Delivering E-Learning

A Complete Strategy for Design Application and Assessment

Kenneth Fee

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780749457310
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Personalmanagement

Delivering E-Learning describes a new and better way of understanding e-learning. The author looks at overcoming objections to e-learning and acknowledging poor past practice before presenting a new strategic approach. It places the emphasis firmly on learning, not the technology, de-mystifying the jargon and de-bunking industry myths.The current way most people look at e-learning is flawed, and this means they are missing its full potential. This book provides a clear framework to better understand e-learning. Proposing a strategic approach to implementing e-learning, the author demonstrates how to align e-learning strategy with learning and business strategies. It offers a complete resource for applying e-learning to any organization.

1

Understanding e-learning

This chapter begins by trying to correct some of the mistaken and incorrect thinking about e-learning that is all too prevalent, and bemoans the lack of good general reference material on the subject. From there, it builds a picture of what e-learning is really about, explaining that it is an approach, not a method, and creating a new working definition. It explains the three component parts of e-learning, describes five different models of e-learning and discusses some different learning blends. Lastly, it debunks some of the worthless jargon that does not help our understanding of e-learning. Along the way, we hear for the first time from the members of our Virtual Round Table, on what they think are the big issues in e-learning.

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS

Too many people think e-learning is about the loneliness of the long-distance learner. When they think about e-learning, they often conjure up an image of a solitary individual sitting at a keyboard, working his or her way through readings, exercises and tests. They think of it as distance learning, and they think of it as self-study, lacking the interactions and the ‘human dimension’ of more traditional ways of learning.

This view of e-learning then leads to a lot of misconceptions. From this flawed frame of reference and stereotyped image, people derive a view of e-learning that is as inaccurate as it is limited.

Anyone moved to design e-learning in this way should reflect that information and communication technology (ICT) ought to be used to support and improve learning experiences, not replace them with a poor substitute. Some people have experienced e-learning that conforms to this stereotype, and this has engendered hostility to the very concept of e-learning. But it is a mistaken hostility, based on the wrong kind of experience.

I have met many people who say, ‘I don’t like e-learning’ or, in a slightly more sophisticated version, ‘it doesn’t suit my learning style’. I’m always amazed by these statements. Nobody would go on a bad course and come away saying, ‘courses don’t work for me’ – or, if they did, nobody would take them seriously. Another analogy would be people who said they wanted to learn but they didn’t like reading books. No employer would accept that as a reasonable explanation for not consulting an instruction manual. And yet this sort of attitude to e-learning persists – although perhaps not for much longer, as the digital natives take over and the alienated either become digital immigrants or retire.

A notable misconception is that only certain knowledge, or limited skills, can be gained by e-learning. While it is true that some e-learning methods are better suited to knowledge acquisition rather than skill development, the inferred conclusion about the limits of e-learning, in all its forms, simply does not follow. In this chapter and the next, we will explore why. For the moment, let’s say that there is much more to e-learning than many people imagine.

Some readers may feel they already understand e-learning, and will be inclined to skip this chapter. I hope not. To quote Doris Lessing, ‘That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.’ I aim to help people understand e-learning in a new way.

In this chapter we look at what is really involved in e-learning, what it means, and how it works. We consider the interrelationship of the components of e-learning, and we look at different e-learning models in order to reach a more complete understanding.

WHEN RESEARCH DOESN’T HELP

Clarifying the meaning of the word ‘e-learning’ itself is a good place to start. In my research, none of the standard works of reference has been much help. Most British dictionaries of English do not include a discrete entry for e-learning, simply offering e- as a prefix denoting electronic. The exception is the Collins dictionary, which describes e-learning as a computer-based teaching system. Learning and development professionals, who understand the distinction between learning and teaching or training, need better information. The good people at Collins are forgetting the great dictum of Galileo Galilei: ‘You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.’

But perhaps this should not be surprising, as the modern concept of e-learning, and even the term itself, is not much more than a decade old. According to the etymology in Webster’s American English dictionary, the term first appeared in the year 1997. Some attribute to veteran e-learning commentator Jay Cross the credit for having coined it, but nobody seems able to cite the exact reference to prove this claim. It happened at a time when people were adding ‘e’ as a prefix to many common words, including e-mail, e-business and e-commerce. What is certainly true is that the term was very rapidly adopted, and became common currency all over world by the turn of the century.

However, there has never been much agreement on how to spell ‘e-learning’, let alone how to define it. The main spelling variations are e-learning, eLearning (the choice of the European Union), elearning and e-Learning. Further variations italicize the e. And the leading British journal on the subject idiosyncratically spells it e.learning (to be fair, this is a branding foible that does not extend to the spelling in the body of the journal).

Some people argue that we should not distinguish e-learning from learning in general, as doing so encourages the view that it is a separate phenomenon (a view that some e-learning vendors have encouraged). They reason that e-learning should be subject to the same disciplines and the same measurements as any other form of learning. A related, but separate, argument is that the term should not be used at all, as e-learning is just another form of learning, albeit in electronic form. The standard retort to this is that the term ‘e-mail’ has been used for much longer and is still usefully distinguished from traditional mail that is physically delivered (‘snail-mail’, as the techies derisively call it). These objections to even discussing e-learning recur all the time, diverting and stifling debate whenever they arise.

