One thing that happens as you age, and provided you’ve been paying attention, is that patterns seem to emerge. You hear some people talking, and you can quickly determine what is going on, hostile, friendly, business, personal, whatever, from the patterns exhibited. Many things start to look familiar.
And you get the feeling you’ve seen most things before. Because you have.
That’s why it’s so interesting to see the claims, hopes, even demands made by those in the business of peddling learning and training solutions that are technologically, rather than humanly based. Or the similar claims and demands made by converts to the newest faith based “movements” like social learning and e-learning.
“A powerful force—unlike any in history—is altering the learning profession’s landscape”, Tony Bingham, President of ASTD says. “You will become irrelevant”, another learning professional expounds. “Your business will disappear”, yet another pundit screams. Yet, it all seems so familiar.
Now, it’s true that there have been technological innovations that HAVE had profound effects on how people live, and society in general, going from movable type, telegraph and telephone, television, mainframe computers, personal computers, inter-connectivity, and the Internet. Oddly enough, though only ONE of these (the Gutenberg Press) has had an appreciable revolutionary impact on how people learn.
Television, telephone, mainframes, pc’s etc were all touted as revolutionary in terms of how they would change the education system, and the learning process. I can personally remember the claims regarding television when I was in elementary school, and the claims for computer assisted instruction on mainframes and so on. And, the hopes for the personal computer. I was “there” for the latter two.
Our school district bought dozens of expensive TV’s, ultimately used once or twice a year (the walk on the moon was one time). Schools went out and bought APPLE II’s, which promptly ended up gathering dust, useless. Computer assisted instruction, by and large didn’t go very far.
Despite all the claims, the “buzz” (it wasn’t called that then), the investment of huge amounts of resources, NONE of these revolutionized learning. And I’ll let you in on a secret. The newest technologies aren’t going to either (but see the exception at the end). Why?
There are several reasons. One has to do with people as human beings. The other has to do with systems. The first is the more profound and immutable. The second can be addressed.
First, while proponents of “social learning” have taken the term and bastardized it, there’s a kernal of value to the term. In essence ALL learning is social. Knowledge is a social construction and often the effectiveness of lack in terms of what someone learns is determined in the context of interacting with other people. If knowledge is social, and validation of learning is social, then ultimately, learning is also social.
Most important is that generally, learning works best when it involves interactions of real human beings in real time. That’s the best way to get indepth learning happening, and it’s a major rational reason why the ancient model of one person telling (stories) to many, then interacting with them, has been with us for thousands of years. That’s not to say that it is perfect. It’s not. But humans, quite simply, like to learn in relatively “high touch” circumstances. That is, they like to learn from humans with humans, and the interactions enables more learning of different types.
Clearly, learning by reading a book is not the same as sitting with the author for the same length of time. It’s simply different. In exactly the same way interacting with a machine to learn is not the same as talking with someone directly.
One mistake techno’s make is believing that interactions via technology will be equal to, the same, or be able to replace live, face to face interaction in real time.
The clear error made over and over is that given content to be learned, any medium can be used to get the identical results, but newer media are more effective and preferred by learners.
It’s not so. What happens is that any medium that is made more “efficient” by the elimination of real time human interaction and contact unmediated by machines, will be perceived as unpleasant, boring, uninspiring by most learners, particularly over time. Can you imagine watching television for learning, 7 hours a day? Or sitting at a computer for that period of time? Or even reading? Every day?
Of course not. The human contact makes it work. It allows questions. You can test your learning with a real human being who can help, or congratulate, make you feel good, (or bad). Not even “real time” machine mediated interactions can do that. YES, technology can help. But it will never yield the positive impact on learning and teaching that is claimed, because it cannot replace humans in the learning process. Sadly, often disappointment when the claims and expected impacts do not occur results in the shelving of the whole technology even if it would have some value.
Ultimately it’s the LEARNERS who say: NO. They said no to learning by watching television, NO to programmed instruction, NO to language labs with tape recorders, NO to computer mediated instruction (unless you forced them) NO to interactive video discs, and they will continue to go back to human interactions for learning, formal or otherwise.
We are social. There is no dispute over that in the scientific community. Social does NOT mean connecting via machines. It means connecting IN PERSON. It means high touch. This will not change, at least in the near future.
Systems Issues
Systems issues are a bit different. We learn within, and educate within structures that have evolved for practical reasons, rather than in ways that maximized learning for each individual. It’s a tough thing, really. The bottom line is our systems are created with a certain mindset about learning, into which technological solutions do not fit well.
Technology gets “stuck on” like a bandaid” rather than integrated into a learning system that works seamlessly.
We have many questions about study and learning that takes place outside the institutions we have. We need to certify and protect and fulfil other social obligations, and that creates integration issues with individually based technology based learning. In any event, it is theoretically possible the world’s systems will evolve to allow for intelligent technological use that works. But there are many barriers.
Exceptions
There will be some exceptions. If and when we can create virtual worlds and simulations that are, in effect indistinguishable from real face to face interaction, we will be as close as we can get (without implanted electrodes and DNA/RNA stuff) to superior technologically based learning. Of course, that’d be pretty freaky. Clearly that would alter the world, and how learning occurs.
Would it replace the desire and need fo face 2 face interaction in the real world? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not. Got to keep an open mind.
Comments?
Robert,
I share your view that virtual world hype and the heavy focus on the social learning / media label are drivel of the month. However, I’m not sure I get the extreme counter prescription. Seems like your article paints with a similar one size fits all says I brush as the folks selling social media flavored silver bullets. One size fits all – doesn’t.
