Decelerated Learning and technology

Follow-up to The Decelerated Learning movement from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

'E-learning' technologies have always been caught up in this debate. For many people, technology and acceleration are intimately related. Perhaps this partly explains the distaste that many in academia have for e-learning? For many institutions, the justification for the expense of e-learning is to reach a bigger market with the same amount of content more quickly. Increase turnover, improve profit margins.

But here at Warwick we like to take our time, do things properly. Am I sounding like a Grolsch advert again? Rather than accelerate content transmission, technology can be used to give people time to reflect, review and create. In this way learning becomes less like comsumption, it becomes activated and creative. This is why we are more interested in technologies such as Forums, BlogBuilder (Warwick Blogs), SiteBuilder (used in a dynamic and creative way), and mind/concept mapping. These asynchronous technologies all have the capability to provide time and space to the student and the academic.

For example, consider the possibilities of these technologies in enhancing seminars, for avoiding the dreaded 'seminar silence' that is far too common. In many seminars the student turns up having read the paper under discussion at the last possible moment. They are expected to formulate and express a response right away. Technology can be used to aleviate this. The student could, instead, slowly develop a response to the paper in their blog. The seminar then becomes more like a work-in-progress report.

I'm not saying that this is the best practice possible. There are many other things that can be done with these technologies, many other ways in which we can do less better. We just need to abandon our preconceptions about technology, and then experiment a little.

Robert O'Toole : 20 Sep 2004 07:59 |  Tags: E-Learning Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem