roberto maragliano – [email protected] joint italy-taiwan workshop on e-learning - ancona,...
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Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
“Incomparable!” Things that F2F
teaching cannot do
diRoberto Maragliano
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Are there differences, in didactics, between f2f and e-learning?
And if there are differences, what sort of differences we are talking about?
Before trying to answer these questions, I want to explain my personal point of view on the relation between didactics and technology
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
For didactics, technology can besupportenvironment
For technology, didactics can beimplicit elementexplicit element
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
For example, in traditional didactics, the manual can be seen
as a material tool, useful to transfer knowledge (support)
as a matrix of experiences, able to mold them (environment)
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
In addition, the fact that in the manual relies a specific didactics can be
highly considered (explicit element)
ignored (implicit element)
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
In my opinion
technology offers didactics an environment
didactics must interact with (and within) this environment
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
If the environment changes, also didactics must change, in order to redefine its identity
So, if the environment changes, didactics must make itself explicit
In my opinion, we have to concentrate in a selective way on the problems of didactics
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Many of the ideas we have, and especially many of the practices we adopt in didactics, are determined by the characteristics of
printed books
The manual gives shapes to teaching and learning experiences
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
The manual is in relation with a dualistic model in which
– there are previously defined subjects and objects, with different roles
– knowledge is seen (and is used) as a physical object, with specific boundaries and specific internal articulations
– the teacher teaches, and the learner learns
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Internet technology is very different to printing technology
Although it is so ductile as to adapt itself for people that use it like a printing technology, Internet technology redefines knowledge organization
If this is the time to understand what shapes this technology can give to knowledge, this crisis can be an opportunity
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
This crisis can be a growth, if it is really a chance to recognize the specificity of didactics problems
If the crisis is a growth, there are no more reasons to believe in a dualistic model
In the most advanced e-learning experiences– subjects and objects are fluid entities– teaching and learning are open functions
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
For years, online education was controlled by software engineers, who have decided the issues to debate
For years, we have been talking about systems, platforms, standards
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Within this teaching approach didactics problems were intended as resolved
We can say more – there were no problems– technology did it all
But technology did not face toward anti-technological prejudicethat is very strong in didactics
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
During the last years and after various experiences
didactics problems have become more visibles
Today, didactics and technology can interact at the same level, without risks of colonization
I think this is good for both technology and didactics
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
In the relation between each othersdidactics and technology must define themselves in a better way and singularly
But together they have to face the objections
that come from outer worlds
This process is not linear and its positive result is not sure
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
There are a lot of resistances
– on technological side, there are resistances toward considering the contributions that come from didactics, for technical innovation and technical clarification
– on didactics side, there are resistances toward considering the contributions that come from technology, for conceptual innovation and conceptual clarification
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
There’s no comparison!
How can we compare face-to-face teaching and its typical human characteristics to the sterile teaching condition related to a calculating machine?
How can a computer, unable to feel pain or joy, express the feeling of teaching and learning?
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
These are the objections we have regularly to face in our work
These objections summarize the resistances toward considering
– technology as a philosophical resource– didactics as a field in which we can debate and discuss different point of views
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
It is difficult to answer these questions
It is difficult to persuade those who are not accustomed to listening– to the others– to the worldIt is difficult to persuade those who do not want to be convinced
But we have to answer and try to debate the prejudices underlying that questions
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
My answer is usually this
It is true, there is something that online learning cannot achieveI agree, a direct experience is something incomparable But then, we should be coherent, we have to give up our learning habits, based on reading! And more, the machine has no feelings, but can we find feelings in our university rooms or in the pages of our manuals?
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
And I want to say more, trying to face directly these objections
There are lot of activities we can do exclusively online, and not in a face-to-face experience
For example – interaction among everyone
– simulation– sharing of the same work space
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Interaction among everyone, simulation, sharing of the same work space
are not common activities
in the actual university learning methods
due both to material and conceptual (and affective!) restrictions
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Moreover, these are typical activities in a technologically and didactically advanced
net learning
Thanks to these activities the entire community learns, not simply the single student
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Net learning does not transfer to the student
a strictly delimited piece of knowledge but enables him/her to elaborate and share
open portions of knowledge
Subjects and objects have open boundaries,that can easily change
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Net learning permits open dialogues
between teacher and students and among students
There are not rigid distinctions in rolesThere are not fixed roles
– the learner teaches– the teacher learns
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
These activities are not always realized at the same time in the actual e-learning projects
When they are exploited (even if partially), the way of conceiving and practicing didactics tends to change
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
Thanks to the awareness about the possibilities of net didactics, that are different from the f2f ones, didactics can develop itself
Thanks to the awareness about the possibilities of interaction, simulation, collaboration, technology can develop itself
Roberto Maragliano – [email protected]
Joint Italy-Taiwan workshop on e-Learning - Ancona, Friday 21 September 2007
We have to respond to the blackmail that came from the common sense about things that net didactics can not do, in comparison to f2f didactics
We have to challenge f2f didactics to do what we manage to do
And above all, we have to challenge f2f didactics to document what it is able to dojust as we document what we are able to do