We learn where we are.
Distance learning as an expression is a misnomer and by those words faulty in concept. Learning takes place immediate to learners, not distant from them. What the expression actually intends and ought to state instead is, learning at a distance from the originating resource.
In reality, “learning at a distance” has existed since the dawn of history when scribes first created writing and sent written knowledge down the street, over land and over sea. We can study the thinking of the pre-Socratics, dead for more than 2500 years and living then thousands of miles away. Contrary to some bit of techno-prejudice, we have not thought all these years of that study in its reach beyond time and space as “distance learning,” merely as learning.
The expression “distance learning” is one more insidiously pervasive example that the institutionalized dispenser of education whether school, teacher or other agency is superior to the individual learner without whom no learning is possible. A more exact term is distance education; that is, educational content provided to remote but connected learners by using some form of technology.
Distance education is the terminology used by such reference sources as the online EBSCO MegaFILE to article texts on the subject – 2,778 of them as of this date. The Library of Congress and all the world’s libraries that follow LC’s thesaurus of subject headings as a standard also employ distance education as the established term. You can Google “distance learning” in Wikipedia and the article you turn up is headed “distance education,” brought to you by automatic referral from the common, but flawed misnomer. For a recent update, see the text Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education (4th ed., 2009).
No doubt, “distance learning” is amok in current popular and professional use. One professional organization, “if your work involves helping people learn wherever they may be,” is United States Distance Learning Association. The Center for Distance Learning, affiliated with the City Colleges of Chicago offers 90 courses in a wide range of disciplines. The Center for Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University has existed since 1991. Presumably, the term is not widely questioned and unlikely to go away very soon.
Distance education as we know it today is an outgrowth of correspondence courses, the first on record having originated in 1728 as a method of teaching short hand with delivery by mail. With new technologies, especially electronic ones – radio, television, and computers – educators have adapted each to enrolling students and classes at a distance from the teacher. Now whole schools operate online and the Minnesota State College and Universities, the state’s public higher education system outside the University of Minnesota, has announced its aim of delivering 25% of its classes by distance education.
Of course, being in a class online, however valuable, fails equivalence to being in a class face to face. Asynchronous participation replaces simultaneity: students reply to one another through postings, not interactive conversations. Though formats vary, classes brought together online require time shifting and likely a greater commitment to pay attention to all the other participants, not just those who participate in the limits of class time. As participation levels increase, in part due to individualization and the comfort of greater anonymity, students can demand in total far more effort from the teacher. These burdens lead to how courses are structured and what is required.
Students will discover what suits their lives, schedules and psyches. They ought also attend to what satisfies their need and desire to learn. The learning counts most of all, not the distance or the technological abolition of distance.
_____
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This article first appeared on the writing platform Helium.com and is here revised.
I welcome substantive comments on the content of this blog. Personal comments may be made to me at my email address, rogdesk@charter.net.
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
To Know, Learn
Link Education, Learning & Knowledge.
The ability to continue learning, begun through education, leads us on to the knowledge that we most dearly need.
Education, too often conflated with learning, is the process of moving each learner to greater knowledge and ability. The education process, begins as soon as a child is present, but does depend upon a rudimentary sensate ability to learn and continued willingness to learn, or assent. Educators are those who expose learning situations to a learner. Though perpetually thought of as teachers in schools or other formal settings, educators may also be others who operate with various intents and levels of explicitness. Educators typically include parents and other relatives, various professionals besides teachers, especially clergy, the communications media allowed or followed and later sought, and one’s peers that in time become all other personal contacts.
Learning is most dependent upon education in its early stages, but learners at all stages must assent to what is being presented otherwise what is intended in education is not learned. Learning, in time takes over from education, and thereby self-directed learners become their own teachers, which opportunity they may perform well or poorly. Learners may also learn from their own thinking by post-operative examination of what they have previously learned.
