Introducing Ineffable Learning

Tonight at my school's annual Academic Fair, I presented a new idea for a large collaborative project. I call it Ineffable Learning, and it will be an online learning website where students can explore advanced topics in computing at their own pace and in subject areas of interest to them.

Most schools' computer literacy courses cover the typical peripherals, the Office suite, web browsing, e-mail, basic file system concepts, and maybe something like computer art or drag-and-drop video editing. However, there is so much more - computing is such a fascinating and deep subject - that is immensely helpful to know. For example, archive file formats, networks, privileges, local and Web paths, system administration tools, and network/Internet layout are excellent things to know about. And, there are always shortcuts that save time and effort; they should be more well-known.

I've talked about a model for class progression based on "skill trees", and I think that would be extremely helpful here. Students will follow a core curriculum assigned by teachers or suggested by the site's defaults, but every lesson creates a subtree of more advanced exploration of the topic. For example, when studying Microsoft Word, a student may choose to stick around to explore more advanced uses, like mail merges or use of the built-in bibliography tools.

The second major feature I propose is drill-down explanations. Students learn at different paces: an explanation of a certain length may be entirely repetitive and boring for one student but confusing and overcompressed for another. Therefore, a little "what?" or "why?" or "what's a ___?" link at the bottom of explanations would allow quick students to save time and the others to get more examples and basic review to help them understand.

Finally, I would like to see "infusions", broad subjects like security, ethics, or history that can apply to everything in the course. A student interested in one of those could choose to have it infused into the course, injecting extra paragraphs and lesson branches into the content.

I got two volunteers to help make this a reality, one graphics designer and one programmer/IT person. Doing this alone would take huge amounts of time, so I'm glad there are some people interested in helping. Everybody I talked to seemed really interested in this style of education.