Learning to question; a question of learning?

One of the little secret successes of the internet is Oxford University’s Continuing Education department. They put on a series of online courses on a wide range of subjects which on the basis on completing two philosophy courses (and just starting a new one on Political Philosophy) make some of the best use of the web as a collaborative, mind expanding medium that I have seen for some time.

The experience is driven by an open source software called ‘Moodle’ which handles the presentation of content and the forums for discussion. Each course is moderated by a post-grad (some web savvy, some finding their feet) and runs over 10 weeks – each week having a different lecture and discussion topics. Students are encouraged to follow a simple set of netiquette rules to make the forums flow and you can very quickly find yourself engaging in a stimulating discussion on the nature of mind with a Professor of physics in Brazil, a freelance writer from Greece and working mum in Canada.

It really does explode some of the myths of social media needing to be 'rich' - instead Conted supplies a simple and structured canvas which allows community to create itself rather than be 'strategized' to death.

My initial skepticism was quickly allayed when I found that people were genuinely interested in the open debate of ideas – and very quick to moderate any individual attempts to ‘wow’ the community with the philosophy lexicon they had just swallowed. I can genuinely say that each course has taught me a huge amount about a topic that had always interested me while studying Classics but I never got the time to really tackle with any degree of rigor. What has really struck me is the level to which that thought and debate has then filtered into my working life – not explicitly – but in small ways challenging some of my assumptions about the world and introducing new points of view and ways of asking questions about the world. A refreshing change from my previous experience of education and need to ‘produce’ answers at the end of your study. Only one teacher of mine ever encouraged the ability to question over the search for an answer – my classics teacher at school – now the internet is providing just such an education experience – long may it continue.

It is obviously a wild hope that any ‘financial education’ will promote such a questioning mindset over the ‘easy answers’ approach – it is very hard to measure the value of a question.