Thing Twenty-Nine

Thing Twenty-Nine – Online Learning

I actually have quite a bit of experience with online learning. I took a correspondence course through the University of Wisconsin that was primarily online (well, to be fair, it was primarily me reading about 70 books for adolescents and younger, but it had some online components). However, for my last part-time job, Best Buy, I was eligible for a rewards program through several of our vendors. The most memorable one was Microsoft.
Microsoft paid employees in points to complete online learning modules. These points could then be spent on anything Microsoft (including portable devices, Xbox, and many other products). What I found was that I was actually learning quite a bit from these modules that I would, at best, skim. Microsoft no doubt knew that people would generally do as little work as possible, so they made sure the questions at the end of each of these online training things were geared directly to what they wanted the test taker to take away from the test (say that ten times fast!). I found that, even though I spent very little time with these modules comparatively, I absorbed much of the knowledge they were trying to instill. I don’t really have any conclusions to draw past that, but it is interesting. I think there is definitely a place for online learning. I don’t know that that place is high school, but who knows? If it could be refined and made as thoroughly “skip-proof” as the Microsoft stuff was, perhaps it could be a very useful tool.