This month we talk with Tony Bates about national and international trends in flexible learning that he's noticing in his travels...

Q: The Australian Flexible Learning Community supports Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector. What differences do you see in the ways the higher education, VET sector and school sectors are employing e-learning/flexible learning? Is there a difference? Should there be?

A: This is a difficult question for me to answer, as my focus and experience is mainly in higher education. I suspect that in some higher education institutions, e-learning is playing a larger role, because they put less emphasis on the development of social or motivational behaviour compared with schools, for instance. Having said that, one main reason for using e-learning is to develop skills for a knowledge-based society, which include teamwork, communication skills and collaborative learning. 

I think that in higher education and also possible in VET, e-learning can play a more central role in teaching and learning than in schools, where it tends to be used more as a supplement to classroom teaching. However, even in higher education, supplementing classroom teaching is still by far the main use of e-learning as well.

The big difference though is the use of e-learning in corporate training. Many organisations are now embedding 'just-in-time' e-learning within the work process, so that if for instance someone needs to know how to do a graph from data in an Excel spreadsheet, they can go online and download just that module of teaching.

Q: How do you see organisational structures changing as a result of flexible learning? (Both education providers and corporate organisations).

A: I don't see organisational structures changing as much as I would like. Indeed, in my own institution (UBC), the trend has been the opposite, to try and integrate e-learning (including distance education) within existing faculty structures, and without any changes at the Faculty or department level. In my view this leads to duplication, lower quality of teaching, and overwork for professors. Nevertheless, institutions that are introducing good quality e-learning tend to have professional support units for faculty and a project approach to re-design of courses to exploit e-learning more fully.

Where I do see good progress in organisational change is in student administrative services going online (admission, registration, tuition fee payment, textbook ordering, student records, portals, e-portfolios). The reason for this of course is financial: getting students to do their own online administration saves lots of money.

Q: Do you think the concept of an “educational institution” will become less relevant as more education and training goes online?  As flexible learning makes it easier for VET organisations to use expert facilitators - who are currently working in their industry - will we see the downfall of the professional teacher? What is the role of industry in this new training context?

A: Well, the University of Phoenix uses expert facilitators who are currently working in their industry. This model works well in a niche market, but it still needs a major institutional and organisational structure to support learners. In North America, the collapse of many for-profit e-learning initiatives shows that here at any rate there is still a strong demand for credentials, even or especially for lifelong learners. Another reason for the collapse of some of the for-profit initiatives is that they grossly under-estimated the cost of learner support - the need for a mentor, assessor and advisor. So I think professional teachers will be necessary, but they may not be tenured academic faculty.

Smart companies will train their own staff in teaching techniques so that they can act as mentors and advisers in an e-learning context for other employees or increasingly suppliers and clients.

Q: What are the issues that concern teachers, management and CEOs? Are they different? How can these be resolved successfully?

A: I think the issues are very different. Teachers are concerned about workload, rewards (or lack of them) for innovative teaching, and intellectual property.

Management of educational institutions are concerned about cost, quality, and how to innovate without it costing money.

CEOs are concerned with competitive advantage and how e-learning can lead to increased productivity.

I think the intellectual property issue is difficult, because academics believe that they own everything that they do and don't trust academic administrations. Even more difficult is negotiating necessary changes in the way teachers work, such as project management, where they have to be held accountable for delivering on time and to a certain standard. This is seen (wrongly in my view) as a threat to their academic freedom, and (rightly) to their autonomy, which is not quite the same thing.

Q: You have talked about “Lone Rangers” of e-learning. I am sure there are quite a few out there in our community. Can you explain what they are and comment or offer advice?

A: Lone Rangers are individual teachers working on their own to create and deliver e-learning. They often have to work this way because there is no institutional support available (other than a pat on the head). However, it is also the preferred method of working for many academics (autonomy again). The problem is that either the teacher starts to get overloaded with work as more and more material goes online (and also the students start to get overloaded) and/or the quality of the teaching is poor, because the teacher cannot be a subject expert, web programmer, graphic designer and instructional designer, at least not without substantial re-training. Technology is not used to change, but to add on.

