I am subscriber to many e-learning forums. In my experience too often the discussion is about systems rather than learning. The discussion that is most likely to generate responses is one that starts ‘I about to purchase a Learning Management System, Any recommendations’. What that follows is a mixture of name checking of various LMS systems interspersed with the suppliers recommending their wares. It is a rare for someone to ask the killer question which is what do you want it for?
Today we had an e-learning guru declare how impressed he was that someone had found a way of using Word Press as an LMS. There was little discussion about what transformation in learning had happened as a result of this discovery. The point he was trying to make was that wasn’t it good that someone had got hold of some open source software and come up with a ‘free alternative’ LMS. Aside from the making the obvious point that nothing is free i.e. there was a cost for working out how to use word press in this way, what was the actual impact on learning.
I know of one learning institution that is making creative use of share point to create what someone might want to call an LMS. They would actually reject such a suggestion and rather focus on what it has enabled them to do. This is to create a learning environment that places the learner at the centre of the process. It is not about managing the learner but enabling the learner to manage their own learning, the system is built around a learner not the course they are on. Furthermore in creating such a solution they are not wedded to one approach; they are quite happy to use proprietary software if this fits the bill.
I have written in this blog before how I find it difficult to understand this desire in e-learning to create solutions that do everything. It is hard to imagine in what other field of ‘engineering’ is this approach taken. It seems perfectly OK for someone who is manufacturing a car or constructing a building to source the expertise and the materials from different places. So what’s so different about designing learning systems?
Just because you are using sales force to manage your customers/members of your organisation what is the logic to extending sales force to create an e-portfolio? Why is there such a need to have an open source portfolio if your LMS is open source?
Having an integrated offer is a right and proper objective but if it is all sourced from one place are we sure that we are making the best offer to our learners/users? Maybe there is real value to be had from ‘shopping around’ and filling a shopping basket full of items that have been brought not because of the packaging but because they actually deliver what your learner’s need.
Friday 22 March 2013
Saturday 2 March 2013
We need to stay out of our silos
Every Friday night for the past two decades I have gone out with the same group of mates who have often delighted at pouring scorn on e-learning and e-portfolios. This week was different one of them has just joined Doosan, a South Korean company and he confessed to be enjoying his e-learning course that was inducting him into the history of the company and also showing him how to interact Koreans. Quite important given they are now his boss. He was not just enjoying it he could see its validity.
Early on in the week I was with the Group Director for E- learning for a large college and he was describing how e-learning was having a transformational effect in his organisation. As a result he was being enabled to harness expertise from a number of sources, including the private sector to create a full range of learning opportunities. Incrementally his team have been able to encourage each Department, to see the benefits of e-learning and they are now transforming the way that learning is delivered and tracked.
What had been clearly critical to this success was that e-learning was not seen as a separate activity from the development of the technical capacity and resources of the College, all this activity is being co-ordinated from one place, by someone who had the vision to see the links and with support from the executive to bring all the links together.
In one sense that is an obvious development but if you were to go around any learning institution in this country and track e-learning projects you are likely to find lots of ‘pet projects’ happening; a number of different e-learning products procured to do the same thing and little evidence of a positive benefit on the whole institution. You might also find that these initiatives were taking place with at best minimal support and at worst outright opposition, from those responsible for technology in the institution.
As someone going in from the outside into these institutions, the one person I am least happy to see at any demonstration is the representative from the IT department. As one of ‘their number’ was clearly pleased to remark recently ‘these e-portfolios were meant to be the big new thing 10 years ago and they have not gone anywhere’ It them became clear that any notion of the transformational effect of technology on learning was clearly not on his agenda.
Just over a decade ago I was manager of the East Leeds Family Learning Centre which was the venue for one of the first job guarantee programmes with Tesco. This was where unemployed people were offered a job, on the basis of their potential to be a good employee and provided they completed a training programme. The success of the programme was lauded because it got lots of unemployed people back into work. That was the end objective and it was spectacularly delivered.
