LEARNING DISPENSARY: Learning Redefined

What Is It?



Perhaps taking a cue from the world of medical practitioners,
the Internet gurus have come up with the idea of a Learning

Dispensary. Yes! The Dr Teacher is here to help you cure of any

learning disability that you might have been suffering from–just

the way a medical practitioner would do if you were suffering

from a physical ailment. The basic idea remains the same. You

get diagnosed through some tests; get certain medication; go for

a follow up; and, if some more medication is required, you take

that till you are fit as a fiddle.

Let us take an example.

You are learning, say, Microsoft Word and have problems with

your confidence. You go to the site running a Learning

Dispensary and register yourself as a learning patient. A

specialist doctor calls you within minutes and you explain to

him your problem. Alternatively, you can get online with the

doctor via Internet. You answer doctor’s questions and go

through learning sickness tests and the doctor diagnoses the

symptoms. Based on symptoms, he prescribes a learning capsule

that is available at the same site. You pick up and apply the

learning capsule on yourself as detailed by the doctor. (Taking

the drugs only per the prescription could also be automated by

controlling your behavior based on the symptoms. For example,

per the diagnosis, if your problem is that you need to have a

firsthand practice of the software, you will be warned and

restricted from going through conceptual information on the

subject). Once you have applied the learning capsule, you will

again go through an automatic or manual check up as it suits

you. You will then be given a fitness certificate on proficiency

in that area. Thus, you go through the entire cycle of curing

the learning sickness in only a matter of few hours, sitting at

home no matter what part of the world you are located in.

But, Is It

Scientific?



You can be sure of that. The Learning Dispensary can handle both
aspects of learning disability viz. contextual disability and

psychometric disability. Contextual disability can be very

easily handled by giving an absolute piece of learning in terms

of a learning nugget or capsule to cure a certain kind of

learning deficiency. But it is often found that the learners

have psychometric disability that hinders their learning and

becomes chronic when the systems keep trying context-specific

solutions that are detrimental to the learner’s ability to

learn. Such learners have difficulty in learning not because

they do not have the interface with contextual input, but due to

the way the learning is delivered. Their problem is not the

acute shortage of knowledge or information but the chronic

disability to respond to a specific system that offers the

learning.

To deal with this type of

learning disability, the dispensary service will be able to

establish if the symptomatic analysis shows a particular

instructional methodology being the cause of learning

disability. For example, if the symptoms are that the learner

could not learn because of mammoth theoretical information being

thrown at him or her though the learner wanted to learn by

doing, it will offer an entire medical course that teaches the

same unit with an instructional methodology that suits the

learner most–hands-on practice in this case.What Is So

Special?



Though there are some apprehensions from some quarters, the
Learning Dispensary offers many specific advantages over the

traditional approach to learning. Such learning nuggets make

education and training self-paced. In their pursuit for

"anytime anywhere learning" people are drifting away

from colleges and universities. Then there is the urgent need

for people at every level in every profession to upgrade their

existing knowledge and skill-sets.

Until now, the use of

technology was limited to classroom and people had to take

sabbaticals to be able to upgrade themselves with the latest.

Today’s executives do not have that kind of time. They cover

multiple time zones physically and work with a number of people

spread over various geographies electronically ending up with

little time to explore and attend long training sessions.

The other advantage with

Learning Dispensary system is that you do not go through a pile

of junk to acquire a small portion that is to be learned. The Dr

Teacher does not bother you with too much of information. Dr

Teacher hits the specific virus causing the learning deficiency

and that is it.

This mode of teaching and

learning will help as diligently an individual as an

organization with a big setup. Industry, specially the software

and telecom segments, is finding it difficult to handle the ever

changing need to train the mobile staff and upgrade them with

the latest. Now they do not need to worry too much. They just

need to hire an agency running a Learning Dispensary just as

they have medical facilities for their employees.What Is the

Future Like?



So far so good! But what does it take in terms of technological
requirements? How much does it cost? What are future prospects?

Interestingly, the

systemic requirements to run this kind of a setup are not very

complex or costly for teachers or the students. All that one

needs is a PC with Internet access and a telephone. This level

of technology has become a necessity among the average masses in

most of the developed world and the developing economies are

also not lagging behind. And with technology becoming more

viable, this is going to increase phenomenally. Although the use

of existing technology of Internet and telephony will be enough

to handle this kind of a setup, there are technologies such as

PC-Plus from Microsoft that will give it additional teeth. This

technology is in the pipeline and all set to take the world of

connectivity by storm.

Providers will also not

face much difficulty in terms of technology. Providers can

further leverage the technology by having virtual Dr Teachers

who can continue with whatever they are doing as their mainline

work. For example, a hardware engineer placed in Virginia is at

the same time doubling as a Dr Teacher and gets a call by the

system to work with a learner with certain kind of learning

disability.

With learning through

electronic media already reaching its zenith (if growth of

Computer Based Training (CBT), Web Based Training (WBT), and

online universities are any indication), learning dispensaries

are going to be the future models of education and training. It

will be a giant leap and real educational challenge to determine

and exploit the computer, the Internet, and the inherent

potentialities of the technologies to the advantage of learners

and teachers.

There are people who argue

that learning takes place only through a cognitive dissonance.

Learning happens when what happens during an interaction causes

the learner to question or reflect on what they know and then

revise it. But we can bring in objectivity here as well.

Moreover, often these discourses end up in taking the learning

experience to an altogether different tangent, achieving very

little and sometimes negative results. With the Learning

Dispensary type of scenario, the interaction between the Dr

Teacher and the suffering learners would result in determining

the learning sickness and then the absolute piece of learning

will be delivered.