special
Can Elearning Solutions Be Applied to The Study of Arts and Letters?
What we can learn is limited by the ambit of our experiences and of the media that we are exposed to. Usually, the best media that creates a deep imprint on us is good Literature. However in order to appreciate good literature, we must in turn have already seen what we have read at work in our own lives, even for just a glimmer of this sight is enough and literature will awaken and deepen that glimmer of insight. But if we have not at all seen any part of ourselves or our lives in the text, then the text will never come to life. And this is applicable to teaching as well. What is taught in any humanities classroom, especially if these things have something to do with the profundity of human experience (I am speaking primarily of literature, philosophy, psychology and the arts) but such human profundity of insight can be seen in every humanities subject such as history or sociology. The difference will always be in the slanted use of discourse to achieve whatever power struggle the teachers wish to establish will only translate well if the students have some concrete idea of what is being taught. Otherwise, they will only be able to memorize facts, if they succeed in that at all since the context will always make the facts easier to remember.
The trouble is that elearning solutions cannot help but remove the teacher from the picture. After all, it is the essence of elearning to be fast, easy, and done at one’s own pace. With a full-time teacher, the pace will have to be managed and if the teacher is any good, he or she will continually challenge the students’ thinking.
Perhaps elearning can be used as say a primer for reading support and assessment. But without the full insight of a responding human person, there can be no recitation or no reaction paper written in an elearning class for the arts and letters. The practical applications of quick and accessible training are just incompatible with the image of the Arts and it will probably always be that way until the end of time.
With the humanities, the teacher must always be present. The equation is simple, take away the human, then there is no humanities left at all. Of course courses such as literature can still be taught by computers, but the student will not be able to feel feedback from his or her insights. After all, the essay and reaction, analysis reports are essential to these subjects. And no computer built today is yet able to even process such things. Elearning solutions will always be effective in the corporate arena. It should also be used in the sciences and in math primarily. And finally, it can only act as supplementary or support to the subjects of Humanities.
Related posts
Understanding LMS (Learning Management Software) Hosting
Workforce skills and training from five years ago, though still of value, leaves an open door for your competition to take your accounts. Economic times means the battle for clients is getting even fiercer each day. How prepared are your staff members?
THE TRAINING INVESTMENT
Ensuring your work team is operating at top effectiveness is no longer a desired goal; it’s a necessity for survival. If your staff falls short in meeting your customers’ needs, there are plenty of other companies ready to walk in the door to lure your clients away using expert staff who can deliver what they need.
You could send your key personnel away for updated training and skills upgrading, but can you really afford to have them away from your daily business? Apart from the enormous expenses to cover their training and accommodations while out of office, your support staffs are still left with quickly aging skills and talents – and expenditure to keep everyone fully trained is usually financially prohibitive.
Business continues, whether your employees are in the office or out getting more recent training. You need to find a viable solution that is both time effective and economically manageable.
E-LEARNING TO UPGRADE SKILLS
E-learning and CBT (Computer Based Training) is how your competition has been gaining the edge to match, and surpass your own services. Not only is it exceptionally cost effective, it also helps ensure all your department personnel are all operating from the same operations page. You can now build a unified workforce to deliver peak performance service to your customers.
COST EFFECTIVENESS
Online Training systems do provide an efficient and affordable solution by allowing you to easily structure and manage the time required by each individual to progress according to their needs and ability. Your employees can access their training sessions from their own computer, and progress through the sessions according to their own schedule and learning curve. CBT also allows the user to refresh or review specific processes and methods they’ve learned.
The courses allow each individual to progress at their own speed, and as your services require. However, CBT is of best value only when the online fields covered are diversified enough to cover the wide range of skills building your company may need for your daily operation. There are many general online training courses throughout the web, but you need certification or professional level instruction for business, not beginners or high school instruction.
You need:
• A diverse selection of highly specialized fields of study.
• Accurate, and up to date, tutorials covering specific software, programming, and IT branches.
