Web-based Learning - Largely Beyond Content

Authors

Abstract

This paper argues that the development of web-based learning environments tends to be impaired by a vision of learning and education that strongly emphasises content and almost completely disregards context. Though this vision has been inherited from the mechanistic models of the Industrial Society, it is, paradoxically, still dominating most of the efforts to improve learning and education. This is happening at the dawn of a Knowledge Society where the old premises have vanished and completely different paradigms apply. The paper starts to briefly analyse the mechanistic heritage of education. It than takes stock of the representatives of educational thought that started breaking away from mechanistic views, into views where the contexts of learning, namely the activities of the learners, are given the front stage. Finally, it gives examples of learning activities that illustrate how different learning contexts can be created in web-based environments.

Subject

E-Learning

Conference

Web-Based Learning Environments, WBLE'2000, June 2000