Andragogy, thanks to the work of Malcolm Knowles (1980), has once again been accepted and widely-used term. Basically, it represents an educational philosophy, which is the anti-thesis of pedagogy. Whereas pedagogy is the instruction of a dependent personality (the child), andragogy is the for the instruction of a non-dependent personality (the adult). Adult learners are considered to have more experience, a greater need to be self-directing, and a greater interest in life-centered topics. Whereas children are more commonly referred to as “students” who are “taught”, adults are more commonly referred to as “learners” who are “facilitated.”
Published in Chapter:
Interaction with MMOGs and Implications for E-Learning Design
Panagiotis Zaharias (University of the Aegean, Greece & Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece) and Anthony Papargyris (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-808-6.ch069
Abstract
E-learning is emerging as one of the fastest organizational uses of the Internet as a supplementary or alternative mode for corporate training. However its effectiveness is questioned and most of e-learning courses and applications have been accused of being quite static, non-authentic and superficial, poorly designed, and thus non-motivating. Their philosophical assumption views learning as an isolated phenomenon, a static knowledge in a can that could be transmitted to the learners. In this chapter it is argued that many useful lessons for e-learning designers can be learned from game design and especially from the design of massive multi-player online games (MMOGs). A review on instructional quality of games and design elements of MMOGs is conducted under the perspective of adult learning, in order to identify, adapt, and propose design implications for e-learning design.