RESEARCH - E-LEARNING PRACTICES DEFENDED

Updated 20/02/2003

HUMAN LEARNING - E-LEARNING PRACTICES DEFENDED
Wilson, E. (2003) Beware of the Lazy Luddite Lecturer, says IT Vendor
The Age newspaper (Australia). 'Next' section 11 February.P.9.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/08/1044579986668.html

Interviews with Con Kittos, Asia-Pacific CEO of e-learning software vendor, Click2Learn and Mark Baker, CEO of corporate e-learning vendor MindAtlas. They make their responses to perceived obstacles to making e-learning the primary teaching tool.

A. Undermining Teaching and Bad Teaching Habits -
They agree that tools misused cause more damage than good. To use them well does require the lecturer to acquire Learning Technology Competencies. 'Online learning requires academics to acquire new skills,' one of them is quoted to say. Currently those type of lecturers are RARE in Australia mainly due to a lack of an education vision amongst academics not just lack of technical skills.

One learning technology competent lecturer is cited. He lectures face-to-face across all his region. He then complements this teaching with website subject assistance - his lectures on a basic website - lecture audio recordings, lecture Powerpoint slides, generic question and answers page ('FAQs'), personal emails responses within 24 hours. No measurement of his success amongst his students was stated though.

Downside of traditional lecture formats? (i) A student's inattentiveness on the day leading to inferior lecture notes. (ii) Information dumping abuse with little engagement.

E-learning courses can engage students better and they can review difficult material repeatedly, one was quoted as saying.

B. E-Learning - poor sequential guidance over a complex subject
- poor primary vs secondary components guidance and
- poor customised terminology.
'Baker blames flat HTML curriculum' dumped in people's faces... fully backing the claims that most academic subject websites are abusive information dumping nightmares for students. A simulation website setup is the ultimate goal many are believing. Agreed that lack of local customisation is a major problem with e-learning packages.

Wilson concludes that the promise of e-learning still seems paved with attitude and technical problems that are not being addressed as yet.

- DEBRIEF -

These vendors in this communique failed to give evidence of the effectiveness of e-learning. Thus they continue to be unconvincing.

Surely, the universities that have been using e-learning tools have evaluated student responses and performances to this complementary learning tool. But they failed to inform this newpaper journalist of this. I certainly would not start making a major investment in this alternative/complementary learning tool without seeing some evidence. "Saving you money," is no evidence to the vision of of a progressive university.

What about individual keen lecturers at Griffiths university ? Even anecdotal evidence like "Yes, 50 % of my students say that my subject website is really helping with their performance, another 30 % don't really mind and 20 % rarely use it.... With that break up...I definitely will use it as one of my main teaching tools. " The vendors gave zero evidence to its efficacy from the claims they made !

I too use a tennis racquet on the tennis court but I could be in any grade from grade 15 to the top grade... Stategrade ! I am actually in Grade 5 but you couldn't tell from the state of the art tennis racquet of mine !

Wilson, the journalist, has not gone to the END-USER.... the student of the lecturer who enthusiastically provides this online teaching tool.

From this article, at best, we can say - online learning can ONLY be used complementary rather than alternatively to face-to-face learning. This is clearly admitted by the CEO of one of these IT vendors.

And these vendors did not emphasise the critical skills of face to face and electronic discussion forums amongst students that greatly assist students with a lecturer's gobbledeegook.

We also can easily get sidetracked by teacher and system qualities as the continuing interest in the e-learning debate shows. We forget who our cusomer is... the student/employee. Yet few of these proponents or exponents, (including academics) cannot tell us solid, empirically-grounded adult learning theories. They can't eloquently tell us foundational student/employee learning disciplines. They cannot tell us how students actually learn.

In other words, they are coming up with interventions that may in no way impact the real learning pathways of students ! They would rather come up with a Bells and Whistles system than start with the foundational process. They are putting the cart before the horse !!!! We used to call that in the old days witchcraft and hocus pocus !

I agree... because of my extensive analysis of how humans actually acquire cognitive and behavioural competence... that a simulation environment is at powerful learning tool. BUT, to create that digitally at this stage takes enormous resources.

In a decades time, when the academic is paid for their good website design skills - WYSIWIG Website/Graphics/Audio editors + Dynamic Databases skills - students will get the added customisation and prioritisation that is needed to fulfill e-learning's benefits as complementary to face-to-face learning.

E-learning should be carefully evaluated to discover its benefits. But unless we start from the principles of human learning then we jsut are 'spinning our wheels.' Yes ? We have no yardstick to measure ourselves by. Let's look to the yardstick as we attempt new interventions... in anything we do. OK ?

Aaah ! But there is even a greater issue. The real issue is that the academic or the corporate trainer feels uncomfortable with evaluating their own performance in a unsupportive, punitive environment prevalent in academia and in corporations. I would too ! That is the mega-issue, isn't it ? No room to fail along the way to acquire new skill mastery. No reward for experimentation.... so you survive on yesterday's skills. No reward to share insights with departmental colleagues. No profound learning about your occupation. I wish you luck ! Or for some of you... may all your magic incantations produce miracles.

There ain't no shortcut to profound learning... no magic memory pill or computer game. Stop pretending there is.