Slightly different presentation this time – the presenter (under the seemingly unlikely name of Curtis Bonk) has come on dressed as Dr Evil!
Disagrees with previous speaker about ‘distance learning’ being flat – SUNY Network shows it growing
A question – from an IT perspective, what can you differently online?
Personalisation, individualisation etc…
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere
Materials available and updatable
More economical? Reusable
Non-linear – just in time syllabus, just in time teaching
Learning styles – (ref r2d2 on Curtis’s website)
Guest experts
Extend classroom
Sharing the curriculum – e.g. Merlot
Changing methods of learning. However, skills needed are teaching based
Talked about SAKAI and Chef
Critique of WebCT and Blackboard – describes them as ‘warehousing students online’
Lists of stuff not in these pacakges – timeline, venn diagramming, debate tools – in fact says they have added nothing to learning – only replicated tools that already existed.
Have to demand better tools from them, working with them, or working round them.
He really doesn’t like WebCT and Blackboard! Interesting point about the tools that could be useful for online learning.
For e-learning – students need to mature, independent learners.
However the instructor needs to be flexible, enthusiastic, patient, innovative, creative, provide prompt feedback, builds communities …
Unfortunately at this point the power on my laptop gave up – I’ve got paper notes of 10 trends in e-learning, but don’t have time to put these up now. I’ll try to get these done before tomorrow.
Ironically one of the questions David Farqhuar raised in his presentation was when we are providing e-learning in developing countries, who provides the electricity. In this case – if we provide a wireless network, who provides the electricity?