Dr. Bates has been seriously kicking ass for many years. He’s decided to retire – and he deserves it. I can’t even imagine how much energy he’s dedicated to the field of teaching-and-learning, and eLearning, over the last few decades. Well earned retirement.
His post announcing the decision is full of gems. I have to admire his no-BS summary of the state of eLearning.
Even the processes of learning, which used to be relatively stable, given how much is biological, are also undergoing change. Technology is not neutral; it does change the way we think and behave. Furthermore, I foresee major developments in the science of learning that will have major implications for teaching and learning – but it will also have major false directions and mistakes (be very careful with artificial intelligence in particular). So this is a field that needs full-time, professional application, and very hard work, and I just don’t have the energy any more to work at that level. To put it simply, this is not a profession where you can be half in and half out. Dabbling in online learning is very dangerous (politicians please note).
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And then there’s MOOCs. I can’t express adequately just how pissed off I am about MOOCs – not the concept, but all the hubris and nonsense that’s been talked and written about them. At a personal level, it was as if 45 years of work was for nothing. All the research and study I and many others had done on what makes for successful learning online were totally ignored, with truly disastrous consequences in terms of effective learning for the vast majority of participants who took MOOCs from the Ivy League universities. Having ignored online learning for nearly 20 years, Stanford, MIT and Harvard had to re-invent online learning in their own image to maintain their perceived superiority in all things higher educational. And the media fell for it, hook, line and sinker. This is a battle I no longer want to fight – but it needs fighting. But my reaction did make me wonder, am I just an old man resisting the future? And that has definitely left a mark.
I’d been hoping to find a way to get Tony to visit our campus to work with our Learning Technologies Task Force. Looks like that’s out. But I look forward to following his writing. This is a guy who’s been working in this field for decades, in various roles, and who has had the good fortune to travel and see what various institutions are doing. That’s gold.
Congrats, Tony!