Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1170] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 171
From: Nicole Harris (harrisnv@sbu.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 19 Feb 2001 - 18:18:53 MET
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 17:18:53 +0000 From: Nicole Harris <harrisnv@sbu.ac.uk> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1170] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 171
I'm always slightly bemused when I hear people worrying about on-line learning
replacing traditional education. I have also heard this worry a lot recently
from librarians facing increasing amounts of digitised material.
Surely it is akin to saying that the introduction of debit cards eradicated
cash. Of course it didn't. It isn't practical, desirable, or foreseeable.
Electronic resources, teaching online, role-playing online - all of these simply
provide another option, another means of getting the message across, another way
of trying to reach each individual student. We all learn differently, after
all, so surely the more learning options available - the better?
Anita Pincas wrote:
> 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
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> List address to send message to everyone:
> ifets-discussion@catfish.valdosta.edu
> Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
> Forum website: http://ifets.ieee.org/
> Forum's contact person: kinshuk@massey.ac.nz
> Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.ieee.org/maillist.html
> ---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------- Nicole Harris Researcher LITC South Bank University London SE1 0AA
Tel: +44 020 7815 7838 Fax: +44 020 7815 7050
http://www.sbu.ac.uk/litc http://www.angel.ac.uk
-------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------- List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discussion@catfish.valdosta.edu Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html Forum website: http://ifets.ieee.org/ Forum's contact person: kinshuk@massey.ac.nz Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.ieee.org/maillist.html ---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Tue 20 Feb 2001 - 00:20:26 MET