I would say that in answer to your three questions that the answer would be no to all three but that it was the second question that is the problem. Some of the respondents have mentioned the evolution of e-education but in many ways it is the evolution of the technology that allows the educators to use methods that are more like the ones used in traditional face-to-face lessons. The biggest difference is the way that the students experience the course materials. In traditional lessons the experience is shared by all the students but in online courses each student experiences the course individually. There is quite a large amount of research on the personality types and online courses. It suggests that online courses suit some personality types more than others.In a traditional classroom setting most tutors are able to adapt to the materials and their style to suit the students but online courses are not able to be adapted as quickly. A student does not need to participate in a classroom discussion to experience it or affect it but if a student does not participate in an online discussion then they effectively do not exist. Humans are by nature social but can online courses be social to the same level even with video conferencing and social media like Facebook and twitter?

Whether the course content is disseminated through synchronous audio/video web conferencing, synchronous discussions such as instant messaging or through asynchronous discussions (my own area of interest) the student will most probably be sitting at a computer separated from the other students in space and often time. Traditional course can be lecture, seminar or tutorial but online courses appear to be either lecture or tutorial. Organising the technology to enable a seminar style lesson that allows the same interaction with the same immediacy is difficult and probably beyond the technical ability of most students and many tutors.

How we teach online is not the same as face-to-face but exactly how is the subject of much debate including this one but recognising that it is not the technology that needs to evolve. First, we need to recognise that the way that students experience the course materials and the learning itself is not the same and will never be the same without the same "Holodeck" equipment only available on Star Trek. As educators, we need to change the way we teach but exactly how I don't know...

Q1: No. Q2: No, Q3: No. There is plenty of exploration and research to be done. Only 1% of previous pedagogy is applicable. 99% must be thrown away. We need to stop referencing the people listed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy. They are holding us back. We need to expand the stub at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didactics . Why? The job market has changed since the industrial revolution. Half my children have jobs whose descriptions did not exist two decades ago. The world has changed. All our pupils and students can be assumed to have at least two remote controls at home, and are part of the push-button age. I would like matriculants to know everything in Wikipedia. However, is it more important that they have memorised all that knowledge, or know how to find it? As you hint, education is more important than learning.

I don't agree with your equation or the estimate of forty years.

I also doubt the equation as Ian Kennedy said. Many of my (IT) students use e-stuff for learning even in the traditional classroom, so on the left side there should also be Education (w/o "e"). If I comment on my ppt slides they pull out their smart phones and take pictures, which I later see in their open book materials for the tests. That's of course technology use,and not related to didactics. It may influence my teaching style, though, because now I think before I comment on my slides, which remarks are really important for the students.

For eTeaching we have to take into account how today's students learn: small chunks of materials in a variety of media should make the difference. I sometimes just invite them to take a look at youtube and find materials about Facebook security settings (and their drawbacks) by themselves. But, I agree, it's not part of a well structured curriculum/didactics work.

Greetings to all,

I also fear that the equation eLearning eTeaching express less than reality needs to understand the present moment and that means the use of new information and communication technologies in education.

The problem is that all (well almost all) the pedagogy we have concerns models of knowledge transmission. In a society where information and knowledge are available in abundance "teach" must pass a historic overhaul.

Almost all teaching and pedagogy we know concerns a society that needed to "transmit" information and knowledge.

So we must assume that the information and knowledge that is being produced need not be transmitted more. They are already stored and available. Always have been ... but not like now within reach of two or three clicks:)

Today any boy of 8 or 9 years of a slum in india or my country (Brazil) learn to interact with a smartphone or a tablet-art in 15 minutes (maximum).

So our pedagogy must turn now to the ways in which our children will learn (or already are learning, regardless of school) with new technological resources. Learning this new context means primarily relate to what is available from the new technologies - means everything

:)

Learning this new context means the ability to interact with the knowledge produced in ways never before imagined. Interact means to be able to get the information, judge them (in importance, validity, reliability, etc ...), apply them in new situations and mainly modify them doing the knowledge to move forward and evolve. Knowledge to produce various hands also seems to acquire an increasingly important (and I speak of something more complex than simply working in groups). Producing knowledge are shared, mediated by information and communication resources is also adqurindo great importance. Perhaps here is a recipe for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary evolve towards complexity that knowledge acquired in the information society.

To conclude I think that the issue of new technologies in education involve a radical change in our teaching practices, but rather to understand what knowledge means, learning and knowledge in relation to the information society that has become not only abundant (this it was even in the past) but available to anyone at any time from various devices. What does learning in this context?

This leads to further reflections on designs of learning platforms, the teacher's role (if it still exists in the way we conceive) and the very concept of school we have had and still survive (for how long).

I think, in conclusion, that it is not teaching models from the new technologies of information and communication models but learning from these resources. Maybe with this little conceptual change, we may get somewhere. Almost all teaching and pedagogy referred to teach, because it was the cultural context we lived. The cultural context has changed (or is changing rapidly) and need another model. And the new model is not a model of knowledge transmission b...

Lots of questions here - I guess the title was the hook for me. 40 years of promises? Well, I think perhaps the "promise" of technology is always with us - that is what drives innovation; solving a challenge or trying to improve how things are done. But if you mean that many promises are also predictions that have not been delivered then even some of the most prominent technology innovators have got the future very wrong. see, eg, http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/ It was not so long ago (around 1995) that both Microsoft & Apple misread how the Web would evolve & they tried to build "walled gardens". When it comes to educational technologies & e-learning ... my sense of things is that we have benefited tremendously by an ongoing digital revolution. Sure, there is also hype about what can be achieved but the "e"-enabled world continues to deliver both opportunities & challenges. I agree with other comments about over-simplified equations. There is also more to education than teaching & learning. Socialisation plays a big role, as does encounters with institutions, organisations, & hierarchies.

@Ian Kennedy - not sure that I agree fully with what you say about not learning from or referencing older pedagogies or theorists. But I do agree that we need some finer-tuned approaches to effective e-teaching. In fact, I think some early 20th century learning theorists (like Montessori & Dewey) understood well the benefits of open, inquiry-based learning -- which I think is an entirely appropriate approach to contemporary contexts. But this is not the only approach & I think new approaches will emerge over time

@Jon: I appreciate your view. My point is that we need to "steal" as much as we need from our predecessors, and rapidly move on, rather than just trying to refine their views and prove that everything we are doing now is based on their lead.

Hello everybody,

I think that with the new technologies of information and communication learning should be more on account of the student than the teacher. Now, with the amount of information easily available, it is possible.

Let's leave it up to the students themselves the responsibility to choose their educational path (differentiated pedagogy) with each deciding what he wants to learn from their own interests, they will not feel motivated?

Because this motivation has to start from the teacher? Students are so different in their motivations ...

What I have tried to imagine is a pedagogy that use of one hand the ease and abundance of information. On the other, the motivations of each student specifically. What is the role of the teacher? The motivator:)

But the teacher is not trying to motivate each student with the same proposal, design, etc ... and yes, motivate each student in their specific project work (individual learning path) that can be a study, a prototype, a portfolio, an exhibition ... depending on what each student will want to build. They can also work from groups of information sharing (sharing learning paths) and "project", for example.

The point I'm getting at is that no longer fits the role of transmitter of knowledge that the teacher always had and that we need to draw a didactic pedagogy and more in line with the new features. I think we have historical elements in didactics and pedagogy to take advantage and move towards a new model of learning.

See you soon,

S.

@Ian Kennedy and Michael Brückner: Thank you for interesting observation. That way I put “simple” under the quotes. Also, I use the term eEducation, because “modern” students think that they could find all answers on the Internet. Especially when the lecturers (professors, teachers, etc.) became fascinated with the usage ICT in teaching process, and forgot old good school of explanations the important things of their lectures, giving the hidden instruction between the lines, and giving them good and bed examples in their own work experienced. As I work in the field of Computer Science, I do not understand how lecturers could teach their students to make some programs presenting “slides” or writing on blackboard, only. They have to show the solution on computers, from the beginning to the end. Or, to coach them in that process, writing the program on the computer. Also in eLearning you may add some “clouds” – student model, explanation model, etc., as well as in eTeaching some “clouds” could be action model, different teaching styles, different way of presentation, etc. So, the equation is very, very complex.