The processes of education that adhere in all societies tend to become institutionalized in rituals, programs, schools, libraries, museums and other agencies. We think of schools as most prominently established and central to education. Schools, largely through teaching or instruction, aim to impart a common base of knowledge, regarded as most relevant to the society. Hopefully, schools also purposefully embed that content with the process of learning how to learn. In this manner, educators eventually make themselves unnecessary when the learners in their charge have gained mastery and can go on to the next level of education or unto learning on their own. Successful teachers put themselves out of business, except than another wave of ignorance is due to follow those who move onward to further stage teachers and their own direction.
Accessible knowledge consists of what all minds know together with what anyone has known and recorded where those records still exist. Knowledge, also said to exist in full form in the mind of God, is another delightful possibility but outside the scope of this article. Thus in human terms, knowledge is both personal and immediate, but relatively limited, while knowledge beyond the personal is vast and of long duration. Over history, various people reputedly have known everything about everything, a limited possibility. What historians meant by the expression is that the learned had knowledge of what could be conceptualized and categorized into subject disciplines. According to this latter meaning, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646-1716, receives credit for being the last person to know everything that a human could know. Since then knowledge has expanded with increasing velocity, and try as we might no one can know but a part of it all. Rather, we can know about a great deal.
Knowing everything, certainly, is not our real problem as we live our lives. Our problem, and still a challenging one, is to gain and maintain sufficient knowledge so that we can live humanely and well, fulfill our responsibilities, and enjoy the benefits of civilization.
Thus, education starts us on the path of learning by which we are equipped to gain knowledge and the abilities attendant to knowledge throughout our lives. Learning becomes a lifelong endeavor for a number of reasons. The more we learn, the more we realize the limits of our knowledge and the immensity of our ignorance. Knowledge continues to advance through discovery, new activity around the world, and reformulation of prior knowledge; therefore, matters we once knew no longer fit present reality as currently understood. Just as researchers and thinkers discover they have been in error or mistaken, we can admit our own failings, and must replace discredited knowledge with new information. Alas, we have a great tendency over time to forget or misremember what we once knew or thought we knew. The joy of learning is also a powerful stimulus, beyond any utility.
Chiefly, however, we need to learn because, as humans, we are the chief actors in our own lives and destinies. So much comes to us that requires us to learn what we did not know before. Knowledge furnishes and equips life – health, family, housing, location, aging, retirement – and work and recreation and civic responsibility and philosophy of life and religion if we have one, and so on.
What then is the task that education faces to prepare us as learners for the knowledge that is always pressing at our brains and waiting for our minds to integrate the previously unknown with what we already know? Here are a few major challenges.
Determine knowledge needs. Over time, we gradually shift from following the leading dictates of others as to what we ought to learn. Following an established path in learning is a safe mode in some guarantee of less error. The first messages are healthy doses of conservatism that suit us for life in the culture and society we inhabit. Soon, however, we follow our own preferences as we are no longer just receivers but seekers and initiate our own directions. How do I see my future at this point? What is it that I want to become? What are the requisite knowledge and skills to do what I need and want to do? Am I prepared to begin? How do I have to prepare myself in the short and long range? Where is the information?
Acquire the processes of self-direction. What is the available environment for my learning? What choices do I have? What resources, personal and published, that aid choices are available? Am I able to distinguish good advice, obtain it, and upon the information received make my own choices? How do I like to learn? Can I then effectively learn in my preferred manner what I need to learn? Do I have requisite information-seeking and judging skills? How can I get them, hone them? Am I disciplined? Do I look for achievement or ease? What will pay off in my present estimation in the long-term?
Determine accuracy or truthfulness. Does what I find fit what I know? Am I in error somewhere? What is the evidence for the information and how does it fit criteria for validity: up-to-date, authoritative, publicly tested, corroborated by other sources, appropriate to the question? What other questions does this new information open? Where do I go next? What choices do I make?
Whether inquiry-based learning will ever obtain much ground remains debatable at present. Although inquiry is how scientists and other scholars work, the approach is not the practice among most folk. State departments of education and school districts that have tried to implement inquiry as a means of authentic learning usually face a persistent public uproar until they have to give it up or state legislators put a stop to strategies of learning through questioning and testing information. Inquiry is messy, confusing, unbounded and questioning of traditional values, ones that parents and the public feel are endangered. Children can be at odds with their parents over such sensitive subjects as U.S. history, classics of literature, logic and fallacy, evolution, environmentalism, economics, sex education and a host of other subjects on which the public divides.
