elearnspace

Many aspects of education, training, and development need to be questioned. What has technology (and the internet) made obsolete? How important is space? What can we do at a distance? What does a live lecture add that a good quality recording doesn’t? How can we thin classroom walls and bring in external experts? Or connect with learners in similar courses from around the world? Or what do use from the growing open education pool? Systems are created to serve the needs of an era. When eras change, systems don’t…at least not until they encounter a disruptive force (in education – the financial climate looks like it may serve this role) that causes individuals to question the value of the assumptions underlying the existing systems.
Hybrid Education reviews Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative – a project that relies on virtual tutors to change the role of faculty in the learning process: “The virtual tutor takes care of the basic concepts that typically dominate lectures, leaving professors open to plan the face-to-face component of the course according to what parts of the curriculum the software tells him students are picking up more slowly, and what concepts could bear reinforcement.”