@Ian Kennedy I agree with triple NO for my questions.

@Sérgio Silva, Jon Mason and Ian Kennedy About old-new pedagogies or theorists, and % of applicability of previous pedagogy…

Beside all computer animations I have made or found, when I teach novice programmers about very hard to understand but important concepts in programming pointers or the same case about parameter passing in function, I use good-old toys Icky Poo and Frisbee! See pages 19 and 20 in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234037026_Pedagogical_Patterns_For_Learning_Programming_By_Mistakes_(Presentation), for details.

Data Pedagogical Patterns For Learning Programming By Mistakes (P...

@ljubomir jerinic Hello! Thanks for your paper. It is quite interesting - even for my horrible english:)

I identify too much with the principles of constructivism and social constructivism.

Congratulations for the work.

See you later,

S.

Shall we plan a revolution, or be content with evolution?

@ian kennedy Hello Ian:) That's the point and I think she explains in part the question of Mr Ljubomir Jerinic when he posted his question and I have tried to argue here too.

So far we have navigated the waves of evolution.

All attempts (I'm only speaking from what I know or read about) tried to fit the technologies of information and communication in the work that we performed already. Then it became a thing with anachronistic elements of two different historical moments, but basically what I see is that we try to do what we've always done using the new features. Perhaps we should try to do something new using the input that we have of teaching and learning theories. Of course we can not throw out all our references. @ John Mason spoke very well about it. I think constructivism and social constructivism should also be observed. I also really like the elements of Freinet pedagogy, adding the @ John Mason. But I can not forget to mention the political form as the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire saw the school and its social function.

Ian is right and I also talked a bit of that around here ... I think we need to seek a new education model that uses the capabilities of learning, self-learning and shared learning that the new technologies of information and communication possible.

But there's more:) school (education) not just about teaching and learning, but also of cultural transmission (values, principles, morality, worldview, etc ...) that will be resolved only with this technology? No, of course ... so we can not replace teachers by Google, but we need to know what we want to convey cultural heritage ... So it seems that you draw here a new type of teacher also ...

Ian (and everyone), where we are getting ourselves into? :)

Let's tame that horse or we'll just ride it ... Ian, you brought us a big headache:) but we already have a base to start ...

Anyway join a forum with people like you from around the world and with such powerful experiences makes me very excited about how we can use new information and communication technologies:)

@ Ljubomir jerenic: not all predictions come true even .... but it might not be the most appropriate:)

See you later,

S.

@Ian: Yes, not only to plan a revolution, but we should carry out a revolution of the educational system. Evolution is too slow. Researchers must have their dream, as John Lennon said:

“A dream that I have dreamed is just a dream.

A dream that you have dreamed is just a dream too.

The dream which we have dreamed together is reality.”

@ Sérgio: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. The reason why I still believe that eLearning in the sense of Intelligent Tutoring is possible. Only we do not have correct approach and/or the way to express learning in the sense of “language that computer understands” i.e. appropriate computer programs, as well as teaching. Yes, we spent more the 40 years in this trying, but as the great Serbian poet Miroslav Mika Antic said: “Reality is real if you add unreal.” (In Serbian: “Stvarnost je stvarnija ako joj dodaš nestvarnog”).

eLearning could somewhat push a student towards possible reality but there should always be a mentor or tutor or teacher with a wealth of experince to carry the student along, pushing the student to achieve a visioned mission.

@ Henry lheanacho You are 100% correct:)

@ Ljubomir jerinic not think towards intelligent tutor:) as a software (program) that will do this. My idea goes more in the direction pointed to by Henry of a mentor, tutor or teacher. This person should have a wealth of experiment and a great human capacity as well to guide students in other fields as well (political, ethical, moral, etc ...), as I expressed here. And you may not need to be one, but we have more tutors interacting with students ...

Even more,

S.

@Sergio Silva, thanks for the acknowledgement. Please may you vote it up on me.

I would say that in answer to your three questions that the answer would be no to all three but that it was the second question that is the problem. Some of the respondents have mentioned the evolution of e-education but in many ways it is the evolution of the technology that allows the educators to use methods that are more like the ones used in traditional face-to-face lessons. The biggest difference is the way that the students experience the course materials. In traditional lessons the experience is shared by all the students but in online courses each student experiences the course individually. There is quite a large amount of research on the personality types and online courses. It suggests that online courses suit some personality types more than others.In a traditional classroom setting most tutors are able to adapt to the materials and their style to suit the students but online courses are not able to be adapted as quickly. A student does not need to participate in a classroom discussion to experience it or affect it but if a student does not participate in an online discussion then they effectively do not exist. Humans are by nature social but can online courses be social to the same level even with video conferencing and social media like Facebook and twitter?

Whether the course content is disseminated through synchronous audio/video web conferencing, synchronous discussions such as instant messaging or through asynchronous discussions (my own area of interest) the student will most probably be sitting at a computer separated from the other students in space and often time. Traditional course can be lecture, seminar or tutorial but online courses appear to be either lecture or tutorial. Organising the technology to enable a seminar style lesson that allows the same interaction with the same immediacy is difficult and probably beyond the technical ability of most students and many tutors.

How we teach online is not the same as face-to-face but exactly how is the subject of much debate including this one but recognising that it is not the technology that needs to evolve. First, we need to recognise that the way that students experience the course materials and the learning itself is not the same and will never be the same without the same "Holodeck" equipment only available on Star Trek. As educators, we need to change the way we teach but exactly how I don't know...

@Gary: It looks like there are some DEd and PhD topics in the area of how teaching could/should change now that we have all this "cool" technology.

Thanks Ian

I am looking at doing a PhD in this area. I am looking for a suitable institution any suggestions?

@Gary

How about Sunderland Centre for Pedagogy? Contact Bridget Cooper

Spy out her record at http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Bridget+Cooper

My proposal is to adopt best practices derived from this model:

Cognition, Affect, and Learning

https://sites.google.com/site/barrykort/home/cognition-affect-and-learning

I must say that I have always been a bit skeptical about eLearning and its benefits. I feel as if the whole education system is being re-tailored to suit the below-average students and that the main deficiency is the ever-increasing lack of motivation for learning.

Also, a great book is more than enough if there is interest (+ Google and Wikipedia for additional information, of course), as well a great teacher/tutor.

A great eLearning system might be just as good... but a bad/average eLearning system is not better than a bad/average book. So, the problem is not so much technological - but we need people that are able to write the content in an engaging way. Whether it is an eLearning system design, or a book - it would not matter so much.

As I've mentioned, the problem is in human nature - some students lack motivation and do not want to learn things properly. Trying to force them is often counterproductive.

This problem stems from the society and the media and the fact that studying was never perceived as something "cool". If we manage to change this and convince people that studying is "cool" and being ignorant is not - this would make a much higher impact than the difference between eLearning and traditional learning/teaching. All the information is available via search engines and free online tutorials and textbooks - so all we need is students that are genuinely interested in the topic and willing to take the time to look for it.

We need to remember that even with the best eLearning/eTeaching/eEducation tools, technology and methodologies, they only serve as an adjunct to the human-to-human learning modality. Computer's do not get frustrated like people do, but only people can use analogies, metaphors and examples in ways that help a student understand. Even the best computer cannot mimic what you can do when explaining a concept to another individual. Computers can respond to preprogrammed scenarios, but humans do their best work 'outside the box' with creative responses to flexible and changing learning situations. Educational technology is in addition to (and not a substitute for) knowledge transfer between people.

@EricHall I agree with your main message, although I would add that there is plenty of innovation in the design of computer systems and services in terms of scaffolding toward the development of understanding. I don't think that computer systems are intrinsically incapable of dealing with analogies & metaphors or in leading someone to explanatory content & the tools that we now have have come a long way from the Hypercard days of 20 years ago

Hello to all,

Well, a question that is often debated is little difference between education and instruction. A broader concept we consider education in development of physical, intellectual and ethical children and human beings in general, with a view to their integration and social individual. The instruction is only one component of this process.

