It´s only E-learning. That´s what they claim. But, it is also a totally new world. It includes phenomenon educators rarely have thought of before. Here is a good example of what that means, based on experiencing MIT and Coursera online. You will have use of this post. At least; it should give you a smile.
Yesterday evening I realized I had double-booked. Two different webinars at the same time, and both of them was interesting.
One of them was by the prestigious university MIT, in USA. The topic was “Disruption” and I did not want to miss it. The other one was the Annual conference of Coursera, the MOOC-platform. I have been to their Annual conferences before, when it was IRL. So, I neither wanted to miss that.
What could I do? Well, I did what I guess most people would do. I decided to try both of them at the same time.
Here is what happened. Just give this clip the 30 seconds it takes. Consider you being me.
My idea behind going to both of these webinars at the same time was probably the same idea as you would have had in a similar situation. You did think: “I can constantly mute one of them and then switch between them, depending on what might happen”, didn´t you? Well, at least that was what I thought.
But, it actually took me 30 minutes to figure out how to do that.
I quickly muted my laptop, but then both of these webinars muted, at the same time. Finding out how to mute one of them, but not the other one, and then do the opposite, and switch, was really difficult. Up until I found the “hidden buttons” within the two different conference-systems that these two actors used, I had to live with what you just saw. A totally chaotic situation.
I also think it actually mattered how the basic settings was made by the ones hosting these webinars. It was not as easy to solve this as you might think. Try yourself it you do not believe me.
It is not likely me being alone on the globe, double-booking digital conferences nowadays. But I am not convinced that the “teachers” you see in this clip ever have tried to act as students themselves. And that was the point here.
If you want to create good E-learning it can be worth the time to enroll into some digital courses yourself, before you start creating. And experience how it actually is. If you do: it is very likely you will experience things that you can have use of.
And get a smile on your face on the way.
Disruptive Education 