Most people have a tendency to equate learning with the concepts of training or teaching, which, like the textbook, ABCs of E-Learning by Boradbent (2002: 111) identifies as being merely input devices to coerce students into remembering data provided. However, learning, as it will be discussed in this paper, refers to the outputs that are demonstrated by the student, which are identified within this same text as being the “acquisition of skills, knowledge, and attitudes”. A rich learning experience, therefore, is one in which students are actively engaged in the learning process, acquainting them with knowledge and techniques that will assist them in becoming more productive in their futures and providing them with skills they will utilize throughout their lives. As a lifelong learner, there are numerous elements of a learning environment that are helpful and even necessary in building a rich learning experience that can be translated into the online environment with careful attention and technological accessibility.
My personal learning experience has taught me that there are no hard and fast theories that can accurately describe my preferred learning style or what will work best for my learning at any particular time. This concept is supported in the book when it discusses David Kolb’s classification of four learning styles, of which I fit into two rather nicely (divergers and accommodators) and occasionally dip into numbers three and four. An open environment in which discussions can be held without concern of offending and where ideas can be explored through a variety of means and methods is usually what helps me to learn best. The reason I believe this is so is that depending upon my mood for the day, one means of engaging my attention will work while another that has worked in the past may not. This is also supported by the textbook: “learning styles are not cast in concrete. Learners are not always hooked on one style”. Instead, I agree with Mel Silberman (cited in Boradbent, 2002: 115) who indicates that an effective learning environment for a variety of learning styles is one that combines visual, auditory, and kinesthetic activities within the instructive curriculum. As the following examples will show, a good learning experience will be one that engages the students in the activity, regardless of what the activity is, and that fosters the student’s development in some way to provide them with long-term higher-level thinking skills. Anything that is not able to engage the students in some form is a poor learning experience as little is being retained and no development is occurring.
I can think of several examples of good learning experiences in my past; however, I will concentrate on two in particular. During a traditional class on Shakespeare, our instructor had us place our desks into a circle so that everyone was facing everyone else and then initiated a discussion about Hamlet. She opened the conversation with an unusual question that I still remember today – do you think Hamlet was gay? That quickly gained our attention, immediately encouraged several of us who had never participated much to talk and before we knew it, the class time was over and we still had so much to say. In another class on women’s studies, where discussion topics weren’t entered into willingly, the teacher introduced an activity in which we were to match up the activities that women were allowed to do in the 1800s with activities that women were compelled to do in order to take care of their families. It required action as we moved about the room picking up activity cards and placing them where they were supposed to go and was equally engaging. In both cases, the discussions and insights I gained have remained with me ever since and I realized I had also learned to listen to and consider other perspectives, a skill I have cherished.
These concepts can be transferred into the e-learning environment and are, indeed, two of the four identified means by which the author suggests engaging students within an interactive environment, indicating that the potential for online learning can be enormous. While the e-learning environment loses the face-to-face interaction of the traditional classroom, the concept of a circle of students gathering together to answer the teacher’s question of whether Hamlet is gay can occur within a message board, chat room, or webcast as easily as it can in the classroom. With a growing number of people involved in chat rooms, the lack of physical connection is becoming even more blurred. Just as in the traditional classroom, online learning can be potentially successful or not, engaging or not, depending upon the degree to which the course is designed to have meaningful interactivity, which is itself a challenge in developing a rich online learning environment.
Interactivity is added to the class when the instructor or fellow students are able to ask and respond to relevant questions related to the learning objectives that also pull in personal experience and reflective thinking. The idea of including games into an online curriculum is supported by Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan who says “You can export almost anything you can do in the form of a classroom game to an online, Web-based activity”. Students can also be engaged by fostering a strong online community within the classroom as well as by addressing personal concerns of “what’s in it for me”. Assessment of learning can then take place in much the same way it does in the traditional classroom, through the level of the thought expressed in online responses and participation in classroom activities and through the results of written assignments or online tests.
By examining what works in the traditional classroom and translating this experience as much as possible into the online classroom, particularly as it applies to engaging students in interactive, personally connected experiences, online learning can be tremendously effective. The greatest challenge, in both the traditional and the online classroom, is in introducing discussions, questions, games, and activities that will get the students engaged and actively making connections between what they’re learning and what they’ve experienced or learned in their daily lives.
Works Cited
- Boradbent, B. (2002). ABCs of E-Learning: Reaping the Benefits and Avoiding the Pitfalls. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
- Kolb, David. Cited in Boradbent, B. (2002). ABCs of E-Learning: Reaping the Benefits and Avoiding the Pitfalls. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
- Silberman, Mel. Cited in Boradbent, B. (2002). ABCs of E-Learning: Reaping the Benefits and Avoiding the Pitfalls. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
- Thiagarajan, Sivasailam. Cited in Boradbent, B. (2002). ABCs of E-Learning: Reaping the Benefits and Avoiding the Pitfalls. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.