E-learning Curve Blog at Edublogs

At its heart, learning is about growth. The reason for learning, and education is to facilitate peoples’ need to acquire and develop new skills and knowledge.

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In previous posts, I’ve suggested that knowledge workers under time-pressure and with high demands on their skills are motivated to continually educate themselves on new topics. In small- to mid-sized enterprises, for example, workers are required to learn new skills, behaviours and attitudes in the context of their functional tasks. As they do not necessarily [...]

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Significantly, Jonassen et al point out that learning is not restricted to formal learning environments, and that learners can “acquire sophisticated skills and advanced knowledge in natural learning situations” (p. 28).

Table 1 Characteristics of a computer-based learning environment (after Jonassen, 1994)

Characteristic

Definition

Active:

Learners are engaged by the learning process in mindful processing of information [...]

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David H Jonassen, with his colleagues Chad Carr and Hsiu-Ping Yeuh in Computers as Mindtools for Engaging Learners in Critical Thinking, (1998) proposes that learning is an active and creative process in that information is processed “mindfully” (p.30), since the learner not only collects information but also constructs a format for representing that information and [...]

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In 2001, David Jonassen argued that “most e-learning replicates the worst features of face-to-face instruction. So, it may be cheaper to ‘deliver’ knowledge over the Internet, but it will not be more effective” (“Interview with Professor David Jonassen”, 2001). He correctly identified that at the time e-learning was on the ascender of the hype curve, [...]

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