This week I spoke with the employees of our Information Technology Department.  Prior to meeting with them, I believed that they were all ‘techies’ and had some sort of higher-level understanding of technology.  I believed they could learn in any environment and they were gurus who innately knew the information because technology was their passion.  What I learned was that my beliefs were correct … to some degree.

Without question, technology is their passion and unanimously they all expressed that on their own time they read articles and continued to learn and expand their knowledge.  In addition, they shared with me that they have the opportunity to participate in online learning which has been organized in a ‘just in time’ or ‘as needed’ basis.  From my perspective, I thought this was a brilliant method of learning for employees as it ensures ‘students [can] relate the newly acquired information to their prior experiences’ (Vītoliņa, 2015).    In one breath they told me about the learning opportunity and in the next breath they shared with me that not all Information Technology staff participate in the program because it does not meet their learning needs.  Their explanation is below:

The online learning opportunity offered to employees was one sided and can be defined as a download of information to the participant.  It consists of prerecorded videos explaining a topic.  There may be a corresponding quiz to confirm understanding.  Neither does it include a question/answer opportunity nor does it provide an opportunity for collaboration or reflection.

According to Vitolina, 2015, and also Ferrence, 2001, it was stated that learning is a process where the students make inquiries, study, consider, and reflect based on their evidences (p. 88).  The learning opportunities provided to Information Technology Staff did not include all facets of the process.  Therefore, regardless of how ‘techie’ an individual may be all learners need the opportunity to question, reflect and collaborate with others in order to retain and apply learned knowledge.

My take-away from the discussion:  Regardless of a person’s knowledge, skills and abilities learning in any environment should be active (also Dewey 1938).  The teacher should not give instructions but rather create learning situations.

 

References

Vītoliņa, I. (2015). E-inclusion Process and Societal Digital Skill Development. Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/dcse-2015-0006