Learning Theory: Cognitive Flexibility: Interactive Learning

Interactive Learning

• Overview:  From the earliest days of the invention of the computer, there has been a promise that they would play a major role in education, from helping children to learn in the school and in the home, to helping adults acquire job training. To date that potential has not been realized. By and large the impact of computers on education has been minimal. Some of the major reasons for this have been limited computational power and limited models of learning and teaching.
  
  While studies have shown that computer-assisted instruction can reduce learning time by up to 30% and improve test scores by up to 10%, when compared with human-taught courses, it has been felt that such gains have only just begun to tap into the potential of computers in education. Open-ended teaching and learning strategies that are becoming more popular now require considerable flexibility on the part of the computer. It seems that John Dewey with his "learning by doing" view of education had it right: he argued that one learns through direct experience, by being engaged in authentic tasks.
  
  Learning through doing dovetails with the integration of computing and communications into the very fabric of the workplace. As computer notebooks (not notebook computers) become commonplace in the classroom, as they will over the next 5 years, technology in schools will function for learning much as it functions in the workplace: as integrated into the very nature of the activities that students (and workers) engage in. To signal this major change in how technology is used for learning and teaching, the term "interactive learning environment" is coined.
  

More...................... Interactive Learning Environments: Where They've Come From & Where They're Going