There’s a place for all of it, when considered strategically and honestly considering drivers and barriers. To discount the value of any intervention including job aids (I’ve seen it), policy change, incentives, tools, environment, non-traditional solutions such as eLesson support, search tools and the internet, or even social tools and to a lesser degree virtual worlds as a solution for any problem is short sighted and narrow minded to say the least.
Has technology lived up to what it said it was going to be? Nope. On this we agree. But does technology (or rather the principled application of solutions that include technology) have untapped potential beyond the glutton of crap we’ve seen over the past decades? Yes, I think it does.
As isolated interventions, none of these things has much power. I’d say the same of a f2f instructor, a book, or any classical training tool. In isolation they have little power. In combination, strategically, principally, intelligently, and intentionally, these performance drivers can do great things for MANY.
We aren’t there yet. Hopefully the next fad wave after social and virtual will be ‘oops – we missed the point’.
I think, generally, as a society, we’ve over stated the effects of our technologies, particularly in respect to learning. Perhaps it’s necessary to fight inertia of our systems.
I tend to agree that we haven’t maxed out the power of tech., but I think we should also recognize that issues rooted in human behavior often cannot be addressed by technology. And that technology is not likely to alter what makes us human, and our desires and preferences (well, maybe the latter).
There’s no doubt that certain tech stuff (I’m a big fan of simulations) can have huge value, but no matter how I figure it, without the human interaction side, it’s a no go. Airline pilots can use simulators out the yingyang, but without the human discussions that occur after, the learning is limited, which is why the debriefs are used.
Machines can’t do it as well, and it has a different “quality” if machines do human type things.
THanks for the input.
Meh, sometimes the initial results of technology are pretty darned good, if unsustainable. I’ve been involved with a few projects where the computer provided invaluable repeated practice opportunities. But the results weren’t exclusively due to the use of one technology. This was also accompanied by a well structured print job aid, a bridging orientation to the technical manual, AND hands on practice and evaluation in the real world.
Certainly the results wouldn’t have been the same applied to soft skills development. This was for equipment maintenance and in this niche it worked very well. However, when the energy and focus came off so did the power of the solution. It takes energy, it takes focus. When we stop tending and caring about the technology, it loses its power as a solution. Fire and forget doesn’t work. Ever.
I agree that there is nothing better than face-to-face contact for learning from someone, but when that someone (author, politician, expert, child…) lives on the other side of the planet, how are you going to get a class of students to engage them, face to face?
You’re not.
But with Internet access, you can get the next best thing.
The Internet has brought information to our fingertips. People can find out more stuff, and engage with millions more interesting people than they ever could have without it.
It has revolutionised the ways young people engage in education, and provides a non-threatening environment for those who are not sociable by nature.
Perhaps it is not yet THE most profound effect on the way people learn, but is certainly up there!
‘nothing better than face-to-face contact for learning from someone’
I’d change that to:
‘There’s no better mode or method than face-to-face contact for learning from someone worth learning from’
I’ve seen many arguments for face to face being a better mode / method for learning. This is a broad brushed statement that assumes that the person facilitating the learning is good at their task. This also implies that the supply is sufficient to meet the demand and resources are available to support that supply. When these conditions are not met, f2f no longer becomes the ideal modality for skill acquisition and learning.
That doesn’t mean that failing these conditions any eSolution will be a better choice either. One size doesn’t fit all.
I agree with Steve.
I am leading e-learning project for company which server people all over the world. We cant effectively meet our clients demands. We are in the situation where people are paying fortunes for traveling to face-to-face teaching.
Internet is the only way forward for education provider like us. Adopting to technology must only be dictated by the requirements of proposed tasks.
Thanks for your comment. What comes through from your comments is the same thing that comes through from others who push the e-learning agenda, at least in part. You ASSUME that e-learning is “the only way”, and under that you ASSUME that e-learning will be effective.
Given that estimates of traditional classroom type training effectiveness are so low, generally, why do you assume e-learning will work at all?
And, I ask you. How much is your company investing in your project? How are you evaluating return on investment? How will you know it “works”?
You also ASSUME that a virtual classroom is equivalent to a f2f environment. How do you know that? The Medium DOES change things, as McLuhan suggested.
It sound to me like you have made a decision, then go madly off looking for justification, instead of looking at data first. Real data.
To me you exemplify the problem. A smart person who knows just enough to be dangerous. And doesn’t realize the assumptions being made.
Good catch, Steve. Often people make the mistake of comparing their favorite training/teaching approach done by a super-competent practitioner with a badly done example from another approach. Often that’s unintentional, but I do occasionally slip into some assumptions myself.
Putting systems stuff aside, I’m struggling, because I believe that all these social learning proponents can’t all be complete idiots, and that there must be something new, novel, unique, valuable, that separates all the stuff they are trumpeting from all the old stuff, (e.g. email, listservers, chats, etc) which existed before.
And I am struggling to figure out what companies can do to improve learning by social learning techniques that is different from what they can do with the infrastructures they have had for 10 plus years (again, email, water cooler learning, usenet, listservers, texting.
There must be a pony somewhere in that pile.
…but I’d still go down the hall and ask “Joe” if I had a problem or needed to know something. I’d sure not use twitter, since a) chances are I wouldn’t even get a response, and second, b) by the time I did it might be the next day.
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Author has mixed up two different issues here
Social aspect of e-learning
Face-to-face learning vs e-learning
f2f delivery method becomes useless in situations where your learners are based all over the world sometime in very remote places (in our case where learners are based on oil rigs etc).
Main benefit of f2f method is learner-2-learner interaction, however now-a-days this can easily be achieved with help of virtual classroom concept. It is working for some institution. it has certainly worked for my university where lecturer deliver lectures in all campuses simultaneously where students/learners are able to interrupt lecturer and can communicate with each other.