The debacle over inquiry vaults the politics of education, learning, and knowledge to the forefront. Individuals may learn all they want, despite obstacles. However whenever an environment based on learning and not teaching occupies public institutions, some constituents will fear those choices and muster complaints. Then those authorities, the ones who do not realize that the Bill of Rights grants freedom to all, will always make learning subservient to education and bind up its content. Limitations settle upon us, as knowledge becomes what some middle of the road position says it is.
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This article, here revised, appeared in a slightly different form on Helium.com.
I welcome substantive comments on the contents of this blog. Personal comments to me may be made to the email address, given above.
The ability to continue learning, begun through education, leads us on to the knowledge that we most dearly need.
Education, too often conflated with learning, is the process of moving each learner to greater knowledge and ability. The education process, begins as soon as a child is present, but does depend upon a rudimentary sensate ability to learn and continued willingness to learn, or assent. Educators are those who expose learning situations to a learner. Though perpetually thought of as teachers in schools or other formal settings, educators may also be others who operate with various intents and levels of explicitness. Educators typically include parents and other relatives, various professionals besides teachers, especially clergy, the communications media allowed or followed and later sought, and one’s peers that in time become all other personal contacts.
Learning is most dependent upon education in its early stages, but learners at all stages must assent to what is being presented otherwise what is intended in education is not learned. Learning, in time takes over from education, and thereby self-directed learners become their own teachers, which opportunity they may perform well or poorly. Learners may also learn from their own thinking by post-operative examination of what they have previously learned.
The processes of education that adhere in all societies tend to become institutionalized in rituals, programs, schools, libraries, museums and other agencies. We think of schools as most prominently established and central to education. Schools, largely through teaching or instruction, aim to impart a common base of knowledge, regarded as most relevant to the society. Hopefully, schools also purposefully embed that content with the process of learning how to learn. In this manner, educators eventually make themselves unnecessary when the learners in their charge have gained mastery and can go on to the next level of education or unto learning on their own. Successful teachers put themselves out of business, except than another wave of ignorance is due to follow those who move onward to further stage teachers and their own direction.
Accessible knowledge consists of what all minds know together with what anyone has known and recorded where those records still exist. Knowledge, also said to exist in full form in the mind of God, is another delightful possibility but outside the scope of this article. Thus in human terms, knowledge is both personal and immediate, but relatively limited, while knowledge beyond the personal is vast and of long duration. Over history, various people reputedly have known everything about everything, a limited possibility. What historians meant by the expression is that the learned had knowledge of what could be conceptualized and categorized into subject disciplines. According to this latter meaning, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646-1716, receives credit for being the last person to know everything that a human could know. Since then knowledge has expanded with increasing velocity, and try as we might no one can know but a part of it all. Rather, we can know about a great deal.
Knowing everything, certainly, is not our real problem as we live our lives. Our problem, and still a challenging one, is to gain and maintain sufficient knowledge so that we can live humanely and well, fulfill our responsibilities, and enjoy the benefits of civilization.
Thus, education starts us on the path of learning by which we are equipped to gain knowledge and the abilities attendant to knowledge throughout our lives. Learning becomes a lifelong endeavor for a number of reasons. The more we learn, the more we realize the limits of our knowledge and the immensity of our ignorance. Knowledge continues to advance through discovery, new activity around the world, and reformulation of prior knowledge; therefore, matters we once knew no longer fit present reality as currently understood. Just as researchers and thinkers discover they have been in error or mistaken, we can admit our own failings, and must replace discredited knowledge with new information. Alas, we have a great tendency over time to forget or misremember what we once knew or thought we knew. The joy of learning is also a powerful stimulus, beyond any utility.
Chiefly, however, we need to learn because, as humans, we are the chief actors in our own lives and destinies. So much comes to us that requires us to learn what we did not know before. Knowledge furnishes and equips life – health, family, housing, location, aging, retirement – and work and recreation and civic responsibility and philosophy of life and religion if we have one, and so on.
What then is the task that education faces to prepare us as learners for the knowledge that is always pressing at our brains and waiting for our minds to integrate the previously unknown with what we already know? Here are a few major challenges.
Determine knowledge needs. Over time, we gradually shift from following the leading dictates of others as to what we ought to learn. Following an established path in learning is a safe mode in some guarantee of less error. The first messages are healthy doses of conservatism that suit us for life in the culture and society we inhabit. Soon, however, we follow our own preferences as we are no longer just receivers but seekers and initiate our own directions. How do I see my future at this point? What is it that I want to become? What are the requisite knowledge and skills to do what I need and want to do? Am I prepared to begin? How do I have to prepare myself in the short and long range? Where is the information?
Acquire the processes of self-direction. What is the available environment for my learning? What choices do I have? What resources, personal and published, that aid choices are available? Am I able to distinguish good advice, obtain it, and upon the information received make my own choices? How do I like to learn? Can I then effectively learn in my preferred manner what I need to learn? Do I have requisite information-seeking and judging skills? How can I get them, hone them? Am I disciplined? Do I look for achievement or ease? What will pay off in my present estimation in the long-term?
Determine accuracy or truthfulness. Does what I find fit what I know? Am I in error somewhere? What is the evidence for the information and how does it fit criteria for validity: up-to-date, authoritative, publicly tested, corroborated by other sources, appropriate to the question? What other questions does this new information open? Where do I go next? What choices do I make?
Whether inquiry-based learning will ever obtain much ground remains debatable at present. Although inquiry is how scientists and other scholars work, the approach is not the practice among most folk. State departments of education and school districts that have tried to implement inquiry as a means of authentic learning usually face a persistent public uproar until they have to give it up or state legislators put a stop to strategies of learning through questioning and testing information. Inquiry is messy, confusing, unbounded and questioning of traditional values, ones that parents and the public feel are endangered. Children can be at odds with their parents over such sensitive subjects as U.S. history, classics of literature, logic and fallacy, evolution, environmentalism, economics, sex education and a host of other subjects on which the public divides.
The debacle over inquiry vaults the politics of education, learning, and knowledge to the forefront. Individuals may learn all they want, despite obstacles. However whenever an environment based on learning and not teaching occupies public institutions, some constituents will fear those choices and muster complaints. Then those authorities, the ones who do not realize that the Bill of Rights grants freedom to all, will always make learning subservient to education and bind up its content. Limitations settle upon us, as knowledge becomes what some middle of the road position says it is.
© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.
This article, here revised, appeared in a slightly different form on Helium.com.
I welcome substantive comments on the contents of this blog. Personal comments to me may be made to the email address, given above.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Background
Concepts and Concept Formation
Updated 10 February 2009.
Where do we get our ideas? How do we test and develop those ideas? How do we share them? What effect do ideas have; that is, what difference do they make?
These questions have stirred me for a long time. Mother took me to the public library at an early age, and Dad read aloud to us four children. These routines made me a dedicated reader from childhood, a habit I have not yet abandoned. Reading and other experiences led me to bouts of imagination and questioning. No doubt early discovery of myths and legends led me to wonder and speculate. I asked questions that Dad answered, ‘There is no way to answer that.’ In his 70s, he asked me similar open-ended question. When still young, I had learned to ponder, a trait typical of the very mature, who have lived through considerable history.
Though my first choice of profession was to be some kind of scientist, perhaps a chemist, I was never very good at the messy sciences. I would rather read about biology, chemistry and physics than do them. I read Gods, Graves and Scholars (1951) when I was twelve years old, and suddenly archaeology appealed to me. The possibility of discovering the long-lost past excited my imagination. Subsequently, history, historical novels, and biography preoccupied me. By the time I reached sixteen years, I knew I wanted to be a historian. I majored in history at college, but the environment that I studied in turned me into a philosopher. Why am I as I am? Why are things as they are?
