Can eLearning Contribute To Academic Reform?
The legal reform will be easier and faster
eLearning, including blended learning, plays an important role in continuing education and as a choice for adults in general. What about the rest of the population? Many lower and higher education students have been thrown into eLearning because of the pandemic. For some, this has been a blessing in disguise, as teachers use new technology and versatile communication skills to facilitate otherwise limited learning, and give students the time and resources to self-regulate, expand, and develop their preferred learning methods. For others, it was a waste of time, and for many, it has given further leeway to the worst that e-tech can do to young minds and bodies.
In most places in the world, the choice of learning for those under the age of 18 is severely limited. Not only does this limit the scope of their education and overall development, it also leaves them unaware of their online and mixed work options.
Broadening choices in education
Expanding educational choices through the innovative use of new learning technologies, combining digital and real places to overcome limitations in collaboration, and living together across borders can create freedom of choice in learning where it doesn’t exist, but can also strengthen and expand it wherever it exists. Legislative reform becomes easier and faster.
The possibility of digital and mixed education is also a basis for many other freedoms. For educational reformers around the world, the main motivation is to ensure health and wellbeing in the context of learning, to bring learning back to the community, and to connect micro and macro communities together.
Within the pandemic and as the future will be significantly influenced by it, these proposals will continue to gain in importance. The freedom to choose to include eLearning for all ages alleviates many of the health, financial and professional problems brought to the surface by the pandemic.
Some examples:
- Reduction of overload in learning environments, diversification of the spaces used for learning (inside and outside)
- More options for families and students who cannot afford the cost of a traditional school or who have no access for other reasons, e.g. B. because they have no schools in their area
- Decentralization and thus facilitating the creation and operation of learning communities in which no resources are available
- Expansion and redistribution of teaching / mentoring professions, including a wider variety of professionals in the teaching / mentoring process such as artists, health specialists, social workers, seniors, etc.
Global reform may be more possible than ever. non-invasive global reform to facilitate local, culture-specific reforms. Substantial and diverse global and local social reform is both a prerequisite and the result of a comprehensive reform of basic education. By their very nature, eLearning and blended learning could be ideal media for overcoming established limitations of plurality.
Public access to eLearning with infrastructure and support for blended learning in micro-communities can empower the disempowered. Human rights violations and financial wars affect us all, not just those of us who live in them. It may not be apparent yet, but the cross-border loss of voting rights, even if taken for granted, is foreseeable.
The role of eLearning
eLearning could play an important role in developing a culture-specific, diverse context that combines formal and non-formal democratic, agile and self-directed learning approaches. It could help provide educational services that are used according to the wishes and needs of the user, are accessible to all age groups and socio-economic situations, and enable the widespread establishment and legitimation of learning communities.
All over the world, proposals to expand the options in education are based on the innovative use of new learning technologies and the resulting de-institutionalization of learning. Combining digital and real places to overcome limitations in collaboration and coexistence across borders.
With eLearning, micro and macro communities can be connected and learning environments and processes can return to these communities. E-learning and blended learning communities can also play an important role in overcoming established dividing lines between education in the government sector, in the market sector and in the community sector.
eLearning and blended learning as options in the state (public), market economy (private) and municipal sectors could urgently enable immediate international educational reform. This option could facilitate the liaison, cooperation and establishment of joint agencies between ministries of education and all other international decision-making and action bodies, the United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR), the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) and others on a global scale intergovernmental bodies and non-governmental organizations.
Conclusion
The establishment of eLearning and blended learning across borders could help ensure that compulsory education becomes compulsory, goes beyond compulsory education and enables non-compulsory education to flourish. It could almost by default result in schools, universities, learning communities, teaching staff and digital educational structures becoming open source that can be used depending on the choice of the learner.
