Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Has online learning gone backwards because of the pandemic?

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The answer, of course, depends on what you think constitutes 'online learning'. I don't feel personally like I've gone backward, for example. Still, writes Tony Bates, "the majority of teachers and instructors have not changed their method of teaching. It is still mainly lectures or teachers talking to students, sometimes for six hours or more consecutively, all online." Well, yeah, but these are different people from the ones who were doing online learning before the pandemic. These new people are all starting from scratch. They're the 2020s equivalent of people who tried to build virtual environments resembling lecture theatres (and yes, I build one of those in 1995). But they're still way ahead of where they were. As for the rest of us, I have to say, the last two years have been full of challenges, but they really feel like a great leap forward. Even if the new online instructors didn't go from zero to sixty in just a few months.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 22, 2024 10:53 a.m.

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