E-Learning in Action

The University of Leicester commenced the Adelie project in 2006. The

purpose of the project is “e-learning benchmarking pilot at University of
Leicester identified two key challenges associated with building capacity
among university teachers:
• designing for e-, m- and blended learning;
• teaching online with and through student activities.
This needs to extend, in a systematic way, both - across more disciplines
and to greater numbers of students and staff. ADELIE builds on four years
of developing the CARPE DIEM process with four other UK universities, and
is rooted in internal partnerships including three CETLs.
ADELIE's aims were to support staff across the University to:
• make more effective use of the technologies available to them such
as Blackboard and Breeze;
• get a better understanding of the use of learning design
(instructional design) and key relevant pedagogical concepts in e-
learning;
• be confident in choosing from a wide range of learning technologies
including e-learning and m-learning;
• design and implement online learning activities for engaging
students.”(Anon 2007b).

Irish colleges are making similar inroads using advanced e-learning

techniques. This year UCD made an Irish breakthrough as reported in
Silicon Republic.com “University College Dublin made history today as the
first Irish university ever to hold a lecture in the online virtual world
Second Life, with Professor Mary Burke from the school of information and
library studies who lectured to students from the virtual James Joyce
library.
Professor Burke’s lecture consisted of a series of slides relating to the
collaborative and educational aspects of Web 2.0 technologies such as
Second Life itself and online bookmarking resources like del.icio.us.”
(Boran 2008)

Is it necessary to be a pioneer in this field, does one need to be ‘at home’

with digital technology to use the latest e-learning techniques
successfully? Perhaps not: “…like most of my colleagues today, I have
never taken an online course as a student. So when I was asked to put my
course online, I felt quite unprepared, even though I had done it once
before. (I taught one course online seven years ago as a trial, and it did
not go well.) So I started the experience with great reluctance and
trepidation. Much to my surprise, I finished it jubilantly. It turned out to be
one of the best classes I have ever taught.” (Cottitore 2007). Before
embarking on this latest challenge Cottitore’s mindset was “I saw my
previous experience with teaching online as an enormous time sink that
did not improve learning. And I had hoped never to do it again.” (Cottitore
2007). So what was different this time?. This course taught had originally
been taught offline. When it was launched online demand for the course
went up. The course consisted of a mix or blogs (team and individual),
podcasts, Webinars, online documentation, and immediate access to
grades. When course had finished the reaction of both lecturer and class
was very positive. “There were several things that I believe made the
course so successful. One key was the blog discussions. Initially, the posts
read as individual, unrelated, formal discourses, even though I had
provided guidelines and a movie about how to participate in a blog
discussion. So, for the first two weeks of the course I graded the blog
discussions very strictly and provided a great deal of individual and team
feedback. I tried to convey that these discussions were analogous to
classroom exchanges in which they must build on the ideas of others. It
took about two weeks of low grades and extensive feedback, but they
suddenly "got it." The blogs became surprisingly high-level, extremely
energized discussions with application of course content, relevant life and
work experiences, and examples from the students' independent
research.” (Cottitore 2007)
A teacher (and blogger) Melanie McBride describes her experiences
teaching with e-learning 2.0 techniques (i.e. using web 2.0 tools). She
recounts how she and her class watched a vlog from Howard Rheingold on
Social Bookmarking. As a follow-up she introduced her students to
Twitter.com to allow them to ask questions about the day’s class –
questions that perhaps they would have been reluctant to ask in a class
setting. “…it struck me that since I was showing Howard Rheingold’s vlog
post, we might actually be able to FIND Howard on Twitter and, perhaps,
use Twitter to allow the students to ask him about his video. To do so
would, in my view, convey the immediacy of social and participatory
media in a way that nothing else would.
To my delight, Howard was not only available but sent a message to our
class!” (McBride 2008). Does this account prove that e-learning is the way
forward? Not necessarily, it does show how the learning experience can be
enriched for the student, but it is also down to the natural teaching
abilities of McBride herself, who knows what tools to use and when in
order to heighten the learning experience.

