I was reading this blog and it got me thinking about the differences (if there are any) between commercial training and education. In commercial training, as outlined in the blog I was reading, the focus is often on compliance and establishing that goals have been achieved and protocol is understood. I would suggest in an educational setting the focus is more on gaining knowledge and cementing understanding but the process is generally the same.
Information based courses provide the learner with the knowledge that they need, however as the author points out this is often unnecessary as the information is probably somewhere else. This is definitely true of the Masters Programme I have been working on where the information is provided in a variety of forms. Lectures, attended or watched on-line, reading lists provided by the faculty or peer led debates or discussion forums for sharing information. I am not sure this entirely negates the need for information based e-learning content but it certainly suggests that the focus should be on directing students to appropriate locations rather than feeding them information.
Action based learning focuses on enabling a student to use the information that they already possess. This type of e-learning content is also in abundance within the masters programme. Where students are provided with case studies, multiple choice quizzes, interactive 'formative' assessments and pre/post tests. As mentioned in a previous post I am upgrading from Blackboard CE8 to Blackboard Learn, this gives me a chance to re-evaluate the current e-learning material and perhaps enhance it.
Information vs performance e-learning provides an interesting view on the way the information is already presented. As it stands at the moment the course effectively has both but they are almost totally independent of each other. This, I think, is a problem. By simply adding links to both sections the information and the activation can be joined together. For example a case study which is essentially a set of questions based on real or simulate information assumes knowledge of certain pieces of information. If the educational purpose of the case study is to definitively test if a student knows the information then there is no reason to provide a link to that information. However if the case study is a formative assessment meant to cement knowledge by asking the student to actively engage with it then there is no reason a set of resources should not be provided for reference. This also encourages students to revisit information and provides links with that information and the real world application that is being tested in the case study.
The formative assessments, in the form of multiple choice quizzes or graphical drag and drop exercises, provided are also purely an activity for students to complete on their own. They are interacting with it in a somewhat 2 dimensional way. If students were in a classroom situation working with these activities, teacher led or not, students would almost certainly develop a discussion on the content or make comments to each other. This adds another dimension to the way students interact with the information and with each other and I think this level of interaction should also be encouraged in distance learning. Whether or not students will have the same level of uptake as they would in class is another matter but I think it is worth a try.
As I mentioned each module also has a pre/post test attached to it. This subscribes to the test-teach-test approach which definitely has benefits for the student. However I think the presentation of the pre and the post test should be slightly different. The pre-test should, in an ideal world, be used by teachers to make sure that students get the information they need from the module. The post test should prove that they have. However, what if they do not get 100%? The principles of assessment tell us that all assessment must be relevant and I am not sure that assessment can be fully relevant if no feedback is given. So the post test should probably include links back to the information to help students find the answers to questions that they did not answer correctly.
In essence I can see the benefits of e-learning being solely information based, or performance based but their needs to be links between the two areas to provide a total and rounded learning and assessment experience for students.
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