In this sense, eEducation can not (at least I like to think so) develop to the point that dispense with the figure of teachers and tutors. To me education is an essentially human process, even though we can use technology to educate people. But I argue that it is a human process, then, is not part of my wish list system "smart" eEducation that is responsible for the education of all generations, not agree that this should be one of the promises of eEducation.

Anyway, I think we reflect on the terms education and instruction, can be an interesting exercise in this discussion.

A hug,

S.

Does the behavior precede, or follow? In other words, is the technology a response to behavior, or is there a new universe of responses as a result of the technology? Both,of course; but futurists have envisioned the individual human immersed in technology, in many ways, given up control of identity -- we see that in invasive public safety issues, loss of privacy, data crime. Education -- in entire -- must always champion the growth of the individual. How does eEducation address this issue? Are we foolish enough to believe it is "the answer", or can we still be comfortable with the uncertainty that is surely a driving force in education? Be sure to take a look at Huxley's "Brave New World".

A good proportion of the world knowledge, books, scientific papers , new papers, magazines is now available on the web. The tools, web search, for finding the relevant information in this vast collection of material are also available and are improving rapidly. What H. G. Wells called the "World Brain" is materializing itself under our eyes. This world brain is not only vast store house of accessible knowledge but it is mostly framework of collaborative research, a framework of thinking/learning together. The most interesting part of learning is not learning what other learned but what nobody has yet learned. True learning is not different from creation.

I still remember the day I learned in a book about the atom. I was 8 years old and had probably read an explanation into a children book. That part I do not remember. What I clearly remember is to have done the thought experiment of cutting of piece of material and realized that this cutting operation had to stop and that generated an eureka feeling as if I had made the discovery. Learning, true learning has to in this mode of discovery.

We are not located into different locations anymore. We are almost in each other head now.

Https://www.coursera.org/

if you want to be updated with the free will question, make sure that you do not overlook the following book:

Kornhuber HH, Deecke L (2012) The will and its brain – an appraisal of reasoned free will. University press of America, Lanham, MD, USA ISBN978-0-7618-5862-1

(in book stores, with the Publisher or with Amazon (as kindle book as well).

Kind regards. Lüder Deecke, Vienna, co-author

I have joined late so please excuse me if I post some thing that has already been discussed. I think before we talk about eSOMETHING we must define the same. For example eEducation or eTeaching may not be some entity that avoids conventional pedagogy. When printed books came into existence (that was also a revolution in the field of education) we did not talk about bEducation that would completely or at least to a large extent stop conventional class room teaching. We could have done that because, thanks to continuing education research, books for self study became available. However requirement of “chalk and talk” form of teaching was never denied, rather I would say could not be denied. This is so because books can store information but when some one reads it he/she needs some skill to link them with the information that has already been acquired by him/her. For a new subject or a difficult topic this linking needs supervision. This is one of the major tasks that a teacher performs. Advancement of Information Communication Technology (ICT) also created a revolution in the area of storage and distribution of information. Researchers also designed program for eLearning. Since a digital computer can perform logical decision very fast such education systems can to some extent adjust/modify itself to suit the requirement of an individual student. But such adaptation is limited to the information stored in the system and the linking mechanism that the particular eLearning program supports. In a class room where face to face teaching is performed, there is no such restriction. A good teacher, for example, can evolve a new linking strategy that will suit the purpose. This is possibly the role of a good teacher and possibly this is the reason why a good teacher can explain a difficult topic better. However, ICT is a very powerful tool and therefore we should exploit its capability as far as possible. I suggest let us have e_assisted_Education/Teaching/Learning rather than eEducation/Teaching/Learning.

@Anup Bandyopadhyay: Nice observation… I especially like your proposal “eAssisted_Education/Teaching/Learning?”

Huh, the hard question, and I don't know the answer to your question (yet), but I can tell you this.

We (different kind of educators) had in the “classroom” similar tools: TV, projector-foil etc., before. The main difference between these, auxiliary tools and computers (and of course the whole ICT) is the possibility that the user (student) could COMMUNICATE WITH THE COMPUTER, to have a DIALOGUE with the computer, i.e. ASK QUESTIONS AND GET ANSWERS, like communication with a human teacher. The question is whether the eLearning systems, used nowadays, "capable" for it. Another problem is INDIVIDUALIZED LEARNING, i.e. each student learns according to his abilities, and again the question of whether e-learning systems, used nowadays, "capable" for such learning. The third and unfortunately not at last, problem is lack of ePedagogy (eDidactics) therefore, the future of eLearning should be the appropriate research in psychology and pedagogy of how to learn (teach) with the aim of ICT!

Problems listed above (and many others) directly affect the realization of good adaptive learning environment.

We have a lot of problems to realize the good software for learning with the computer, especially good adaptive learning environment. I mean, we have to find out “new” learning strategies, and/or to formalize the impact of emotions on learning process, to formalize “new” pedagogy, we have to find out usable student model, declare new adaptive ontologies, define new adaptive semantic web for education, etc.

The problem is that computer is “dumb” machine, so we have to write the good software. The algorithm/heuristics of learning is not found yet, in the sense of human learning. We have to find out the proper knowledge representation and appropriate heuristics for searching and applying that knowledge, to understand fuzzy logic and reasoning, non-monotonic logics and reasoning, other kinds of logic, etc. Too many open problems, right? Therefore we have to go back to roots, math, AI, cognitive science, classic pedagogy, classic didactics, etc.

But, the ideas (about adaptive generation and dynamic selection and sequencing of courseware elements such as learning objects or tests) are very, very challenging, as well as how to implement “automated explanations”, trying to make (“dumb” machine) A GOOD TEACHER!

Therefore, the future of eLearning will be the appropriate research in psychology, pedagogy, cognitive science, instructional design, human-computer interactions, artificial intelligence, computer science, etc. to learn how to teach with the aim of ICT, as well as to learn how to learn!

Dear Ljubomir Jerinic,

I am a fan of yours and I agree with many things you say about the fields of research and study on ICT future, but I think I have a disagreement with your position.

I think the two biggest potential of ICT is the opportunity to self-study and individualize the training courses of the subject. Another great potential is the ability to make people interact in ways never before imaginable. So I think it is here we differ. I do not think it's a question of software that teach, but ways of using all the possibilities of ICT to learn from each other, our problems (personal, global, community, etc.), with our differences (cults, political creeds, ideologies, preferences, etc.) and not interacting with software.

I would not want our future problem was how to format a machine or software semantic web or something. Would we strive to try to think of how to make a system for people to interact and learn from each other. I think it would be "teacher" in a learning model like this.

I think better than rack their brains to produce a good software for learning (learning platform) I think we should break the head to rethink our educational system in a way that would integrate and articulate people around people, learning individually, together and through the experiences of each other. I think that ICT can make something fantastic like a model :)

I agree with your opinion that the computer is a dumb machine (maybe it should stay that way lol) and as most of the search fields you pointed to growth. The concept of learning to learn in the scenario with the technological base is very important that we should be rethought from the perspective of ICT.

Respectful greetings,

S.

@ Sérgio: Yeah, I agree with you 100%, and thank you for the kind words.

The reason why I still believe that eLearning in the sense of Intelligent Tutoring is possible is “try to find different opinions and approaches”, i.e. listen what others have to say.

Yes, we spent more the 40 years in this trying, but as the great Serbian poet Miroslav Mika Antic said: “Reality is real if you add unreal.” (In Serbian: “Stvarnost je stvarnija ako joj dodaš nestvarnog”).

And, researchers must have their dream, as John Lennon said:

“A dream that I have dreamed is just a dream.

A dream that you have dreamed is just a dream too.

The dream which we have dreamed together is reality.”

Teaching and learning are social acts. So I think it is fact why all efforts did not archieve. Some individual students may use software but they use it at home to understand better what they have learnd in the lesson.

Understanding needs conversation and discussion with other human studends or teachers. A good teacher is able to understand (!) what the studends problem is and he has tools to evoke fine grasp.

So I think ICT is an additional tool for students. It is smarter than TV or other tools but not able to substitute the human factor.

@Wilfried Musterle: Yeah, I agree. But, if we really understand the process of acquiring, representing, comprehending and adopting new knowledge and if we have different machines based on knowledge not purely information… That’s the point of researching, as well as exchanging the opinions and ideas cross debate such as this.