From a micro, one person e-learning strategy and implementation to the

experience of developing an e-learning on campus at UCD. Niall Watts
gives an account of how they developed an e-learning strategy via their
existing Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) – Blackboard to enhance the
e-learning experience on campus. Initial interviewing elicited the following
information: “Most of them had created small quantities of learning
materials. While many seemed to be satisfied with passive content
delivery, others were interested in fostering active learning online. They
were particularly interested in:

• Making greater use and reuse of images, animations and movie clips
• Developing virtual patient case studies
• Encouraging the students to reflect on their learning “ (Watts 2007)
The project was constrained mainly by time, training and content control.
Academics wanted control of content creation but didn’t possess the skills
to provide the content in the format necessary. Rapid development tools
were used, whereby lecturers were given a day’s training and then left to
develop the course content. Watts found that a day’s training was deemed
too long as only 5% of academics participated initially. The lecturers were
not looking to revolutionise the way subjects are taught but looking to
introduce blended learning techniques that added value to the normal
classroom and lab based learning. Initial feedback has been positive there
is still some resistance “While we have improved the interactivity of e
learning materials, there are still many academics yet to be convinced of
the value of online learning. Ease of use on its own does not guarantee
that effective or engaging content will be created or that the students will
appreciate it. Only an appreciation of and commitment to best practices
can do that.” (Watts 2007)
E-Learning Content
At a high level the question over content can be divided into three types:
(Bean 2008)
1. Content Centric Solution
2. Learner Centric Solution
3. Sponsor Centric Solution
Content centric describes were every last detail is contained in the course
– not ideal because the student becomes over-whelmed by the volume of
information and cannot see the wood for the trees.

Learner centric is the ideal solution – delivering to the student the precise
information that they need.

Sponsor centric is the reality – if they are paying the piper they call the
tune. We can see this in the example earlier of UCD where the academics
wished to have control over the new e-learning content. I don’t state this
as a criticism, mainly as an observation. Sponsor control in the work
environment is even more pertinent.

One of the criticisms of e-learning in the past has been around Content:
• Delivery
• Management
• Ownership
• Quality
CD-ROM was a cold, isolated mechanism for delivery; content was
painstakingly uploaded onto an Intranet, but once it was published it
stayed unaltered, becoming quickly out of date with no clear ownership to
improve the quality of the content. This is still an issue today.

Part of the problem, and this is certainly true of early iterations of e-

learning was that the “new” delivery method was still linear in design. As
Cathy Moore demonstrates, with PowerPoint presentations it is better to
give the audience an incentive to click on the “next” button. She offers
five ways of achieving this:”
1. End each slide by asking a question.
2. End a slide with an incomplete sentence.
3. Suggest a sequence; build a list
4. Compare and Contrast
5. Create a dilemma” (Moore 2008)

In academia Stephen Downes doesn’t believe that content is the primary

concern in E-Learning 2.0 “What happens when online learning software
ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is
"delivered," and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where
learning is created? … Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than
read and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than
courseware authors.” (Downes 2005). Elaborating further “The e-learning
application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It
represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and
content creation services used by other students…It becomes, not an
institutional or corporate application, but a personal learning center,
where content is reused and remixed according to the student's own
needs and interests. It becomes, indeed, not a single application, but a
collection of interoperating applications—an environment rather than a
system.” (Downes 2005)

George Siemens goes further by asking the question “A World without

Courses”. It is an interesting question. He tries to answer it with a slide &
audio presentation (Siemens 2008). The salient points are that he believes
people (digital natives) learn better through distributed forms of
technology, RSS feeds, YouTube etc than through a formal course.
However, a course’s value is perceived through its accreditation – the
piece of paper you receive at graduation. This is the challenge and the
question he poses.
However, from the perspective of Corporate E-Learners the business
drivers are different: “In business, we aren’t really looking to facilitate the
development of personal learning centers, so much as we are trying to
develop more effective strategies for getting work done. And we
understand that few employees, who are being evaluated on their
effectiveness in moving the organization toward organizational goals, are
interested in developing a collection of interoperating applications to
serve as their personal learning environment…Our take on "learning 2.0"
is that it's important to bring distributed learners together to have
conversations about just how that attempt to apply the concepts works
out in the field, the challenges they encounter, and the strategies they
employ to overcome those challenges…But we believe that content is just
the beginning, the jumping off point for deep learning, which is what
takes place when people think together about what helps them be
effective, and why.
We believe that learning 2.0 platforms must support these dialogs in both
structured learning programs and more informal communities of practice
which weave together a variety of collaboration tools as well as content
generation tools. The intelligent use of discussion forums, web meetings,
email, instant messaging, and chat is every bit as vital to the design of
learning 2.0 as sexy content publishing tools. In fact, we believe that this
weaving of interaction into the mix is at the heart of how to transform e-
publishing into e-learning.
” (Bock 2006).

