Why aren’t there significant differences in outcomes for online or in-person learning?

Why does the seemingly intuitive fact that we learn better in some ways than others make no difference when we try to accommodate those different ways of learning in our teaching? 

How can a teacher with only a few days of training teach as well as or better than one with years of subject matter expertise? And why can someone teach the same thing the same way twice, yet have completely different results each time?  

These questions and many more will be answered in this session.

Key takeaways:

•    A learning technology is one that includes pedagogical methods (when we learn, we are all learning technologists, no matter what other technologies we might use)
•    There are many teachers, from textbook authors to curriculum designers, but the most important teacher in any learning transaction is always the learner
•    The technology that matters is only ever the whole assembly, not the parts 
•    Although technological determinism — the belief in technology as a key governing force in society — is exceedingly rare, some parts can be much more influential than others (they are the hard parts of the assembly that we must work with)
•    For all but the most trivial learning, the whole assembly will never occur the same way twice (it is complex, so there cannot be predictive sciences of teaching)
•    Creative technique, skill, passion and compassion matter at least as much and usually more than method (we should therefore not focus our efforts on developing better methods of teaching; instead we should focus on becoming better teachers)