Yes, both corporate trainers and professors absolutely have to address the implications and opportunities of Web 2.0

But the contexts and cultures of corporate training and higher education are so vastly different.

Tom Werner posted some ways they differ.

Random Mind attended a round table given by Bret Nelson of San Jacinto College at the 2007 Conference on Information Technology, on making a smooth transition to online teaching. Her post seems to have captured the essence of the round table.
Topics included:
- On the difference between teaching online and teaching face-to-face
- On developing your course
- Using discussion as a tool
- Strategies to help you cope
- Keeping the lines of communication open

You can present a lot of good information in your elearning courses, but you can’t really control whether or not a person learns from them. The learners own what they learn and much of it is determined by their level of motivation.

The good news is that while you can’t make a person learn, you can create an environment that is more conducive to learning

Source: The Rapid eLearning Blog

Angela Maiers and Pat Hensley both posted their list of the 26 keys (or ABCs) to Student Engagement

Understanding Immature Technologies

The report analyzed each technology (time-sharing, client/server computing, LANs, relational databases, VLSI design, etc.) from first inception to the point where it turned into a billion dollar industry. What was consistent among virtually all the results was how long each took to move from inception to ubiquity. Twenty years of jumping around from university labs to corporate labs to products was typical. And 30 years, as with the mouse and RISC processors, was not at all unusual (and remember, this is the “fast-paced world of computers,” where it is “almost impossible” to keep up).

Source: Business Week

Understanding Immature Teaching Technologies

I think this creates a bit of a practice dilemma for the instructional technologist working with faculty members interested in exploring technology to support learning. As we take the time to learn about the next emerging tool – Twitter, Ning, Facebook, blogs, podcasting wikis, etc. – we forget that the vast majority of faculty we encounter in our work will not likely adopt these tools for years, if at all! By the time the long nose of innovation runs its course, entire new chapters of internet history will have been written. From this perspective it seems that most technological innovations in education are limited to the early adopter, constraining potential change on a wider scale.

Source: Techne

When I switched from WebCT to blogs, I found that students responded very differently. In my first “blogged” course, the students spontaneously began conversations of their own on issues related to the content of the course, pulled in new content that interested them, and began showing up for class more engaged with the class topics. Needless to say, I was pleased. At the end of the semester I asked that first group of blogging students why they had had used the class blog so freely when students in WebCT classes had seemed reticent. What I learned shouldn’t have surprised me.

Source: Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

Mobile phones are potentially the most powerful communication and information device ever created, I had suggested, and they are already everywhere. How blind, I asked, must we as educators be if we cannot use such a remarkable tool? If we cannot teach with such a remarkable tool? If we cannot help students see how this tool will impact their lives in amazing ways as they go forward? So I went into the class wanting to show future teachers one more way to embrace the technology of the 21st Century rather than fearing it.

Source: SpeEdChange via Eric Kunnen’s GRCC Blog

These attributes are the most commonly cited characteristics of highly creative people… and they’re heavily discouraged in the early years by the education system and social climate of adolescence. This is why we won’t see another da Vinci for a long, long time - or why, if we do, he/she would not have come from the system we currently have in place. At every turn schools and society are set on pushing back the most creative individuals. Their common traits are not welcomed nor encouraged, and certainly not nurtured. This must not persist, because I think the world is long overdue for another da Vinci-type right now.

Source: Wandering Ink.