Exercises

Teach Yourself the Lot

by Tim Ewington

It was in a cafe in a Yorkshire town that my curiosity was first aroused. It offered plastic table coverings, tea at 30p a mug, succulent bacon butties and four computers. Above the hubbub of flat vowels and teapots being filled, came the high-pitched scream of a modem. Cuppas and computers—welcome to the cybercafe, north-country style.

My expectations of an internet cafe changed in a buttie's bite. The people clumped around the computers were neither 17-year-old net surfers nor backpackers e-mailing their friends in Australia. Instead, they were being used by Lucy, a young mum working part-time as a nurse, who was examining health sites related to the course she is studying; Sarah, the mid-thirties manager of the next-door tourist gift shop who was finding out more about Verona for a talk at her Italian language class; Dave, shift manager from the local paper mill, poring over an American site describing how to improve production processes that he had read about in a business magazine; and Justin, a sales manager waiting for his next appointment by indulging his passion for performance cars and peanut-butter sandwiches.

After e-mailing easily the most popular reason for using the net is research for either work or education. Pursuing personal interests comes next. This thirst for information online is stoking a burgeoning knowledge economy. In a survey by the media consultancy Human Capital, more than 80% of British adults said that they yearn to discover more about specific interests, and gave two main reasons: the desire to develop their careers, and a passion for a topic of personal fascination.

The largest numbers of people want to pursue computers, languages, history, the arts and science as a personal goal, but the range of interests is astonishing... dog breeding, fluid dynamics and Persian rugs, to name but a few. In a survey of 2 000 respondents chosen to reflect the make-up of the adult population, more than a thousand interests are mentioned. Our career-development goals are less eclectic, and less clearly defined. Finding out about marketing, accounting and human resources are popular objectives, though the majority wants an introduction to the basics rather than a high level of knowledge—for example, the fundamentals of marketing known as the "four Ps" (product, price, promotion and place) and how they apply to everyday working life.

Many people, however, cannot pin down exactly what they should do to advance themselves. One consequence is that fewer than a quarter of us are doing anything to do so. The reasons we give are predictable: the pressures of work and family, the difficulties of childcare, cost, the need to travel long distances and—most important of all—lethargy. Pursuing your passion sounds great until it means attending a further-education class on a cold winter evening. We want the results, but won't endure the pain needed to achieve them.

This is when the internet proves its worth as a tutor. "The online world can make a tremendous difference in helping people to learn," says John Brown, director of lifelong learning at the British Educational Communications Technology Agency. "People are put off by grandiose institutions, rigid timetables and intimidating courses. The internet engages people and helps them embrace learning in really exciting and innovative ways."

Adults with access to the web at home are 75% more likely than non-users to say that they are actively pursuing some specific kind of knowledge. The question is whether adults who are already motivated to learn are the first to hook up to the internet, or whether plugging into the net prompts curiosity. The answer seems to be a bit of both.

    These adult careerists, hobbyists and self-improvers agree that the net changes their habits. It is flexible, allowing you to pursue your interest when you choose, at your own pace, in whatever direction takes your fancy. The internet does not demand that you attend an institution each week. You can fit the pursuit of knowledge into your current lifestyle, around work and family commitment, and enjoy a coffee or a whisky at the same time. It is children who set the ball rolling in many households. The most common reason that people buy a PC, according to the research company Inteco, is to further the education of their children. Parents anticipate that their children will use the internet not only for schoolwork but to pursue hobbies—even if these revolve round Leonardo DiCaprio websites. However, they rapidly realize that they can exploit the internet to their own grown-up ends.

"It's an interesting dynamite," says Alan Clarke from the National Institute of Continuing Adult Education. "Parents buy computers because they know their kids have to understand the internet. They see their kids doing the searches and see how simple it is. Then they take their first steps into subjects they have always found fascinating, but have never dared plunge into before."

The everyday experiences that whet an adult's thirst for discovery range from television programmes, magazines and newspapers to exhibitions. Channel 4's current series Six Experiments That Changed the World inspired one viewer not only to investigate the scientists who carried out the ground-breaking investigations, but to conduct some of the simpler experiments with his young daughter. When we feel inspired to learn, we need to be able to act quickly and keep the momentum going. Wait too long and we do nothing.

The internet is nothing if not immediate. It is the perfect source of just-in-time knowledge. "Having the internet in the house means that the family has an incredibly powerful library, sitting in the corner waiting to be used," says Sue Phillips, a Birmingham mother of two whose family has been online for the past year. "Last week, I was listening to the radio about castles around the country and a couple of websites were mentioned. I scribbled them down and spent an hour on the internet looking at these castles, their local area and the stories connecting them."

Online learning is rapidly coming to counteract some of the failings of Britain's secondary-education system. It is not the only answer, but since there is such a shortage of places in most traditional adult-education colleges, and teacher standards are a cause for concern, it is the ideal tutor for engaging the attention of the less enthusiastic learner. (One interesting piece of research shows that by working online boys improve their literacy faster than girls.)

The BBC is central to this increasingly important role, and casts itself as popular educator by building on the pillars of the corporation's traditions of informing, educating and entertaining. It is mobilising sound and vision to exploit the full powers of the internet. As BBC Television broadcasts about 35 hours of factual programming each week, and new digital channels such as BBC Knowledge are entirely factual, the material is readily available for adapting by BBC Online, which has quickly become Europe's most popular website.

Michael Stevenson, director of education at BBC, says: "In the future, if you are watching a factual programme, we will be offering, in parallel, engaging, interactive online packages that will help you to learn more. You can take the journey as far as tailor-made, online short courses. The content of these courses will be built around the research carried out for the development of the programme and may be accredited by a university."

Before long, after you have watched a factual programme, you will then be able to take an online "learning journey". Glenwyn Benson, head of science at the BBC, says: "Digital television viewers will be able to use bookmarks during our programmes, such as Walking with Dinosaurs. After the programme the viewer will be able to click on the bookmark and more information will be available on their television. It might explain the scientific discoveries that allowed us to create the lives of the dinosaurs, for example. If you then want to go over to your PC, you could build a dinosaur skeleton from its bones and see what the creatures were really like."

Equally innovative online ideas are being pursued to support career development. Organisations such as the University for Industry, a public-private partnership using modern technologies to suit the needs of learners, are developing free, online content to cover issues such as customer care, team building, IT and basic finance. At a more exalted level, Ivy League universities in America are pioneering the most ambitious forms of online learning, aimed at students anywhere in the world. Virtual courses, one-to-one teaching and interactive care studies are available over the internet—the English department at Cambridge University offers a Virtual Classroom open to all—but most are in their infancy.

In the UK, several universities are developing online content, both to attract revenues from distance learners and to open up e-commerce opportunities. Coventry University has 2 000 course modules online. "The internet is not going to replace the taught course," says Rhonda Riachi, director of the Association for Learning Technology, "but there will be enormous changes." Students will have far more flexibility in the options they can study, they will not be tied to a campus and they will be able to study with more than one institution.

What if you don't have access to a computer at home or work? Even worse, what if you are one of the 8m adults identified in the Human Capital survey who have real fears about even starting to use a computer? There are new ways that you can defuse your fears. By spring, more than 250 Learndirect centres will have been set up around the country by the University for Industry, designed to help adults adjust to new technology.

That internet cafe in West Yorkshire had better start planning to increase its output of butties and cuppas.

(1 635 words)

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