“A little learning is a dangerous thing”
Have you ever read part of a recipe and decided you knew how to make the dish? Then after tasting the results, you found out that you missed a key ingredient.
Have you ever read part of the instructions for building a particular piece of equipment, and then the equipment didn’t work?
These are two examples of what it is like for a person to decide to only research a portion of a topic and feel they are now a subject matter expert (SME) on this topic.
In today’s massive open online courses (MOOCs), this is predominantly one of the problems (Carr-Chellman & Rowland, 2017). So many people believe that if they just watch a video and take a quiz, they now have the concept, knowledge, and execution skills to be highly proficient as an SME with that skill. On the contrary, they are quite the opposite. They can be more dangerous to themselves and others with just a little bit of so-called learning.
Take this concept to an extreme, for example, a helicopter pilot. The pilot must first understand the theory of flying through academic learning. The next phase is teaching through simulation with augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) (Trust et al., 2021). The final phase of testing is the actual flying for practical application. If we just allow helicopter pilots to merely play a video game and then take to the skies. Then we as educators are just as responsible for inefficient teaching as the learner would be for insufficient learning.
Take time to fully understand what is needed to educate and test the learner for the highest level of proficiency. It is our calling, and we must remain steadfast in serving with excellence.
1 Corinthians 7:24 Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them (New International Version, 1983).
References
Carr-Chellman, A.A. & Rowland, G., (2017). Issues in technology, learning, and instructional design. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
New International Version (1983). Life Application Bible. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Wheaton, Illinois, AND Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Trust, T., Woodruff, N., Checrallah, M., & Whalen, J. (2021). Educators’ interests, prior knowledge and questions regarding augmented reality, virtual reality and 3D printing and modeling. Association for Educational Communications & Technology AECT. 65:548 – 561. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00594-9
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