Jess’ E-Learning Blog

 I thought that since this is the second time this semester this has happened, I should write it down and make a post of it. For the NGO Training Program project we’re working on in class, we have a liaison (Brett) who attends each class. He is supposed to communicate with Anne, our lecturer, who then tells us how we are supposed to complete our assignments. to keep both uni and DoCS happy. Sometimes though, what Anne says is different to what Brett says, which makes everything just confusing.

 The first time this happened was during the group project for DoCS, providing case studies of organisations using particular technologies. Anne told us that we only had to make the case studies relevant to DoCS’ context. However, Brett told us that they should all be ‘human service’ examples. Like aged home care organisations, drug rehabilitation centres, etc. We nearly had to rewrite three quarters of our assignment because of this, until we realised … Brett wanted us to use these examples so that he could take them to build a business case for whatever technology/ies they ended up using. So, we decided that DoCS cutting and pasting assignments that we hand in to uni would constitute a breach of Intellectual Property rules and therefore it doesn’t matter if they are not in the same industry as DoCS is.

The second time this happened was last week, when Brett ran the class because Anne was at a conference. In this class, we were supposed to choose a training program to use in an individual assignment. Over this week, we had to storyboard a high level e-learning alternative to the face-to-face program. The whole thing. Only, we weren’t told this by Brett. Brett told us that we had to think of e-learning alternatives to individual activities in the program. For example, ‘this bit of the program can be completed a week before the face-to-face program using this technology’. Apparently, DoCS’ aim is to reduce the face-to-face time (not necessarily to eliminate it) and to provide training ‘options’. This made storyboarding practically impossible - how do you storyboard an e-learning program which isn’t actually an e-learning program? So most of us spent last class in a confused stupor, wondering exactly what we were supposed to be doing.

My (long-winded, I know) point is that we are recieving two sets of direction and it is not helping us to work effectively. I think that the problem may lie in how well uni and DoCS have discussed their objectives, deliverables and particularly their assumptions in regards to this project. For instance, DoCS assumes that we will be able to find case studies directly related to their industry and that we will not be able to produce an entire e-learning program. They believe that the group work assignment is a deliverable that they can take for their own and their objective is to provide e-learning options, rather than an extensive e-learning program.

I have been looking at different storyboards for e-learning programs and how different learning theories affect the shape of storyboards. I know that when e-learning was first used, there was a lot of behaviourist learning style storyboards available because they were easy to design and build. More recently, there has been a shift to e-learning designs which employ other learning theories, and thus the creation of technologies such as m-learning, IM for learning and virtual worlds for learning. 

I don’t think that using any one of these technologies, or any one particular learning theory is really such a good idea. I think that the behaviourist model of learning (as much as I dislike it) is beneficial in that it provides structure by which learners are less likely to feel overwhelmed or ‘lost’ in their learning. Having said that, behaviouralist learning is boring and, if used too extensively, renders what could be an exciting e-learning experience no better than a three hour uni-style lecture on the wonders of nylon carpeting.

However, a storyboard based on constructivist learning is not much better. While it is beneficial that the learning is flexible in allowing students to do whatever learning they need to do in whichever order they choose to do it, what is to motivivate any student to do any of it? This apporach lacks the structure needed in learning which turns a giant program of an elephant into bite-sized bits of elephant learning. Many people, when faced with a large amount of work or learning are overcome by it’s vastness. It is through structure , which constructivism lacks, that individuals relise that their learning goals are achieveable.

In addition to this, a lack of structure means that learners have to be disciplined enough to do the work, with less direction from the instructor than in other learning styles. This problem is similar to one that students in my course sometimes experience when they complete a subject in Block mode (meaning three or four half-day classes during a semester) instead of having a shorter class each week. Students found that because classes were weeks apart, the work that they had to do between classes was often forgotten, half-done or completed a few days before class. The lack of teacher interaction and structure made it more difficult for them to be disciplined in their work. I think that this same pronciple can be applied to constructivist learning - learners in a program with little to no structure are not going to learn a lot any time soon unless they are genuinely interested in the topic and can motivate tehmselves to complete the work.