For a guest lecture at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences in the beautiful Tropics Institute in Amsterdam, I was asked to talk about my start-up LearningStone. It’s always a good moment to reconsider the proposition one has. For insiders, LearningStone is all about supporting instructor led training with an online platform. In a word, it’s about blended learning and the practicalities of offering training in a classroom setting with all the benefits of the online world.
But why? Why not just use elearning. It’s cheaper, faster, more adaptive, avoids travel… I could go on as I’ve been enthusiastic about self paced elearning for such a long time. So why build a platform that supports so called instructor led training? It was actually just after my lecture that I realized I should of said the one essential thing: Elearning of the self pace type is simply to lonely. People need other people. They need inspiration from experienced mentors who show them the way ahead. These people don’t actually have to be physically in the same room . Our platform will soon be used in combination with webinars, but in essense it’s the same thing: people inspire us to to think, to act, to read…. and yes to learn with the help of self paced learning.
I found a great image that shows how lonely self paced elearning can be. Thank you Roger Reuver (see his Flickr site for some great images) for the perfect timing of the picture.
Michiel Klønhammer 