Irony in Education: Collaborative Learning that Allows Individual Focus

ost instructors would not really care if one or more of the participants could not keep up with the rest of the learning group, since the instructor is basically paid to educate the group and not spend extra time making sure those designated as “slow learners” do understand the lesson before moving on.  Before the introduction of the concept of individualized instruction, students and learners of all ages were at the mercy of the teacher or instructor who may or may not have enough consideration to see if all the students or participants in the learning exercise are able to learn the lesson at the end of the session or class.

Before the introduction of the concept of individualized instruction, students and learners of all ages were at the mercy of the teacher or instructor who may or may not have enough consideration to see if all the students or participants in the learning exercise are able to learn the lesson at the end of the session or class.  Most instructors would not really care if one or more of the participants could not keep up with the rest of the learning group, since the instructor is basically paid to educate the group and not spend extra time making sure those designated as “slow learners” do understand the lesson before moving on.  Not only is it politically incorrect and inconsiderate, but this situation is quite a reality in a lot of learning institutions, be it in a classroom in a school or in a training session in corporate settings.  The dawn of individualized instruction has significantly improved the lot in life of some learners who have met with difficulty in absorbing some aspects of the learning process.  e-Learning solutions have taken a page from this highly advantageous learning scenario and made it even easier to facilitate learning, even in group-based learning scenarios, allowing members of the group who may take longer than the others to understand the lesson to complete the training or module in roughly the same time as others, and still completely comprehend the perceived areas of difficulty.  This is all without having to delay or stall the scheduled time frame designated to a particular lesson, since the individualized learning process that e-learning tools afford learners can be done quite quickly, with the learners themselves defining the areas of difficulty and then doing further study on their own.  In this manner, the entire learning process is still kept synchronous, allowing the entire participating class to finish on the projected time.

While it may sound quite ironic in itself, since an e-learning management system allows for collaborative learning within an entire group of learners, and yet allow them to tackle individual areas of difficulty on their own, this is a reality with e-learning development tools nowadays.  This is because the system has been designed to allow for synchronized distribution of learning modules, as well as continuous communication between study groups and participants of the learning exercise.  In situations wherein the learning group is separated by a great distance, communication is still afforded to them in real-time.  Best of all, learners who would like to target one aspect of the learning module further can do so without having to delay the progress of the entire group, since the tools afforded by the system allows for an in-depth study of any part of the learning module, and since it is connected to the virtually unlimited information source of the internet, any and all additional information or data can be accessed instantaneously, effectively providing a venue which is considered to be the most convenient research platform in pursuing the additional area of study.

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