Digital tools for teaching and learning are almost a need in the contemporaneous classroom. Education is in superficiem, a communication process, therefore its ontology is strongly influenced by the technological evolution of the media [1]. The inclusion of new technologies in the teaching process has motivated that high profile educational institutions to create online courses or post online videos of the lectures (in many cases for free), as a mean of promotion and in some cases, as an extension of their classrooms. These initiatives have extended globally to other institutions and even, devoted platforms for sharing educational content have appeared on the web. Some critics consider that the digitization process is focused on quantity more than quality [2], however there is no doubt that the education of the future is going to be as much as open as possible, the remaining question is if openness is equivalent to a quality product and/or if the complete product is going to exist as a freemium category.
In my experience, based on feedback from students, it is clear some kind of demand for alternatives to the classical lectures. The main reason is that the program that I’m part of, a Master in Big Data Analytics [3] is meant to re-train workers with some background in IT but willing to move to a more hands-on roles such as data scientists, data analysts, data engineers among others, therefore is expected that most of them are already employed and/or have families and for extension, with not much time available for long classical lectures. Some of them have suggested audio records and other video records. The last suggestion seems to be the obvious step forward to ensure a broader engagement from the students. My main critic to this process is mainly, the fact that putting online a lecture without any preparation or intention, will not really help to the process. In a similar way, like the cinema is not filmed theatre, I think just by recording a lecture is not online learning. Despite that cinema and theatre share some narratives, techniques and other elements, they are completely different and they have their own language and techniques. If we want to create online content for learning, we should embrace the proper narratives and techniques to ensure quality in the learning process.
Online learning is not the future, but the present of education, and as the first filmmakers that at the beginning of the 20 century via experiments and innovation create a new language for the cinema, educators should create a new way to communicate their knowledge using online learning with innovative and efficient narratives, techniques and tools.
References
[1] Goldin, Claudia Dale, and Lawrence F. Katz. The race between education and technology. harvard university press, 2009.
[2] Lei, Jing. “Quantity versus quality: A new approach to examine the relationship between technology use and student outcomes.” British Journal of Educational Technology 41.3 (2010): 455-472.
[3]
https://www.arcada.fi/en/master/big-data-analytics