Linear Versus Interactive Learning

In his essay The Impending Demise of the University Don Tapscott defines linear learning;

In the industrial model of student mass production, the teacher is the broadcaster. A broadcast is by definition the transmission of information from transmitter to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion. The teacher is the transmitter and student is a receptor in the learning process. The formula goes like this: “I’m a professor and I have knowledge. You’re a student, you’re an empty vessel and you don’t. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you.” He asserts that this style of teaching and learning is changing … students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently.

Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one. That you are reading my blog is evidence of how the process of learning is changing from groups of learners gathering around an expert to people looking for information in a highly targeted, individual way.

Scouting is uniquely well positioned to take advantage of this shift because it has always been based on experiential, engaging hands-on learning. In the merit badge program Scouts pursue things that interest them individually, work interactively with a counselor and achieve on a highly individualized scale. It is important that we understand the intention and unique nature of Scout instruction to apply it without defaulting to the linear model of lecture and test.