This is my last article for the Community. It seems like just yesterday when I accepted the offer to write 10 articles for you. The task gave me an opportunity to reflect on the various perspectives of e-learning and understand how they relate to each other. In this article, I reiterate my belief that learning is basically a social activity and the sooner we get this fact, the better our chances at giving our learners memorable learning experiences.

Old Wine, New Bottles

The title of this article is a take on a very influential article written in 1940 by Charles I. Gragg for the Harvard Alumni Bulletin titled, Because Wisdom Can’t be Told. In that article, Gragg compared the case-based approach for learning with the stand-up lecture mode of teaching. He sliced and diced the lecture mode and showed how the case-based method was far superior in all aspects. His main arguments for the case-based approach centred on the purposeful thinking and collaboration of groups of students engaged in learning activities around real-world situations.

After reading the article, I linked it to the state of e-learning today and realised that nothing much has changed since 1940. What Gragg strongly argued against back then is in vogue today; the only difference is that it is taking place online. If Gragg were to write his article today, he would have strongly condemned both the telling and the reading of wisdom as it occurs today both in the classroom and online.

To help you understand what I mean, read these snippets from his paper. And when doing so, think of a recent e-learning project you were involved in.

• “It can be said flatly that the mere act of listening to wise statements and sound advice does little for anyone. In the process of learning, the learner’s dynamic cooperation is required”
  
• “Thinking out original answers to new problems or giving new interpretations to old problems is assumed in much undergraduate instruction to be an adult function as, as such, one properly denied to students. The task of the student commonly taken to be one chiefly of familiarizing himself with accepted thoughts and accepted techniques, these to be actively used some later time. The instruction period, in other words, often is regarded both by students and teachers as a time for absorption.”
  
• “…the business school must be able to do more for its students than could be accomplished in a corresponding period of actual business experience.”
  
• “If the learning process is to be effective, something dynamic must take place in the learner. The truth of this statement becomes more and more apparent as the learner approaches the inevitable time when he or she must go into action.”
  
• “Yet no amount of information, whether of theory or fact, in itself improves insight and judgment or increases ability to act wisely under conditions of responsibility.”
  

Gragg then went on to discuss the raison d'être of cases: discussions between student and student and student and teacher. Here are some snippets on this front:

• “Everyone is on par and everyone is in competition. The basis is provided for strong give and take both inside and outside the classroom. The valuable art of exchanging ideas with the objective of building up some mutually satisfactory and superior notion is cultivated. Such an exchange stimulates thought, provides a lesson in how to learn from others, and also gives experience in the effective transmission of one’s ideas.”
  
• “In making the adjustment to the democratic disciplines of the case system, students typically pass through at least three objectively discernable phases. The first phase is the inability of the individual to think of everything that his fellow students can think of… The second phase is that of accepting easily and without fear the need for cooperative help. The third and final phase is the march towards maturity usually comes … with the recognition that the instructors do not always or necessarily know the ‘best’ answer and, even when they do seem to know them, that each student is free to present and hold to his own views.”

The e-learning courses that are designed today are nothing more than glorified stand-up lectures. The so-called ‘discussions’ that usually come attached to these courses are a lame attempt to foster collaborative and purposeful thinking. The state of e-learning today can be best described by the Indian parable about the six blind men and the elephant: each had a description that was partly right; but all were in the wrong.

The Way Forward

Gragg criticized the lecture mode of teaching in the context of business education. His main point was that the lecture mode would not be able to help students achieve a level of dependable self-reliance that is asked of them when they are called into action.

Similarly, if the objective of e-learning as used in business or educational contexts today is to help students achieve dependable self-reliance, then the course-based method of e-learning has little to offer in this regard.

The way forward now is the same as it was in 1940: to help students exercise their thoughts and views in a democratic and collaborative context around authentic situations and all the while being facilitated and guided by instructors to reach shared understanding. The idea here is to have memorable learning experiences.

This is not to say there is no place for the course-based approach. There is, but primarily for structured information presentation, not for in-depth learning. In the case-based approach Gragg describes, structured information was presented only as raw material to help learners understand the business contexts of the cases, not as the primary learning vehicle. The same can be applicable for e-learning – the course-based approach can be used as a stepping stone where learners acquire the necessary background information and raw material before entering real stage where they engage in meaningful learning in shared contexts.

Blended learning, blogs and wikis are some approaches being used today to build shared contexts, but they are still just single threads in the overall learning experience. (You can read George Siemens’s article, Learning Ecologies, Communities and Classrooms, to learn more about these different approaches). These approaches and the others to come will have to be integrated into the same fabric of learning if we are to help our learners achieve their objective of dependable self-reliance.

Conclusion

Last week, I took part in an Open Space Technology (OST) session organised by my local knowledge management society to brainstorm the directions the committee should take in 2005. Although just 12 people attended the session, it turned out to be a very fruitful session with the committee getting several action points to consider in 2005. What excited me about this session was that all of this seemingly structured session was in fact un-structured and un-focused. There was no agenda, only a theme. The participants themselves created an agenda and brainstormed on the various pros and cons of each item in the agenda and then came up with the action points.

This experience proved to me once more that there are approaches out there to create memorable learning experiences and they all have the same ingredients: loosely structured democratic and collaborative sessions where participants are guided to think out solutions to real-life issues. It is my hope that such experiences will be brought to life in e-learning environments in 2005.