In time, the possibilities of employment forced on me a practicality. History jobs were few. I had taken a library education minor as work insurance, and that choice began my career in the information field for most of the next forty years. By the time I became a university librarian and library educator in my twenties, I saw that my real work was in adult learning. I identified myself as a lifetime learner; my first responsibilities provided for and fostered other people’s continuous learning.
My life as a reader provoked another thread, attention to writing. The Kudor Preference Test (9th grade?) showed that the interests I favored aligned most closely with authors or real estate agents. Another person in the class had the same results. Go figure! Sure enough, I have been scribbling bits and pieces for years, trying novels, poetry and essays. During the years I was a state-level library consultant, I wrote several extensive reports, planning documents, curriculums and policy pieces. I am quick to respond to issues with letters to the newspaper and more extensive commentaries.
For several years, efforts to narrow my attention have focused on the following major interests:
concept-formation
informed conversation for community building and public participation
information-seeking behavior
information policy
philosophy of adult learning
self-directed learning
role of books, reading, libraries in learning
In short, how do ideas originate, become adopted, evolve, and spread?
Thus concepts, their formation and examination are the subject of this blog.
For additional information on Roger Sween, see also the 5-part series of posts "Discovering My Personality Type." They are: My INTJ (1), My LifeKey (2), My Learning (3), My Thinking (4), My Solo (5)
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
Updated 10 February 2009.
Where do we get our ideas? How do we test and develop those ideas? How do we share them? What effect do ideas have; that is, what difference do they make?
These questions have stirred me for a long time. Mother took me to the public library at an early age, and Dad read aloud to us four children. These routines made me a dedicated reader from childhood, a habit I have not yet abandoned. Reading and other experiences led me to bouts of imagination and questioning. No doubt early discovery of myths and legends led me to wonder and speculate. I asked questions that Dad answered, ‘There is no way to answer that.’ In his 70s, he asked me similar open-ended question. When still young, I had learned to ponder, a trait typical of the very mature, who have lived through considerable history.
Though my first choice of profession was to be some kind of scientist, perhaps a chemist, I was never very good at the messy sciences. I would rather read about biology, chemistry and physics than do them. I read Gods, Graves and Scholars (1951) when I was twelve years old, and suddenly archaeology appealed to me. The possibility of discovering the long-lost past excited my imagination. Subsequently, history, historical novels, and biography preoccupied me. By the time I reached sixteen years, I knew I wanted to be a historian. I majored in history at college, but the environment that I studied in turned me into a philosopher. Why am I as I am? Why are things as they are?
In time, the possibilities of employment forced on me a practicality. History jobs were few. I had taken a library education minor as work insurance, and that choice began my career in the information field for most of the next forty years. By the time I became a university librarian and library educator in my twenties, I saw that my real work was in adult learning. I identified myself as a lifetime learner; my first responsibilities provided for and fostered other people’s continuous learning.
My life as a reader provoked another thread, attention to writing. The Kudor Preference Test (9th grade?) showed that the interests I favored aligned most closely with authors or real estate agents. Another person in the class had the same results. Go figure! Sure enough, I have been scribbling bits and pieces for years, trying novels, poetry and essays. During the years I was a state-level library consultant, I wrote several extensive reports, planning documents, curriculums and policy pieces. I am quick to respond to issues with letters to the newspaper and more extensive commentaries.
For several years, efforts to narrow my attention have focused on the following major interests:
concept-formation
informed conversation for community building and public participation
information-seeking behavior
information policy
philosophy of adult learning
self-directed learning
role of books, reading, libraries in learning
In short, how do ideas originate, become adopted, evolve, and spread?
Thus concepts, their formation and examination are the subject of this blog.
For additional information on Roger Sween, see also the 5-part series of posts "Discovering My Personality Type." They are: My INTJ (1), My LifeKey (2), My Learning (3), My Thinking (4), My Solo (5)
© 2009 by Roger Sween.
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