E-Learning Community 2.0

For some company, employees are expected to pass company-defined competency exams in orders to perform those jobs. For example, new project managers need to be certified within 3 years in order to continue in the project management job.

This is a company-defined competency (or certification). An outside group tell not be shutting your business down if [...]

Whenever you or a company launch a new product, you new to transfer the knowledge as part of product training to your clients or sales personnel.  Since your clients or sales personnel are from all over the world, you may want to get the message across to them in a clear and interactive manner.
You need [...]

My previous post, I was explaining on how to apply elearning for your online business. I will be sharing in more detail on each of the field list in my previous blog on “Applying Elearning Into Your Online Business.”
 
The first one is on “Online Business”
 
Elearning can assist you to promote and market your product or services in [...]

E-learning is a single word but it doesn’t refer to a single “thing.” Instead, the word e-learning refers to a wide range of business training situations and a wide range of specific solutions.
An e-learning success has to be in business terms, not in training terms. The entire reason you’re involved with training is for [...]

The title of this post is a statement I have heard from teachers, in one form or another, more often than I can count. Often times it feels like people say it to justify boring students out of their minds. Not always of course. And just as often those same teachers do use entertaining techniques, projects and tools in their class. It is just that they resist new methods or techniques that are different or that appear to be somehow too entertaining. One almost wonders if some teachers feel “it was hard (or boring) for me to learn it should be hard (or boring) for my students.”

I’ve always found that I learn the most from teachers who love what they teach. I would also have to say that most of the teachers who love their subject and love teaching it are almost by definition entertaining. They communicate their enthusiasm in a way that is, as a side product, entertaining. These are the teachers who have the best (most interesting, most amusing, most relevant) stories to use as examples. These are the teachers who bounce around the room getting kids excited. And most of all these are the teachers who get creative and find ways to make the subject interesting to their students.

Is making the material interesting the same as entertainment? If not I am not sure what the difference is. Of course the priority is teaching. Even if not every student finds the material or the teacher interesting the student still has to learn. At the same time to more students are interested and the more interested they are the more they learn. Is a teaching technique that presents the material in a stale and boring fashion somehow better, more pure that a technique that entertains as it teaches the same material? Please tell me no. Isn’t the picking between entertaining and teaching a false dichotomy to some extent? Shouldn’t a teacher who loves teaching their subject at least be animated and interesting?

My opinion is that a teacher should be judged on their results. Do their students enjoy learning more? Do more students continue on to advanced classes? Do more sign up for a class and stick with it? Do the students learn as much or more with the more “entertaining” class/course format? If the answer is “yes” then where is the bad in students being a bit “entertained?”