Foolish Luddism?

Preview of an e-learning book

Beware of too much technology

Everything in moderation, nothing in excess the ancient Greeks taught us. E-learning is one of those areas where we might get excessive. An example of excessive use of the technology is seen in some courses where participants need to spend hours downloading files or reading documents online. In some courses students waste time working in groups. In other courses students are expected to read long documents on a computer monitor. It would be better to send them paper versions of the documents. Placing huge documents on CD-ROM, or DVD sounds like a great idea, but who reads them? Video conferencing appeals to the techie in us, but is it more effective than video tapes or even audio tapes? Is video conferencing worth the additional cost and the effort? You can get too much of a good thing. E-learning does not need to be 100% pure. It may be appropriate to combine leader-led courses, paper-based documents, video tapes and audio tapes with e-learning instructional materials.

One of the dangers of online learning is that we will try to do too much with new technology. We need to guard against replacing existing, valid approaches with new, less-effective ones.

Later: Thursday, April 8, 2010

They have gone, but will be here forever: http://web.archive.org/web/20020205132359/http://www.e-learninghub.com/effective.html

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