"Opinion Piece" was introduced in 2004. Each month an industry specialist was invited to share their view on that month's Community theme. In this Opinion Piece, Professor Shirley Alexander presents:  elearning - a future based on improving pedagogy/on automating existing practice

I have chosen the title for my Opinion Piece because I believe that e-learning is at a cross-roads. Despite the millions of dollars that have been spent on infrastructure we have, by and large, failed to deliver on many of the earlier promises of e-learning. Administrators have been attracted by the promise of decreased costs of education, teachers have been drawn to assurances of increased quality of learning, while students have eagerly anticipated the opportunities for just-in-time, just-for-me, just-enough, learning. Unfortunately, evidence that these promises have been realised is thin on the ground, and hence business and governments are (perhaps quite rightly) beginning to question whether their investments in e-learning have been worth it. In fact, future funding for e-learning seems rather more uncertain now than ever before, and will remain so, until we can demonstrate more convincing evidence of its consequences.

The major problem, as I see it, is that we have consistently failed to learn the lessons of the history of the evolution of new technologies, where developers and inventors have been spectacularly unsuccessful in their attempts to dictate the eventual uses of their new technologies. An example of this is the evolution of the telephone, originally conceived of by its inventors as a more modern and automated telegraph. The inventors “told” users how they should use it (for business and efficiency purposes only) and actively discouraged its use as a device for sociability.

In fact it was not until some 20 years after the telephone’s invention, that its promoters realized that it was not being adopted as rapidly as automobiles or electricity, and finally accepted and eventually promoted its use in facilitating social connectedness (“reach out and touch someone”). This was despite numerous earlier signs that this might be a significant and important use. In writing about the evolution of the telephone, Fischer (1992, p82) described the process as follows:

 "the story of how and why the telephone industry discovered sociability provides a few lessons in the nature of technological diffusion - it suggests that the promoters of a technology do not necessarily know or decide its final uses; that they seek problems or needs for which their technology is the answer, but that consumers themselves develop new uses and ultimately decide which will predominate".

There are of course many parallels with e-learning where “experts” or product developers tell us how we should use it. Some talk about generations of e-learning in terms of advances in the technologies, while others profess the enormous gains to be made if only we would all adopt teaching strategies that are underpinned by notions of constructivism, or if we could facilitate learning through Communities of Practice. But exactly how do learners “construct” their knowledge, either alone, or within Communities of Practice? Some “experts” would have us believe that provision of simple web pages (textbooks on screen) containing content in text, audio and/ or video is more than enough to enable learners to “construct” their knowledge. Those experts are usually silent on the question of exactly how learners create meaning from this collection of someone else’s ideas.

The nineties have been a time during which we have “let 1,000 flowers bloom” in e-learning development. We have spent millions of dollars experimenting with a variety of approaches to e-learning developments, many of which regrettably represent little more than a pedagogy based on the automation of teacher and textbook as deliverer of information. There have however, been some encouraging attempts to use pedagogies which are underpinned by more contemporary views of learning, and which have the potential to realise some of goals of improved learning outcomes. But we do not have enough information of the consequences of these experiments, to move forward to the next generation of e-learning developments.

It is now a critical time for e-learning practitioners to undertake the important role of evaluation, and engage in evaluation practices which foreground the learners’ experience of e-learning (with the technologies and context playing a supporting role), and undertake holistic, longitudinal evaluation studies, rather than the short term “Polaroid” evaluations of the present. We need to understand the consequences of e-learning over time and within a variety of contexts. As noted by Castells (2001, p28):

“..we engage in a process of learning by producing, in a virtuous feedback between the diffusion of technology and its enhancement….. It is a proven lesson from the history of technology that users are key producers of the technology, by adapting it to their uses and values, and ultimately transforming the technology itself…”

Gaining a deeper understanding of the ways in which learners experience e-learning and then adapting e-learning to their uses and values, will help us to develop a deeper, more evidence-based understanding of important questions such as

• which learners benefit from e-learning?
  
• how do learners approach e-learning in a variety of contexts?
  
• what do learners think that e-learning is good for?
  
• what is best achieved face-to-face, and what is best achieved online?
  
• what do students believe they have gained and/or lost as e-learners?

It is only by gaining a deeper understanding of the consequences of our practice as e-learning designers that we will be able to move forward in developing and further refining the pedagogies that will ensure the success of our learners.

References

Castells, M. (2001) The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Fischer, C.S. (1992). America Calling: A Social History of the telephone to 1940. University of California Press: Berkeley.

Professor Shirley Alexander is the director of the institute for Interactive Media and Learning (IMA) at the University of Technology Sydney.