LEARNING’S NEW POSSIBILITIES
October 23, 2013
Imagine a system where learners meet clearly stated, performance-oriented goals, acquiring skills and knowledge that are relevant to real-life challenges. In this system, designed to enable high performance, learners of all levels meet their objectives with the aid of flexible programs that accommodate varied learning styles and abilities. Learners leave the system with all the necessary skills required by both a world-class workforce and as better educated citizens who can respond more intelligently to the never ending needs of a vibrant democracy.
This can be the face of American training and education — but only if we take advantage of the already-real advances technology has achieved. And, that all depends. Because, until both training and education can reverse their current emphasis on rote learning and refocus on understanding and retention will we see that dream come true.
But, to fulfill that dream we must first comprehend the metamorphosis that has taken place in the new learning culture.
Brought to the forefront by the highly competitive global economy, the changes afoot can result in both opportunities and responsibilities for today’s best platform for learning — media-based training and education.
Media-based learning does indeed offer the world the best such tools we have yet known. If applications providers treat knowledgeably-designed media as another communication tool that can deliver better retention and increased performance (while, at the same time, is multi-sensory, measurable and more consistent), learning wins.
And to be successful, advocates of training and education must acknowledge that it is now necessary to communicate with the learner’s senses through the effective application of video, gaming and optional word-for-word audio — essential in a nation with so many less-than-fluent readers!
But before that can take place, the trainers and teachers must abandon their lemmings commitment to the lecture/reading/testing approach they learned long ago when they were students in a world of limited technology. They must reprogram themselves and acknowledge, once again, that their primary responsibility is to teach and train.
If they will do that, they will discover that today’s leaners are best served by a media-based curricula.
More on Monday – – –
— Bill Walton, Founder
ITC Learning
www.itclearning.com/blog/ (Mondays & Wednesdays)
e-Mail: bwalton@itclearning.com
“ THE WORLD RELIES ON THE HANDS OF ITS MEN AND WOMEN ”