Wilfried,

Teaching yes. But learning is not necessarily the social act. Any embodied intelligence, if has internal motivation, can learn autonomously (self-learning, reinforcement learning), manipulating environment and checking results of manipulations.

Teaching and Learning is a process which do not termiante at any point, even after a student have earned a qualification for the purpose of going through the process. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of the process can be absolutely achieved if there are teaching and learning aids. Hence, the eLearning and eTeaching, as a means to an end. The innovation of ICT into research has lead to a higher-through put results that have given a break through into many findings in all ramifications of life.

@Ljubomir Jerinic I do appropriate your dream. Possibly we will be able to have machines based on knowledge not purely information. I think this will be very much dependent on the specific application domain. For some specific application area, teaching a programming language for example, such achievement may not be very far off. However so long we don't get it completely we can utilize the enormous power of computer in our present day education system. I have used this to explain transient behavior of many dynamic systems using simulation technique. This is possible because in this study we can magnify the time axis and investigate every detail of the state dynamics. I have used this technique to explain how an oscillator starts oscillating and how the amplitude stabilization is achieved using nonlinear elements. I would call this as an example of e_assisted_teaching. I think many such applications should be possible.

With respect to eEducation, my experience has been as follows. I have found that using computers and software designed for instruction in a subject area (in my case, mathematics) works well for a limited number of tasks. If instructional software is well-designed, its optimal use is in leading students through learning scenarios where they are allowed multiple attempts at answering a question or solving a problem. Well-design software in this situation adjusts the level of difficulty upward (if the student shows rapid mastery of the concepts) or downward (if the student is challenged by the material). In this situation, the software is used to drill the students to the point where they display mastery of the concepts. This is something that they can do individually while an instructor is working on other things.

The eEducation tool is used as a supplement to the teacher in the classroom, but never as a replacement. Even though well-designed software can help student develop basic skills in an area through repetitive drills, only a teacher can explain to the student the purpose)of those drills and expose their deeper meaning in the context of the curriculum. I know of educational institutions that use computer-based instruction exclusively to teach Basic Algebra (where the teacher plays a subordinate role to the software) and needless to say, student performance suffers. If the students are in an environment where their computer-based score is the final artbiter of their grade/performance and they are not allowed to demonstrate their knowledge to another human being (who may understand the struggles of the student), then we are doing a disservice to them. When we use eEducation, we must develop a rational plan for when to use it, where to use it, and how best to use it. eEducation is a tool in the universe of tools we have available for academic instruction, but the best and most critical tool is the classroom teacher.

Right now if I want to learn a little bit on any subject I can google the key words and the information is readily available. But if I want to learn the equivalent of an university course, something rather complex, it is not that easy to learn it online. Wikipedia has provided a good source of information for small segment. There is a need for a coursePedia with a standard interface to learning any complex topic.

@Louis - a lot of my recent work has been focused on online inquiry & I've been thinking along the same lines. I've also found it useful to distinguish between information & explanation. While we have many choices for retrieving information in all kinds of smart ways we do not have tools that work with explanation in any kind of sophisticated way..

Jon,

I was thinking that the simple invention of html has allowed so many thing. Is there an interface language that would be appropriate to build explanation and course. Hyperlink for explanation. Different course could be interwoven into curriculum. All the smart think that Ljubomir was sudgesting would be made available transparently through the interface language for explanation.

Please see http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Category:Courses

(1) @Jon.Wikiversity is a good place for putting up your explanations etc. It allowed me to put in Examples and Exercises and Explanations (EX's) (which are obviously disallowed in Wikipedia). See e.g. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Blocking

(2) @Louis. I like your term CoursePedia. My idea was that one file should basically be an annotated bookmarks.html file pointing to all the resources. The file contains the curriculum, in the broad sense of the word. See http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Teletraffic_engineering

(3) I used a postgraduate class to provide the text, and the next year they provided the EX's. "All" I did was to provide instruction in wiki marking-up, a list of topics, let each student choose his / her own topics, and score their wiki articles!

Wieslaw,

I agree. Learning needs a strong will and therefore psychic engergy. This energy did not run out in a social group but will be wasted alone in front of a computer. So this method is a pretty good tool beside other methods.

Ljubomir,

thanks für your agreement. In your respond is a little word: "if" ...

To understand the problem of a question you have to understand human thinking. Then you can find a suitable answer solving the problem. To understand human thinkung we have to understand human life. To understand human life we have to be a human.

Nevertheless the communication of learning programs should be upgraded.

@Wilfried, Ian, Louis, Jon, Eric, Anup, Henry, Wieslaw, Barry, Gary, Sérgio and all who have participated in this: I just (thanks all of you) find out that as Wilfried pointed out "communication of learning programs", discovered another part that is missing in good educational systems (programs): DISCUSSION. One of the main parts of my future research in the field of usage ICT in Education will be: the process of human thinking, as well as model of discussion and collaboration (besides explanation). Carry on...

Hello for everyone,

@ ljubomir jerinic: you're right, we should always dream. All the achievements start as a dream (idea), sometimes distant (like fly to Da Vinci). And I admire that in many people including you, certainly.

But sometimes I feel that we are antagonizing the process of learning through ICT with the process of human learning. I'm just calling processes that emphasize the processes of contact, interaction and exchange between people. Learn together, teach together and at the same time to be master of my learning process is a concept (and one educational principle) that I value. I admit that the concepts embedded in Wikiversity (Ian Kennedy) attract me more than intelligent systems for teaching and learning based on the semantic web. I believe we can reach the systems that go beyond the level of information.

Will these two forms come to be confronted about an overlay another? But because one would have to overlay another is not it?

The point I'm getting at, in fact, is that the idea of eliminating completely the contact, the richness, diversity of people, social learning processes embedded in human ... makes me afflicted:)

Well, maybe it's just ignorance on my part or lack of future vision or exaggerated belief in human lol.

Congratulations respectful,

S.

@Sérgio Silva I quote from your recent post. “The point I'm getting at, in fact, is that the idea of eliminating completely the contact, the richness, diversity of people, social learning processes embedded in human ... makes me afflicted:” I appreciate your feelings. I think eliminating completely the present form of human interaction in teaching is absolutely impossible. However, when there was a scientific invention in the past we got opportunities to off load our routine responsibilities and could concentrate on more intellectually involved activities. Possibly here also we can use such computer aided “intelligent” programs as teaching assistants in a restricted form for some specific subjects. But the role of a professor can never be replaced by such “artificial intelligence”. I think as proposed by Ljubomir Jerinic research to model the process of human thinking, discussion and collaboration would be of immense help in understanding the entire education process which in turn would help the teachers like us to augment and improve our teaching methodology.

It is all very well to try to capture phenomena in equations; unfortunately, the one that is proposed has as many solutions as the number of educators and more. The main reason being the notion of "learning". I do not think that we, including educational psychologists, have a grasp of what it means by learning, specifically independent/self-guided learning. The terms elearning, mobile learning, etc., are just slogans that empower ICT rather than learners. I faced the issue of what it means by learning while investigating educational IT. I know that I have a reasonable model of IT, but I am still unable to develop an understanding, i.e. formal, of what a/the learning process is. With all due reverence, researchers in education are not getting any closer to develop a model that can help ICT people, so that educational IT will not be just the hardware.

I'm afraid that these are too many -even only 3!- too complex questions to be discussed in this kind of forum. Perhaps as axis for a 3-days conference and I am not sure. Anyway, we know something more than 10 years ago about eEducation, and we are searching for new approaches.

When I teach students, I can't evoke the same pictures and ideas in their minds because they are all different. Each of them build his own understanding and model of the teached subject. This is a constructivistic process and no program may be better.

eTeaching is another way of presenting learning content. A student is able to select the methods that range from the abundance of offers, which makes him a successful learning. eTeaching as the sole method, however, is fatal, since the currently rigid programs show no flexibility, which allow meaningful deviations.

