Last week, with the top trio Neil, Cam and Howard, I ran a session for colleagues across the ministry that shared our team’s work. We explored three questions:
- What is e-learning (and what is not e-learning)?
- Why is it important?
- How does it fit in The New Zealand Curriculum?
We got asked some tough questions – questions that we should always be prepared to answer! So I’m going to devote a couple of posts to e-learning FAQs (don’t hesitate to offer up your own frequently asked questions or answers).
Q: e-Learning has nothing new to offer (other than the benefits of evolutionary change – more information, more connections etc).
A: There many justifications for e-learning. These include: young people are digital learners (their social, cultural and ethical practices are digital ones); the workplace and economy requires proficiency with ICT; e-learning can be a lever for teacher pedagogical change; ICT can be used to ‘add value’ (eg when teaching concepts difficult to grasp or to access to a wider range of learning resources and options). These reasons are necessary but not sufficient, to my mind.
The main justification, for me, is that e-learning supports the kinds of curriculum and pedagogies that respond to and shape 21st century society.
The NZ Curriculum says e-learning contributes new ways of teaching and learning (p36 e-Learning and pedagogy). e-Learning offers new approaches to teaching that overcome barriers of distance and time, expand learning beyond the classroom, and provide for more varied and richer learning. These are largely matters of scale and the amplification of effects: e-learning provides for wider and more flexible learning options by making learning quicker, bigger and more varied.
This is not to be sneezed at. An example is the Virtual Learning Network, which connects teachers and students to provide a full range of subjects and teaching expertise to small and rural schools and communities.
What about new learning? Transformative learning that shifts us away from a focus on content goals for their own sake? Learning that ’affirms students’ interests, but also expands them and then demonstrates their significance’ (to quote Craig McDonald, commenting on a previous blog post)?
I’ve used the five key competencies from The NZ Curriculum as a framework for my suggestions for new educational outcomes through e-learning:
- Thinking: We are open to different ways of knowing the world. When we studied chemistry, we were presented with one (therefore, true) model of the atom in our chemistry textbook. Type atom into Google images to see all the ways we represent or model a single phenomenon. [example suggested by Rachel Bolstad.]
- Using language, symbols and text: Our perceptions of the world are constructed through language, symbols and texts. Changes in technology change the ways that we communicate and construct meaning. There are new forms of information and new ways to process and present this information. An example is Hans Rosling, who models and visualises complex data sets to reveal new insights on poverty.
- Managing self: We understand ourselves by bumping up against other people’s values and perspectives. Interacting with communities of learners from other schools on a student inquiry project, as in this one on human rights issues, provides opportunities for learners, in a diverse and challenging setting, to set personal and shared goals, make and adapt plans in achieve those goals, and share and negotiate interpretations and ideas.
- Relating to others: Watching documentary web video on a website like Alive in Baghdad, we hear the varied views and perspectives of Iraqis living in a time of civil war and democratic evolution. We are compelled to relate to others’ views of the world and imagine ourselves in the positions of others, including the journalists doing the reporting.
- Participating and contributing: This competency is about students not just knowing the world but being productive in it, and classrooms are rich with examples of e-learning’s contribution here. In Point England Primary School’s book review podcasts, students are making a real and valued contribution to an international community of readers. They learn the discourse of literary criticism through their immersion in practice – through the act of participating and contributing in a community of literary critics. In the video, the students talk about why e-learning is important to them and what they are learning.
Next: What is the evidence for the impact of e-learning on teaching and learning?
I think e-learning is important because our learners live a great deal of their lives outside school in a digital context.
This is where there is a disconnect between the types of text-based literacies so often practised at school, and the multimodal online literacies that young people engage in to connect, establish identity and find meaning. Aren’t these our goals as educators too? I think to do otherwise is to swim against the tide and ignore an incredible opportunity to engage learners and put them in control of their learning.