The teacher plays one of the most important roles in the educational process. His interaction with students entrusts him with the responsibility of adapting the teaching based on the era we are living and the new tools it provides. Education needs a form of teaching that is in line with the demands and new orientations of society; especially now because of the coronavirus.
The continuous advances in technology make it imperative to adapt the traditional way of teaching. There are now all the means for learning to stop following a teacher-centered teaching model and a text-based teaching. The student through technology is able to take an active role in learning. He is given the opportunity to gain some sort of experience as he has access to both primary and secondary sources.
Experiential learning conflicts with the traditional teaching. The focus of experiential learning is on the student who, through action and self-motivation, is called to build his knowledge. Self-motivation and proactiveness are very important principles because they mainly achieve the basic purpose of education, maturity and self-determination of the student. The pedagogical and doctrinal notion of ‘self-energy’ lies in the tradition of philosophical thinking about human nature. From a pedagogical point of view, self-motivation is not something standard, but something that needs to be developed and reassured. According to this pedagogical principle, the student and the teacher have an interdependent relationship, which is expressed as the relationship between the student’s self-efficacy on the one hand and the teacher’s instructional guidance on the other (Kapsalis & Nima, 2008).
The experiential and interactive teaching through new technologies is based on cognitive learning theories. In particular, Bruner’s theory on the “discovery learning” emphasizes the value of discovery as a learning process and as a cognitive outcome in education. It stresses the necessity of adopting the principles that govern science and proposes the application of the “discovery method” or “guided discovery” to the examination, analysis and investigation of cognitive objects in the learning process (Komis, 2004).
At the same time, it refers to the importance of transforming the knowledge into a language familiar to the students’ intellectual development level. Students, having the role of young researcher, are invited to observe, analyze, compare and extract the results of their research, thus discovering new knowledge. Some basic methods that are proposed in the discovery process are the experimental, midwifery, interactive and pragmatic techniques, while the teacher has the role of the facilitator during the learning activities (Raptis & Rapti, 2007). In recent years, Bruner has sought to link the theory of “discovery learning” to the social dimension of knowledge, thus approaching the “socio-critical” school of thought.
The interactivity of technology serves this new form of teaching. The introduction of multimedia into the educational process highlights a more comprehensive and objective source of information for the students. However, the teacher should be responsible to confirm that the material is valid.
Although the educational process can only benefit from the introduction of new technologies, it should be made clear that the aim is not to replace the traditional way of teaching – by eliminating the interpersonal relationship of the student with the teacher – but to evolve it and make it more relevant in modern and uncertain times.