I was reading along and happy to observe that participants show enthusiasm and warmth in the exposition of ideas. Blended education is still in evolution to support the original questions posted. Have we reached to our ultimate goal , no, but it is the instructor's role to use an integrated approach to delivering material adding as much as possible asynchronous and synchronous tools to deliver the educational material. For example chatting and forums are becoming subjects of interest to accompany elearning to add the flavor of an instructor being around to add the necessary "interaction" to move information toward knowledge. Providing the means for side communication helps but does not substitute the instructions and hints of reading between the lines provided by an instructor in a face-to-face setup.

I think the questions Ljubomir has challenged us with such questions. Where do we go from here? Are you guys ready to start a quest of research, cross-national, to assess and investigate these issues? I leave the answer to Ljubomir, may be we could cooperate in such a quest.

@Antonio, nice idea about some kind conference, but who will be organiser. I'll agree that we all need the new impulse, a new ideas, to carry on. Yes, we all need some “stimulus” like mathematicians, computer scientists and psychologists had with "Theories du language, theories de l'apprentissage" (eng. “Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky” back in ’75? That is the answer to Hussin questions, also.

@Wilfried, yes you are right. I still want to look straight into the eyes of my students when they respond to my questions... After all these years of my research, how to use computers in education, and kind-such a success, I still do not believe that any kind of e-learning can replace a GOOD TEACHER! But, we (as the researches) have to look forward.

Some days ago I wrote a note, (unfortunately in Spanish) about the distance between Education and Learning. Learning is not about programs, plans, money or computers, Learning is a natural process given by nature to every specie to survive on the planet. Human beings are the only one specie who needs years and years and years and PhD and Post PhD to pretend to learn.

Now, e-learning. The main problem is that Education believes than computers work by themselves, so in the Center I work flipped that idea and focus on student, we teach them first PLE and metacognitive skills and then we let them work with computers. Plan actions, figure it the problem, plan actions, make them work, one more time, that step is wrong, do it again, change steps, try this option, ask someone, search information, what kind of information you need, once you have it, how you use it...Find the goal. what did you learn?

So far it's working.

Dear Sir,

Dr. Ljubomir Jerinic , Sir

Thank you Sir, for your “Question raised on e-Education”

Present Sceneries of “Education Learning” are approaching mostly 99.99% to e-Education formats. I , also appreciate your simple equation regarding e-Education and in my opinions, that simple equation can be modified for better strength of its status , which is given as :

eEducation = eLearning + eTeaching+eComputing

with kind regards

Govindapppa Navalagi RG Score : 2.87

@Alma, nice concept. But, as I said before we (as the researches) have to look forward. In your case, could we formalize let say "your approach" and "teach the bloody computer" to do the same with the next (next, next,...) student, taking account of student characteristics? Or to change approach if the result is not good enough?

Being teachers, we forget quite often that "truths", on frequent occasion, become with age out of date like clothes, and we feed students with spoiled soups welded at the time of the youth of our schoolmasters and from the vegetables usability of which is not proven up to the present time. Meanwhile, K. Popper and His Majesty Time proved that our knowledge of the Nature changes not progressively and even not through a spiral motion but through trials and errors.

just entered the stage here (thanks to invitation of Ljubomir Jerinic), let me first complement the "equation" to the following one:

eEducation = eLearning + eTeaching + eAssessing

All too often, assessment of teaching/learning is forgotten, or assumed to be self-evident, easy and straighforward. It is NOT. It is hard work, sometimes harder than any form of eTeaching and eLearning.

It is astonishing what can be done for Teaching and Learning using modern E-quipment like computers. It is disappointing what has been done up to now for Assessing. It doesn't go beyond Essay Assessment by means of sophisticated techniques based on IRT, Bayesian Statistics and the like. That's fine for those who understand these mathematical techniques (or accept the results of a software package without understanding how it works).

My hypothesis is the following: once we have accepted and are accustomed to IT in the classroom, and the euphory has evaporated, we will be left with the question: what does it bring us, teachers and students alike? And then we start assessing, evaluating, validating. That's too late. We should start NOW!

As I was reading through the answers to this question I noticed a comment by Ljubomir and it started me thinking "teach the bloody computer" Does eEducation = eLearning or are we trying to teach the computer to teach the students? I know it is not that simple and there is a lot of other factors but are we simply putting the computer between the teacher and the student. I will admit that I am an "old school" kind of teacher and I like to be able to see the faces of my students. The immediacy and my experience allows the lesson to be adapted to meet the needs of the students constantly during the lesson. By placing the computer between us and the students that takes away that adaptability. I think we should not try to overcome this weakness but try to use it in a positive way. We should use the time inherent in asynchronous discourse to set tasks that require longer periods of contemplation before the students are expected to give longer answers with more analytical, critical or reflective thinking. The face to face lessons can have an instantaneous exchange of ideas but eTeaching needs to challenge the students to higher levels of thinking skills.

@ Paul Vossen - Like you, I am participating by invitation (of @ Ljubomir Jerinic).

eEducation = (eTeaching + ) eLearning

I put a pair of parentheses because the essence with eEducation is perceived to emphasize Learning with the Teaching embedded into the World Wide Web. For education to succeed, student (or learner) must be at the center of the education. This idea requires the awareness of empowering the student and letting him or her to "configure" learning to satisfy his or her needs or interests. In a formal (traditional) brick and mortar (B&M) education, the strength is the great opportunity for interactions and formation of community of teaching and learning practices. Many B&Ms have not exploit the opportunities. But opportunities are lost since these B&Ms have been operating under the "status quo" model and cannot change quick enough or radical enough with the advent of Internet and new technologies. Imagine these B&Ms as the Dogs.

Imagine the eEducation as the Cats. For eEducation to succeed, there is a need to breed a new specie called Dog-Cat where facilitators remain to be present to coach.

So, what should be the aesthetic of eEducation? I believe that the (curriculum) designer should know and make explicit the Level of the skill development and (then) the knowledge acquisition. If student at Level 10 (the PhD level) needs a supervisor in his or her learning journey, then there is a greater need for Level 1 to Level 4 (using the NZ levels) to interact with facilitators.

As people grow older, non-formal education (unstructured work-place training) and informal education (conversational, watching movies, reading newspapers and magazines) would become more relevant to these people if they would want to evolve themselves to be lifelong learners. The structured eEducation can be a good mixed:

lifeEducation = non-formal Education + informal Education + eEducation

The eEducation to foster lifelong learners is possible if the "community" is the center of lifeEducation while the center of the other three types of education is the student. My vision of the lifeEducation is not propose a creation of a new B&M school but to spontaneously use many Brick and Mortal facilities (not school) to connect with facilitators and assessors and to connect them with the learners.

In short, for eEducation to be relevant, there is a need of a new business model to evolve from a radical idea to a practical framework.

@ Gary Stobbs - I am likewise an old fashion "teacher." The eEducation has its strength if it can be put to proper use as a means to transform people to be lifelong learner. However, there is a need of a visionary to harness all components into an appropriate curriculum and appropriate business model to be of use. I believe that eEducation will evolve.

@Francisco Cua: I agree, guess what you mean is an extended form of blended learning. Several years ago this was also the result of a very successful project with > 50 universities in Switzerland. The problem is indeed that there is not such a thing as a comprehensive, well-thought out business model for lifeLearning. Perhaps someone should organize a workshop or conference with/for people like us, who have a lot to say from practical experiences with all that technology business. For instance: in NO university I am working for, eLearning has already been accepted (far from used) by a majority of teachers and students, although the best of eLearning Platforms are installed and promoted. What does that tell us?

Thanks Ljubomir for your message. I have seen your question and I appreciate its significance. But I do not engage in e-Teaching and Learning.

Being a young nation, Malaysia allocates a large budget for education. I am one of the teachers of the pre-university (Matriculation) program. My students live in the hostels; and we see them, office hours, 5 days a week. Even with this facility, it is difficult to deliver facts, deliver values, correct misconceptions, correct behavior etc. But then, this is education; it is more than just delivering facts.

I believe that eT&L has an important role, but I am not in a position to comment. I'm still thinking about it. Your questions, Ljubomir, are very appropriate and will help direct my thinking. Thanks.

Respected Sir,

I will answer as a teacher as i am still a novice researcher in this field.

1. we have far to go as in India students still prefer face to face teaching although udacity is becoming popular here day by day.

2. I find semantic web based pedagogy will definitely improve the current scenario. Enough has already been researched and applied in this field but we need to apply it more often.

