The E-Learning Debate 2010 #elearningdebate

Yesterday I attended this year's E-Learning Debate, hosted by Epic, which took place again at the Oxford Union, and was once again chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC Technology Correspondent. 

Here's a pic of the empty Debating Chamber:

This year's motion was "This house believes that technology-based informal learning is more style than substance".

Speaking FOR the motion were Prof Allison Rossett, Nancy Lewis and Mark Doughty.  Speaking AGAINST the motion were Prof William Dutton, Jay Cross and David Wilson.

Here's a picture of Jay speaking:

Rather than summarise the debate here -  you can see the Twitter stream  at #elearningdebate with comments from those in the room and elsewhere -  I'm going to point you to Epic's ELearningDebate.com site, since from this afternoon (7 October) video highlights of the Debate will be available there.

What I will say is that in the Debating Chamber the voting was as follows:

Ayes - 54
Noes - 259

But if you want to continue the debate and vote on the motion yourself, you can also do that at the E-Learning Debate site.

Comments

[Jane Hart]

Update: here are two places to find out more about the E-Learning Debate.

Barry Sampson has written a great post here - http://onlignment.com/2010/10/the-elearning-debate-2010/

Jay Cross has written his own posting here - http://www.internettime.com/2010/10/pronoia/

Will add more in the comments as I come across them

[Caferrara]

Jane,

Thanks for posting this. It's great that these conversations and "debates" are happening. As the developer of a social, community based LMS, I actually believe that you can have your cake and eat it too. I believe the formal vs. informal debate is not a black or white decision, or rather an "Aye" or "Noe" choice.

There are certainly benefits to both methods, and I believe traditional LMS vendors should work hard to incorporate informal, more collaborative Web2.0 tools and vice versa the newer eLearning upstarts (myself included) need to recognize that having "some" control and measurement is not such a bad thing.

Carmen Ferrara
http://www.ipresentonline.com

[Jane Hart]

Carmen: I will simply quote Marcia Conner (author of the New Social Learning) "“The only people who can own social learning are the individuals who themselves are learning each day, from one another, based on their work and in the flow of work.” For more, see http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/state.html