Face to face learning vs. Online Learning
I was speaking to Paula about how I feel I engage so much more when talking face to face with someone rather than online - I felt this had really been a barrier to me in module 1 and stopped me enjoying the module to its full extent - I appreciated that a massive part of the module was social media and connecting to people, but I didn't feel I had the same experience as when I spoke to someone with at least a voice attached (phone call) or talking in person.
I wanted to have a look at this idea in further detail, especially when Paula mentioned she had that day spoken to two people who were at the other side of the world, something that would not be possible without social media or online communications.
Why is it for me I feel like I need to see or hear someone's reactions to feel I'm fully engaging in the topic? Is this more to do with me as a person? I have a lot of empathy and enjoy conversations with people - so maybe its a personal thing to me. Or it could be something to do with society and that its easier to spot the truth when looking at someone's body language or hearing their voice and to gauge what a person actually means by their answer. For example - if a friend tries to organise going for drinks with me, and I don't really want to go but don't want to sound rude, it is easier for me to give an answer over text as the friend sees no reaction from me other than the text itself. Whereas if we were face to face it might be harder for me to sound enthused about the idea.
Or possibly its a wider discussion more to do with our deep psychological needs? So could it be due to us as human beings wanting eye contact and craving responses that satisfy our question?
Just typing in to google "why do we engage more face to face" came up with lots of articles all in different areas about why face to face meetings are important. A dating site mentioned it was important to have more face to face meetings, a business site had an article stating the top 5 reasons to meet face to face and a marketing company said it was an essential marketing tool.
Paula sent me a piece of literature (link below) - A Comparison of Two Learning Theories Face-Face & Online Learning Dr. Mary Anne Weegar and Dr. Dina Pacis National University, USA.
At first reflecting on my own practice I assumed I would be a constructist teacher, all the ideals of that theory appeal to me much more than the beahvoirist idea of the teacher dictating/lecturing students to pass on information.
However later on I saw that the behaviorists strongly oppose the idea of online learning as substitute for face to face learning - something I am still deciding my view on in this review. It also led me to wonder how behaviorists can disagree with online learning (or at least not as substitute for face to face), when their idea of teaching is to 'lecture' students and 'dictate' interpretations to them - surely this is no better than online learning - as the interaction they have with learners is sub standard if students are not allowed to choose how they interpret information. Also equally how does a constructionist theory work with online learning if their whole idea is active participation and engagement - if students are just reading something on a screen are they truly engaging? And when we talk about 'online learning' what specifically are we talking about? Do we simply mean someone has access to a computer and can read something from a screen? We can also branch in here I suppose interactive learning (for example at my workplace we have a new interactive training platform called learning heroes, where the videos are all interactive, with little characters to help make the bog standard fire safety training more engaging). But then even that - as interactive as it is - is a yes or no test at the end!
Leaving that aside - I was thinking about how I teach dance and how it seems to me at first glance it has to be taught through a behaviorist method. When teaching fitness related dance classes we cannot let students 'interpret' the warm up, and whilst I will let students adapt steps to make them harder or easier, ballet is taught with a set of steps that are set in stone from when ballet was created. It is not similar to contemporary where you can use your bodies to explore and create movements. This is in main as well due to health and safety. In contemporary sometimes warm ups are done in exploratory styles - the teacher picks a joint and students must create a warm up movement starting from that joint, etc. However in my classes, I have a set (sort of set - varies each week slightly with music etc) warm up to make sure the student is completely warm up and safe to dance and exercise. This is also due to time constraints and room constraints - our studio is quite small and I need to think about everyone's space for movement. Possibly this feeling is intensified when teaching community dance as a lot of my students are beginners at dance and are not trained professionals who have excellent spacial awareness.
So as concluded in the article, perhaps we all need all balance of constructivist and behaviorist methods when teaching - constructivist parts so students do not feel like all the information is forced on them completely like with a behaviorist lecturing method, but also setting up certain things that are set in stone (for example in my classes - the warm up and cool down are set, however if a student feels we need a longer back stretch, this could be adapted for them).within the behaviorist theory.
In relevance to my thoughts of online vs face-to-face engagement - my thoughts are becoming less close minded and thinking about the subject on a surface level. I do believe that for discussions within my studies, conversing on blogs is time consuming and can become stagnated unless both people are online at the same time (a rarity with our varied jobs and working hours). However I can appreciate that online conversation is better than no conversation at all. And someone giving you an idea is still someone adding to your portal of knowledge and is therefore beneficial.
However thinking of other parts of life, my mom sometimes emails me and I don't reply for several days - but the quality of our conversation is still good as there is a lot of detail in the email and lots of stories and things to catch up on. So in this sense this is a great opportunity because I don't have to wait until when I see her next as we live far away from each other. Also in things such as training for work - it would be time consuming if we always had to meet up for a face to face training, when now our platform allows us to do it on our own when we have a spare 10 minutes and we can do as much or as little as we like at a time. Also even on our work based learning course, I can never make the campus sessions - so although I'd like to and know it would be beneficial to me as a learner to have the advantage of face-to-face engagement as I spoke about earlier, its better I can actually still join in the course and engage in other ways. Otherwise the course wouldn't be accessible to me and others at all.
