Social Online Learning - Is the NZ Government finally moving in the right direction?

The Government’s announcement on Communities of Online Learning (COOLs) (NZ Government, 1989, 2017) activates a more robust legal framework to support what is already happening and opens the door to new players.

With the announcement however, has come a strong backlash from the NZ Education Council citing the need for all primary and secondary education to be delivered by “registered” teachers.

Of course this goes directly against the ethos of community learning especially in the online context such as that within the government's COOLs framework.

I believe there are some risks and benefits which must also be taken into account.

If existing trends in social online learning continue without primary and especially secondary schools suitably modifying their practices there is a real risk that their relevance will slowly disappear, as learners use alternative, unstructured methods of learning more aligned to their online use.
Students are already substantially supplementing traditional teacher-led learning with unstructured, online learning, delivered by the online community - whom typically are not registered, qualified teachers.
This comes through community life-experience and one could say is a return to the way learning was delivered prior the the schooling system we know of today.

Online social media/learning communities not only allow an exponential amount of learning resources, of varying quality from scientifically incorrect to the hands-on expert rivaling the best registered lecturer, but also now allow the cream to rise naturally, so to speak, through social community tools such as upvotes, number of shares, likes, and ratings.

The power of social communities has significantly changed the quality of community made learning resources and will continue to shape this space as online social tools became common across platforms.

Having spent the last 15 years in tertiary education as a teacher and a college manager, my experience has shown that “qualified” teachers are not always the best “teachers”. Often they come from a traditional education background and continue to use these same traditional techniques within today’s classrooms, which does little to engage today’s students but actively alienates them. I can however see the Primary and Secondary School sectors working hard to fix this disconnect through a range of digital upskilling/ professional development courses, however the tertiary space is still years behind.

I do however believe frameworks are required, as bullet pointed within your post.
Whether it is a “teacher” in the traditional sense, implementing the learning frameworks or the community will be the question as what we call a “teacher” has already technically changed with the advent of online social learning.

A good example of this on scale is Khan Academy.

The “teacher” so to speak, is the platform's founder Salman Amin "Sal" Khan, who is not a registered or qualified teacher rather an community member who has expertise in a number of fields (Science, Engineering and Computer Science).

Despite his lack of teacher registration or qualification he has delivered over 1 billion lessons worldwide. The platform is used by 40 million students and 2 million teachers every month.

Teachers using a social learning platforms to be taught by a non-teachers (the irony).

However this is exactly the case in most Tertiary Education Institute around the world.
Tertiary level teacher registration is not compulsory rather highly recommended.
Colleges and Universities find subject matter experts who then deliver learning to students, most of whom are not registered or qualified as teachers through Education Councils.
This is essentially the same as COOLs through an online distributed medium.

It maybe the real benefit is to ensure those that do teach, whether registered and teacher qualified or not , do so through from a place of knowledge, with suitable experience in the fields taught and with an understanding of a learning framework such as those bullet-pointed.

However does that require a full teaching qualification and subsequent registration, especially in today’s online social learning context?

It is a question which must be asked.


NZ Government, Education Act 1989 (Update) Amendment Act 2017 https://education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/legislation/the-education-update-amendment-act/