“The future of schooling post-coronavirus,” by Harold Jarche, on jarche.com

“With a standardized curriculum and constant testing, there is never enough time for most school students to fully learn. There is too much information and much of it is without context. But mastery often comes from modelling. It is how the apprentice becomes a journeyman and in time a master. It is not done in isolation. Are there opportunities — especially online — for more learning in communities of practice, and not based on classes and courses?”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

Harold Jarche tends to focus on adult learning in and among organizations. He’s also a keen thinker about the ways in which our existing learning models don’t match the demands of our networked age.

For example, he goes on to say:

“Shaping worked when our environment was seen as complicated (knowable), but it really is complex (understandable only through continuous probing) and this is becoming obvious with our global challenges. As knowledge expands and new information is constantly added, what teacher even has the base knowledge to do the shaping anyway? In our digitally networked world, modelling how to learn is a better strategy than shaping on a predefined curriculum.”

His question—are there opportunities online for “learning in communities of practice”—is a worthy provocation.

Consider the implications of learning taking place not “in school,” not “in class,” but rather among “communities of practice,” where people learn through modeling.

Or are you betting on the future of learning being about the coverage of more and content?

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“Some Colleges Planned Early for an Online Fall. Here’s What They Learned,” by Beth McMurtrie, in The Chronicle of Higher Education

“As other colleges make late pivots to online learning, professors are scrambling once again to figure out how to teach their classes remotely. And this time the stakes are a lot higher. Not willing to put up with emergency measures anymore, students and their families are questioning whether the fall will be any better, using derisive terms like “glorified Skype” to describe the experience they hope to avoid.

“While many instructors — regardless of their institutions’ stated plans — have been trying to learn how to become better online teachers, colleges that decided in May or June to teach the fall online have been better positioned to help them make such improvements. Instead of spending their summers planning to teach hybrid courses in socially distant classrooms, professors at Fullerton and elsewhere have been able to focus their attention on how to design a fully online course.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

To paraphrase the proverb, the best day to focus on exceptional design for online learning was 6 months ago. The second best day is today.

Your enrollment may depend on it.

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