Learning is Still the Same
January 26, 2010
People get confused by technology especially when that technology is applied to learning.
I am planning a new kind of first grade these days and was asked recently if what I was planning to do relied on new technology in an important way. I responded that Plato suggested building what I will be building, more or less. What has technology to do with learning?
The Edge Annual Question this year asked, "How the internet changing the way you think?" I answered that people haven't changed how they think in 50,000 years.
Additionally, there have been a few pugnacious comments and tweets about my suggestion on this web site that perhaps mobile phones aren't a great place to deliver year-long courses.
So let me be clear: Learning is learning and technology is technology. The two are related if and only if the technology makes it possible to learn something that can be learned in no other way.
Distance learning was around a long time before e-learning used the technology of printing and the U.S. Postal Service. It was a watered down version of school. E-learning is quite often also a watered down version of school. Whether it relies on computers, mobile devices, or any other technology the question is, "Is it any better than what it replaced?"
"Better" ought not be defined by ease of access, or speed of transmission, or by the possibility of being in the jungle while taking a course. There's only one question about the things we design that are supposed to enable learning, namely, are they any good?
Learning hasn't changed and it won't change any time soon. This is what learning is:
1. You have a goal.
2. You try to accomplish that goal.
3. You have some difficulty.
4. Through some means—introspection, intervention by another, access to information, whatever—you figure out how to rectify what you were doing wrong.
5. You accomplish the goal.
6. The next time you don't make the same mistake.
That's it. That's all there ever was to learning.
Note that, in my definition, classrooms have nothing to do with learning at all. And, courses have very little to do with learning either. Technology only comes into play when it can facilitate step 4.
People in e-learning who care about learning, as opposed to caring about satisfying the requirements of a client who is pretending to do education or training, need to ask the following question:
How can technology facilitate step 4?
To put this more clearly:
How can technology facilitate access to information or expertise at just the moment when a learner, frustrated by his failure to attain a goal, needs help?
This would include access to a mentor who might not actually answer the learner's question, but just might help him think the issue out better. And, it might include access to other learners who could do the same. It is the possibility of access to information just in time that is what's exciting about e-learning.
Now I hear the mobile learning people saying that that is what's exciting about mobile learning and my response is that they have missed the point.
The way in which technology can change the world of education does not lie in its ability to ease access of information. It does that to be sure. But our education system has never had much to do with learning. The steps that I described above relate in no way to how school actually functions and they have little to do with training as well. The real role of technology in education is to change the playing field for real learning.
How does a learning goal get set in the first place? If it gets set by a school system that demands so many credits in so many courses, it's clear that learning goal-driven learning has been thrown out the window. Technology allows us to change that state of affairs. We can set up situations that cause students to have goals that they become interested in achieving. These goals should be something more significant than pleasing the teacher or getting a good test score. Goals need to relate to things that people really do want to learn how to do. Goals are about accomplishment. You don't need technology to do that.
We need technology to change the face of education because what is there now is so bad and so unchangeable. Really, we could create a fine education system without any technology at all. We simply have the means to do better stuff now because people are more willing to accept new ideas if they are on a computer, and the ideas can spread more easily on a computer.
| Read More Op-Ed Articles on eLearn Magazine |
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| Must e-Learning Be Cool? |
| Things That Can't Be Taught |
| What Can Be Taught: Part I and Part II |
| Learning Through Business Scenarios |
Let's think about learning more and cool technologies less.
About the Author
Roger C. Schank is one of the world's leading researchers in AI, learning theory, cognitive science, and the building of virtual learning environments. He is president and CEO of Socratic Arts, a company whose goal is to design and implement low-cost story-based learning by doing curricula in schools, universities, and corporations.
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