[Air-l] Technology Transforming Education--EE-Learning

[Dr. Steve Eskow]

Nancy, you write:

>>Your point about mixing oil and water by combining on and offline
components in education is intruiging. I don't know and am curious what
others think. I am not one to argue that a university education should be
job training, but I do think that learning to function in multiple media to
get a job done is an essential piece of modern life for most professionals,
and I would hope students are given the opportunity to work on those skills
in their education.>>

Here's a retrograde thought.

The emphasis on "learning styles" and "multiple media" that suit different
learning styles may be the problem rather than the solution.

Textual illiterates can be fluent oralists, if that's a word. And they can
learn from television and the other visual/aural media.

Premise: success in the middle and upper ranks of the work force depend on
print literacy.

The central medium of instruction of the university, then, ought not to be
the orality of the lecture, or the conversation of the seminar, but the
reading of texts and the writing of texts, with the other media in an
assisting and supporting role. 

Hunch: the success of the British OU is based on their organizing their
courses around texts, texts usually written by expert faculty or
practitioners for the course. Television and radio and the computer play a
supporting role--at least that was the case when I was close to the work of
the OU.

Students who choose the OU know in advance that their success will depend on
their ability and willingness to read a great deal, and write a great deal.
They know there is no way to avoid that reading, substitute summaries or
outlines or good conversation for that work of close reading.

Nancy, and all, does "multiple media" mean that a university education need
no longer require the ability to cope with complex texts?

Steve Eskow