However it was the easy and natural access into other services that ‘seamlessly’ delivered the result. What made the difference, was that a number of the successfully applicants, motivated by the guarantee of getting a job were able to quietly access the centre’s literacy and numeracy programmes, so that they were able to address the key issue that had stopped them making progress before. The ability to read and write. What mattered was that when the store opening was delayed, so that it opened after the summer holidays, we were able to harness the work of the Council’s Early Years’ service to create over 60 child care places. A process helped by the fact they were already in the building. It was the full integration of service delivery that made the difference.
E-learning and e-assessment will only be successfully delivered when it becomes a fully integrated part of curriculum delivery not something that is an occasionally added on and made available. The full extent of what it can offer will only be realised, when it is seen as more than just making learning environments electronic but where there is a recognition that it can transform the way that those learning environments are structured and delivered.
One would have hoped that the organisation like JISC that have asked to make this transformation would have done so by now, but for all the reasons described in this blog this is never likely to be the case. Like most things it is probably down to individual centres to pick up the e-learning ball and run with it in the hope that organisation like JISC might eventually catch up and others might look outside their silos.
Early on in the week I was with the Group Director for E- learning for a large college and he was describing how e-learning was having a transformational effect in his organisation. As a result he was being enabled to harness expertise from a number of sources, including the private sector to create a full range of learning opportunities. Incrementally his team have been able to encourage each Department, to see the benefits of e-learning and they are now transforming the way that learning is delivered and tracked.
What had been clearly critical to this success was that e-learning was not seen as a separate activity from the development of the technical capacity and resources of the College, all this activity is being co-ordinated from one place, by someone who had the vision to see the links and with support from the executive to bring all the links together.
In one sense that is an obvious development but if you were to go around any learning institution in this country and track e-learning projects you are likely to find lots of ‘pet projects’ happening; a number of different e-learning products procured to do the same thing and little evidence of a positive benefit on the whole institution. You might also find that these initiatives were taking place with at best minimal support and at worst outright opposition, from those responsible for technology in the institution.
As someone going in from the outside into these institutions, the one person I am least happy to see at any demonstration is the representative from the IT department. As one of ‘their number’ was clearly pleased to remark recently ‘these e-portfolios were meant to be the big new thing 10 years ago and they have not gone anywhere’ It them became clear that any notion of the transformational effect of technology on learning was clearly not on his agenda.
Just over a decade ago I was manager of the East Leeds Family Learning Centre which was the venue for one of the first job guarantee programmes with Tesco. This was where unemployed people were offered a job, on the basis of their potential to be a good employee and provided they completed a training programme. The success of the programme was lauded because it got lots of unemployed people back into work. That was the end objective and it was spectacularly delivered.
However it was the easy and natural access into other services that ‘seamlessly’ delivered the result. What made the difference, was that a number of the successfully applicants, motivated by the guarantee of getting a job were able to quietly access the centre’s literacy and numeracy programmes, so that they were able to address the key issue that had stopped them making progress before. The ability to read and write. What mattered was that when the store opening was delayed, so that it opened after the summer holidays, we were able to harness the work of the Council’s Early Years’ service to create over 60 child care places. A process helped by the fact they were already in the building. It was the full integration of service delivery that made the difference.
E-learning and e-assessment will only be successfully delivered when it becomes a fully integrated part of curriculum delivery not something that is an occasionally added on and made available. The full extent of what it can offer will only be realised, when it is seen as more than just making learning environments electronic but where there is a recognition that it can transform the way that those learning environments are structured and delivered.
One would have hoped that the organisation like JISC that have asked to make this transformation would have done so by now, but for all the reasons described in this blog this is never likely to be the case. Like most things it is probably down to individual centres to pick up the e-learning ball and run with it in the hope that organisation like JISC might eventually catch up and others might look outside their silos.
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