“Why the E-Learning Boom Went Bust” – catchy title and an intriguing article in The Chronicle this morning.
The Chronicle
Authors Robert Zemsky and William F. Massy start by asking why the claims about e-learning were so “extravagantly off the mark.” They begin by looking at three basic assumptions behind the belief that e-learning would revolutionize teaching.
1.
If we build it, they will come. But they didn’t because no “dominant design” emerged and gathered a critical mass of practitioners behind it.
Actually two dominant designs did emerge: PowerPoint and commercial Course Management Systems (CMS). But both of these “tools” tend to be teacher-centric as they are commonly used. Both have the potential for dynamic, engaged, non-linear presentation, but, because of their deceptive ease of use, most folks just skim the surface and use the basic. Hence, learning occurs within traditional, teacher-centric framework.
2.
The kids will take to e-learning like ducks to water. But no one bothered to really examine what it was that students wanted.
From my experience at the University of Tennessee, supporting the Blackboard CMS and trying to advance the pedagogy that utilizes emerging technology, we notice that students like and now expect course materials to be available 24/7, and they like instant access to grades. Neither of these features, by itself, is a crucial element in creating in engaged learning. They can be. But in and of themselves. They are just convenience features.
A campus bookstore manager suggested that the researchers observe what software students were buying. The most popular programs were those that “allow their purchasers to prepare and distribute complex presentations.” They want to show off, presenting themselves and their work through these new tools.
Their fascination with technology has three major components:
A.
Desire for connectivity, to each other principally – on my daily walk, I am amazed at the number of cell phones pressed to ears with animated conversations going on
B.
Desire to be entertained: peer-to-peer file sharing here almost brought the Residential Network to its knees because students were unaware of the background activity that was taking place on this network, facilitated by the P2P software programs operating in the background.
C.
Desire to present themselves and their work. In 1992, I was technology coordinator for an affluent school district in Massachusetts. The computer teacher established criteria for a class project: credit for content and credit for presentation techniques and use of the technology. We were both amazed when the students quite deliberately chose to take a lower grade because their interest was, in fact, not on content mastery, but rather on bells and whistles.
3.
E-learning will force a change in how we teach
Faculty members use electronics to simplify tasks rather than changing how they teach their subjects. They “webify” their PowerPoint slide presentations and post them online in the CMS. The assignments look and feel the same, with some additional accessibility.
When campuses made investments in e-learning courses with their early adopting faculty, they found that “the courses died, simply because no one wanted to teach someone else’s e-learning syllabus.”
This expensive dying points out a critical aspect of pedagogical change that might have come along with the interest in learning objects, but did not emerge until recently: concept of designing, creating, storing, and retrieving course content with the express intent of facilitating reuse has not been adopted. I think the concept of reuse can be articulated and embedded in faculty development models but it hasn’t been adopted yet in any way that might impact how faculty teach.
The authors recommend that higher education develop a catalog of lessons learned. I see Educause as well as the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) as attempting precisely that, through their publications and conferences. Fine minds are actively working on these issues. However, the “pace of educational change and reform” is agonizingly slow for a variety of reasons. But the dialogue itself about transforming the academy is dynamic and exciting.
The authors recommend their report, “Thwarted Innovation: What Happened to E-Learning and Why,” available from their website.
Thwarted Innovation
