Forget automation of learning!
Everybody these days seems to have a deep fascination for fully automated systems of learning. Especially the people making professional decisions in organizing and investing in learning. All focus is on finding the perfect platform for getting the right videos and articles, on demand, with recommendations, exercises, blending all elements of e-learning into an automated flow, supervised by ai. Triggerz is a good example. Fully automated learning! Isn’t it great?
There’s one big problem: None of the people working with learning prefer themselves to learn that way! They aren’t fooled by the software, system or the ai. Neither is anyone else. Ordinary people just have to follow the decisions of the learning policy makers.
It's a bad sign.
The problem is not with automation. I love automation. Especially the automation of repetitive tasks that bore me. Learning is however rarely repetitive and boring. If it is, it’s because of poor learning design and a good sign that we are not learning.
So: Everyone working between learning and digitalization, please remember to put teachers, facilitators and peers solidly in the center of the learning experience (LX). We all desire the attention, feedback and reward of a respectable living human being and expert. Attention on our efforts, success’ and errors when we are trying to learn!
This does not disqualify e-learning. It reboots it.
In recent work done at IME with personal leadership development online, delivering automated learning inside an LMS is avoided. Instead group processes are personally facilitated for a maximum human interaction. Just like in physical classroom training, the participants are led by the facilitator through the reflections, feedback and difficult conversations that we know create the trust, vulnerability and self-insights required for deep learning and personal development.
The learning process is supported by collaborative software, which is developed for working together, instead of the EdTech that’s often developed to automate learning. Such personal development couldn’t be achieved with any kind of automated process.
So put the living eyes of the instructor and the peers back in the process of learning!
#SexyBrilliant 🙏
Totally believe this! Thanks for the post.
Very nice article. What I start to reflect on is not whether automated learning is good or bad, but rather where it fits into the learning cycle. If you take something like the Dreyfuss model of learning, which states that in learning something we transition from being a beginner, to becoming an informed beginner, to becoming competent, then proficient, and finally mastery... automated learning is quite good at providing a knowledge base. However, knowledge is just the foundation. The application of it is where we develop competence, proficiency and mastery. I have myself used a lot of automated e-courses to gain knowledge about a field, but to put it into practise I find I need the human interaction and feedback, exactly as you propose. I believe something like the Khan academy is a fine example, where the actual information is available via videos etc.. but the interaction with the teacher/facilitator really boosts the process of building it into a core skill. That said, this is an area with many angles, and I hesitate to generalise overmuch. At any rate, thanks for the article. Though provoking and insightful. Exactly what I appreciate. :-)
Spot on!
Thanks, Nice to show the nuance or the slice of the pie where automation of learning could work and how.