A comment from Scot Alfred

I just copy his email to me verbatum:

Hi Albert,

I’d love to have posted this comment to your Blog. but there is a 100 character limit for comments, so please see below my comment in full:

Nice to catch up again.

You pose an interesting question in this post and one that deserves some debate. Back in the mid 90's when the online learning really kicked off most thought of the Web as re-publishing medium and a way to reduce the costs associated with distance education. Even though there have been an extraordinary number of studies that have demonstrated the inappropriate nature of this use, well over 90% of the courses offered online today still adhere to a content-based paradigm.

There is a single important theme that is emerging from the contemporary literature with regard to e-learning and is "learner engagement"

So it begs the question "what engages learners?" and the answer to this question is where we should be concentrating our efforts.

Albert you and I both know from the Fablusi online role play simulation approach that learning engagement comes from learner-centred and authentic tasks, but it is not the answer across the board.

Students that publish their work publicly find enormous pleasure from this kind of recognition and others like this bunch of photographers just like to talk about what they are interested in--a kind of serendipitous learning.

Learning is a multi-dimensional and complex activity and what the ICT research is suggesting seems to me to be just as applicable to face to face education.

Thank you for your invitation to comment on ITFORUM, you have even prompted me to begin an e-learning Blog of my own at: http://e-learning-engagement.blogspot.com/

I'd like to think that we can use Fablusi again in the near future, as it is a wonderful tool for producing a rich learning experience.

Keep up the good work Albert.

Kind regards,

Scot.