Examining examples of marketing and articles about flexible learning - and contrasting them with some writing about arts education...
This blog is partially pre-empted by my previous blog that critiques the chaotic environment of an Elluminate (virtual classroom setting). This blog supports discussion and reflection about transformative thinking which results from chaos. Chaos in this sense means a non-linear learning, where the results of the learning activity are produced as moments in diverse situations (Holland & O’Connor, 2004, pp. 31-32).
“In a highly competitive international market… …is the first choice of thousands of students”. (Youtube, 2008, 32 secs). This précised comment from a marketing video for University of London, recently released on Youtube, highlights the kind of emphases that have been placed on the advertising profile of flexible learning courses, firstly with a presumption that students respond to the call for higher education primarily through the prompt of competitiveness. Interestingly this clip has been viewed worldwide by just over one thousand viewers (I have seen it 3 times for this assignment).
Paradoxically the clip reveals a key reason that people choose this type of distance learning. “Self pacing” is a term that describes the flexibility of completing study and assessment tasks alongside the ordinary juggle of family roles and responsibilities with work commitments. From this term, several critical notes about this particular presentation and its use as a persuasive tool for recognising the benefits of study access as an educational format spring to mind. Access worldwide is touted as a reason for studying this way, with no real mention about associated fees, course related costs. The very real issue of tutor contact and travel for same were discussed at the end of the video as critical. The costs of travel and sustainability issues for family and work challenged students are hardly mooted, nor the very real carbon footprint issue, engendered by such distance locations.
In describing the University of London as a centre of excellence, the advertising blurb relies on previous standards of qualification. These same criteria define meetings between tutors and students for revision, shared discussion about the subject and challenges to the knowledge input of tutors as critical learning events prior to examination. Once again time dense consideration is not compared with the ongoing schedules of work and family. Important to note is Annand’s (2007) comment that “despite hopes that social interaction incorporating more characteristics of face-to-face instruction will be facilitated in the ‘post-industrial’ adult distance education era, facilitating significant learner-to-learner interaction requires cohorts of students to move through a course of studies at the same pace. As a result, requirements of social interaction conflict with learner autonomy” Introduction section, para. 2).
Similarly, in this same article about re-organising universities for the information age, Annand (2007) (pre)scribes university education (as) “still generally conducted within pre-Industrial Age organizational structures” and thereby discloses a binary appraisal of different education accesses, somewhat muddled by learning theory, teaching theory and the very real financial problematic of maintaining educational quality in a fiscally disrupted era. The third line of this important article denotes cost effectiveness as a rationale for flexible delivery and becomes highlighted as an anxious and economically driven educational philosophy.
Further to this fear is a very real inhibition created by an increased dependency on technological advancements. Students’ access to learning online and/ or at a distance is to a large extent not yet matched by institutional resources, both human (technical support) and machine (computer and their associated communicational programmes). Alexenberg (2008) describes this same inhibition as “similar to the problem of learning a new language” (p. 16). He states that learners will default to linear or relational pattern of recognition as opposed to the integrative conceptually rich confirmation of learning that occurs in response to learning on site.
Keeping in mind the threads of my crituique, I argue that the same resistance to learning through technologically driven media may catalyse a new model for thinking, where the digital world becomes a conceptual agent, and students are provided with unique pathways to think. Annand (2007) concurs by naming this as a consequence (where) learning can be more autonomous and self-directed. However, Peters (2004) also points out that as this kind of learning is “technically mediated” it must be also be “carefully planned and structured”.
A secondary benefit from flexible learning education is described by this same author as “text-based rather than orally based” (Peters, 2004). In a previous blog I have briefly examined the anomaly which resides in the expectation that the whole world knows how to read. Without diverting this essay into a discussion about such an unreal statistic, this discussion points the way to a surfacing problem with flexible learning of the high level reliance on face to face or tutor to student communication. Both the Youtube clip and the article report the desire for students to be in close communication with their teacher albeit little or no desire to know them.
In the article, Anderson (2003) posits the following equivalency theorem: Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience. High levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences. (p. 5). In conclusion, the economically driven decisions of distance and flexible learning has not yet made inroads into the teacher hours to student self directed learning ratio.
Reference list
Alexenberg, M, (2008). Educating artists for the future: Learning at the intersections of art, science, technology and culture. Bristol: UK, Chicago: US. Intellect
Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2). Retrieved June1, 2009 from: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/149/230
Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing universities for the information age. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3). Retrieved June 1, 2009 from http://www.unescobkk.org/information/news-display/article/re-organizing-universities-for-the-information-age/
Distance Learning & Flexible Study - University of London External System. Retrieved June 1, 2009 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLyEiYC_0Xg
Holland, C. & O’Connor, P. (2004). Like writing off the paper: report on student learning in the arts. Ministry of Education: New Zealand.
Peters, O. (2004). Distance Education in Transition. New trends and challenges (4th Ed.). Oldenburg : Bibliotheks-und Informationssytems der Universitat Oldenburg.
Crikey, where can I start.. I think you are hitting the nail on the head.. their is a paradox, between the autonomous learning that the technology these days can afford people, and the structured formal education based on economies of scale, user pay models education is still working in today.
ReplyDeleteThe formal education model can actively work against people learning how to read (in a broad definition of what it is to read these days) by encouraging them to rely on teacher centred study, and as you point out, autonomous learning requires people to know how to read.
If we think about what autonomous learning was prior to the Internet.. although I have insecurities about this if I follow Illich's critiques.
* Know how to read and write text, numbers and diagrams to a certain level
* Know how to use a library and a bookstore
* Know how to use a book or text's index and bibliography
* Know how to operate audio and video cassettes (or reals)
* Know how to access and communicate with willing experts in the community
* Have critical abilities to determin quality information, and creative abilities to create information that influences learning pathways
Much of this remains the same today, but the technical abilities are expanded on, or like the steam train and ice cooler, the technology has developed. An autonomous learner these days might be:
* Know how to read text, numbers and diagrams to a certain level
* Know how to use the Internet to access information
* Know how to use a websites's index and hypertext referencing
* Know how to operate digital audio, and images
* Know how to access and communicate with willing experts in the "community".
* Have the critical abilities to determin quality information, and the creative abilities to create information that influences learning pathways...
Autonomous learning in these terms is not all that different today than it was 20 years ago, but there is political, economic and ideological tension in the technological change over it. As Postman describes it Technopoly.
Perhaps there is agreement that the ultimate in "flexible learning" is to develop autonmous learning abilities, but the disagreement (and so the paradox) is what precisely are the skills needed for autonomous learning these days...
The question I have in my mind is:
Do people who enrol in a course or formal educational pathway have or even want to develop autonomous learning abilities in the subject? They may well have autonomous learning ability or motivation when it comes to buying a car, or studying something they are truly interested in, but not so when it comes to something they have to do under duress, or because they've been told they're not up to date with their politics, economic thinking or ideology...
So for the time being, your reference to Alexenburg (not having read it myself) is unavoidable. People will revert back to linear (structured) learning.. if only because this is what we are intensively schooled to cope with, and it is a 'safety zone' of real measured logical learning.