| This work presents a new theory for higher education online, known as 4th Dimension Learning, based upon a new paradigm of different understandings of the relationships between time and space using Einstein's Relativity Theory to demonstrate that time is relative to the observer and there is no absolute time or space. Through a heuristic narrative discovery process, culminating from three years of research into distance education, 4th Dimension Learning provides an original framework and a new paradigm for higher education online. It is argued that in the fourth dimension, learning is not measured by the clock hour or the hours in a classroom seat, but where information is instantaneous and knowledge can be acquired in a true non-linear model. With information attainable in the blink of a download, the click of a mouse, and where time is relative to the observer, then online learning becomes relative to the learner-proposing that the college student can learn more, faster through this Web-enhanced fourth dimension. The online learning theory presented bridges the concepts established in the New Physics of the 20th century and in learner-centered and resource-based educational theory, and explains how online learning brings college students the opportunity to learn on their own personal time by removing the time and space restrictions that encumber the traditional, physical academic setting established in the last century. It is theorized that the information age offers the potential for learning in the fourth dimension—a dimension beyond the three-dimensions of the physical classroom where time counts down the minutes of the classroom clock hour where it is assumed that knowledge is gained for all participants. |
