Why e-learning is killing education | Aaron Barth | TEDxKitchenerED

Education at scale doesn’t have to suck. If you ditch conventional e-learning's clicky gimmicks, and focus instead on science-backed design principles and powerful human stories, your training will shift from tedious to transformative.

Dr. Aaron Barth, thought-leader and president of Dialectic, gives progressive leaders the confidence they need to tackle their hardest people problems using scientific methods. Rooted in education, Dr. Barth founded Dialectic after completing his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Western University, keen on fusing theory with application.

Dialectic uses the power of science to accelerate employee learning, transform organizations, improve employee and customer engagement and mitigate unconscious bias. Dr. Barth and his team of gifted scientists and designers have implemented interactive learning experiences for 50+ Canadian companies, uncovering workplace barriers and mobilizing impactful strategies. They work in two areas: workplace culture and learning and development. For both, their goal is to help their clients create behaviour change at scale. Dr. Aaron Barth, thought-leader and president of Dialectic, gives progressive leaders the confidence they need to tackle their hardest people problems using scientific methods. Rooted in education, Dr. Barth founded Dialectic after completing his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Western University, keen on fusing theory with application.

[totoplopp]

Story telling in math: Johnny was super excited about measuring the volume of his cardboard box but his cat had sat on it and made it crooked. Now he had to measure the volume of a paralellpiped oh no! He remembered that the determinant of a matrix made of 3 vectors gave him the volume... Lol

[soundaryar]

A lot of people seem to be pointing out the fact that the title is misleading, and that it isn't about online learning in particular. Yes, they're right, but I think the inefficiency is more pronounced in online classes, perhaps that's what the speaker was trying to say? Anyhow, the points were all very valid. Education needs a big change.

[mishaw]

I work an 8-5 shift remotely while obtaining my masters in Data Science online. I actually like having the opportunity to work remotely and learn online. The benefits to me is that I do not have to physically be in a classroom and can move around. If I want to travel to a beautiful city while working and studying I can do so. To me this has been very beneficial and I have saved tons of money (commuting, clothes, food at work) that I was able to reinvest in the stock market.

[tabrezshaikh]

There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story.

~Tyrion Lannister

[gordoncarscadden]

Watched a video from Carl sagan and he spoke of how young children enter school full of wonder and questions and graduate with these qualities gone. Something seriously wrong with our school system

[byronkadum]

Blaming e-learning when the real problem that he is trying to explain is the inability of teachers to "storytell" in the way they teach.

[theskullcrack]

As long as people want money, nothing will change, schools will remain as dull human generators

[aadamy]

I had a great chemistry teacher who would open his lectures up with stories and history around what we were going to learn in chemistry! It made me so excited to then learn all of the formulas etc. I was doing something that others before me had to figure out and apply to the real world. I had a math teacher who did the same. These are two subjects we don’t usually think of as an opportunity for that. If you take out time from the lesson to give it historical context (I do this with my music students all the time) you will have the most passionate and interested students. They’ll never forget what they learned !

[acceleratekid]

not click and quiz, but stories and meaning --- scenario and story based learning best way ...

[buffsuki]

Im so happy with how my college is doing with the distance learning (personally) there not doing mandatory zoom meetings and they even record them for ppl who couldn’t attend because of whatever reason

[cogitoergosum]

The reason we don’t do this in eLearning is because it’s three time more difficult and takes four times as long to do. I totally agree with what this man is saying and it is definitely a better way of teaching as well as being more interactive and engaging but the sad reality is that most organisations don’t have the time or money to put into developing eLearning like this. I have been an eLearning developer for the last 8 years and the reality is that most organisations don’t do this because it’s cost heavy, time heavy, and doesn’t necessarily bring any more results. Building a really good, emotionally engaging story takes as much skill as making a movie because that’s kind of what you’re doing. It’s far easier and quicker to just cut and paste content because that’s how the boss who is paying for it has learned at school so that’s what they are comfortable with and that’s what they think everyone else will be confutable with. I totally agree that good stories are much much better at teaching people (although bad or boring stories can be much worse), but it all boils down to money and time. It’s just the world that we live in.

[edwinpj]

Honestly a lot of teachers/professors still teach us even through virtual class by telling stories, examples of their or other's experience.etc. May God Bless them ❤️.

[dhareshm]

This man makes sense. We need more stories from which we can then use in our lives rather than have heaps of information dumped on. All the information that one needs is there available on the internet, but for it to work, we see that they need experience. Experience can form from listening to stories and this is can give people a head start in learning.

[WHYsauce]

This is why I love e-learning and why I struggle in school, it offers flexibility for me to be able to take my time and actually think about/ reflect on what I have learned (or observed if in a lecture) and think about applications of the info and try my best to look for errors in the thinking. Basically, yes storytelling is great, but for me flexibility to pace myself so I can make sure I fully understand before moving on completely is most important (FOR ME) :)

[swojnowski]

People forget because what they get at school every day is a bunch of no experiences. No wonder that those who hardly had any contact with the education system frequently do better than people with PHDs, they have experienced and hence learnt more.

[Mike-decg]

I wish school was back in the damn school already because I’m sick of it

[klaw]

I'm an e-Learning developer and my approach to it is to tell a story. The problem I find resides with the clients that just want to pour their PowerPoint contents into a e-Learning format and don't care if there's a better way to do it. Things are changing though, some are listening to what we advise.

[laurajane]

I homeschool and we use e-learning and paper. Stories are fun, but if you don't have time, the most important part of the stories are the analogies. Eduation went down way before e-learning. The biggest downfall was the imposition of Common Core. I went to elementary school in the 60's. Nowadays, spelling books (or online) don't teach spelling rules and math books (or online) don't drill basic arithmetic. We learned by rote and I can still add, muliply and divide without a calculator. And, as you can see, my grammar is still pretty good, too. 🙂

[kt-eypo]

The failure of eLearning does not come for the creators but from the stakeholders; the one's who are paying the bill. As ID people we have not forgotten about our targeted audience's, but have been forced to sweep them under the rug at the cost of the learner. Aaron Barth, you are preaching something that is well know by the Learning and Development group.

[Urmilpatel]

Its simple.
Government cuts education -> corruption by ministers and administrators in education department -> decline in salary and secured job of teachers -> recruitment process is affected -> more efficient teachers opt out due to less salary -> these teachers work for themselves or e-learning industry hires them -> e-learning industry rises -> people choose e-learning over schools

We are in middle of time to analyse the results of e-learning industry. I am working on both modes, but I feel that human interaction has its own charm.