elearning_label_learning_and_society

This is not to say that it is the one and only answer - however, it is one of the key success factors that will help us to make the transition. It can potentially enhance the learning process for different types of skills and competencies. Initially the expectations of what e-learning can do were out of proportion and unrealistic. As a result of this we have seen false starts and disappointment. Learning technologies have been overhyped, not much different from other technologies in the early phase of their deployment.

People don’t easily adapt to technology but the new ICT have the potential to adapt to people’s needs

However, during the last few years more and more good practices have emerged. These demonstrate how to use the new technologies as tools to support formal and informal learning and how to create a new learning environment. New learning models have been tested, new pedagogical approaches pioneered, and new “cocktails” of technology and traditional approaches have been mixed. IBM has been one of the pioneers in deploying a blended learning approach for its internal management development programs. Knowledge Management had its own hype-cycle and now we see areas of informal learning that have evolved as Knowledge Management programs merging into a broader stream of e-learning implementations.

We have gained a much better understanding for what purposes we can effectively use e-learning and where its limitations lie. So why isn’t e-learning taking off in a big way in our daily lives - in schools, universities and in companies ? Why are the numbers of people who report great experiences that they have had with e-learning still somewhat limited ? Why are the best practices that we have seen emerging in many places not spreading much faster?

There is a reason for this, we have thousands of exciting and interesting experiments, however they are not scalable, and in many cases they are incompatible. The best ideas and practices are not transferable and not reusable in environments other than those where they have been developped. We have created many little gardens with little houses often with walls around them, with nice individual arrangements of plants and flowers - but with little capabilities to walk around beyond one’s individual space and talk to our neighbors. Every door has a different system to ring the doorbell, a different way to enter and the furniture cannot be used in any other house.

Looking for the capability to broadly share and exchange e-learning content

It is quite clear that we are looking for something different, be it the capability to share and exchange e-learning content regardless of where it has been produced or access to the learning resources at a given moment from wherever we me may be with whatever access device we use. This can range from laptop computers to PDAs to mobile phones. We would want to identify the best learning resources for our individual skills needs and be able to identify the sources of this information. These resources should be high quality and provide us content in various formats ranging from simple text to advanced digital multimedia. We would also like to have someone to support us personally if we get lost in the maze of the network and we will want someone who can accompany our learning process and advise and council us which route to take and which traps to avoid.

Am I talking about Utopia or is this a realistic possibility ? It is a possibility, however to get there we must get the fundamentals right. So we need to create a common infrastructure and a set of common standards and rules that help us achieve scale and scope in e-learning. We like to think about a new pedagogy, of exciting new multimedia content, and virtual tutors and digital curricula. All these wonderful innovations will only come to fruition on a broad basis if we get the fundamentals in place that enable the broad based deployment of learning technologies. If we continue to work in our little gardens then we incur a tremendous waste of energy and resources. Infrastructure and content production based on open standards will provide a dramatic acceleration of e-learning development and deployment. This is vital in a market that is currently extremely fragmented and that lacks clear direction and guidance. See the related article on eLIG, the European eLearning Industry Group by Richard Straub.