3. right learning strategy must be modeled as completely user-centric, adaptive and affect.

Thanks for sharing this question with me,

Wow, this discussion has proceeded along a number of interesting paths since I last participated in it. So many interesting perspectives.

@Ljubomir - one question you raise about Intelligent Tutoring also interests me a lot. It is to do with how computer systems can be configured for intelligent dialogue. There's some really interesting work emerging from automated question generation -- see questiongeneration.org

@Louis - the idea of an "interface language" for explanation is something very interesting. I'm researching along similar lines but hadn't thought yet in terms of a "language", just there there is enormous scope for tool development

@Ian - yes, wikiversity is a good place for explanatory content. Over time, it is really becoming a very useful source. Slowly, it is also gaining in academic credibility but there's a lot of academic elitism out there that dismisses it too easily.

@Ljubomir - back to your initial questions. Over the last few years I am starting to notice a displacement of the term "e-learning" by "digital learning" because it has more utility & enables us to move beyond other awkward terms like "m-learning" by using an all inclusive term. It's interesting to reflect that prior to "e-learning" there were many other competing terms that have fallen by the wayside: eg., hypermedia, multimedia, computer-mediated communication, etc. Likewsie, I also the term eEducation a little awkward. To the question as to whether we have "succeeded" -- there's plenty of inspiring case-studies out there but it's still very much a work in progress in terms of pedagogy.

Re the formula on what is equivalent to e-Education: I'm not so sure that it can be neatly summarised as the sum of e-teaching & e-Learning. What about the admin side of things? "Education" to me tends to involve institutional delivery & access, & this involves teachers, researchers, administrators, IT systems staff, instructional designers, etc. Perhaps the term "digital infrastructure" is more useful when talking about "e"... & then to qualify it in terms of context, like educational settings etc.

Ljubomir rose a very general question, and thus initiated a vast discussion. i suppose self - learning is the more important component. E-learning is only part of self-learning. A person (adult or student) must be very self-organized, manage his/her personal time while self-learning process.

E-learning as a tool may help in it, and increase effectiveness of learning.

On the other side e-teaching is more practical set of tools for a techer and aimed to organize and structure teaching environment.

eEducation = eLearning + eTeaching. These three can not be effectively achieved without eConcepts towards better implementation strategies

Before we address questions about the relative advantages/disadvantages of new technologies for education, we need to first decide on our educational goals (what is it that we want our students to know, to do, and to be, and how these 3 are related to each other). Different educational paradigms have emphasized one of these three (e.g. transmission models, constructivist competency-based models, personal development models), and each of them favors different pedagogical principles (e.g. habit formation and programmed instruction; active learning, problem-solving and inquiry-based skills; person-centered principles, self-discovery and critical pedagogy). It is only after we make these decisions that we can assess the relative merits of, say, face-to-face vs. online environments, and decide how a certain technology can best be used to facilitate (or hinder) the implementation of our pedagogical principles. We always have to determine the value and use of a technology (or a learning environment) in terms of the goal we want to achieve, but it is not always straightforward. For example, on the surface, it might seem that a face-to-face environment is a more effective way to foster discussion and the exchange of different viewpoints, but this is not necessarily the case. I have recently sat in on undergraduate classrooms of fewer than 15 participants, where the students sat as far away as possible from each other, the teacher lectured for the entire period, and no one asked any questions or volunteered an opinion. Nothing had changed in the 50 years since I had been an undergraduate. I have also participated in two online courses, both of which had a “discussion board”. In one, participation on the discussion board was optional. The result? No one participated (except me, but I gave up after a few weeks, since I never received any feedback). In the other, participation was compulsory (marks were assigned), but it was so highly structured that it hardly resembled a “discussion”. Students were given a specific question to address (no option to ask their own questions) and were told to cite references (using correct APA style!) from their assigned readings in their response. The result was a series of posts that didn’t address each other and looked more like traditional homework assignments than any kind of real exchange. The absence of exchange and discussion in BOTH these environments (face-to-face and online) had little or nothing to do with the presence or absence of a technology-enhanced environment, and everything to do with the teacher’s (implicit or explicit) educational model and pedagogical commitments.

I agree with Denise's observation at the end of her discussion. What is missing always is the "essence" to create interaction and therefore capitalize on technology to enhance the exchange of ideas during the learning process.

You know Ljubomir, I am thinking to use discourse analysis in the thread of discussions to your questions. I feel important outcomes will be the result.

@Denise Morel: "The absence of exchange and discussion in BOTH these environments (face-to-face and online) had little or nothing to do with the presence or absence of a technology-enhanced environment, and everything to do with the teacher’s (implicit or explicit) educational model and pedagogical commitments."

???

What's wrong with those educational models and pedagogical commitments? Which models and commitments are you refering to, anyway? Do you really think that we can change students' well-formed minds and well-shaped habits (after all, they are adolescents, aren't they)?

Or are we forcing well-meant learning models and modes (e.g. disucussions) on our students, who know bloody well that in the end those do not pay off at all in a educational world dominated by "standard tests" and "credit points"?

I am puzzled.

@ Hussin Hejase I was also considering a critical analysis of this thread as I believe there is important ideas being discussed. I would like to ask permission from Ljubomir and all the other contributors to use their comments. I plan to put any resulting article on here for everyone to comment on.

@ Paul Vossen Sorry, I think my previous post was a too long-winded. I mentioned 3 models (referred to by some as Transmission, Transaction and Transformation) and their related pedagogical principles at the beginning. My point was not to promote or denounce any particular model, but simply to highlight the fact that decisions about how to use technology in education can only come AFTER we’ve determined what we want our students to learn and the kinds of pedagogical activities that will help our students achieve that goal. So, for example, standardized tests and the credit system that continue to dominate institutionalized learning are reflections of the transmission model and favor memorization and rote learning of “facts”. If this is what we want, we can design technological tools to promote that kind of learning. Similarly, if what we want to promote is critical thinking or problem-solving, for example, then we will have to design different technological tools (and also different ways of evaluating students, since, as you suggest, as long as students know that what gets rewarded are “right” answers, they won’t see any value in open-ended activities (such as discussions).

@ Gary Stobbs: You have my permission :-)

None of your questions or your equation are simple to answer :-)

First, the simple equation: eEducation = eLearning + eTeaching in relation to the right pedagogy and learning strategies for students. The answer is it depends on many variables.

Technology offers the potential to diminish eEducation at the expense of students' quality of education. Even though most universities limit the number of students who can participate in eLearning, the number of students for a course has increased over the last ten years. Teaching in an online environment is quite time consuming when we think about the amount of time it takes to read each student's post in a discussion board for grading and grade papers and quizzes. As the number of students increases in the classroom and the turnaround time for posting grades/feedback to students shortens, it is more likely instructors will not have the time necessary to provide adequate feedback to students in all areas of the curriculum. Therefore, the quality of education online decreases in relation to class size.

This manifests when universities need to increase their revenue by increasing student enrollment and some universities are currently going global in order to enroll more students. Globalization and increasing diversity are excellent concepts; however, if the instructor has difficulty communicating with students whose language is not English (or whatever the language is of the university), then problems arise. Thus, the eEducation experience might have less integrity, reduced quality of material, instruction, and completion rates. It is imperative that globalization of eEducation includes support for instructors and students from diverse backgrounds in order to minimize unforeseen consequences of opening education to a global marketplace.

The right pedagogy and learning strategies go hand-in-hand with the above information. It seems highly unlikely that there is 'the right pedagogy' or 'learning strategies' that will fit all the needs of the students. What we can do as teachers, instructors, students, instructional designers is adapt what we already know from current research to broaden the opportunity for more students to participate in eEducation. One way to accomplish this is by increasing the number of classes offered in each discipline so the student to instructor ratio does not overburden the instructor. A law class I mentored in one semester last year, had 70 students participating. The instructor never did meet the grading/feedback period required by the school because the instructor was overwhelmed with all the reading he/she had to do prior to grading.

