Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1159] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 171
From: Anita Pincas (teedapi@ioe.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 19 Feb 2001 - 12:55:33 MET
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 11:55:33 +0000 From: Anita Pincas <teedapi@ioe.ac.uk> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1159] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 171
In response to:
From: Ian Coward <I.Coward2@wigan-leigh.ac.uk>
>Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1142] A New Question
>Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 10:07:13 -0000
>
>After reading the response from Lucia Cucciarelli, from the department of
>lifelong learning, I was given to wondering whether the advent of on-line
>learning could possibly spell the end of traditional eduaction
>establishments.The growth of home-based interaction and education through
>the internet,as in the case of the British governments 'LearnDirect'
>initiative, seems to me to give governmental departments, bent on saving
>money, the opportunity to scale down, radically, access to public facilities
>such as college learning resource centres.
>Ian Coward - Department of Computing & I.T
>Wigan & Leigh College,
>Leigh, Lancashire, England
Good heavens, I hope not. If you look at the very nice article by Philip
C. Candy " Reaffirming a proud tradition: universities and lifelong
learning", which has an excellent overview of literature in the field, you
will see that
there are already good stirrings among educationists at all levels to be
flexible and adapt to new needs, even in the tricky area of assessment. The
paper is in Active Learning in Higher Education, December 2000, Vol.1 No.2,
publ. by Paul Chapman for Sage, www.sagepubl.co.uk
I personally believe that universities at undergraduate and higher, and
institutions at other levels, are going to have to change their ways of
thinking, though it will take time.
The push towards autonomous learning - which is seductive, and which the
business providers would like to follow - will not work. Anyone who has
been in education for some time knows that.
I was in a BBC World Service Newshour discussion on Saturday with a
professor from Liverpool university (on the BBC website, but I havent heard
it myself yet!), and he too had got the impression that people were hoping
the internet would spell the end of universities.
I dont think there is any chance of success in *sustained* learning - as
opposed to quick, just-in-time information collection - without either
well-structured collaborative learning among peers or some teaching (online
or otherwise) and preferably both.
Anita
=====
Anita Pincas
Senior Lecturer,
English Department
Institute of Education,
University of London,
20 Bedford Way,
London WC1H OAL, UK.
Tel: 0207-612-6522 office
Tel: 0207-286-5324 home
Fax: 0207-612-6467
MA in English Teaching by email:-
http://www.ioe.ac.uk/english/MAinET.htm
Certificate in Online Education and Training:-
http://www.ioe.ac.uk/english/oet.htm
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