{"id":30108,"date":"2012-06-20T17:36:42","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T21:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=30108"},"modified":"2012-06-21T10:31:21","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T14:31:21","slug":"dont-knock-it-until-you-try-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2012\/06\/20\/dont-knock-it-until-you-try-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t knock it until you try it."},"content":{"rendered":"

From DSC:<\/strong><\/span>
\n To the many people who disregard or think that online learning is “less than” or inferior..my first thought to such a perspective is, “Have you ever taken or taught an online course before?\u00a0 And if so, how recently?”\u00a0 That is, do you know<\/em> what that experience can be like these days? Below is a story of a “new believer” so to speak.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, online learning is not for everyone. Many students don’t have the discipline to make it in the online classroom.\u00a0 But if I were an employer looking to hire someone, I’d definitely want to hire someone who was successful in the online classroom — as they will be the self-starters of the future, folks who will require little hand holding and supervision.<\/span><\/p>\n

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No Back Row <\/strong><\/a>— from InsideHigherEd.com by Steve Cohen<\/p>\n

Excerpt (emphasis DSC<\/span>):<\/em><\/p>\n

Computers and the Internet were supposed to revolutionize education \u2013 from pre-K through grad school. And while there have been isolated examples of teaching-learning breakthroughs \u2013 think Scholastic\u2019s Read 180, Khan Academy \u2013 most of the so-called technological advances I\u2019ve seen are decidedly unimpressive.<\/div>\n
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Until now.<\/div>\n
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And what I saw truly surprised me. UNC has created a virtual classroom that is more intimate than 90 percent of the seminars I\u2019ve taught in or taken.<\/strong><\/span> That\u2019s because a quarter of every student\u2019s computer screen is a grid of the dozen other students in the class \u2013 in close-up! Within minutes of signing into the class \u2013 and this particular class was \u201clive\u201d (referred to as synchronous) \u2013 I realized that each of us was sitting in a front-row seat.<\/strong> <\/span>The professor was going to call on each of us.<\/span> He could also capture and share our computer screen with the other students.<\/p>\n

Which meant that all 12 of the students in the class were going to contribute.<\/strong> There was no perusing Facebook, no e-mailing, and no shopping during this 90-minute class. Although it may be hard to believe, there was closer intimacy in this virtual classroom than in most of the dozen-person seminars I\u2019ve experienced in law school. Perhaps it was the close-up of each person\u2019s face in the upper quadrant of the screen. But I got a sense that each student knew that he or she was expected to contribute to the class discussion. And that shared expectation raised the bar for all.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Also see:<\/em><\/p>\n