At the K-12 level, technology offers the potential to increase eEducation and eLearning opportunities for all students through instructional design of applications that takes general instruction and adapts the instruction to the needs of the students. For example, the educational system requires students to learn certain content at certain times within the K-12 continuum; however, not all students learn at the same rate. Therefore, technology could help students who may need more time to master the content due to a disability or students whose language is other than the native language spoken at the school. Consequently, students learn and move to the next level only when they have mastered the previous level regardless of age. Secondly, students living in poverty areas do not have the same point of reference in their knowledge base as other more affluent students. Thus, it is also important to design instruction to increase their knowledge base but at a rate that works for them in relation to their environment. The caveat is not dumbing down the instruction but balancing the instruction with the students' needs and stretching their abilities without creating frustration.

@Denise Morel Thank you for your permission and I do think you are close to something with your comment about the Transmission model and how students are instructed. I think that many of the online (eEducation) courses are structured to provide "facts" in a way suited to rote learning. Would you agree with this conclusion?

The key benefit of e-education is the transference of responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student. Are we there yet? No! We have not yet established the culture of learning that makes e-learning effective. Students do not have the skills to be responsible for their own learning yet, nor do they understand the process of both learning for learning and learning for achievement. Perhaps we need to focus our early teaching on the skills needed for students to be effectively responsible for their own learning, a la 'flipped' teaching. This fits in with many views about the effectiveness of teaching metacognitive strategies. I am currently experimenting with ways to transfer responsibility for learning from me to my students via technology, but have only had limited success. The extant learning culture blocks the change. Students EXPECT me to guide their learning and resist attempts to make them more responsible. Part of this problem may be tied up with what students perceive to be valued in assessment. If assessment valued a wider range of cognitive strategies, we would be able to convince students to take more responsibility.

@ Mark Gould - When these "immature" students complaint, the "immature mommy or daddy Dean and Associate Dean" will come to comfort them and create "hell" to the faculty who is doing the right thing. :-)

Assessment is what moves and motivates these youth and adult to engage, to drop the course, or to complaint... Thus, I put emphasis in curriculum design and I incorporate assessment and engagements into the design. I use this formula: Curriculum design -> Assessment -> Motivation -> Performance (students' engagement) -> Feedback. Activities and positive teaching/environment are incorporated and embedded in Assessment and Motivation.

I am speaking in context of higher education.

I always agree with you Francisco, and I reiterate, I think there is a responsibility for us as teachers to help students move to the new responsibility. We will do this with careful design of curriculum and assessment and perhaps a change of teaching focus to be more about the skills students need to negotiate their learning. To know what it means to learn for learning's sake while understanding what is needed for assessment.

@ Gary Stobbs: Oh definitely, I agree with your conclusion. The transmission model (or as Friere calls it, “the banking model”) and its offshoots – programmed “teacher-proof” learning materials, one-size-fits-all mass instruction, and standardized testing – have dominated the field of education since the industrial revolution, and continues to this day. And the model lends itself easily to implementation in an online context. After all, we don’t call our times “the Information Age” for nothing (unfortunately).

@All: Just to add some salt to the wound:

The influence of Information Communication Technology (ICT) of “now day’s education” is obvious and evident. The ICT in education is here and it will stay. Therefore, the impact ICT on the learning/teaching process (in almost all fields and levels of education) is enormous. Computers (all types and sub types) are in the center of the usage of ICT in current eLearning, eTeaching and/or eEducation.

However, we had a "similar" tool: TV, projector-foil etc., before. The main difference between these, auxiliary tools and computers is the possibility that the user (student) could communicate with the computer, to have a dialogue with the computer, i.e. ask questions and get answers, like communication with a human teacher. The question is whether "our eLearning system" capable for it. Another problem is individualized, each student learns according to her abilities, background, emotion, etc., and again, the question is whether our eLearning system "capable" these modifications? The third and unfortunately not at last, problem is lack of let say “ePedagogy (eDidactics), or how to present learning materials in sense of above considerations?” Moreover, could we “easily” change teaching strategy in “our eLearning system”, when we “see” that previous strategy is not good enough? Problems listed above (and many others) directly affect the realization of good adaptive learning/teaching environment.

I strongly believe that the teaching is art. I hope, that the goal (of all teachers and researchers in any kind of education) have to be to transform how children learn, what they learn, who they learn from, to reach the utopian Summerville way of learning and teaching, with help of ICT.

Ljubomir, what you are saying is correct. Except there seems to be an implication that the computer dialogue with the student replaces the dialogue with the teacher. I think that there are two possible response to that implication:

1. That is possible that the computer can't replace the teacher because of the importance of the social aspect to learning, and

2. That even if it were possible, I don't think that students are well enough prepared to use ICT effectively for their own learning. We need to develop in students an appropriate way of mediating their dialogue with the computer.

in other words, it is still important for the teacher to prepare students to use ICT effectively, then, with effective ICT systems, e-learning is a possibility.

With respect to your point about speed of change in response to need, e-commerce has been very quick to respond to consumers so with similar evolutionary pressures, e-learning should do the same. The question is: will the same evolutionary pressures be applied to e-learning?

@Ljubomir Jerinic: I agree 50%. Let me explain - and increase the salt in the wound (perhaps)

"The ICT in education is here and it will stay." Information and Communication will stay. Whether the kind of methodology and technology pushed upon teachers, assessors and students will stay, is a matter of philosophy, policy and politics, on all levels, and those three stakeholders have almost no influence on it. It just happens. I see no other explanation for the discrepancy between good will on the one side and bad results on the other side (all in the eyes of the resp. speakers and stakeholders, of course)

"However, we had a "similar" tool: TV, projectors,..." Yes, and at the dawn of ICT well-meaning pioneers meant that all pupils should learn how to program a computer: using a toy programming language like BASIC. It costed us at least two generations to unlearn students the bad habits and concepts and expectations conveyed by such !$%. Now we have e-learning platforms mostly with incarnations of learning theories which turned out to be inhuman or otherwise inferior. Surely, researchers are working on better things, but that will take much longer than proclaimed and I do not want to judge its usefulness before I have seen it myself. In the meantime, pedagogues like Erik Mazur demonstrate, that you can be very effective by simple technical gadges...

"I strongly believe that the teaching is art". I don't. Most students don't. Well, we should start distinguishing in our discussions what students we are talking about: 5 years old, 15 years ols, 50 years old? Isn't art something for the artist and a self-chosen circle of admirers? Is this how education is organized in 21st century? Would be wonderful, but I can't see it happen very soon. If students should be at the center of our activities, art would be the false paradigm.

Maybe I misunderstood you - for the sake of further discussion ;-)

Perhaps teaching is best thought of as an art because it involves the creative synthesis of a large number of variables to generate a response intended to elicit a desirable emotional response in a learner - hence causing learning. Learning is mediated by the limbic system - emotional response usually linked to novelty or other form of arousal. Sounds like art to me!

@Mark Gould : I can live with your definition of 'art', but by its very nature I can't see a role for ICT to foster this emotional response by our students in absence of a human teacher (coach, guide, guru, ...).

Surely, in some areas, ICT *can* provide interesting new ways of basic information storage and retrieval (thus replacing libraries, books, papers and the like), for visualisation of all forms of knowledge (replacing musea, hardware models, etc.), for experimenting and simulation (replacing the laboratory, testroom), etc.

But as you already noted: using the computer and other tech stuff in a sophisticated way has to be taught and learned itself. This can eat up a large amount of precious teaching time. Do we want that?

The danger is, that teachers become instructors of tools, and students start thinking that all can be done by tools instead of brains. For some educational purposes this may be enough, but it is certainly not the general answer.

We have a major problem, if people start thinking, that there is nothing interesting to learn and deal with beyond what can be programmed on a computer or provided by any sort of ICT (cf. Joseph Weizenbaum !)

The crucial question to ask is: who are the people who are promoting ICT and promissing a wonderfull world full of ICT-enabled classrooms? I bet, most are not themselves teachers or students, or ignore the emotional, motivational, social, economical ... complexities of integrating it in current educational reality!

If indeed teaching is an art, which can not be fully taught and learned like a craft or skill, but depends essentially on personal dispositions and talents, then the entrance conditions to the job of teacher as well as the relationship between teacher and student should be rethought and redefined also!