Institutions need to provide both technical and instructional support, so that classes are re-designed to achieve the benefits of technology. In essence, technology should be used to take some load off the teacher, by enabling students to use their time interacting with learning materials and other students, enabling the teacher to focus on individual or small group interaction (online or face-to-face). This may mean reducing but not eliminating the time spent in class, for instance.

Q: What are the sorts of mistakes organisations make when moving to online training?

A: The main one is to assume it can just be added on to the existing workload of people. There needs to be quite substantial up-front investment, a major effort at re-training, and explaining the role and purpose of e-learning, which in turn requires some strategic decisions to be made about priorities and goals for e-learning. The main mistake is just to drift into e-learning through keen Lone Rangers. This will just add cost and frustration.

Q: What are three things a CEO needs to know about change management and the implementation of e-learning?

A: CEOs need to think clearly through the links between e-learning and company productivity. E-learning is not so much a new way of doing traditional training but of ensuring that all staff have the tools to improve their performance. This means combining knowledge management - the organisation of all the information available in a company so that the people who need that information can easily access it in a form that helps their decision-making - with e-learning, so that work and learning are fully integrated. This may mean moving responsibility for the introduction of e-learning away from training professionals towards line managers, although the training professionals should be key members of the planning and implementation process.

Q: We hear a lot about international competition with regards to the delivery/supply of online learning. Who’s winning? Who will surprise us? (So, what is happening in Mongolia…?)

A: No-one is winning. There have been very good studies on the 'Business of Borderless Education' done in Australia which show that education and training is still quite context-specific and 'brand-driven'. In other words, learners don't opt for any organisation but look to institutions that they know for e-learning. Thus the market for internationally delivered e-learning, although large and growing, is limited to certain contexts. For instance UBC offers a global degree in educational technology in partnership with Tec de Monterrey in Mexico. UBC has participants from over 30 countries in the English sections of the program, but most of these have some connection to Canada or UBC. For instance one third of the UBC enrolments in this program come from the local province, one third from the rest of Canada and the remaining third from other countries. Local markets are important, although in this program the international students make the difference between profit and loss. The partnership with Tec de Monterrey is critical for ensuring sensitivity to different cultural contexts and ensuring that the program can be delivered in Spanish as well as English.

I think we will see some growth in corporate universities. Volkswagen for instance is developing an AutoUniversity focusing on 'sustainable mobility in the 21st century'. Although it will be a combination of face-to-face and online teaching for its middle management initially, the plan is to widen the program and eventually seek accreditation as a public university in Germany. The aim is to 'future-proof' the company.

The demand for online education and training continues to grow. I have been involved in a World Bank project to provide distance education to the most remote rural areas in the world, many of which have no grid electricity supplies, let alone the internet. However, in Mongolia, we found that the nomadic herdsmen and their families, who lived in tents and moved their livestock across the open steppes as the seasons change, wanted information on market futures for goats, sheep and cattle, so they could anticipate market demand, how to market their livestock, financial management skills, and the development of and marketing of traditional crafts. They wanted internet access, and will probably get it within 10 years, through satellite systems (some are already accessing television in this way). In the meantime, the aim is to provide herdsmen's families with print material, CD players, and provide computers with DVD drives in the local village schools, and deliver non-formal education through the ministry of Education's non-formal education administrative infrastructure. However, all materials will be created digitally so that it can be transferred later to the internet.

Tony Bates runs a Canada based consultancy company that specialises in the planning and management of e-learning and distance education. He is responsible for developing a program of research into e-learning at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain and is on the Academic Advisory Board of the Volkswagen Auto Uni, based in Germany.

Tony was Director of Distance Education and Technology in the Continuing Studies Division of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada for 10 years and Research Team Leader of MAPLE, the Centre for Research into Managing and Planning Learning Environments in Education at UBC.

He is a founding member of the British Open University where he worked for 20 years as a Professor of Educational Media Research.

Tony has worked as an e-learning consultant in over 30 countries for clients such as the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO, national ministries of education and several U.S. state higher education commissions. He is the author of eight books.