Metaphorically, education should offer everything from soup to nuts. There should be classroom instruction for students desiring guidance, discussion, and debate that only a live audience with an expert facilitator can provide. There should be online education for students whose independence and computer literacy permit fast-tracking and self-pacing. And, there should be a correspondence option for those students needing greater introspection, deliberation, and time.
This has been the doctrine during my experience as a real estate educator. The perspective has been accepted by most and only questioned by a handful, rarely publicly. The only concern I recall centred on the introduction of online education. The product was slow to seed and self-interests cast it as a usurper of quality instruction. Eventually the swarm of successful users quieted the Luddites.
For students’ sake, we should open the floodgates and sustain a continual dialogue on how to provide quality, personalized, addictive education that students willingly adopt as a life-long exercise. We need to re-examine traditional ideas and practices. How can the classroom delivery method be improved with the introduction of technology? How can online education be enriched with open, real-time communication among students and a dedicated instructor? What should be done with the correspondence platform? Is it amenable to improvements that deliver immediate feedback, gratification, and better educational outcomes?
If the answers to these questions are inconclusive, then I urge a search for a dialectic answer. The solution may lie in a compromised synthesis of all three platforms of delivery. I can picture a blend of offline and online education through a technological superstructure. I just need an entourage of talented educators to help me with the architecture and details. Interested?
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