Ten Ways Online Education Matches, or Surpasses, Face-to-Face Learning
Interesting, if very lightweight, article from a professor holding online classes.
Actually, reflecting on this, I can see why he reaches these conclusions – he’s running live sessions, i.e. traditional teaching, but augmenting it with discussion groups etc, that develop a richer and longer term set of student to student interactions.
I’d like to see the analysis and comparison with standalone courseware – I think the results might be a little different. So what to do? I think some key elements that he talked about can be placed into courseware to develop a more two way sense of involvement for the learner:
* discussion groups – this is so simple and cheap to implement, it’s a no brainer, but I see little of this being done – first response is always about not being able to control the posts. Hmm, let ‘em rip, the natural community will kill off assholes – or they’ll reveal some things that need to be fixed.
* ‘Ask an expert’ mentoring. I’ve not seen something as simple as a contact/mentor email in most courseware – why not nominate a few people to take in turns to answer email?
That’s it – a couple of cheap and cheerful ideas. Now where did I put that dogfood – it’s time for my dinner :-)