Beyond technocentrism and infocentrism: designing effective e-learning courses for professional education

Abstract

Information Technologies (IT) open many possibilities in education, and e-learning projects are nowadays implemented in many universities and corporate settings. However, the huge majority of these projects fail. This is especially true in professional education and corporate training. We believe that focus on technology (technocentrism) and on 'content' (infocentrism) are among the main causes of these failures. To radically improve this situation, we present in this paper an alternative perspective based on the distinction between 'learn about' and 'learn to do', and on innovative educational thinking (John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Seymour Papert and Hubert Dreyfus, among others). How this framework can become a reality is then explained with three examples of e-learning implementations that allow for 'learn to do'. Finally, we discuss how IT can add value to learning when one is focused at learning in and through practice.