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Technology And Course Design Essay

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Technology and Course Design
The massive amount of information that is available to humans on a daily basis and in every area of life requires self-directed, motivated, organized, and strategic learners (Bacon & MacKinnon, 2014) who hold the capacity to parse for relevant information. As Swan (2010) suggests, “the growth of the [world wide web] provides educators with the opportunity [to] change their pedagogical focus from the transmission of knowledge to one enabling students both to make sense of an overabundance of information and to use it to generate knowledge themselves” (p. 111). Heutagogy easily fits into distance education systems as the self-directed, autonomous learner has the potential to thrive in an online learning environment (Blaschke, 2012). As Ackoff and Greenberg (2008) noted, “humans are hijacked very early in life by an educational system that was designed in the industrial revolution to educate workers to make the industrial wheel go round” (as cited in Hase & Kenyon, 2015). The outdated view of education as a product created by scholars that can only be delivered by experts (Eberle, 2009) deters advancement of the learning experience.
Negative views of online classroom structure rightly point out difficulties when face-to-face or traditional classroom content is ill-adapted to the online environment (Bacon & MacKinnon, 2014). These classrooms do not utilize the advantages of interactive technology, instead preferring media that supports

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