E-Learning in Higher Education

This chapter examines the nature of change in Higher Education with respect to the introduction and growth of e-learning. While the ostensible aim is to use e-learning to improve the quality of the learning experience for students, the drivers of change are numerous, and learning quality ranks poorly in relation to most of them. Those of us working to improve student learning, and seeking to exploit e-learning to do so, have to ride each new wave of technological innovation in an attempt to divert it from its more natural course of techno-hype, and drive it towards the quality agenda. We have to build the means for e-learning to evolve and mature as part of the educational change process, so that it achieves its promise of an improved system of higher education. Why is e-learning important for HE? A student who is learning in a way that uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) is using e-learning. These interactive technologies support many different types of capability: internet access to digital versions of materials unavailable locally internet access to search, and transactional services interactive diagnostic or adaptive tutorials interactive educational games remote control access to local physical devices personalised information and guidance for learning support simulations or models of scientific systems communications tools for collaboration with other students and teachers tools for creativity and design virtual reality environments for development and manipulation data analysis, modelling or organisation tools and applications electronic devices to assist disabled learners For each of these, there is a learning application that could be exploited within HE. Each one encompasses a wide range of different types of interaction – internet access to services, for example, includes news services, blogs, online auctions, self-testing sites, etc. Moreover, the list above could be extended further by considering combinations of applications. Imagine, for example, a remotely controlled observatory webcam embedded in an online conference environment for astronomy students; or a computer-aided design device embedded in a role-play environment for students of urban planning. From Changing Higher Education, Edited by Paul Ashwin (RoutledgeFalmer, forthcoming) E-Learning_in_Higher_Education.doc 2 16 June 2004 The range and scale of possible applications of new technologies in HE is almost beyond imagining because, while we try to cope with what is possible now, another technological application is becoming available that will extend those possibilities even further. Everything in this chapter will need updating again when 3G mobile phones begin to have an impact on our behaviour. Never mind; we keep the focus on principles and try to maintain our equanimity in the face of these potentially seismic changes. E-learning is defined for our purpose here as the use of any of the new technologies or applications in the service of learning or learner support. It is important because e-learning can make a significant difference: to how learners learn, how quickly they master a skill, how easy it is to study; and, equally important, how much they enjoy learning. Such a complex set of technologies will make different kinds of impact on the experience of learning: cultural – students are comfortable with e-learning methods, as they are similar to the forms of information search and communications methods they use in other parts of their lives intellectual – interactive technology offers a new mode of engagement with ideas via both material and social interactivity online social the reduction in social difference afforded by online networking fits with the idea that students should take greater responsibility for their own learning practical – e-learning offers the ability to manage quality at scale, and share resources across networks; its greater flexibility of provision in time and place makes it good for widening participation There is also a financial impact. Networks and access to online materials offer an alternative to place-based education which reduces the requirement for expensive buildings, and the costs of delivery of distance learning materials. However, learners still need people support, so the expected financial gains are usually overwhelmed by the investment costs of a new system and the cost of learning how to do it. We cannot yet build the case for e-learning on cost reduction arguments – we are better placed to argue for investment to improve value than to save costs. Changing HE towards the use of e-learning E-learning could be a highly disruptive technology for education if we allow it to be. We should do, because it serves the very paradigm shift that educators have been arguing for throughout the last century. Whatever their original discipline, the most eminent writers on learning have emphasised the importance of active learning. The choice of language may vary ~ Dewey’s inquiry-based education, Piaget’s constructivism, Vygotsky’s social constructivism, Bruner’s discovery learning, Pask’s conversation theory, From Changing Higher Education, Edited by Paul Ashwin (RoutledgeFalmer, forthcoming) E-Learning_in_Higher_Education.doc 3 16 June 2004 Schank’s problem-based learning, Marton’s deep learning, Lave’s socio-cultural learning ~ but the shared essence is the recognition that learning concerns what the learner is doing, rather than what the teacher is doing, and the promotion of active learning in a social context should be the focus of our design of the teaching-learning process. It is especially the social situatedness of learning, in the Vygotskyan tradition, that is the focus of David McConnell’s chapter in this book. If the organisation of teaching and learning in HE were driven by the insights of these scholars, then e-learning would have been embraced rapidly as the means to deliver active learning. But change in HE requires a subtler understanding of the forces at work, and here Lewis Elton is a valuable guide. In his analysis of strategies for innovation and change in higher education (Elton 1999), he draws a distinction between hierarchical and cybernetic models of governance, which have contrasting approaches to change, the former being top-down, the latter relying on a network structure that allows the opportunity for bottom-up as well. Achieving the right balance between the two enables innovation to be embraced within a model of change management: “New ways of learning ... require new forms of institutional management” [Ibid, p219] so if universities are to rethink their methods of teaching, they need a management structure that is capable of supporting innovation: “The process of change must be initiated from both ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’, with the bottom having the knowledge and the top the power... The top must use its power, not overtly and directly, but to facilitate the work from the bottom and to provide conditions under which it can prosper” [Ibid, p215] A top down management structure is inimical to successful innovation precisely because management does not have the knowledge necessary. A similar point is made in a collection of articles in a recent Demos publication on the process of reform in the public services in general. Here the ‘mechanistic state’ is contrasted with the ‘adaptive state’ [Demos, 2004]. Again, the point is made that if we try to innovate through command and control methods, the innovative idea weakens as it travels down the hierarchy and confronts the local system knowledge it is failing to use in its process of reform. In an adaptive, or cybernetic structure, the model is not a unidirectional graph, but a network, with multiple two-way links between all nodes, even if there is a hierarchical organisational structure. These local dialogues allow localised versions of the innovation to spread downwards, customised versions to spread sideways to peer groups, and generalised versions to travel upwards to managers and leaders. We need systems capable of continuously reconfiguring themselves to create new sources of public value. This means interactively linking the different layer and functions of governance, not searching for a static From Changing Higher Education, Edited by Paul Ashwin (RoutledgeFalmer, forthcoming) E-Learning_in_Higher_Education.doc 4 16 June 2004 blueprint that predefines their relative weight. (Bentley and Wilsdon, 2003:16) Another source for this kind of analysis is the literature on knowledge management, which draws our attention to the importance of continual innovation, if an organisation is to remain competitive. Senge’s analysis derives from a systems approach, and concludes that the organisation must be ‘continually expanding its capacity to create its future ... “adaptive learning” must be joined by “generative learning” learning that enhances our capacity to create’ (Senge, 1993: 14). The quote captures the twin tasks of both generating new knowledge, and monitoring existing activities, to ensure adaptive change in response to the external environment. Similarly, Nonaka made the link between knowledge creation and competition in his seminal paper on organisational knowledge, and his model draws attention to the relationship between individual learning and organisational learning (Nonaka 1994). Organisational knowledge creation is seen as a continual dynamic process of conversion between tacit (experiential) and explicit (articulated) knowledge, iterating between the different levels of the individual, the group and the organisation. Again, the network, rather than the directed graph, is the optimal model for innovation, and the dialogic process between individuals and groups at different levels of description of the organisation, is very similar to the principles embodied within the Conversational Framework for learning (Laurillard, 2002, 215ff). Interestingly, Higher Education already fosters an excellent mod