Technology is making a positive difference in education, and it will for the rest of our lives.
New and emerging technologies like AI and AR/VR are starting to have an impact on education. So, are we on the cusp of disruption is education. Yes and no, technology cannot replace the teachers in our classroom, at least for now. The delivery of the content that’s taught ‘in person’ in a classroom session is still the same. The fundamental issue is then, you are taught by someone whose knowledge of the subject is not up-to-date with the latest. It is not the fault of that particular individual, because with the sheer speed of change in technology is impossible to keep up for a single individual.
Distributed Learning can address this issue.
The Distributed Learning approach can address issues where people can scale their learning by collaborating with other individuals and expert in the field. It can give a run for money to in-class instruction-lead learning.
Distributed learning allows individuals to learn from different forums like:
- Open Source Software (OSS)
- Organisational Learning Program (OLP)
- Online and Offline Content
- Predetermined Curriculum
The brief on these forums help you to understand more.
Open Source Software
In this forum as a learner, the individual is contributing to an open source project. It allows the in-experienced learner to hob knob with more experienced and professionals. The experienced professionals critique in-experienced person’s work and guide him to accomplish tasks.
Organisational Learning Program
These programs are facilitated by experts within an organization or by a recognized body. These programs are typically aimed to upskill participants task. E.g. a typical upskill programs launched by Google to improve Android skills of developers.
Online and Offline Content
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms such as Udacity, Pluralsight, edX, Coursera, etc offer learning materials that can be accessed either online on the internet or offline via manual data transfer.
Predetermined Curriculum
Learners have access to a resource library to upskill themselves. Lerner’s progress is tracked and checked at pre-determined points.
Community Meeting + Workshops + Hackathons
These forums give opportunities to meet, grow, and network with the like-minded people. It gives opportunities to interact with experienced professionals who have core competence and wealth of knowledge. It offers a platform for one to showcase and share gained knowledge.
Summary
In addition to these forums, I will explore other topics in my further blogs on education. These are
- 70 20 10 model
- Internet and your organization
- 70 20 10 & xAPI
On the Medium.COM, I came across an article on the topic of Distance Learning. Babajide Duroshok wrote it. In the article, he kept a perspective of Distributed Learning in the continent of Africa.