Posts
 |
| Photo: Aleks Krotoski |
In 1995, I took an extracurricular workshop at my university library on the world wide web. The objective was to familiarise attendees with how and why to use this new cyberspace thingy – in the context of education and for general use. I appear to have picked up a thing or two.
 |
| Photo: The Guardian |
Admittedly, I spent most of that afternoon waiting for images of Jarvis Cocker to load on the Pulp fan page, but the ambient learning experience wasn't lost on me; I also learned about browsing, browsers and how to browse through sources that might be academically useful. Remember, this was before Google made sense of web content, before Wikipedia defined everything and before Facebook (and MySpace and Friends Reunited before it) made learning social. Jarvis aside, I sensed change within the hallowed halls of the ivory tower. I was not prepared for just how deep the revolution would be.
"The big difference is the move from reliance on print-based to online learning, which offers students much more possibility both to access a range of resources and to work together with other students online," says Dr Mary Lea, chair of the Open University's postgraduate certificate in academic practice, which includes a section on design of learning environments. The OU is familiar with the kind of learning facilitated via distance, but Lea admits the web has opened new avenues for students. "In the past, a distance learning course was written and delivered and because it was in print, did not change much for the next few years," she says. "Now, we are talking much more about design, where there is an integration of a range of media which has implications for the course content, not least in the ways that it is possible to integrate student-generated content."
Read more...
Source: The Guardian
