…educational technology is no longer a single innovation or a group of innovations but a sea change based on the awareness that face-to-face (F2F) pedagogy is a subset of the virtual learning environment — and not the other way around.
I like this quote from an old post by 21st century fluency, although I’m not sure I completely agree with it. I like the idea that we need to change our mindset and think of face-to-face spaces as a subset of learning spaces, rather than the predominant one. But, I don’t think of virtual spaces as the predominant space either. I think that learning spaces are both physical and / or virtual and that there isn’t a hierarchical structure to how these spaces are conceived. I talk about blended learning, but increasingly there is only learning, and we use a range of tools that sometimes includes digital spaces, sometimes whiteboards, sometimes models, and sometimes conversations. They’re all just ways of connecting people and ideas.
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One response to “Face-to-face as a subset of virtual learning spaces?”
I came across a good comment that was marked as spam by WordPress. The author’s email also looked “spammy” but I thought the content was good, so I’ve cut and paste the comment below:
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“These scenarios show Net Gen students and faculty engaged in learning practices that are leveraged by IT, a process that requires either improving current practices or creating new ones. The underlying theme remains the same, however: cultivating learning practices consistent with learning theory and aligned with the habits and expectations of Net Gen students (and soon professors!) who have been “raised on” IT. The scenarios suggest the importance of integrating all learning spaces, formal and informal. For most higher education institutions, the lecture hall will not disappear; the challenge is to develop a new generation of lecture hall, one that enables Net Gen students and faculty to engage in enlivened, more interactive experiences. If the lecture hall is integrated with other spaces—physically as well as virtually—it will enable participants to sustain the momentum from the class session into other learning contexts. The goal is not to do away with the traditional classroom, but rather to reinvent and to integrate it with the other learning spaces, moving toward a single learning environment.”