Openly sharing and learning – Is there a right way to do it? No. Education can happen in a vast amount of ways. Bringing it online, sharing it with everyone that’s interested, allowing anyone to take part – this promises benefits for everyone involved. Or doesn’t? The answer resulting from our group work could be boiled down to “yes but consider all sides carefully” and can be found here: https://padlet.com/sfellermann/PBL8_ONL201_topic2.
Education should be made available to everyone, however, socioeconomical status is determining who benefits most of it (1). In Germany, there are a lot of “offline” educational opportunities, which are open to anyone. However, having people make use of these opportunities seems to be far more difficult offline than online as the latter is independent of – for instance – location. The degree of flexibility online education poses is the biggest potential it has. However, the large amount of possibilities that are out there, easily accessible if you have the right tools (device and internet connection), can also be overwhelming. Thus, it needs structure and guidance. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been brought to life as one possible way to facilitate online learning and they have been very successful in doing so. But MOOCs do not replace educational institutions as Dave Cormier explains in a video from 2010 (2). It therefore requires good instruction and clear visions to understand what form of education fits what purpose.
To me, pure online education is a good tool for people that know what and why they want to learn. It requires more discipline and motivation as active participation is more difficult to impose on course members than it would be when educator and students are in the same room. A study by O’Neill and Sai published in 2014 (3) analyses why the majority of students chose face-to-face education over taking an online course, which provided the same content. “Informal theories” about why the students believe to learn better face-to-face were described – in my opinion boiling down to the essential aspect that these students have the possibility to take the course “offline”. So why shouldn’t they? Online doesn’t add anything to their learning experience – possibly because they haven’t tried it yet but also because they do not depend on the degree of flexibility the online course would provide them with. Therefore, open sharing and learning is not going to replace the more traditional forms of learning but it provides alternative ways and possibly also grants people that cannot take part in traditional forms access to advanced education. And its potential is undoubtable – and so is the possibility of feeling of being overloaded with information. It’s a blessing and a curse.
- https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education accessed April 13th 2020
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc accessed April 13th 2020
- O’Neill, D. K., & Sai, T. H. (2014). Why not? Examining college students’ reasons for avoiding an online course. Higher Education, 68(1), 1-14.
