Why Online Learning is The Perfect Environment to Implement John Dewey’s Theories
Faith Mundia
EdTech & Learning Sciences | Fay Institute of eLearning | Digital Learning Innovator
As an online educator, I've seen firsthand how a student's interest in learning greatly influences the effectiveness of experiential learning. When students are genuinely engaged with the material, they are more likely to dive deeper into projects, participate actively in simulations, and persevere through challenges. This intrinsic motivation is essential for success in the sometimes self-directed world of online learning.
John Dewey, an education philosophy pioneer, firmly rejected the notion that intelligence was a fixed, innate quality. Instead, he believed that intelligence was dynamic and heavily influenced by a student's environment and experiences. For Dewey, a student's natural curiosity and genuine interest in a subject were the most valuable indicators of their learning potential.?
Dewey's ideas resonate perfectly with distance learning because they address its core challenges and unlock its hidden potential. Experiential learning counteracts the potential isolation of online education by providing hands-on activities, simulations, and project-based work, making learning active and engaging. It focuses on student interests and combats the potential for disengagement by tailoring content to what is meaningful for learners, ensuring it feels intrinsically relevant. Dewey's emphasis on social collaboration addresses the absence of a physical community in distance learning encouraging collaboration through digital tools. This enables the online learning environment to resemble the rich social environments conducive to deeper learning allowing students to feel connected and part of a learning community.
4 Strategies for Bringing "Learning by Doing" Online
Dewey's core principle of hands-on learning might seem at odds with distance education. However, a thoughtful approach to adaptation can bring the spirit of experiential learning to the virtual space. Let's explore 4 strategies that can help us to adapt his ideas, successfully and bring his philosophy into the digital classroom.
With a project-based focus, we can encourage students to apply concepts to solve real-world problems or address topics aligned with their interests. The projects can include research, design, implementation, and will often result in a tangible product or a presentation. This empowers the students to take ownership of their learning, manage timelines, and collaborate with peers, all of which resonate with Dewey's emphasis on active learning and the social nature of knowledge construction.
With ‘at home’ investigations, encourage students to use everyday materials in their immediate surroundings for hands-on experiments, observations, and data collection. These investigations may tie into larger course concepts or virtual simulations, providing essential opportunities for active learning despite the remote setting. The focus here is on resourcefulness and making learning relevant to the student's lived experience, mirroring Dewey's belief that knowledge should be both practical and connected to the learner's world.
领英推荐
In online collaboration, this can be achieved through a variety of digital tools, such as shared documents, discussion boards, video conferencing, and collaborative project management platforms. These tools allow students to work together on tasks, share ideas, provide constructive feedback, and build a sense of community. Online collaboration mirrors the rich learning environments Dewey championed, where knowledge is constructed through dialogue and shared problem-solving, even when students are physically separated.
To maximize the potential of online learning, it's vital to leverage the resources and connections within the broader home environment or digital community. This strategy expands the boundaries of the virtual classroom, aligning with Dewey's belief that learning should be situated in real-world contexts. For example, students can get to engage in collaborative projects with students from other schools or even countries, or they can also get to interact with experts via virtual guest lectures. Connecting learning to the wider world enhances relevance, broadens perspectives, and creates a sense of purpose for students' work.
Concerns
Successful implementation of the aforementioned strategies requires careful planning and consideration, as translating a hands-on approach to the digital world poses unique challenges. For this to happen, we need to have several essentials for the students in our online classrooms.
Conclusion
Implementing John Dewey's philosophy in a distance learning environment requires a mindset shift. It's about fostering an online community of learners, not merely transmitting content. Educators must embrace the possibilities of digital tools, prioritize student-centered experiences, and focus on the relevance of learning to students' lives and the world around them. It's a move away from seeing education as the mere transmission of content and towards fostering an online community of engaged learners. By adapting Dewey's vision, we can create online learning environments that are as transformative and engaging as he always intended education to be.