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Reality

Tony Frascina

Is there a problem with e-learning? If so, what is it?

‘Traditional’ e-learning (there’s no such thing but we all know what we mean, perhaps we should call it lazy misguided and all too common e-learning) squirts information at people and expects them to absorb it. The words were in front of you on the screen. Surely that’s all you need? We even gave you nice graphics so what’s your excuse?

Frankly, it doesn’t work. It’s a waste of time and money. And worse for us, it gives a potentially excellent medium a vey poor reputation.

The hosepipe is essentially a lecture, and a pretty poor one at that .

You’re told once, it’s up to you to listen and take it in (except even a lecture is far far better than the hosepipe). But is this really how people learn?

It’s clinical, sterile, and removed from reality. Let’s look at how far this model of learning has advanced, or not.

Why do we learn at all?

In fact it’s instinctive and fundamental to us as human beings. We learn for a very simple reason – to survive. If you didn’t learn to do the things you needed to do, you’d die.

So learning is built into us. You can't stop a child from learning – though you might say schools sometimes do a good job of putting them off.

And how did we learn in the past? There were no schools, there was simply the world. You were in it and surrounded by it. Everything was real. You saw what your family members did and you copied them. For thousands upon thousands of years – for millions of years in fact, that’s how we learned.

And because learning that way made us successful as a species, we’ve all inherited a predisposition to learn in the real world, ‘on the job’.

So how does learning happen in the real world?

These lion cubs are playing – well actually they’re practising, their job, hunting. When they fight, they’re rehearsing what they need to do to catch and bring down prey. They’re practising over and over again, every day they practise.

They repeat, they learn from their mistakes, they get feedback about how well they’re doing – from the response of the other lion cub.

And slowly they get better. Until they’re ready to join the hunt; which they need to be very good at to survive.

And because play is so important to learning, and learning is so essential to survival, we enjoy playing – which makes us play more.

Is any of that familiar? But we’re only talking about lion cubs …

Children want to play and they want to learn, and there’s no difference. They want to do what they like to do over and over again, and they get better and better at it.

When they play, they’re engaged, they’re emotionally excited, they’re receptive to learning new tricks and techniques, and they’re with other children, in a social setting.

Stop all this and start instructing them what to do and you bring down the whole edifice - and see what reaction you get (yet we’ve designed schools to do exactly that…)

All through human history, we’ve learned on the job, and it’s made us what we are.

Supremely adaptable and quick and eager to learn. In the real world, solve real world problems and performing real world tasks.

Through learning in the real world things that are useful – relevant – children quickly become experts and accumulate vast knowledge – of what is useful to them.

There’s a second strand to this argument. It’s about another thing that makes us human, and is something that is finally dawning on we learning people about what helps people learn.

How come a medium sized feeble primate became so successful? It’s largely down to the fact that we’re social. We live in small social groups (even in a city!) and we’re intensely interested in each other. We invest a huge amount of effort in communication and in knowing what our group members are up to.

We gossip. Ceaselessly. Our groups have hierarchies and we get very wound up about allegiances, friendships, and relationships.

No much else to do in the savannah.

And we’re still doing it.

Watch any playground, any office, workplace, or even social network, and people get worked up about what everyone’s doing.

And it’s not just people. It’s a very primate thing to do.

Which means it runs very deep.

Our investment in gossip and what people get up to is so great that we even derive huge pleasure finding out about people who aren’t even real, such is our obsession. And about what happens to them.

Who doesn’t like a good story?

Which brings us back here. What do you do every night when you’re sitting round the fire? You tell stories. And you listen to stories. Ancient cultures have very strong oral traditions. About real things and made up things, we don’t mind. We’ve evolved listening to stories (and looking at the stars!) Stories are in our blood. We’re addicted.

Here’s one story addict

And here’s a class A drug.

Stories, stories everywhere. We just can’t get enough.

Gossip, stories, emotional involvement. We’re hooked.

Multi-billion dollar industries are built around telling stories

Relevant

Scenario based

emotional

Learner centred

rehear

sal

Action m

apping

Social

?practical

??

engaging

?contextualised

???action learning

Which brings us here.

These are all terms we bump into as learning people. There are plenty more where these came from. They all form part of the vocabulary of those of us who purport to design good learning.

And they can all be traced to our development as human beings.

Relevant

Scenario based

emotional

Learner centred

rehear

sal

Action m

apping

Social

?practical

??

engaging

?contextualised

???action learning

And it’s this that brings us back to reality.

We learn by doing, by repeating, by practising, by trying, by acting out, by being involved. And we love learning from stories, because in the end we’re all terrible gossips.

http://www.walkgrove.co.uk/