Online Learning Reflective View ONLINE LEARNING: FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE? A REFLECTIVE VIEW

This chapter reflects on the development of learning in an environment of diverse processes and technologies of educational communication that can no longer be designated by such simplistic terms as distance education (currently often referred to as online education or e-learning) or traditional face-to-face education. Competent learners of any age have always been able to find their ways to the resources that work for them. At the present stage, however, and thanks to the proliferation of ever more sophisticated and effective information and communication technologies that span the globe, learners are less than ever defined by specific formal courses and programs in which they enroll. In finding our online voice—which may, on occasion, also be heard offline—we, educators, increasingly are thus no longer limited to merely attending to learning opportunities purposefully designed or co-designed into a deliberate instructional context; we should additionally keep our eyes trained on the extremely rich and rapidly growing wider range of resources that make up today’s learning ecology. Hence, our voices will become less instructional, less also those of ‘guides on the side’, but increasingly those of Online Learning Reflective View friends, mentors in the true sense of the word, those of co-explorers and co-constructors of the learning landscape. THE POWER OF VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION: A DEDICATION I dedicate this chapter to David Wolsk.1 I never met David face to face. Yesterday he died. I received the news this morning by email from my friend Diana in Tucson, Arizona, whom I never met either. However, I had been able to bring her and David into contact with each other not so long ago when David happened to be in Tucson and had told me so, also by email. So I mentioned Diana to him and he took the initiative to look he