Josh Bersin differentiates between two types of content: Instructional

Content and Informational Content – “Job aids, reference manuals, books,
conference calls, wallet cards, etc. are all “informational.” Exercises,
simulations, on-the-job exercises, and games tend to be “instructional.”
One could argue that traditional lectures may fall into either category.”
(Bersin 2007b). Additionally, e-learning, from a corporate perspective can
be implemented at four different levels – each level more complex (and
expensive) than the previous. The levels are useful in that they
demonstrate the requirements needed to meet specific corporate needs.
Category Example What the Tracking Tools you
learner will do Needed should use
1. Broadcast “There is a new Read None Email,
of New pricing model Powerpoint,
Information being Conference
announced and calls
here it is.”
2. Important “Here is the Read, listen, Who took Rapid e-
Knowledge new pricing and answer this? Did learning,
Transfer model, how it some they get Online
works, and how questions. it? powerpoint
it differs from with audio,
the previous tracking,k and
model.” assessment
3. Developing “Learn how to Read, listen, Did they Courseware
New Skills price complex and try out new really with
products so you skills. learn? interactions,
can become a What assessments,
pricing guru.” score did exercises, and
they get? simulations
4. Creating “Become a Read, Listen, Did they Courseware
Certified certified pricing try new skills, pass? Are with
Competencie expert in the and become they assessments
s regional sales certified. certified? or certification
office, with exam.
authority to
give discounts.”
© “Four Categories of E-Learning” - Bersin & Associates, 2007 all rights reserved.

Table 3.1 (Bersin 2007b)

From Bersin & Associates own research the current demand is in category
1 & 2 which they have termed “Rapid E-Learning”. The characteristics of
these types of products are:
• Combination of Slides, Video, Audio
• Self Authoring
• Low Cost
The driver for corporate e-learning solutions is low cost training solutions –
Rapid E-learning meets this requirement.

In a separate article Bersin demonstrates how e-learning technologies can

be successfully united to the disparate demographic of modern
organisations.
Table 3.2 (Bersin 2007a).
This table is a logical elaboration on the Digital Native / Digital Immigrant
divide discussed earlier. Different generations have different training
requirements – how does a corporate e-learner provider meet all needs?
Similar to the views held by Downes et al people learn in different ways. In
a corporate environment people learn as follows:

Table 3.3 (Bersin 2007a)

70% of what an employee learns in the work environment is from peers or
informally. It is a challenge for suppliers to harness this for employers.
Or as Jay Cross explains “Workers learn more in the coffee room than in
the classroom…They discover how to do their jobs through informal
learning: asking the person in the next cubicle, trial and error, calling the
help desk, working with people in the know, and joining the conversation.
This is natural learning - learning from others when you feel the need to
do so…Training programs, workshops, and schools get the lion’s share of
the corporate budget for developing talent, despite the fact that…this
formal learning has almost no impact on job performance. And informal
learning, the major source of knowledge transfer and innovation, is left to
chance.” (J. Cross 2008).

Bersin’s solution is explained by the table below. By using a variety of

techniques and methods to maximise learning and retension of
knowledge.

Table 3.4 (Bersin 2007a)

As he explains “a new employee (novice) starts on the lower left of the

chart and then moves up the learning curve (in the gray area) to a
plateau. At that plateau they find that they are no longer performing as
well as they want, so they need some training and they attend a “training
event.” Right after this event their learning shoots up to the top of the
gray area, and they feel very comfortable with the material. They go back
to their jobs, and of course in a short period of time they forget 70-80% of
what they learned, arriving at the right side of the gray area - more
capable than when they started, but not nearly as expert as they felt
during the training period.

The idea of “learning on-demand” is to create a wide variety of tools and

processes to support the continuous learning process we described earlier.
The orange area “fills in the blanks”before and after a training event and
includes many opportunities to learn and gain expertise. (Bersin 2007a).

Tony Karrer, outlines the challenges facing corporate learning

organisations: “Corporate learning functions are seeking to find ways to
lower production costs so they can attack broader markets – go farther
into the long tail. They look to eLearning approaches to lower distribution
costs. They look to rapid authoring tools to lower production costs. For
corporate learning functions to really impact the long tail, they will be
forced to look at eLearning 2.0.John Hagel – … tells us: What we know at
any point in time has diminishing value. Corporate learning is also facing
the fact that anything they create and publish becomes out of date that
much faster so effective production costs are increasing.”(Karrer, Tony
2008).

It is interesting how Karrer picks up on the “long tail” argument made by

Seely-Brown. Although e-learning in academia and in private enterprise
have different drivers and requirements, they also face similar challenges.