Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Classroom vs Online

There is a huge trend going towards online learning. It's flexible, its easy to do on your own, it's easy to meet employer requirements in the comfort of your own home. It's wonderful.

I personally love this move towards online learning and I love that anytime I have a question or want to learn a new topic, I can look something up online (often for free) and learn a new skill. It's actually what I've been doing a lot of to learn how to run a small business.

But I worry a little about online learning. Over the last week and a half, I've been teaching a group of awesome HCA's in a completely classroom environment and it's really rather awesome.

You get something from the classroom that you can't get with online learning. INTERACTION. You get to hear what others in your same situation are going through. You get to hear questions that you didn't even know to ask. You get to add your own stories and history to the learning and get immediate feedback from the instructor.

As a teacher, the classroom has been very revealing to me. Online, my students are in a whole other frame of mind, but in front of me, I get to learn about their challenges and backgrounds and experiences. This helps me to form new curriculum and learning techniques to reach more students.

The most effective learning technique for adults has shown to be a BLENDED approach. Most colleges have adopted a lot of classes this way. Part of the time is spent in the classroom and you get the interaction and the 1:1 with the teach and part of the time is done online in the comfort of your own space.

I'm a big fan of this.

What works best for you? Online - Classroom - Blended?

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