Whether e-learning is a term that will be used in the future is not a question that will be encountered in this book. I start from the acceptance that the term is in current use, and seek to explain what we understand by it. I hope to demonstrate in this chapter and the following one that e-learning is a distinct subcategory of learning, and one that can help us reach a better understanding of learning overall.

E-learning is widely misunderstood. To the layperson, its specialized vocabulary is often mystifying. But not just that: people who debate its pros and cons sometimes find themselves arguing at cross purposes, because they are referring to different things. There are different kinds of e-learning, which we shall shortly distinguish, but learners who have experienced only one kind are not in a position to make judgements about the overall benefits.

One indicator of the confusion around the subject can be found in the fragmented entry on e-learning in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Between the time of my writing this and when you read it, that entry will have been edited and re-edited a number of times, but my guess is that it will still be an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle, inside a conundrum. Rarely has a new concept, the subject of so much attention, been so muddled.

For further evidence, consider the unhelpful glossary of terms provided by Wikipedia (at least, as I write this in 2008) – an arbitrary selection not even listed in alphabetical order.

A WORKING DEFINITION

There are too many definitions of e-learning. Many are offered by vendors, and should be treated with some suspicion, as they will be written to place the vendor’s offer at centre stage. Academic definitions, and those provided by governmental and professional bodies, are more authoritative, but still quite diverse, and sometimes more relevant to a formal educational setting than to a corporate context.

According to the European Union (EU):

eLearning is the European programme in the field of ICT for education and training which promotes the inclusion of ICT in all learning systems and environments (formal, non-formal, informal – school, higher and adult education and training).

In other words, the European Union defines e-learning in terms of practical EU initiatives, and takes a very broad view. But one weakness of this description is that it tells us very little about what ICT actually offers learning.

The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) is the world’s biggest professional body for learning and development, with about 70,000 members in about 100 countries all around the world. This makes it arguably better placed than most to define what e-learning is. The ASTD originally defined e-learning like this:

e-learning covers a wide set of applications and processes, such as Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classrooms, and digital collaboration. It includes the delivery of content via Internet, intranet/extranet (LAN/WAN), audio- and videotape, satellite broadcast, interactive TV, and CD-ROM.

This is a rather technology-specific description, likely to date, and liable to confuse all but those who already know what it is.

That was from 1998. By 2001 the ASTD was ready to expand somewhat on that:

E-learning refers to anything delivered, enabled, or mediated by electronic technology for the explicit purpose of learning. This definition excludes things that might fit under the title ‘distance learning’, but are non-electronic (such as books and paper-based correspondence). It is broader than, but includes, online learning, Web-based learning, and computer-based training. E-learning includes both one-way and two-way learning exchanges, as well as learner-to-learner interaction (as occurs in learning communities). For simplicity, assume that if you use a computer in some fashion to affect learning, then it is e-learning.

This is more useful, if a bit self-referential, but we need to encapsulate the concept in a briefer statement.

The United Kingdom’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) manages greater brevity when it states that e-learning is:

learning that is delivered, enabled or mediated using electronic technology for the explicit purpose of training in organizations.

The CIPD uses this definition to clarify the meaning for respondents to its regular surveys, hence the closing emphasis on organizations. This remains useful for our consideration of learning at work, but adds an unnecessary addendum to a general definition that can be used by all; we do not need to have a different definition for the world of work from what would be useful for schools and universities, and for e-learning for personal development.

Our definition needs to demonstrate and clarify some of the thinking needed to correct misconceptions. It should say something about the phenomenon that is e-learning, without recourse to examples, and should embrace all the technological applications, while excluding extraneous detail. It should also be as jargon-free as possible, expressed in simple, plain English. Therefore, we arrive at the following working definition:

E-learning is an approach to learning and development: a collection of learning methods using digital technologies, which enable, distribute and enhance learning.

That much should be clear enough. Some people want to engage in futile argument over whether true e-learning is purely online, or whether any learning that uses computers is ‘e’. Instead, we should agree that there are different kinds of e-learning, and seek how to classify them and thence to understand them better.

THE THREE COMPONENTS OF E-LEARNING

Allison Rossett distinguishes the ‘stuff’ of e-learning from the ‘stir’ – the stuff being the content, and perhaps the bits of technology that go into the mix, and the stir being the way the learning is put together, the connectivity, the teaching or training approach, the overall design. This is a useful distinction, because it makes people think about what goes into e-learning and how it all fits together. But we can go further.

There are three component parts of e-learning, namely enabling technology, learning content and learning design (see Figure 1.1). People tend to focus on the first, the technology, because this is the new and unfamiliar component, but the other two are at least as important. Software vendors tend to place great emphasis on the first, because that is what they contribute, and where they make their living, but that does not mean that learning and development professionals need to follow suit. Chapter 4 will look at the technology in more detail.

It almost goes without saying that the content of any learning programme is important, but it is a mistake to elevate it to prime importance. The phrase sometimes used is ‘content is king’, but it shouldn’t be. Technologists frequently underestimate what is involved in learning, seeing the learning process as little more than manipulation of content. And sometimes vendors emphasize the primacy of content to flatter the buyer and to protect their technology. Their concept of learning is as a process for transferring knowle...