Jess’ E-Learning Blog

For the group assignment, one group made a wiki on the uses of virtual worlds in education. They mentioned that a benefit of virtual worlds is the anonymity, which can encourage shy individuals to express themselves, which I hadn’t thought of before. I definitely agree with this. When I have taught people, given a presentation or participated in groupwork, one of the persistent problems I have is group participation. So a virtual world which can increase participation would be very beneficial in that more ideas and knowledge could be passed along by people who have overcome their shyness.

So, I was going through my RSS feeds and I noticed that Suemin had updated! So I read, and then I thought! (shock horror!!! ^_^) I read Suemin’s last two posts, one describing learning styles and the other concerning the impact of learning styles on learning strategies, and had a few thoughts on what implications this has for e-learning.

My first thought while reading the entries was that the main problem for an educator is that when teaching a class there are so many variations of preferences that it is difficult to cater to them all, meaning that learning techniques used will not be effective for everyone in the class. While this thought was based on traditional face-to-face education, I think it still has implications for e-learning.

While an activist needs to do something to learn it and e-learning can be experiential, e-learning is restricted to an image on a computer screen. If the learner is an activist according to Honey and Mumford’s tests, but also a kinaesthetic learner according to VARK tests, a computer screen may not be active enough a medium - you can’t touch or feel or really be in a situation if it is presentedin a 2-D frame.

And while the activity of blogging involves observing, reflecting and thinking - and is therefore suited to reflectors and theorists - it is not suited to activists, and is only suited to pragmatists if they can link the reflection to a real life situation.

So, then, the same problem appears. If activities in e-learning are only appropriate for certain learners, and a class of learners is compromised of a variety of different learners, then the amount of activities that will need to be conducted to appease each learner group is enormous. However, a balance must be achieved between addressing the learners’ needs and time and workload constraints. A teacher cannot have too many activities teaching the same lesson, just in a different way. The educator would spend too much time creating the experiences and the learners would spend too much time going through each activity. This is not a viable option.

The question with learning styles (in e-learning and traditional learning) is how to address the needs of a variety of learners while maintaining the integrity of the structure of the learniong and learning techniques.

 An interesting point brought up by Ryan Watkins is that learners need to have ‘e-learning readiness’ if e-learning is to be successful. He makes the point that learning at school is primarily low-tech and highly face-to-face, making the transition to high-tech and low face-to-face in e-learning difficult, which does make sense.

However, the this is balanced by what school students do outside of the classroom. Last month on the train to uni, I heard a couple of school kids - I’d estimate year 8 - talking about the best way to build a computer, adding such-and-such graphics card, hooking this up with that, buying memory cards from this shop, etc, etc. Add this to the startling amount of ten year olds I know who know more about the Internet than I do, and I don’t think that there is a problem with the working knowledge of school students in regards to high-tech or low face-to-face tools.

I think that if there was a problem in acclimatising school students to e-learning, it would be actually accepting and understanding the ways in which learning can be embedded into the technologies that they already know. For me in my e-learning subject, the largest hurdle has been understanding how tools I already know or use can be used in new and different ways. It has been difficult to open my mind to the vast amount of possibilitieswhich technology can give. If there is a problem introducing e-learning to school students, I think that it would be breaking the moulds by which they define learning and the tools by which it can be done. 

This is a summary of Jennifer DeVries 2005 article, ‘E-Learning Strategy: A Framework for Success‘

An e-learning strategy is useful to set goals and measure the success of e-learning in the organisation. The goals are the main component of an e-learning strategy.

 Developing and Setting Goals:

1. Needs Assessmentaddresses the audience’ s needs and characteristics. Issues can include attitudes towards e-learning, computer literacy, motivation levels in regards to being trained, Internet connectivity and associated costs and hardware/software issues.
2. Review Team Readiness Training It is important to know how ready your team is to develop and initiate e-learning, both individually and collectively. These two steps will reveal skill gaps that need to be filled in order to have a successful program.
3. Obtain Management Direction This can be done in two ways:

• Top Down - Where management has instigated the process of creating an e-learning program you will want to be collaborative, asking if they have any particular programs in mind and why they want it.
• Bottom Up - If management has not instigated the development of a program, you will need to fit the program with the organisation’s strategic objectives and show examples of programs similar to the one that you are proposing.

Elements of an E-learning Strategy:

• Technology There are generally two categories that e-learning technologies fall into:

• Synchronous Technology - Interaction between the learner and educator with these technologies occurs in real-time. Examples include webinar, webcasting and chat technologies.
• Asynchronous Technology -Technologies in which the learner controls the time, place and content that they view.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) can be used to monitor both synchronous and asynchronous technologies and both types of technology can be blended into a learning program.

• Content This concerns what content you are going to design and how you are going to design it. Issues here include outsourcing, prioritising courses and how the instructor will perform. It is also important to evaluate the content now and also to develop a system of feedback for development once the program has been initiated.

•   Administration and Support need to be addressed to anticipate and address issues as they arise.  An e-learning strategy should include ways to “assign, track, manage, support, and report on your training course usage” (para. 25)

• Communication There are two issues regarding communication that need to be addressed in an e-learning strategy: change management and marketing communications. The change to an e-learning program needs to be handled carefully to avoid as much ill feeling towards the program as possible. Marketing is an issue as it is what draws students to the course and keeps the program viable.

•  Financial Analysis  Three words: Return on Investment (ROI). This is the ultimate reason that a program will or won’t be funded and it therefore needs to be considered. Issues that need to be considered include costs for development and maintenance, course prices multiplied by expected participation rates and estimates on how long it will take to break even.