Would You Tell Me How to Get, How to Get to eLearning: Development and Complexity

Abstract

Though e-learning is primarily aimed at much older students, essentially adults, the cognitive processes become exponentially more complex with age. For the sake of clarity, we will discuss learning as it occurs conspicuously in children. Once understood, we can reapply these principals to college level development.
In the 1960's, television was deemed mutually exclusive to development, and for good reasons. But somehow Sesame Street managed to transcend this impasse, and accomplish an admirable job within an uncooperative medium. It is important to appreciate that the preceding 'educational programming,' despite insufficiencies, should not be seen as a failure in general, but initial attempts necessary to reach the unusually high standards Sesame Street achieved.
An appreciation of core educational theories is crucial for creating classrooms in a software medium. One need not subscribe to these theories per se, in order to benefit from their implicit strategies. What one discovers is that digital calculation, the fundamental function of absolutely all computers do, is incapable of non-empirical processes (ie. open-ended problem solving important to education). Nonetheless, Sesame Street's methodical testing paradigm, where media are merely means not ends, by investigating how minds might be addressed in the act of perception/interpretation of that mean, allows disappointing idiosyncrasies inherent to the medium to become useful features available to producers.