Basics of Education

One of the blogs I subscribe to is "Corporate Elearning Strategies and Development". Recently there was a thought-provoking article posted by Brent Schlenker and I wanted to post a link and make some further comments myself.

Here is a link to the article:
We don't NEEd more teachers. We need more people TEACHING!

I think the whole article is good and valuable, but the "Basics of Education" points got me thinking about the web-based training I produce, and how I may be able to add value to my projects by including other education-necessary components.

Anyway, here is my thoughts on how my projects fit into the required components:

1. Defined Curriculum - Web-based training usually does a decent job of listing what is included. Personally, I always try to make sure we include an outline of the entire course and each course includes up-front learning objectives.
   


2. Administrivia - Courses are all self-paced, and can include due dates and qualification periods, no problems here.
   


3. Connect to Others - This one is tough for a SCORM course. Ideally, it would be nice to have a comments or discussion forum for others who have taken the course. How to accomplish that contained in the course.. thats another post. Potentially an LMS could supply that as well.


4. Access to Experts - I think this is another feature that could be provided by an LMS, but maybe a course could have an end section that was moderated by experts that was continuously updated to include more knowledge. This could also come in the form of linked documents or contact information inside of the course.
   


5. Access to Resources - The course is the main resource, but, as above, can also link to external information.


6. Proven Competence - The quality of available test questions these days makes this a strong point of computer- and web-based training. With all sorts of questions, users must prove by passing a test that they understand the information that has been discussed.