Penn State offers a fine, fine distance education list serv, made up
of around 15,000 persons deeply involved in distance education. Over
the years there must have been several dozen studies that show "no
significant difference" between courses delivered face to face and
those delivered over the Net. (The DDN list really does not want to
go there! But if you type into Google "No Significant Difference, you
will get a boat load of sites).
What the new technology does offer, for the first time in history, is
access to great teachers of all sorts from all over the world. My
favorite guru in this arena is Stephen Downes who argues that the
future will belong to students who employ *teams* of instructors,
connected by blogs, wikis, twickies, podcasting, daypop, feedreader,
message board and everything but two tin cans tied to a string.
You can find out more what Stephen - a brilliant Canadian - has to say here;
<http://www.downes.ca>
His daily news letter is unbelievably rich
http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm
John Hibbs
http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs
P.S. The Penn State list is here
http://listserv.psu.edu/archives/deos-l.html
At 5:22 PM +0800 6/3/05, Barbara COMBES wrote:
Hi All,
I have been watching this discussion with a certain amount of
facscination. Having completed some research into the impact of
technology in education it is interesting to see the same rhetoric -
provide the technology and they will come. Students know what to do with
it. Not so according to the latest research in elearning and technology
in education. Text on screen, moving objects or simulations are no more
interactive than TV, DVD or video. What makes any learning experience is
the teacher and the way the learning tools are embedded into the
curriculum. Only when this happens will students engage with the
learning and participate at a level that can be described as deep
learning. By all means provide the technology, but this is only half of
the equation. We also neeed to think in terms of quality here.
:)
BC
Convenor for the Transforming Information and Learning Conference
http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/TILC
Barbara Combes, Lecturer
School of Computer and Information Science
Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia
Ph: (08) 9370 6072
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that
of an ignorant nation."
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