A few years ago I participated in an online course on e-learning in higher education. During the course I reflected on the question: What to teach and what not to teach? I was reminded of this question last Friday during a two-hour conversation with a colleague at work. I will refer to my colleague as DH.

DH and I were discussing issues of course design and staff development for e-learning. We both agreed that more needed to be done and I think our views concurred on what staff needed to learn; however, we did not agree on what staff should be taught explicitly. I argued that staff who engaged in certain activities would automatically pick up some of the things DH wanted to teach.

Right now I am reflecting on two questions: Firstly, is there any point in teaching staff things they are going to learn anyway? Secondly, is situated learning always better?

To be fair, DH did not agree that staff would automatically learn all the things they needed to understand and street math illustrates the potential problem of overdependence on situated learning. Nevertheless, I still think it is important not to teach everything. Perhaps the ideal would be to combine situated learning with some kind of reflective activity designed to help plug remaining gaps in knowledge.