News Herald – Juliann Talkington
Online learning seems like a panacea. It is low cost, accessible to anyone who has a computer, and allows people to learn when and where they wish.
With all these benefits, many people wonder why we are not rushing to eliminate the traditional classroom environment and move everything online as Sal Kahn with Kahn Academy suggests.
Technology is a wonderful thing. It crunches data, processes information, and helps us handle tasks more efficiently. It can synthesize human voices and translate basic materials. It can process information well enough to beat the best humans in the game of chess. As time progresses, it will be able to duplicate more and more human processes and tasks.
Even with all the advances, we have not yet found a way to handle the psychological part of human interaction. For example, Siri, the Apple personal assistant, can tell you how to get to the flower store on the next block in Shanghai, but cannot handle the interpersonal interaction you will have with the shopkeeper when you arrive.
Learning also is a complex psychological process. For learning to occur, students must be engaged, focused and motivated. They need to be exposed to material in different forms and process information through their brains in different ways. They should be rewarded for solving problems using unique and innovative approaches.
Even though online lessons may be technically correct and the online instructor may be effective at teaching the material, these lessons cannot assure the student is engaged, focused, or motivated.
In a classroom setting, a good teacher can change his/her lesson plans to address real world conditions. He/she can remove distractions and adjust material to reach students given the unique conditions of that day. In addition, a teacher can blend technology with traditional learning techniques to enhance learning. As an additional benefit, classroom students are forced to work in a group setting, something required in most high paying jobs.
Although it would be nice to move all children to an online learning system, it is probably only a viable option for the small percentage of elementary, middle and high school student population – those that have parents who can supervise education every day or those that can stay focused and motivated without adult supervision and the social dynamics associated with peer interactions.
So with all its inefficiencies associated with classroom learning, it is still the best option for most children.