Tag Archives: eLearning

Everyone is both a learner and teacher

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This TED is shock full of excellent thoughts on making the online classroom an exceptional learning experience. It’s the exact response I hoped was out there, after a  recent experience I had that inspired this post on online learning.

In six minutes Peter Norvig shares many great ideas. Here’s what stood out for me:

  • Everyone is both a learner and a teacher
  • Build learning on Bloom’s one-to-one tutoring model
  • Keep videos to 1-6 minutes – max
  • Peers instructing peers are better than teachers instructing students because they’re the ones who remember what it’s like to not understand
  • Motivation and determination is more important than information
  • Students need to see that teachers are working hard for students

Shift Gears to Online Learning

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So you’ve decided to take an online course. And you’re excited because the material is juicy and you can learn it all from the couch in your PJ’s over a bowl of ice cream. You log into your first video. And proceed to watch an hour long video of an instructor talking. And talking….and…3 bowls later and you barely remember what you were learning about.

There’s so much potential in online learning. It’s exciting how much you can do! But it requires face-to-face facilitators to shift gears. We need to utilize different methods to achieve the same goals of the in-house classroom. It’s like getting somewhere by car or bike. The destination is the same but the gear, route and output is different.

Don’t get sent to the eLearning corner. Here’s some basic tips to designing online courses to get you started.

Use what you know:Remember the basics of adult learning – your students online have the same needs as your students in the classroom. As a facilitator you hopefully already understand the needs of the adult audience. Stay connected to Kolb and Bloom  and keep your eyes to the needs of your learners.

Storyboard: Plan your lesson as you would in a face-to-face environment. Determine learning objectives, make them measurable and then fill in the rest with how you will achieve these goals using interaction, activities, debriefs and assessments. Determine what tools (video, group work, game, etc) will achieve the objectives best.

Embrace Web 2.0 tools: If you want to teach online you have to make friends with the medium. It doesn’t mean you need to be an Adobe Flash expert, but it does mean you need to research and play with the many great online tools out there. Some of them are user friendly and easy to pick up with a bit of elbow grease.

Use videos to teach not talk: Videos are a teaching tool. They should teach a specific lesson. Every second on a video should add value to the learner. Talking heads serve very little function other than to lose student attention. Add visual aids, animation, highlighting and flow charts to make a point.

Learning goals not flashy graphics: It’s easy to feel intimidated by the shiny learning tools out there. Students don’t need animation to learn. Pick an LMS or platform that works for you. Just because it doesn’t look like the latest Cameron flick doesn’t mean it isn’t effective.

Stay true to the principles of adult learning, be passionate and thoughtful about the content, and design to meet the goals of the course.

So shift gears. Get on the online bus. Your students are. It’s heading to great places and you don’t want to miss it.

A place for face-to-face learning

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As the world rotates increasingly online, so does learning. It’s exciting! Full of new ideas on how we learn, how kids learn, the impact of social media, the breadth of virtual community. It’s just going to keep growing and growing until eLearning becomes a requirement of sorts for any company to thrive.  In the way the internet is changing our brains, how we think and work, does the brick and mortar classroom still hold a realistic place for learning? Is face-to-face just too old school?

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of personal and professional development. I’ve left my trainer hat by the door and am living a student’s life. And these two worlds of learning are colliding for me. I’m presently taking and online course that is completely virtual, and an intensive yoga teacher training that is entirely face-to-face. Both reflect the models of Bloom and Kirkpatrick. Both are interactive, challenging and fun. Both have strong, experienced facilitators. Both teach.

Yet they are two distinct experiences. In fact, the polarity caught me off guard. As a proponent of online learning, I felt (and still do in many ways) that the virtual classroom, done right, can teach as well if not better than face-to-face learning. The potential for sharing of ideas, the diversity of tools, the flexibility for students. It’s incredible to even think of even just the possibilities for eLearning. Despite all this, as I say goodbye to my colleagues with a wave and head home to my computer, it’s clear to me that something’s missing from the online course.

Maybe it’s the shared laughter. The faces that reflect understanding and growth. The coffee talk at the break. The head nods and furrowed brows. The energy and passion to learn. The shared awe and celebration of aha moments that last more than a few seconds on a screen.

As our lives move more and more online, the face-to-face environment doesn’t just move out. Computers can’t replace the energy we as students – and we as teachers – get from learning and seeing others learn. In this old age way, the ‘real’ classroom is like being with family in a shared space. Together we witness the growth within others and in ourselves. There’s no place like home.

Establishing community in the online classroom

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Click. Log on. Email files. Google this. Hyperlink that. Click. Post comments. Blog. Imbed. Download. Click.

Today we learn in a virtual classroom. Our conversations are posts, our interactions lines of text that can’t be taken back and skype calls from our living room. We meet online to learn. But where is the community that comes with learning? Can we find connection without sitting next to each other in a classroom?

Establishing community online is something managers consider when implementing eLearning in an organization. Questions come up: How will  employees engage?  How will they share ideas? How will the trainer know they’re getting it?

Some think eLearning is an intrusion on a student’s natural learning process. I think eCommunities are often less about being unnatural and more about being different. If we examine the benefits of online environments, we can see that they actually often create a more natural learning space. Listen to Heppel: “people enjoy working together and technology allows for that because it’s less rigid than older methods use of learning.”

Online communities also allow the learner to learn how they need to. How? Students can zoom in for a better view, review content at their speed, share links to enhance an idea, turn up the volume, redo a test, and google for help. What I especially dig about online communities is that they give every student a voice. A place to be heard. If the trainer creates the right structure, the potential for ideas and learning is boundless. Employees generate solutions faster. The outcome is engagement, and subsequently, productivity. What more could you ask for?

Urszula Lipsztajn in a Instructional Designer and Owner of Spruce Learning.