – as most new technologies build on the existing and familiar (early TV was Radio with Pictures).

But, the next stage of innovation and development will come as faculty and designers ask online education to accomplish things which could never happen in the classroom:

• Hyper-scaling:  Imagine if 100,000 students were using the same curriculum in classes around the world.  How might we ask them to massively collaborate, conduct hyper surveys and leverage the impact of 100,000 learners working on the same goals.

• e-Collaboration:  Imagine models of collaborative learning that leverage the ability of learners to work with live and asynchronous peers and experts in whole new ways – including inserting disruptive and challenging avatars into the discussion at key points.

• Class of One: Imagine using more detailed assessment and learning style technology to provide each learner with a “Class of One”, where every week they get a unique set of activities – targeted to their performance gaps and accomplishments.  Their roadmap would push contact, collaboration and assessment objects based on their individual and collective needs.

• Simulation Intensity:  Imagine how we might build large scale simulation environments so that learners would have the ability to “Fail Forward” with greater frequency.  If I am taking Economics 102, the simulator would give me and my peers intense practice moments – loaded with many failures – to deepen our comprehension and knowledge accomplishment.

We have an opportunity to now really design what online learning might be to serve the needs of our learners.  Let’s be brave!”