• The ability to select and allocate the specific training each department must follow.
• Control and minimize unnecessary training costs by limiting which courses are actually pertinent to individual employees.
• Measure the progress and success of each individuals understanding by means of self-assessments, quizzes, and hands-on practice lab simulations.
• Build a tailored system set to meet your specific company needs and priority.
YOUR HOSTED LMS
Building your own learning management infrastructure would require a prohibitive upfront investment in hardware, software, implementation, manpower, time constraints, security installations, and IT maintenance.
Using a Learning Management Software Hosting plan, you eliminate all those extraneous costs. You can now have a readymade tailored system to get your employees started immediately. For additional focus, you can request a custom hosting plan with branded logos and custom courseware to further enhance your online eLearning solution.
If required, your hosting plan may include the development and creation of custom designed video training for your company operations. It is one of the most powerful and economical tools for training new staff members, and can enormously cut down their crucial orientation time to begin productivity.
ADDITIONAL STAFF ENDUCEMENTS
Solid LMS isn’t restricted to career specific tasks only: it should include Soft Skills training programs, designed to help your executives and your management team gain the skills they need to compete, and thrive, in even stressful situations.
Soft Skills training includes valuable awareness and direction for management skills such as conflict resolution, marketing, motivation, risk and sales management, and a wide range of development tools to help build a professional staffing team.
One of the most popular business incentives is to provide access to additional training areas as a reward for great performances by your staff members. LMS Hosting provides you with that motivational edge to build the most dependable work team needed to handle all your clients’ needs.
In today’s competitive market, you simply can’t afford not to have your best people at their optimum proficiency. LMS can help you achieve your goals.
Related posts
The Ten Commandments of ELearning
First off, I thought ten is too many to remember, so I cut it down to five.
1. Pedagogy First, Technology Second
Use technology, leverage it, but always remember it’s a means to an end. The desired end is learning and resultant performance and not the use of cool technology. However, knowing what technology to leverage for effective learning is essential too. Remember, technology can’t replace learning, only augment and support it.
2. Always tie to performance outcomes
A lot of eLearning is irrelevant because the designers didn’t really bother to ask what problems their learners were trying to solve or what they were trying to do. Just shoveling content at your learners in the hope that they’ll pick up what they need isn’t a worthwhile strategy. Learning content must be targeted correctly for it to work, and the only way to accomplish that is by knowing about your learners and their goals.
It’s also important to know that sometimes personal learning goals and corporate performance related learning goals are different for each individual. If you target the goal at the confluence of these streams, there is better chance that what you set out to teach is learnt, retained longer and improves performance and problem-solving.
3. Use Small and Smaller Learning Units
It’s these that allow for flexibility when creating personalized learning paths. Yes, the smaller you can make it the better. It’s the granularity that’ll let you design a custom learning experience for your learners. Think of it as learning Lego; you can use those small blocks of content to create different experiences based on learner need. The granularity also allows for just the right amount of content to be delivered, not more, not less.
4. Simplicity in Presentation and Content Structure
Simplicity is never easy, great care needs to be taken to simplify presentation and the structure of the content for learning to be effective. As Clive mentions in his commandment “Media should be chosen for their ability to aid understanding and memory, not because they impress.” It’s easy to fall into the trap of using sophisticated media without any obvious learning advantage. This sort of media bloats projects; costs more time and money, when something cheaper and simpler could have worked fine.
5. Context, Context, Context
Make sure context is maintained, in presentation, during practice and assessment. Learners taking training at work need it in a specific context, the instructional designer must maintain it by providing content that’s relevant to their workplace performance. Context can be enhanced by using scenarios, stories, demonstrations, examples, and case studies that tie in to the outcomes for that training.
Some learning outcomes, especially in the corporate world can be viewed in a singular context and don’t need much else. However, there are behavioral or ‘softer’ outcomes that can’t be viewed in a single context; in such cases using varied contexts provides much value.
Related posts