Learning and Education: A Paradigm Shift in the Age of Internet and Search Engines

摘要

Today, well into the 21st century, many different models of educational delivery are operating. While the models of lecture remain that Galileo used to deliver his understanding of the universe some 400 years ago at the University of Padua, many other models have made their way into universities and colleges today, such as flipped classrooms, hybrid/blended models, and the online model-both synchronous and asynchronous modes. Technology in the classroom has both helped and hindered (how Galileo would have taken to students browsing Facebook in his classes?) the educator in achieving the learning outcomes of any course. At the same time, the current ways of measuring and classifying a person's level of education (and thus value in the marketplace and to society) have also changed. In the year 1 BG (Before Google), an individual was often considered educated by the number of facts that he or she could remember and recite. Through the invention of the Internet and search engines such as Yahoo and Google, the mere ability to recall has lost its value as most individuals carry a device in their pockets. These devices have greater storage and recall power than the Apollo Lunar Module (Robertson 2009) which has recall and citation of many more facts than can possibly be remembered by humans. Given this technology, individuals now demand and marketplace now expects more from a formal education than rote memorization tasks.