A couple of posts back, I mentioned that I wanted to look at what was so special about the structure and format of a course in comparison to other methods one could use to learn the same subject.
For example, one could learn about something by listening to a podcast, which provides instruction similar to a college lecture (albeit in a more informal way, generally). Or you could read up on the subject from one or more books of your choosing.
There is also a school of thought that stresses “learning by doing,” which involves on-the-job training via internship or real-life experiences. For people fond of this style of education (which includes many of the independent learners who have emerged from the Uncollege movement), finding mentors who can help you navigate real-world challenges is more important than finding professors who can talk to (or at) you from the podium or screen.
Without diminishing the value of any of these other methods of learning (all of which I have benefited from at different times in my life), I’d like to make the case for the unique value of the traditional structured course which serves as the template for nearly all online learning (including virtually all MOOCs).
To begin with, the structured course provides – well – structure. For unlike a podcast or potential list of readings, a course must have a beginning, middle and end. Which focuses the course creator (usually a professor) into building learning around some kind of narrative that gives students something to grasp onto as they make their way through the course material.
Contemporary cognitive science seems to demonstrate that the human mind reacts well to narrative. And even if that was not the case, committing to a course that will take place over a finite number of weeks provides a promise of accomplishment at a specific end date vs. other learning forms that could go on forever.
There is also no natural limitation as to what can be included in a course. For example, most courses already include lectures and assigned readings (which means they already incorporate other audio and reading-based methods of learning noted above). And professors who have integrated external audio-visual resources into their classes (to give demonstrations of atomic bombs going off or the behavior of microscopic entities, for example) are leveraging online learning platforms to expand the integration of external media into lectures that previously included just the professor and his or her blackboard/whiteboard/slideshow.
Courses also provide the means for students to interact with their professors and with each other, as well as mechanisms for them to put their learning to use (by taking tests, writing papers or performing other assignments). In fact, difficulty managing group discussions and the limitations in testing and other assignments in massive online courses are seen (legitimately) as factors limiting their effectiveness vs. offline equivalents of the same courses.
But all courses (classroom, standard-sized online class or MOOC) provide a fixed set of things you must learn and do before accomplishing the overall goal of completing the course.
I’ve talked previously about the difference between synchronous courses (where everyone is doing the same things at the same time) and asynchronous courses (where students can stop and start as they like) and while I think some interesting things will emerge from the world of asynchronous learning, so far I seem to do better within a structure that forces me to accomplish a certain amount of learning and perform a certain number of activities each week.
What this all adds up to is the fact that the traditional course might very well be the best way to structure technology-driven learning, even in an era when we are in a position to replace it with a completely different learning paradigm.
To some, this might seem like the equivalent of using advanced laser technology to improve on the sword. But a format for learning that has withstood the test of time might best be thought of as the outcome of successful evolutionary process, rather than a relic from a past that technology has made obsolete.
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