This week I spoke with the employees of our Information Technology Department.\u00a0 Prior to meeting with them, I believed that they were all \u2018techies\u2019 and had some sort of higher-level understanding of technology. \u00a0I believed they could learn in any environment and they were gurus who innately knew the information because technology was their passion.\u00a0 What I learned was that my beliefs were correct \u2026 to some degree.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 In addition, they shared with me that they have the opportunity to participate in online learning which has been organized in a \u2018just in time\u2019 or \u2018as needed\u2019 basis.\u00a0 From my perspective, I thought this was a brilliant method of learning for employees as it ensures \u2018students [can] relate the newly acquired information to their prior experiences\u2019 (V\u012btoli\u0146a, 2015).\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0In 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.\u00a0 Their explanation is below:<\/p>\n
The online learning opportunity offered to employees was one sided and can be defined as a download of information to the participant.\u00a0 It consists of prerecorded videos explaining a topic.\u00a0 There may be a corresponding quiz to confirm understanding.\u00a0 Neither does it include a question\/answer opportunity nor does it provide an opportunity for collaboration or reflection.<\/p>\n
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).\u00a0 The learning opportunities provided to Information Technology Staff did not include all facets of the process.\u00a0 Therefore, regardless of how \u2018techie\u2019 an individual may be all learners need the opportunity to question, reflect and collaborate with others in order to retain and apply learned knowledge.<\/p>\n
My take-away from the discussion:\u00a0 Regardless of a person\u2019s knowledge, skills and abilities learning in any environment should be active (also Dewey 1938).\u00a0 The teacher should not give instructions but rather create learning situations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
References<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n V\u012btoli\u0146a, I. (2015). E-inclusion Process and Societal Digital Skill Development. Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education<\/em>, 6<\/em>(1). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/dcse-2015-0006<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week I spoke with the employees of our Information Technology Department.\u00a0 Prior to meeting with them, I believed that they were all \u2018techies\u2019 and had some sort of higher-level understanding of technology. \u00a0I believed they could learn in any… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0101\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}