Historical and Conceptual Foundations
When one normally looks at education or thinks about education, the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people is sitting in a classroom with a teacher standing at the front of the room giving a lecture or the given instruction for that class. That is what education used to be, now in our ever changing world, education is not just a teacher standing in the front of the room telling the students how to do something. Now education involves much more interaction with students and finding ways to meet their educational and learning needs. Education has evolved just as the world has evolved over time and is still evolving.
Most educational experiences in the past have been in a face-to-face environment. This type of learning is a great system. The students and the teacher have the opportunity to learn more about each other and how to work with other people. They are also able to learn by asking questions and getting immediate answers. However, this is not the best learning environment for all students. Especially as students are getting older, their interests and other commitments start to factor into what time they are willing to allot for their education. We must all realize that these other factors in people’s lives are also important, not just the time they spend sitting in a classroom learning.
There are several different types of electronic learning or e-learning that we can implement in educational and training needs. In many cases, there are several different organizations that have already implemented e-learning types of requirements and expectations for their employees and workers. The exact form of e-learning can vary greatly depending on how the administration would decide to implement a e-learning program within our school setting. We could implement a web-facilitated, blended or hybrid, or online type of e-learning environment.
A web-facilitated environment would be a learning environment that is very similar to a traditional face-to-face course but where information is posted on a web-site for students to download or go to in order to receive information. A blended or hybrid course uses the internet for a large portion of its learning environment, but does require a number of face-to-face meetings or required on-line chat or discussion groups. A totally on-line course is one where everything contained in the course is delivered through the internet. Students gather all of their information about course requirements, assignments, and expectations through a website that they then also use to either submit their information or ask questions of other students. In this type of environment, there is no actual face-to-face contact with other students or the instructor.
As we, the MBC Group, look at Fithian’s outlook on what they are wanting to see in their employees along with their students and what the training needs are currently and are going to be in the future. We believe that there needs to be a two tiered approach to the learning and educational needs of your employees. When looking at the diversity of any population, we believe that you need to give multiple learning opportunities in various setting in order to meet the needs of all learners. With this in mind, we propose that we set up a blended training program along with an online program also. By doing this, you will offering your students the opportunity to choose which learning environment will best meet their educational needs while also teaching them how to adapt to the ever changing world around us. As we all know, the world is always changing and if we are unwilling or unable to keep up with it, we will be lost or left behind. No one wants their students to be left behind. This is why we plan on creating a learning environment that will not only meet the needs of your employees and students, but also push them into a new learning environment that many of them have never experienced before, but will in the end, we believe become the educational system of the future.
Bibliography
Boshler, Roger and Huang, Yan (2006).Will the Chinese learning initiative evoke the long-awaited fifth modernization?. Planning and Changing. 37, 56-70.
Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006 (2006). Found at http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/survey06.asp.
Rabyaleau, Rosalind Latiner, & Valeau, Edward J. (2007). Community College International Education: Looking back to forecast the future. New Directions For Community Colleges. 138, 5-14.
The Power of the Internet for Learning: Final Report of Web-Based Education Commission (2000). Found at http://www.ed.gov/offices/AC/WBEC/FinalReport /index.html.