E-learning Debate 2010: Musings on the motion - by Naomi Norman

Just in case you have yet to hear, or know nothing of it, on Wednesday 6 October there is to be a second E-learning Debate held at the Oxford Union. The motion this time around is ‘This house believes that technology-based informal learning is more style than substance’.

In many ways it seems like a thoroughly modern debate to be holding at one of the World’s oldest and most formal educational establishments. However, one could argue that Oxford University, with its small tutorials, comfy common room chairs, long dining tables, and numerous quads, is better than most working environments at creating the right conditions for informal learning. Capturing and sharing those gems of wisdom, passed on in the many discussions held in these informal settings, is what has always been the challenge.  And that’s where technology just may be making the difference to modern-day learning.

But, if it sounds like I am coming down on one particular side of the motion, then please read on...

One ‘gem’ captured at Oxford many years before there was any of the technology to video, share and then comment, is the mathematical jottings of Albert Einstein – equations chalked on a blackboard during one of his lectures and then preserved, and now exhibited in Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science – see below.

But like in many of the discussion forum posts, blogs, tweets etc (and even to a mathematician, in this extract, as it stands, in isolation) there is nothing new and truly insightful. Instead, reiterated thoughts, perhaps written in a slightly different format, offer very little to enhance my existing knowledge or my understanding. And, like the 140 characters in a tweet, it is somewhat brief with no space for analysis – after all, there is only so much one can fit on a blackboard of a defined size!

In the modern-day of technology-based informal learning it seems we have ‘blackboard’ upon ‘blackboard’ upon ‘blackboard’, so to speak! I get short update after short update after short update on who said or pondered on what, on this forum or that twitter account, perhaps in different words, but only a small percentage is of pedagogical value to me.

So perhaps I fall on the other side of the motion?

As Professor Diana Laurillard, who spoke at last year’s E-learning Debate, said to me recently when she heard this year’s debate motion: “Oh my goodness! Yet another motion that one could see going either way. Interesting!”

So, of course, at the E-learning Debate 2010, it will be up to the speakers to define the terms in the motion as they deem fit, and up to those who wish to in the debating chamber audience to defend or deprecate the motion when the debate is opened up to the floor. And then it will be up to all of us that are present on the 6 October  to listen carefully, decide where our opinion falls and cast our vote by walking through the door of our choice: noes or ayes.
(And for those unable to make it, to cast their votes online afterwards at elearningdebate.com)

If you have yet to register your interest in attending the debate in Oxford, then do so now at http://www.epic.co.uk/debate/register-interest.html , as places are limited. I have no doubt it will be as thought-provoking, insightful and entertaining as last year’s E-learning Debate.  And if you arrive early, then make time for a quick visit to the Museum of the History of Science, on Broad Street Oxford – a short walk from the Union – to see Einstein’s blackboard. It may not offer you anything in terms of your mathematical understanding, but perhaps it will get you thinking about the tools we use to communicate (see http://jfgauvin2008.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/einsteins-blackboard/ for more on this particular blackboard!)