Senior seminar follow-up

I spoke to a colleague's Senior Seminar group today. I demonstrated a number of tools for learning, sharing, and collaborating online; among them, this blog.

I see their is an wide-ranging insert In this week's Chronicle about Online Learning adds some insight to some of the tools and strategies we talked about. Just a quick browse so far, but I like what they have to say about blogs as a communication tool:

Blogs. Speaking of providing additional opportunities for students to exercise their voices, individual blogs are my favorite. Not only do the students discuss content with one another and the instructor, but they learn to write for a wider audience. Blogs aren't just for students: I use a general course blog (to which my students' blogs are linked) to provide wrap-ups after each face-to-face class. This serves both as a teaching journal for me and as a way for students to ask additional questions after our face-to-face time is over.

And this vision of the future by Khan Academy director Sakman Khan:

Ten years from today, students will be learning at their own pace, with all relevant data being collected on how to optimize their learning and the content itself. Grades and transcripts will be replaced with real-time reports and analytics on what a student actually knows and doesn't know.

The classroom will be a place for active interaction, not passive listening and daydreaming. The role of the teacher will be that of a mentor or coach as opposed to a lecturer, test writer, and grader. The institutions that will remain relevant will be those that leverage this paradigm, not fight it.

This is not just another prediction. It is merely a conservative extrapolation of what is already happening. The technology exists, and it is free and open-source. It is already being used regularly by a larger population of students than on any physical campus in the world—and that population is growing severalfold a year. When it is complemented with the human experience that can be had only on a physical campus with leading researchers and thinkers, we should see a new renaissance in learning.