There’s a new Big Question on the Learning Circuits blog and it’s about questions. It builds on a great posting by George Siemens in which he describes Questions I’m no longer asking, in other words what issues are now so cut and dried that to keep questioning them would be a waste of energy.
Well, I have my own list, based on my own perspective of learning and development in the workplace.
| Questions I am no longer asking | Questions I am still asking |
| Whether face-to-face and live online communication are broadly equivalent for most purposes. | Why there is still something magic about being face-to-face which you can't quite capture in other ways (see Chris Anderson’s presentation at TED). |
| Whether the world as a whole will enthusiastically embrace the internet | When the majority of the teaching and training community will join the rest of the world. |
| Whether the majority of what people learn at work is learned informally (through experience, conversations, exploration, etc.). | What policies and interventions are most likely to stimulate and encourage informal learning at work. |
| Whether formal education and training is valuable (only people who have forgotten what it is like to be a novice would question that). | How formal education and training can be made more stimulating, memorable and enjoyable. |
| Whether mobile devices will play an important role in learning. | What form mobile learning will take? Will apps change everything? |
I’m going to stop at five. Why, because four didn’t seem quite enough and six is going on a bit. Please join the debate at The Big Question.
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