One hot, stuffy afternoon back in the 90s, I was sitting in one of those long department meetings administrators like to schedule right before everyone goes on break. The internet was still relatively new in those days, and the conversation turned to what it might mean for education. A grizzled veteran professor turned to me and said, “You better watch out. The district is going to find a way to replace us with robots.”
I smiled politely, but I didn’t really believe I could be replaced by a robot. And I still don’t.
Despite the near-hysterical press coverage of the ways in which AI technologies such as ChatGPT are going to destroy education as we know it, I am not concerned that educators are going to be out of a job anytime soon. Alarmist headlines about the demise of education are nothing new – first the internet was going to destroy education, then it was Google, then it was Wikipedia. All of these technologies require us to adapt, yes. But none of them can do what I can do.
Asynchronous online education is a new-ish method of delivery, but the principles of teaching and learning that humans have developed over decades – centuries – still apply.
What does it mean to learn something? A common stereotype about online learning goes something like this – you watch a video, then you take a quiz, and then viola! You have learned the material and are entitled to a A in the course.
But that is not what learning is. Learning is not a passive activity; watching a video does not mean that you understood it – or more importantly, that you are able to do “the thing” the video is about. Watching a couple of videos about accounting does not qualify me to take over as the head of accounting for a Fortune 500 corporation.
Being exposed to the content – typically by reading and listening – is just the first step in learning. But to really learn something, you must be able to remember it, and then to apply it. You must analyze, synthesize and evaluate and create with it. You know, Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Online instruction, then, is not just about providing content via Ted Talks or Khan Academy (both of which are great resources, by the way). For online students to learn, however, instructors must design activities that enable students to interact with the material in challenging ways. Then, we provide feedback – which students take into the next activity.
Educators refer to this as the active learning cycle. Students need to grapple with the content – to question it, to apply it, to reproduce it, to build upon it, to come up with brilliant new ideas based on it. We may use fancy ed tech to do this – or, we may just stick to the old school Socratic method of question, answer, new question. But either way, online teaching is still teaching – challenging students to use their brains to learn new skills and grasp new ideas, guiding them through the process of iterative learning, supporting them when they make mistakes. Some steps in this process can be supported by AI robots, for sure. But human connection, judgement and interaction cannot entirely be replaced.
So, how do we do this? In future posts, I’m going to explore what I think are some of the key principles and methods for designing active online learning experiences. But in the meantime, feel free to share in the comments. How would you define learning? What do you think are the key elements of a good learning environment, either in person or online?