I love online learning but...

It is safe to say that without online learning I would not have the job I have today. I am an eLearning Designer but I started out in graphic design. Almost everything I know about graphic design I have learned through video tutorials or on-the-job training. I started learning Adobe Photoshop in middle school, using it to make funny pictures of my friends. I picked up InDesign in college as part of my job on the school newspaper. From there, I picked up video editing, illustration, and audio editing through various jobs. I find that the way I learn best is when what I'm learning is directly tied to the task I need to complete.

Not sure what an eLearning Designer does? Here is a sample of my work!

I love online learning for the convenience and the power it gives me to create my own learning journey. I have used Khan Academy to study for the GREs. I have used Coursera to take a modern poetry class. I am using Duolingo now to brush up on my Korean and learn Mandarin. I use Youtube to find how to videos for everything from fixing a fridge to taking care of my houseplants. That said, online learning can only take you so far. For example, if I don't get a language partner for Mandarin, I won't ever learn to hear the difference in tones with Duolingo alone. I wouldn't dare mess with the electrical wiring in my fridge no matter how detailed the Youtube video. And for ever Coursera course I've successfully completed, there are 20 that I merely signed up for and never attempted. While there are so many benefits to online learning, I think as humans we naturally sometimes need to be in the same room as the teacher and our fellow learners. That's why I'm a big fan of the blended learning approach. 

My best blended learning experience was in college when my poetry professor told us to set up a Facebook group. From there we set up a Google Docs folder where students marked up each poem line by line. By the time we were in class, we were more than ready to discuss the poem. It was a simple setup that delivered really powerful results. The screenshot below shows one of the poems we dissected. What I found most powerful about that experience was the peer-to-peer learning, and it's something I'm trying to recreate today in the blended learning program I manage at work.