Who is really in control?

Schank (2011) laments that education on the computer has been, by and large, a disappointment, over-hyped and under-realized. He argues that  computer-based training has meant putting a book on a computer, allowing the student to press a button to get the next page and take a quiz at the end (Shank, 2011). Edutainment and the rise of the Virtual University according to Schank (2011) however should cause all higher education institutions to reconsider how they are going to deliver the education experience.
With access to information now available 24 hours a day students are starting to take control of their own learning and they can now access large amounts of high quality and increasingly organised resources online. This movement is potentially short circuiting the current education system and its approach of controlling the flow of information through the classroom experience. Sir Ken Robinson draws parallels with the current system and a factory production line producing batch after batch of educated individuals. This description assumes a uniformed, controlled and quality assured environments. However in reality outside of the confines of current institutions learning may be more sporadic and student led - accessing information, concepts and theories that are consumed and processed at a pace that is out of sync with traditional curriculum's. Watters, (2011) in her review 10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know About (But Should) has highlighted this movement with key examples of online communitees and resources that students can access including key sites such as the Khan Academy

P2PU: The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project in which anyone can participate.

OpenStudy: is a social learning network where independent learners and traditional students can come together in a massively-multiplayer study group.

NITXY: NIXTY is building a learning management platform that supports open education resources.

OER Glue: a browser-based tool that will allow students and teachers to “glue” together OER resources online.

iUniv: is a Japanese startup that is building web and mobile apps to support and make social video and audio OCW content.

Smarthistory: is a free and open multimedia website that demonstrates how very heavy, pricey, and obsolete the traditional art history textbook is.

CK-12: The CK-12 Foundation’s Flexbook platform provides free, collaboratively-built and openly-licensed digital textbooks for K-12.

Flat World Knowledge: This is a college textbook publisher whose books are published under an open license.

Connextions: Connextions is a repository of educational content, containing over 17,000 openly licensed learning modules.

Can we control this? - Unlikely
Can we quality assure this? - Unlikely

Should we embrace this?
The potential for virtual learning environments is in its infancy but potentially empowering millions of individuals worldwide. Teachers and lecturers may need to challenge their current role and acknowledge that students are increasingly becoming an equal partner in deciding the direction of their own learning.

References

Watters, (2011) in her review 10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know About (But Should) http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/05/10-open-education-resources-you-may-not-know-about-but-should/ accessed January 2012

Schank, R. (2011) in  THE DISRESPECTED STUDENT — OR — THE NEED FOR THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY, http://edge.org/conversation/the-disrespected-student-or-the-need-for-the-virtual-university accessed January 2012