Back in June I had the pleasure of giving the keynote at the Online Teaching Conference (#CCCOTC15) in San Diego, put on by the California Community College system. There was quite a bit of valuable backchannel discussions as well as sharing of the slides. The theme of the talk was:
Emerging Trends in Online / Hybrid Education and Implications for Faculty
As online and hybrid education enter the third decade, there are significant efforts to move beyond the virtualization of traditional face-to-face classroom and move more towards learner-centric approaches. This shift has the potential to change the discussion of whether online and hybrid approaches “can be as good as” traditional approaches to a discussion of how online and hybrid approaches “can provide better learning opportunities”.
For those who would like to see the keynote, I am including the video and slides below. Pat James’ introduction starts at 05:50, and my keynote starts at 09:15.
And my apologies for fumbling on the slide / website / video switches. I was not prepared for the mandatory usage of a PC instead of Mac.
Some key sections that seemed to resonate during the talk:
Historical Context and Unbundling (~13:15)
Differentiated Instruction Including Laura Gibbs Example Course (~32:00)
LMS as Minivan of Education (~47:39)
Necessity to Support Both Sides of Chasm in Education (~51:45)
Wow. Online learning started in 2011? I wonder what they were doing at the University of Illinois on the PLATO project in 1960 then. Or at Stanford starting around 63-64. Or MIT and BBN with Logo in 67 and onwards. And hundreds of other universities all over the world in the 1960s.
As discussed on Twitter, that slide / 2011 point was tongue-in-cheek to actually point out it is wrong. I chose to start with web-based online in mid 90’s due to importance of medium. You could choose to start earlier, but this new medium seems right to me to make my point.
Yes, it could have been argued in different ways with more history included, but I needed to limit scope as that was not the point of keynote.
Yes, I spoke too soon. But my points remain regarding the follow-up slide, which neglects the real history and decades, generations of work done by pioneers all over the world. I find it appalling that one would ignore this history either because it makes the slide presentation complicated or perhaps because the audience of educators can’t handle it, or whatever the reason is. I don’t understand the oversimplification of edtech history, ignoring vast chunks of it. It boggles my mind. The truth is far more interesting than the fiction.