The Wales-Wide Web

Last week I wrote about workers being unwilling to participate in e-learning because of the perception that computer based learning is socially isolating.

I had a very interesting reply from Thomas Ryberg which warrants further thought.

Thomas says: first of all I think it is important to mention that the term e-learning is a bit too generic for such a conclusion to be made (which you also seem to be aware of :-). My position would be that it is not the e- as such that creates social isolation, but rather the pedagogical approach of the e-learning course. Do you have any data that can shed light on such relations, because that would be interesting? A Danish survey of SME learning concluded that most of the courses were very individually oriented - download material, answer a quiz. If that is the pedagogy of most of the courses, then certainly I think the feeling of social isolation would appear. But I guess the same goes for f2f learning. Many students at Danish Universities report that they feel socially isolated and it is a reason for quite a few to abandon their studies. This is, I guess, due to the pedagogical approach - come to a lecture with 100 strangers and then go do your reports alone. A second thing is that a discourse on 'internet as socially isolating' is strong among parents and the 40+ plus generation. They are in general afraid that their kids will become socially isolated (which is because they often don't know much about what their kids do - basically they use their computers to communicate with all of their friends :-). But I guess the discourse on computers, internet and social isolation goes back a while...what I was not quite sure about in your post was actually whether people reported actually being socially isolated after having participated in an actual course; or whether it was sort of something holding people back from joining a course - due to fear of becoming socially isolated?"

Well, lets clear up the last point first. It was a perception, rather than an experienced reality, that e-learning would be socially isolating. But in reality I think they are probably right. Learning is a social activity. basically, mots e-learing has replicated the cognitive processes of the classroom, whilst paying little or no attention to the social processes. What is interesting from our research is we found many workers using ICT for informal learning - using web sites, forums, chat functions etc. No-one complained that this was socially isolating. But of source they did not, themselves, perceive this as learning. Neither did their managers.

So it is partly to do with the perceptions of e-learning and partly to do with the pedagogy. The use of social software and the promotion of informal e-learning can overcome both perceptions and the reality of isolation.

Has anyone else a view on this?

Technorati Tags: e-learning, social software