Serendipity and Learning

Continuing from the previous post on online learning education Without human (or a future ai-human-ish) interaction for doubt resolution, questions, clarifications, the online learning experience breaks down. There are good games - dragonbox is a good example - am sure there are others, but the only way you will finally learn maths is by practicing more and more complex problems that are based on your thorough understanding of the subject. Various parts of this can be moved online or be made asynchronous. But at a fundamental level, when you work together as a motivated set of students with a teacher, the learning is faster and often more meaningful. For instance, you realise that the other students are often struggling like you are. A doubt asked by one student, often clarifies something for another. The magic of interaction and facilitation (by the teacher) is yet to be cracked online.  Yes, online is a supplement. And must be. But to expect that everything can be taught online i...

So, what about e-learnings? The trouble with e-learnings is that they are too linear. One dimensional. Given what we saw about live trainings, e-learnings rarely offer any of them. So, how to make e-learning more interesting. The answer lies partially in the name. The level of interaction e-learning offers is quite low - as compared to an online learning or a live virtual session where the interaction is much higher. So, e-learnings can be used to up a point - which is the 10% - substitute a part of the classroom  training with an e-learning. It does not provide the interaction that a classroom does - so try and see if that can be done. The other thing an e-learning can do is to become like games - and I am not saying gamify - the question is how to make it challenging. Can an e-learning become more non-linear - give a different outcome depending on how one interacts with it? So that each time you interact with it (like a game), your outcome is slightly different and y...