Let me say that I, although I wrote a long and very critical posting about
DL, do not believe that there is no place for the concept in teaching. As I
pointed out in my last posting, the idea has been in use in one form or
another for at least decades, if not centuries. If the students are
otherwise involved so it would be difficult to find a common gathering
time, then DL can be a way around that problem, especially if they are all
committed to this kind of learning. And just as some learn better by
reading, others by hearing, still others by doing, there is that group (and
it may well be growing with the ubiquity of TV throughout this generation's
developing years) that will learn best by interacting with a video monitor.
So be it. The task of the educational community is to do our best to
accommodate to the different learning style of each student, Obviously,
without incredible increases in staffing, we can't completely accommodate
to every student's learning style, but we can make steps in that direction,
and technology can help us. DL will be a part of that. But it isn't the
magic bullet, as has been well pointed out here already, and we need to
disabuse those in charge of the pursestrings of the notion that it might be.
My impression so far is that these comments are not too controversial,
except perhaps among the DL zealots. But even if DL itself flops completely
(which I hope it does not), the technology involved can and is still being
used in conventional classrooms to improve the process. I have in mind
e-mail communications between students and teacher, issuing and receiving
assignment via e-mail or (preferably) the web, providing supplemental
handouts and readings via the web, having pre-lab assignments turned in via
the web, and more broadly, daily pre-class assignments submitted prior to
class via the web, as is being doine in the "just in time instruction"
techniques now being perfected at the Air Force Academy and other
institutions. The use of video analysis for taking lab data is another wise
use of modern technology, and one that can give students experience in many
important aspects or data-taking (precision, scatter, error analysis,
parallax, how much data to collect, and many others) that will be of
inestimable value to those students who go on to become experimental
scientists, and which will give those who don't a realistic idea of what
experimental science tries to do. Spreadsheets and graphical analysis
programs can also make it much easier for students to do more in-depth
analysis of their data than is possible (due to time limitations) now. And
finally, simulation software can provide the students with two valuable
aspects of learning--the ability to examine special cases that are
difficult or impossible to do in the lab, and the ability to design an
experiment by doing it first on the computer.
The string of technological advances that Herb listed the other day, which
did not in themselves revolutionize education as was predicted for each,
have each found a niche in the educational process, which if used
judiciously and properly each has it own value. The same should be true of
the new technology being exploited by the DL crowd. It will find a place.
DL will be utilized where it is the best solution, and much of the
technolgy will find its way into the conventional classroom.
So we should be spending our time carefully examining the new ideas (and
the old ones too), and making sure that those that have merit find their
proper place in the educational spectrum. We should criticize where
justified, and strongly resist the idea that some new technology will be
the solution to all the problems of education. That folly (and the
draconian budgets that it was used to justify) is largely responsible for
the sorry state our educational system is in now. The steamroller is
coming. We need to do our best to see to it that it rolls on pneumatic
wheels instead of steel ones.