The Austerity of Being Totally Simple

When you know something well, you can sometimes make decisions by feeling rather than thinking. This happens to me occasionally when I’m programming. It’s happened frequently enough, however, that  I know to pay attention when it occurs.

Something has nagged at me now for about 6 months. It is similar to the gut feeling I can get while programming. It concerns the innovative edge of learning research and development. Not that I know elearning particularly well, because clearly I do not, but in this post I try to express an unease. Perhaps it is unfounded. You be the judge.

The tug happens like this … “Whoa, exactly who are these learners we’re talking about here? Do they include the unserved, for whom the classrooms and pedagogy we sometimes disparage are only a distant dream on a path toward freedom and mobility?”

Don’t misunderstand. Elearning R&D is necessary, important, and holds vast potential for the public good.

Having said that, however, more room exists for simple approaches that use low-hanging fruit, can occur nearly immediately, and which would benefit many.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Note it is not a proposal. It is simply an example used to illustrate a point. And very likely it is not novel; surely others have already pushed the idea forward and I’m just not aware of it. But  here goes.

It is a tautology to say that the web is the greatest learning resource the world has ever known. Even if we restricted ourselves to existing “formalesque” tutorials and courses that are free, the web offers an immense variety. For learners the problem is one of locating these tutorials and judging their quality and suitability.

A simple approach might start with a way for learners to identify, comment about, and rate web tutorials they’ve taken. Kind of like an Amazon for web tutorials instead of books.

Would that help? Yes, I think it might. It is a place to begin. Austere perhaps but nonetheless a start. From there? Who can tell. Domain specific sites around areas or topics of interest (eg, chemistry tutorials)? Possibilities for learners taking the same tutorial to work together? Trails to guide learners through sequences of tutorials? Mentors (eg, other learners) to provide support? Multiple voices represented in diverse trails covering similar terrain? Mechanisms (eg, portfolios) to portray learning history? Learning centers coalescing? Expressions of learning in a currency that employers understand?

The paths seem endless but hopeful.

Simple and free. It’s a good beginning.

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Footnote: The title for this blog post is a phrase in Krishnamurti’s book Freedom from the Known.