This should be a straightforward answer and looking at the other discussions here I am impressed by the answers that others have given so far...”... Learning for me is acquiring new knowledge and skills...”... (Bernice Durham-Jones Discussion thread IBOE 2008) or...”... To me learning means discovering...”...(Usman Arshad, Discussion thread IBOE 2008). Learning is Process and of course contextual. Learning to me is the individual acquisition of knowledge that has a contextual use value and offers the learner the opportunity to synthesise this ‘new ‘ knowledge such as to define themselves as ‘knowledgeable’. Knowledge acquisition is not in my opinion the learning of raw facts per se, rather it should be about learning to engage with a subject or ‘raw fact’, from which we may derive understanding. The reading of Laurillard.D (2002) offers a good grounding for thinking about what learning ‘is’, perhaps most usefully the notion of ‘situated learning’ as context has to be a prerequisite to the form that knowledge accumulation takes. Of course there are many things that make up learning and perhaps most important for the teacher is to recognise that ‘Learning’ is an ‘Individual Process’, so focusing on the Learner is critical in any Learning context, what might be the best way of Learning for one might not work as well for the other.
What of teaching practice, although Laurillard’s dialectical considerations clarify the differing modes of practice, there are of course no clear cut right or for that matter, wrong ways for codefing the way knowledge is accumulated by the individual. It is his analysis of Teaching as ‘Mediated Learning’ that in my opinion is crucially important in developing practice in all areas of the Academic Community. In my opinion the objective of the teacher is to ‘get alongside’ the student, to guide them in their learning, to acknowledge that they are not the arbiters of knowledge, and to hold even themselves open to the learning experience, echoing Bernice’s post we can always learn from our students. In the other reading for this question, Peter Goodyear in Steeples.C and Jones.C (2003) uses ‘Shuell’s Models of Learning (Ibid:58) which help in describing the arc of experience in the learning process, this in my opinion is central to any claims on what might be described as good teaching practice. No one form need predominate over the other. However, if we narrow the Field of Knowledge to that of Academia, then certain characteristics based on style of teaching and concomitantly learning, seem to come into some form of ‘relief’ and Laurillard’s article becomes central in definition.
There are fundamental physical differences between online and class based learning. These are a given, but, increasingly as technology crosses and blurs the boundaries between these spaces, and the online experience co-opts notions of building community, user experience and the like then we have to conceive that we might have to move towards conjoining the differing aspects of forms to find at sometime in the future a shared and perhaps unified pedagogy.
Apologies for going on!!
Laurillard, D. (2002) Rethinking university teaching: a conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies (2nd ed). London: RoutledgeFalmer
Steeples, C. and Jones, C. (Eds.) (2003) Networked learning: Perspectives and issues. London: Springer Verlag.
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