The E-learning Curve at Edublogs

As I wrote yesterday, Don Morrison has defined e-learning as:

The continuous assimilation of knowledge and skills by adults stimulated by synchronous and asynchronous learning events – and sometimes Knowledge management outputs – which are authored, delivered engaged with, supported and administered using internet technologies.

(2004, p.4)

I briefly touched upon “continuous assimilation of knowledge and skills by adults”; andragogy.

Today, I’m going to talk a bit more about synchronous and asynchronous learning events. A proportion of the content I develop for the workplace includes non-formal informational and knowledge content delivered to learners (which I call “Information Sessions”) via a number of synchronous and asynchronous channels. We will delve into the detail of this at another time, but for now it is useful to note the meanings of these categories. Colvin Clark and Mayer in e-learning and the Science of Instruction (2003) define synchronous delivery simply as that which occurs simultaneously, whereas asynchronous “occurs at different times” (p.201). I would suggest that implicit in the term ‘synchronous’ is the term ‘collaborative’ – that is, two or more learners, possibly in the presence of an instructor or domain expert, participating (remotely) in a learning event and exchanging information and knowledge.

In Designing World-class E-Learning Roger Schank (2002) calls this “e-learning by doing” (p.13) and cites the industry-wide use of computer-based air flight simulators in aviation as training tools to understand the potential of collaboration to develop learners in situated environments. Equivalently, implicit in the term ‘asynchronous’ is, I suggest, the notion of self-paced content. As Morrison points out though, “the flexibility of internet technology creates grey areas around the notion of synchronous and asynchronous” (p.7). He gives the example of a virtual class which “starts life” as a synchronous learning event, is recorded and can thenceforward be played back on-demand by learners. In a sense, Morrison argues, the presenter and participants taking part in the original event become co-authors of an asynchronous learning event. This, in fact, could serve as a rather broad working definition of the category of learning that the Information Sessions inhabit.

References:

Clark, R. C. & Mayer R. (2003) e-learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer

Morrison, D. (2004) E-Learning Strategies: how to get implementation and delivery right first time, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Schank, R. (2002) Designing World-Class e-Learning. London, McGraw-Hill