IAE Blog

I have discussed Quality of Life (QoL) in two previous IAE Blog entries, (Moursund, 2/5/2016; Moursund, 12/24/2014).

A constructivist theory of learning posits that we build new knowledge on (by tying it into) our current knowledge. That is, our brain finds a pattern match (makes a connection) between what we already know and the new information we encounter. This is a type of analogical process that goes on in a learner’s brain.

Quoting from Robert Sylwester’s article, The Central Roles of the Varieties of Analogy, (Sylwester, September, 2013):

The first really large enrollment Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was run by Stanford University in 2011. During the subsequent four years, the success of these courses as measured by completion rate has been very low. However, the courses have continued to be improved and enrollment in these courses has grown remarkably. Quoting from an article written by Dhawal Shah (12/28/2015):

Student enrollments in MOOCs doubled this year. In fact, more people signed up for MOOCs in 2015 than they did in the first three years of the “modern” MOOC movement (which started in late 2011—when the first Stanford MOOCs took off). According to data collected by Class Central, the total number of students who signed up for at least one course has crossed 35 million—up from an estimated 17 million last year.

In this IAE Blog entry, I discuss distance learning, learning in face-to-face environments, and learning as one views and interacts with nature and other aspects of the world. The main focus is on the first two, so let me briefly dispense with the third.

Long before we had schools and the three R’s, people learned by themselves through their interactions with the natural world in which they lived. We are built to learn from what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch in “nature.” A human teacher can help in this mode of learning, but each of us is innately able to learn through interaction with the natural world.

A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. Such courses have received a lot of attention during the past four years, and huge amounts of money have been spent in their development. Quoting from Ellen Wexler’s article, MOOCs Are Still Rising, at Least in Numbers (Wexler, 10/19/2015):