At least, we shouldn't expect too much effect from the current 'school system', which is based on a completely different paradigm: that in principle everybody has the right and is able to teach / learn anything, given enough time, money and dedication (reading like a very democratic principle, but in essence rather a technocratic one, surely not based on sound psychological research).

Let me remained all of us, with: “Pedagogy, the art of teaching, under various names, has been adopted by the academic world as a respectable and an important field. The art of learning is an academic orphan. One should not be mislead by the fact that libraries of academic departments of psychology often have a section marked “learning theory.” The older books under this heading deal with the activity that is sometimes caricatured by the image of a white-coated scientist watching a rat run through a maze… newer volumes are more likely to be based upon the theories of performance of computer programs than on the behavior of animals… but… they are not about the art of learning… they do not offer advice to the rat (or to the computer) about how to learn.”, Seymour Papert (1993). The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer.

I think that will be important to rethink the didactic approach in the age of "clouds", now...

Back to Ljubomir's question or at least what I think is the essence of it. I think that pedagogy for ICTs or Information systems must be different. It must focus on developing skills of self teaching, self management, self assessment etc. In other words a broad range of metcognitive strategies. These take time and perhaps maturity to develop so maybe self tutoring systems, no matter how good can only have limited use in younger students and increasing use as students mature and show skills appropriate to self tutoring. This also implies an assessment regime that measures metacognitive abilities, and perhaps teachers making decisions about how much use of ICTs is appropriate for individual students. From my perspective as a teacher/practitioner, who uses ICTs a lot (but not commercial self tutoring systems), I would have no problem implementing a system such as this if the self tutoring material met my students' needs. But to reiterate, wide application of self tutoring systems would require a change in pedagogy to focus on developing metacognitive strategies in students and a change in assessment to focus on decision making about how ready students were for more freedom to use the systems. In my case however, I don't think a change in curriculum is needed. The point of the self tutoring systems would be to assist students to gain the knowledge and understandings needed to do the authentic tasks I set them.

I don't know about the different types of models mentioned. But I do agree with Gary Stobbs' point (April 13th) that it is 'the way students experience course materials'. And this is where different personality types comes in, as he also mentioned. I did much better outside the traditional classroom when I studied by postal service. In the traditional classroom I felt intimidated by the teachers and peers around me. I now study on-line, and while I still have the advantage of being able to pace my learning, I find the on-line learning environment lacks privacy. The discussion board is a public domain in which teachers are privvy to all students' conversations, whereas in a traditional classroom students can talk together privately, and freely discuss aspects of the learning day.

When an efficient system is set up, so that e-students are encouraged to converse privately, then the e-environment will more efficiently meet the needs of individual students. At the moment the on-line environment is in some respects more controlled, by those at the top of the hierarchy, than it is in a traditional classroom.

Another example of control is the design of CDRoms. I have had experience of two CDRoms each designed by two different universities. The structure of the contents made it very difficult to easily access information; the sections of information were not cross-referenced. And the novelty aspect of technology was used unnecessarily. For example: information that appears and disappears depending on where you place the mouse and, not being able to progress until you've answered a question. This maybe great for early years to make learning fun, but at tertiary level it is discouraging. I promptly withdrew from this unit due to this CDRom and am now in the slow process of transferring all the information to hard copy, before I re-enrol. The other CDRom I stayed with, but it greatly slowed down my learning. Another potential on-line student gave up the idea of doing her Masters on-line when she received the introductory CDRom with so many novelty aspects embedded in it that it was difficult to get hold of the basic information she needed.

The way the e-learning materials are designed is telling me how to think and learn. The on-line and e-learning experience is the most controlled type of learning I have done, and it needs to loosen up a lot to encourage students to think and do for themselves.

Thank you, interesting question on eEducation

eEducation has a heartbeat it never stops. It is an open inquiry in which teachers and students need to build relationships based on what students need to know and be able to do. As instructors we have to allow real learning to happen that sticks. In other words, we need to allow students to pursue their interest in the context of the curriculum.

Teaching strategies, my personal favorite, is based on the type of students level, interest and topic. Technology fits in every core subject as an instructional tool but face to face meetings are still necessary for students to connect to deep learning. The pedagogy underlying learning leverages audiovisual options to students as they prepare for a lesson or class. The level of interaction in e Education is at a different level than face to face, and assessing for mastery is complex. The Question we need to ask is, where in the e- learning cycle do students need us the most?

@Sandi Worrall-Hart has made a point I had not thought of and that is the online learning environment lacks privacy. The younger generation may not have the same worries about online privacy because they have grown up with Facebook and Twitter but there is still the problem that they may feel embarrassed and may not want to share ideas that may or may not be correct simply to avoid being criticised by their peers or maybe even the teacher. It is the idea of control that we as teachers feel we need to have but as Maritha Purperhart asks "The Question we need to ask is, where in the e- learning cycle do students need us the most?" Can we allow control to be shared or even relinquished for part of the learning process?

Hi @All.

ICT can help in the process in achieving what we want in the learning process. Even though it will not be 100% achieved but in the process much can be done.

The problem is that there is no strong relationship between teachers and system developers. Teacher have various and many ideas but do not know how and where they can channel the idea so a system developer can help them. As for a system developer, they know how to develop a system but they don’t have clear idea of what teachers want.

So in my opinion, there should be a joint and ongoing discussions between the two parties so ideas can be transformed and implemented through system and meet the needs of teachers.

I totally agree with you Zaiton.

System developers are not teachers or curriculum supervisors. An instructor should accompany a high level of awareness with the most recent technologies in his/er field.

There are some corporations combine both domains in the industry such as BBC, Pearson Education, Evolve, ...etc. Such movement could help decrease the gap between teacher and technology where ideas in the educational process match the proper technological understanding and application.

It is highly recommended that instructors have a step forward towards technological training and enhance their technical behavior. Many teachers are still ages from technology while today students look smarter in dealing with it.

Quiet correct Mohammed. Most students in this present era are more technologically advanced than their instructors or teachers. Hence the need for continues technological training for instructors.

Dear Ljubomir,

I have more questions than answers to give.

The conceptualizations of pedagogy have sometimes anticipated, at least historically, the technological and informatics evolution.

These educational principles may (or not) inform (and give shape) to models of coding and processing of data and information (which are not the same thing)?

Pedagogical reflection can become an instrument of design, to guide and steer towards more and several developments the design of software (not only educational)?

How should to change time and space, the environment, the relationships, the educational reality, because all this can happen?

@ Iheanacho: Good point! Probably this asymmetry between teachers' knowledge and pupils' knowledge (from elementary school to university and beyond) at the start-off of an educational interaction always existed. It is a natural consequence of small changes between generations' socio-technological environment, accumulating very fast (at least in our times) to large differences. Nothing to worry about. Except that teachers of all ages should be prepared to accept it and see 'teaching-learning' as a symmetric process, as a 'give-and-take', a 'win-win' situation for all.

Especially in my main field (computer science) I can't help to be hung off by my students as far as pure technological skills are concerned, e.g. fluency in a particular programming language. So what? First, I'm not (any more) interested in all those technological details, which change from year to year, or at least from decade to decade, without a well-defined goal (again: a moving target). I did it in my time, and I was proud of my skills, and enjoyed it very much. I recognize myself in my students day after day. Secondly, however, as soon as I start talking about the wider scientific and socio-technological contexts of computer science I suddenly realize that my students don't know almost nothing (double negation intended for pun ;-).

So yes, there is this need for continued technological training for instructors, but teachers, lecturers etc. need not wait for their next 'summer school' or 'extra-curricular training' (perhaps enforced by well-meaning management afraid of admitting any supposed 'weaknesses' in their staff).

No: just talk with your pupils and students, make it a dialogue, show that you take them seriously and acknowledge what they already know and can do without reflection, and then I'm sure they will take you seriously, are willing to share their knowledge and skills, and will be eager to listen to you and adopt anything worthwhile that you have to say and show - often much faster than you would be able to spell out during a boring one-way lecture.

At least that's my experience. And the experience of a handfull of engaged teachers in my country who have been reporting about their interactive projects with pupils of all ages. Why are those positive experiments getting so less attention, and why are newspapers and other media so full of heated discussions about supposedly important educational reforms (e.g. whether we should have 9 or 10 secondary classes. What please !%?)