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study section 1
Part
A - An overview
Learning
in the 21st century - Thoughts and predictions
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At
the start of the new millennium, we should ask ourselves:
What
will learning in the 21st century be like?
Indicators
suggest and predictions claim that learning in the 21st
Century is likely to place a growing importance on online learning.
Dr Betty Collis, in "Tele-Learning in a Digital Age"
provides personal predictions of what learning will be like in
the future. Please note that she uses the term "tele-learning"
which for the purposes of this programme can be viewed as synonymous
with "online learning". Some of her predictions (published
initially in 1996) are paraphrased below.
Collis
B: "Tele-Learning in a Digital World: The Future of Distance
Learning, International Thomson Computer Press ISBN 1-85032-157-4.
Predictions
about technologies:
Prediction
1
Advances
in technology will make it possible for learners to use the same
"learn-station" for both real-time and asynchronous
interactions and for their choice of combinations of text, video,
sound and graphics. This "learn-station" will be affordable
and portable.
Prediction
2
Technology
will be used to control access to learning resources and to support
a uniform way to make learners pay for this access.
Prediction
3
The
World Wide Web and its various tools and access technologies together
form the environment that can support and stimulate tele-learning
for individual learners, in the teacher-led classroom and in the
course-at-a-distance.
Prediction
4
Central
sources for tele-learning will be available by the year 2005.
Predictions
relating to the educational enterprise and to learning:
Prediction
5
Two
of the most significant changes to education involving tele-learning
will be the increasing importance of virtual communities to complement
face-to-face relationships in learning and the increasing use
of "knowledge utilities" such as the WWW to complement
the textbook and the teacher as major information sources.
Prediction
6
Teachers
and later on learners will come to routinely access distributed
multi-media resources or resource materials and will make occasional
contacts with distributed experts for feedback and motivation.
"Virtual field trips" will be part of the school experience,
but will be associated with individual learning outside the school
setting.
Prediction
7
Training
departments in businesses will lead the way in increased use of
multi-media networks for more efficient one-to-one tutoring and
access to multi-media training materials. These conceptions of
educational efficiency will be gradually reflected in "pedagogical
re-engineering" particularly in post-secondary education/training
establishments.
Prediction
8
Educational
institutions will be slow to change from a structural point of
view. School and post-secondary establishments will be forced
to compete with each other and with market place training providers
for learner enrolment. They will still function as they do now,
but learners will increasingly pick and choose where and what
they learn and from whom. Tele-learning technologies will make
choice possible. This competition will stimulate change.
Prediction
9
Tele-learning
will be an important instrument of a new paradigm of educational
organisation and of a new social conception of learning.
Prediction
10
Competition
will heighten the importance of good learning support. Teachers
will still be important
to tele-learning and will remain the central, critical variable
in the organisation of the learning experience.
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