From Judith McDaniel
It’s not a new concept, lifelong learning. Before formal education, before public schools became responsible for “socializing” the young, lifelong learning was the only kind of learning. When our ancestors needed to do something, they learned how. Whether it was how to cross the prairie in a covered wagon, how to cut down an impossibly large tree in order to farm the land, they learned. Sometimes the learning came from books, but more often it was a function of talking to someone who knew, someone who had “done it,” or just figuring it out by trial and error.
Today, lifelong learning is becoming a commodity. Universities are using it to raise their tuition pools. Businesses are using it to convince workers that job training can benefit workers personally.
But I don’t want to lose track of the fact that most of us continue to learn throughout our lives—not for credit or salary increments—but because we are curious. Basic curiosity is the driver behind many things. Inventions. Gossip (he did what? why do you think?). And learning. Sometimes it is learning of the “how can I?” which is similar to invention. But more often, it is learning about how others lived or are living their lives.
I have college students (18-21 year old range) who are equally fascinated with Medea’s predicament as Euripides presents it, with Clarissa Dalloway’s truncated choices as Virginia Woolf presents them, and with society’s failure to support our children as dozens of novelists and poets present this issue—now and in the past. And why wouldn’t they be fascinated? After all, they are learning about human emotions, human responses, human limitations. This is not a curiosity that is going to diminish when they leave the university for the “real” world.
So why shouldn’t we all have access to a similar forum for discovery? What might that look like? I think it would have a common reading or source of knowledge, the chance to exchange ideas and opinions with others who are exploring the same text or issue, and guidance by a facilitator who has expertise in this area.
What do you think?
Tags: curiosity, lifelong learning
We are using online courses to train case managers who work with people with HIV. It works great for them because the courses have supervisor manuals online, each module can be repeated as many times as needed, can always be accessed for refresher material and can be used by supervisors to do group training with the staff. Each module raises many other issues–and directs staff to clarifying information. this works well for us because there is high staff turnover and makes this more cost efficient and effective.
As a relatively new online instructor at the college level, I cannot tell you how helpful it would have been to have a source to go to for information I so badly needed to begin thinking about designing an online course. I read some books about designing online courses, but they were lacking the voice of experience. In other words, they were theoretical and not experiencial. In theory lots of things should work, but when you actually do them they don’t. Having that knowledge would have helped me immensely so I had to learn from trial and error. Lifelong learning is needed in all aspects of our lives; sometimes we are the students and sometimes we can be the instructors passing along what we learned the hard way. It is especially helpful to know about what resources are out there to help you learn different things so that not every person has to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. The truth is most people have never taken a course online so they assume it is like a “correspondence course,” and could not possibly be as useful to them as a course taken in a regular classroom, which is not the case. There is definitely a need for courses to help train online instructors, which is not something colleges and universities are offering.
I couldn’t agree more with Mary about the need for the services you offer. For me, as a former law school program director, I found myself resisting the movement toward on-line teaching. That was ten years ago. Now I crave the skills needed to put my own pedagogy into a new and more useable format for my students. What you offer helps to address the points of resistance from those, as I used to be, who are close-minded about the possibilities. Thanks!
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