On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:59:43 +0100, Administrator wrote:
Can I make a plea for diversity in the education. Video or audio is much more effective education / training for most people than written texts. Even programmers have moved from text based editors to GUI editors. A screengrab video with voice over (possibly added later) is very effective is showing newcomers the features and doesn't demand that they have the same level of abstract thinking and ability to visualise that characterises top level developers.
Certainly - in my professional line of work, one thing that I'm working with the rest of my team on is figuring out what the next generation of Novell's training looks like - and with that has come a lot of discovery about how the current generation consumes training. A lot more of it now is ad-hoc, search-it-out-and-find-what-you-need rather than the traditional classroom model. The thing that we've observed is this iterative cycle of: 1. Let the student identify what they want to learn 2. Provide them the means to find the information 3. Evaluate what they learned and go back to step 1 if necessary (for more in-depth or a different method of consuming it) That tends to be the way everyone learns, even in a classroom (step 3 is done jointly by the instructor and student and is so natural most don't even think about it). That idea/cycle, though, doesn't really preclude any learning methodology; but where the trend in education is moving these days is away from content-centric learning and towards learner-centric learning; that is, rather than the end product being about the content (a course, a book, or whatever), the end product is more about ensuring the learner has the ability to pick and choose what they need and validating that they come out of the experience with the knowledge and/or skills they need to do what they're trying to do. What I think this means is populating a "body of knowledge" and then providing tools to effectively select the necessary materials; but this is more than just providing a wiki that's got lots of pages full of information - because some people don't learn effectively in that way. That means the development of things like hands-on exercises, audio/video experiences, and online interactions. Something else that's absolutely critical to the learning experience is the social element. By and large, the ability to retain knowledge is significantly enhanced when there's more to it than just reading a book/ webpage. The application of the knowledge helps, but having the ability to ask questions and interact around the content really enriches the experience so the learner is likely to retain more. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org