A couple of months ago I was conversing with a Lutheran in
another state regarding means for learning and growing in the faith. This
person is isolated from a “normal” down the street relationship with a confessional
Lutheran church and thus had problems getting good information and content for
growing in the faith. I had directed this person to both a Lutheran and a
secular web site and asked the person what they thought. Their answer surprised
me but now that I think about it a bit, it really shouldn’t be a surprise. For
the secular site was one of these high flying heavily promoted sites that had
won accolades from various educators and well-known foundations. Yet the
secular site fell flat for this person. Why? With all the money, time, and the
good reputation did this particular means for educating fall flat? People learn
differently, and different subjects may require different methods for teaching.
This is perhaps the biggest challenge of mass-education.
While perhaps 75-80% of all students learn well in a lecture type presentation
format, what do you do with the other 20-25%? In the past (based upon my own
personal experience,) you tell the non-conforming students to suck it up and
learn. They need to adapt because that is just the way it is. It will be good
for them we think. Many of them just drop out and quit. Such is an example of
one of the great failures of the one-size-fits-all education model. I believe
we can do better.
When there is a learning gap, we have two choices. One is
to force the student to adapt to the existing system. The other is for the
teacher and system to adapt to the student. When we as educators force students
into a one-size-fits-all model of teaching, we run the risk of putting
potential learners through unnecessary stress and strain simply because we as
parents or educators fail to adapt our teaching to their modes and means of
learning. New technology and learning distribution models are on the horizon
that hopefully can help in adapting the right teaching for the better learning
modes of individual students.
An example of this is MIT who is in the process of preparing a beta version of their
MITx online learning platform which appears to do just that. Part of the goal
of this momentous project is to refine and improve the learning effectiveness
of online learning tools. As one reads between the lines of their plans, one is
lead to anticipate that part of this project is to provide a variety of common
modes of learning for the same material. So if you are an auditory learner,
there would be plenty of content directed at that learning style. If you are a
visual learner, there would be plenty of videos available. For the reader,
there would be plenty of reading material both condensed and in great detail to
meet those learning needs. If you need drills and practice they provide the
adaptable and progressive means for challenging the learner at their own pace.
Need a group and collaborative learning environment, that appears to be part of
the package.
How can this help upper education and Christian education in general? I was
reading an article on the effective use of e-books the other day and was amazed
to learn that one of the great failings of the medium was the inability or
clunkiness of being able to annotate and highlight text. I thought it was just
me as I personally have experienced this myself. I bought a common top-rated ereader with
the intention of migrating over from my large book and paper library into an
all electronic format that I could read on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. The current software just was not yet able to quickly and easily do
this. I was disappointed. I had high hopes for the medium and due to growing
pains, the software and related hardware was not just there yet. For all you
ereader developers out there, solve this problem and a huge educational market
will open up and beat a path to your door with cash in hand.
As the Vice President of Administration for a higher
education institution, it is my hope that the education market will quickly
adapt and make available a variety of tools through ereaders and Learning
Management Systems like that of MITx so that the warehouse of knowledge that
God has permitted man to accumulate may be readily made available at a reduced
cost for future generations to use and exploit for the benefit of our secular neighbor and fellow Christian.
