Teaching and Learning in the Year 1011

Learning 1011 AD and 2011 AD, courtesy of Nathan Wallen

Let's go 1000 years back in time to set up a learning event. How would you do it? You would probably bring the expert, and the students into the same room, have the students sit on hard wooden benches, and arrange to have the expert stand in front and transfer his knowledge to the students. This kind of direct teaching was was one of the few options available, and it was reasonably efficient, which is why it was used for thousands of years.

Now, of course, we don't need to be in the same room with an expert to learn. We can interact with many different experts, with other learners, and with many different representations of the content. We can design learning environments and online spaces that help people practice, work through problems, and get feedback. If there's a need to listen to an expert lecture, we can record the lecture and let people view it whenever they want. And the good new is, we have a lot of data that shows that of these kinds of activities will result in better learning, and will be more likely to actually improve professional practice.

So, other than the hard wooden chairs, why does so much professional continuing education in 2011 look exactly the same as it would have in 1011?  It doesn't have to be that way, we can help professionals continue to learn and improve.