In his recent New York Times article, “Virtual Classrooms Could Create a Marketplace for Knowledge,” author Anad Girdharadas writes:
In the autumn of 1963, the American magazine Popular Mechanics heralded an innovation that seemed bound to change the world: the ‘teacherless classroom’ … Fate and technology have pummeled many professions since 1963, from bookseller to travel agent to auto worker. But teachers have resisted the powerful forces reorganizing industry. The dream of the teacherless classroom has remained just that … Today the dream has returned.
Citing examples such at the Open Courseware Consortium, to iTunes U to Curriki, Girdharadas points out that education is no longer a seller’s market, where deans decide what you know, at what cost and where. With an increasing number of university professors and subject-specific enthusiasts putting their course materials and expertise online in multimedia formats, students (poor, rich, young and old) have a significant number of options when it comes to where to get (or rather how to build) an education. Furthermore, with this abundance of free or almost free courses and education resources online, universities and other certificate granting institutions have to compete on quality, price and convenience more than ever before.
Taking all of this into account, what do the aforementioned changes and market pressures mean for teachers and professors in terms of their role within the classroom and education marketplace? Or, as Independent Thinking founder Ian Gilbert writes in his forthcoming book, “Why do I need a Teacher when I’ve got Google?”
Scott McNealy, Founder of Sun Microsystems and Curriki, states that educators will have to re-envision themselves as coaches. Their focus should move increasingly towards motivating learners and customizing materials to individual students, often including the work and expertise of others in the process. Or, as this Edutopia article points out, “It is better to coach than cajole”.
What do readers think? With the recent digital education explosion, how will (or rather how should) the role of the teacher and professor change? Where will educators teach/coach? How can we better prepare educators for their new roles and responsibilities in education?
Curriki International Consultant
Tags: Anad Girdharadas, Anna Batchelder, coaching, Curriki, Education, Edutopia, iTunes U, OER, online education teacherless classroom, Open Courseware Consortium, open education resources, Scott McNealy
November 14, 2009 at 8:31 am |
[...] Courseware Consortium, Open Education Resources, Scott McNealy I just published this post on Curriki’s blog, would be curious to hear thoughts from Literacy is Priceless [...]
November 14, 2009 at 3:04 pm |
The effectiveness of any learning environment is the quality of the teacher, whether that’s an online environment, classroom, or a hybrid.
Thinking back on my experience being educated as a software engineer and then as a teacher. I believe that I probably could have managed the computer science degree online as the most significant partner was the computer. Receiving feedback on programming technique would have been just as valuable remotely, as in person. On the other hand, learning and teaching is about relationship and takes a lot more words, not to mention experiences, emotions, etc. The most rewarding and useful are those education classes where significant interaction among the students in conjunction with the teacher take place. Processing all of that text visually is daunting!
As a teacher, my goal is to teach my classes in person, in an online format, and in video format.
So a teacherless classroom? I hope not. Opportunities for all types of learners? A variety of learning environments? Good for the future.
November 15, 2009 at 10:00 am |
Teaching and learning styles will change but the rate of change will depend on the capacity of teachers and bureaucratic systems to change. The teacherless classroom already exists. A sizeable minority of children are home educated without a formal qualified teacher and that group is growing. Better and freely available supporting materials from the internet will make good quality home education easier so unless schools change they might find that they no longer have any customers. Web 2.0 and beyond does provide a step change in opportunity for teaching to become more about personalised learning support, motivation and mentoring of individuals and less about a production lines shovelling subject knowledge into groups in fixed time slots. Good teachers will always be a benefit but poor teachers will be rendered dispensable and subject specialist knowledge will become increasingly less important. Expect a big fight to preserve the status quo
January 15, 2010 at 9:55 am |
Why in the world would I try to learn this the hard way? I have a tons of CD tutorials I got for free lol…. —–> check it: http://bit.ly/learning-software
February 26, 2010 at 4:00 pm |
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