Who Benefits from Online Courses?
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Some universities offering online courses have shut down as the venture proved unprofitable. On the other hand, online courses can prove ideal for adults in employment as they can study at their own convenience. At a time when the demand for traditional skills are declining, retraining options through online courses can be a boon.
At the same time, online courses might not be the answer for acquiring certain types of skills. You won’t want to entrust your life to a surgeon who has learnt surgery online, if such a course was available.
Online courses, however, can keep trained professionals up to date in their fields, provided the courses are designed with that objective in mind.
Enrollment at online courses are growing fast, with one in four students reportedly taking at least one online course in 2008. Online courses can help educational institutions to keep down costs and increase their revenues, despite the shutdowns mentioned at the beginning.
Read the discussion about online courses at NY Times Blog.
Tags: business, education, online courses
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Neurolinguistics: A High-Sounding Word for What We Do Every Day
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Neuroliguistics studies language development in humans, and language use is something the we do every day. The human brain can respond differently to the slight changes in a speaker’s tone of voice or emphasis. A boring lecture creates a very different scenario in the brain from one created by an absorbingly presented class.
Then there is the issue of language acquisition. Noam Chomsky and others have argued that humans are born with grammar built-in. Children learn to understand speech very early, though they might have difficulty understanding long-winded sentences (something that even adults experience!)
A research lab at Carleton University, Canada is setting up a new lab for language and brain research. Participants will wear skullcaps fixed to their heads with gel. Electrodes in the skullcap connect their scalp to brainwave-reading machines. Researchers observe the brain responses to different bits of language delivered in different ways to the audience.
Researchers hope to learn which areas of the brain are activated (which neurons fire) when we speak, hear and understand. There are other facilities that measure different things, all concerned with language use.
Read the story at the Carleton Magazine.
Tags: cognitive science, language use, neurolinguistics
Posted in cognitive science, language | No Comments »