Please find the link for the presentation below.....
https://www.g-casa.com/conferences/manila/ppt/Weegar.pdf
I wanted to have a look at this idea in further detail, especially when Paula mentioned she had that day spoken to two people who were at the other side of the world, something that would not be possible without social media or online communications.
Why is it for me I feel like I need to see or hear someone's reactions to feel I'm fully engaging in the topic? Is this more to do with me as a person? I have a lot of empathy and enjoy conversations with people - so maybe its a personal thing to me. Or it could be something to do with society and that its easier to spot the truth when looking at someone's body language or hearing their voice and to gauge what a person actually means by their answer. For example - if a friend tries to organise going for drinks with me, and I don't really want to go but don't want to sound rude, it is easier for me to give an answer over text as the friend sees no reaction from me other than the text itself. Whereas if we were face to face it might be harder for me to sound enthused about the idea.
Or possibly its a wider discussion more to do with our deep psychological needs? So could it be due to us as human beings wanting eye contact and craving responses that satisfy our question?
Just typing in to google "why do we engage more face to face" came up with lots of articles all in different areas about why face to face meetings are important. A dating site mentioned it was important to have more face to face meetings, a business site had an article stating the top 5 reasons to meet face to face and a marketing company said it was an essential marketing tool.
Paula sent me a piece of literature (link below) - A Comparison of Two Learning Theories Face-Face & Online Learning Dr. Mary Anne Weegar and Dr. Dina Pacis National University, USA.
At first reflecting on my own practice I assumed I would be a constructist teacher, all the ideals of that theory appeal to me much more than the beahvoirist idea of the teacher dictating/lecturing students to pass on information.
However later on I saw that the behaviorists strongly oppose the idea of online learning as substitute for face to face learning - something I am still deciding my view on in this review. It also led me to wonder how behaviorists can disagree with online learning (or at least not as substitute for face to face), when their idea of teaching is to 'lecture' students and 'dictate' interpretations to them - surely this is no better than online learning - as the interaction they have with learners is sub standard if students are not allowed to choose how they interpret information. Also equally how does a constructionist theory work with online learning if their whole idea is active participation and engagement - if students are just reading something on a screen are they truly engaging? And when we talk about 'online learning' what specifically are we talking about? Do we simply mean someone has access to a computer and can read something from a screen? We can also branch in here I suppose interactive learning (for example at my workplace we have a new interactive training platform called learning heroes, where the videos are all interactive, with little characters to help make the bog standard fire safety training more engaging). But then even that - as interactive as it is - is a yes or no test at the end!
Leaving that aside - I was thinking about how I teach dance and how it seems to me at first glance it has to be taught through a behaviorist method. When teaching fitness related dance classes we cannot let students 'interpret' the warm up, and whilst I will let students adapt steps to make them harder or easier, ballet is taught with a set of steps that are set in stone from when ballet was created. It is not similar to contemporary where you can use your bodies to explore and create movements. This is in main as well due to health and safety. In contemporary sometimes warm ups are done in exploratory styles - the teacher picks a joint and students must create a warm up movement starting from that joint, etc. However in my classes, I have a set (sort of set - varies each week slightly with music etc) warm up to make sure the student is completely warm up and safe to dance and exercise. This is also due to time constraints and room constraints - our studio is quite small and I need to think about everyone's space for movement. Possibly this feeling is intensified when teaching community dance as a lot of my students are beginners at dance and are not trained professionals who have excellent spacial awareness.
So as concluded in the article, perhaps we all need all balance of constructivist and behaviorist methods when teaching - constructivist parts so students do not feel like all the information is forced on them completely like with a behaviorist lecturing method, but also setting up certain things that are set in stone (for example in my classes - the warm up and cool down are set, however if a student feels we need a longer back stretch, this could be adapted for them).within the behaviorist theory.
In relevance to my thoughts of online vs face-to-face engagement - my thoughts are becoming less close minded and thinking about the subject on a surface level. I do believe that for discussions within my studies, conversing on blogs is time consuming and can become stagnated unless both people are online at the same time (a rarity with our varied jobs and working hours). However I can appreciate that online conversation is better than no conversation at all. And someone giving you an idea is still someone adding to your portal of knowledge and is therefore beneficial.
However thinking of other parts of life, my mom sometimes emails me and I don't reply for several days - but the quality of our conversation is still good as there is a lot of detail in the email and lots of stories and things to catch up on. So in this sense this is a great opportunity because I don't have to wait until when I see her next as we live far away from each other. Also in things such as training for work - it would be time consuming if we always had to meet up for a face to face training, when now our platform allows us to do it on our own when we have a spare 10 minutes and we can do as much or as little as we like at a time. Also even on our work based learning course, I can never make the campus sessions - so although I'd like to and know it would be beneficial to me as a learner to have the advantage of face-to-face engagement as I spoke about earlier, its better I can actually still join in the course and engage in other ways. Otherwise the course wouldn't be accessible to me and others at all.
Please find the link for the presentation below.....
https://www.g-casa.com/conferences/manila/ppt/Weegar.pdf
A very well considered blog Chrissie. there is real debate about teaching methodologies for children and adults. I agree that most teaching and learning strategies sit between behaviourist and constructivist - we look for changes to how people operate (learning) but wish for 'deep' learning http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/courses/archive/CERE12-13-safari-archive/topic9/webarchive-index.html . Really like the bit about being open-minded - a leaning point for us all!
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