Tacit Knowledge and Distance Learning

A few thoughts on tacit knowledge and learning.

Regarding motivation to learn, a professor which was very influential for my undergrad development motivated students by passing out a bottle of wine to those students which received an A on a paper. And he'd pass it out in class which I think further encouraged hard work. The drinking age in Alberta was 18 so this wasn't a big deal.

This professor, Dr. Dube, made learning a treat and if it weren't for his endearing monologues I might not have learned as much as I did about the History of Western Political Thought. His ability to pull out the key points from Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx, Locke, De Beauvoir, and Alice Walker and make all of that interesting really helped me to learn the topics. Just reading those books on my own would not have been as fruitful. He won the teaching award several times and was well known, he even had a following of student that took every class he taught. I took 6 classes from him myself. We called ourselves Dubeians. Recently I even got him on Twitter now many of the fellow Dubeians have united and are following him there.

Anyhow I think there is a lot to be said about that personal interaction and learning from how he emphasized certain points or his behavior behind the lectern.

Doc Martens has done wonderful for this class, as the teacher can make or break learning no doubt. However I do miss the opportunity of her lecturing to us. At times I was confused by the PowerPoint presentations and wanted further clarification. Here's where I should have made more use of the forums I suppose. While Doc Martens is great about quickly responding it still takes some getting use to. In class you can sort of get the vibe of what the other students are learning and now whether your question would be helpful to ask during class or better saved for after class. On here its slightly more intimidating since everyone can read your posts over and over but because they don't see your smile or hear the tone of your voice they may not interpret your meaning fully. At this point in my life I don't' mind the convenience of online learning and I'm thankful I've had the opportunity to develop critical analysis and study skills in more traditional learning formats. I fear those who haven't had that traditional learning style in higher education especially our first year TCC students taking distance learning, might be lacking in the self-motivated learning skills required of this format.

In an article from Reference and User Services Quarterly, related to the failures of distance learning, the Professor provides findings via evaluations. The Professor gets very poor evaluations for her distance learning classes saying things like, "There's no teaching here..just lots of reading." What gets her the most is when a student comments, "nice shoes" eliciting the "Really, that's what you got from my class" response.