e- LEARNING WORKS

Learning from the

past, present and future

Dr. Gilly Salmon

Centre for Innovation,

Knowledge & Enterprise

Open University Business School

WORLD DIDAC 2002

ZURICH

We know that in education and training we must move forward slowly- real people, real life chances and real cash are involved. However we are currently in a position where terrific opportunities associated with new technologies for learning may pass us by in a haze of commercialism or a flash in the pan of new initiative exhaustion. Throughout the 1990s, I have been working with large numbers of online explorers, educators and learners in the UK Open University Business School to try and make choices about the future for online education based on researched models of the past 10 years.

By the way, I choose to call all online learners ‘participants’ and their trainers, facilitators or teachers, ‘e-moderators’. These words illustrate the different roles that each adopt online compared to face to face teaching and learning situations.

What we know from 10 years of online learning is that moving online does not have to mean a loss of active and social learning. The key to success is a balance between applying useful older concepts about learning and the implementation of innovations using the best of networked technologies. Successful and productive online teaching is a key feature of positive, scalable and affordable e-learning projects and processes. Regardless of the sophistication of the technology, online learners do not wish to do without their human supporters. How many people, for example, have been heard to say, "I’m great at maths because of my inspirational computer?" Not any that I’ve met, on or off line! Instead learners talk of challenge and support by their trainers, or of contact with the thoughts and the work of others. Most people also mention the fun and companionship of working and learning together. Such benefits do not have to be abandoned.

At present there are 3 key issues that we must tackle. Surprisingly they have little to do with technology! These are Participation, Emotions and Time.

Thirdly, pathways for the future. We need focus. Difficult crossroads lie ahead and, like any innovation, if we get it wrong at these early stages, our choices are later reduced.

Learners need to be led through a structured developmental cycle for online learning to be successful and happy. I use a model of teaching and learning online, researched and developed as a grounded model with Open University Business School students over several years, but since applied to corporate training and across many learning disciplines and contexts .

The 5-step model enables purposeful e learning and the gradual building of action and interaction online. It provides a framework on how to set up an online conferencing environment to maximise the experience to gradually build on participants’ experience, maximise individual contribution and interaction and active learning and minimise barriers. In short to build a ‘scaffold’ to successful participation.

Scaffolding means gradually building on a learner’s previous experience.

A conventional view of intelligence is that it a relatively stable attribute that is to do with heredity and environment . An alternative view is of intelligence as developing expertise, i.e. an evolving set of skills for mastery of performance . This idea is linked directly to Schön’s view of the reflective practitioner .

The model shows clearly how to motivate online participants, to scaffold learning through appropriate e-tivities and to pace e-learners through programmes of training and development. People are likely to cycle through the model many times as they increase their knowledge and explore knowledge in different domains. All learning processes are impacted by the context in which they operate . So the nature of your learners, the traditions of your discipline and the suitability of your online learning environment will have an effect. However, colleagues have reported the meaningfulness of the model from working with school age children to senior managers and professionals.

We use this model to train the e-moderators to work online successfully.

‘Rampant featurism’ in computer programmes mean that simple and powerful technological ideas are becoming more and more complex and require faster and hungrier hardware . However, recent research has shown that promoting robust and usable knowledge is directly associated with engaging learners in authentic tasks and situations. In other words, it is how we feel about working online and our integration with our learning groups that are more important than the technology itself (Salmon 2002)

There are many factors involved in personal abilities that contribute to learning and achieving. One major important aspect is known as Emotional Quotient EQ) . E-learners need to understand how to develop and use their emotional quotient. They need a great deal of help built into e learning to achieve this. Working online creates a wide range of feelings in participants, and in e-moderators. Frustration with the technology is common but this is often soon forgotten. The experience of not physically being with others in the same space is probably the main emotions trigger.

You will find the concept of time is emotive and value-laden for both e-moderators and participants. The key issue is that the advantages of ‘any time/any place’ learning and teaching mean that time is not bounded and contained as it is when attending a lecture or a face-to-face training session. Although a face-to-face meeting may last two hours, it has a clear start and finish time and is rarely interrupted by anything else. The participants are either there or they are not, and if they are, they cannot be doing much else. Online teaching is not like that. It has a reputation for ‘eating time’. Genuine fears and concerns do exist, and must be addressed.

It is important to specify the amount of time to be committed and what you expect e-moderators and participants to do and by when, and not to leave this open-ended. It is of course important to design for the numbers involved in a conference and to be realistic about how much an e-moderator can do. Online novice learners and e-moderators will need much longer to do everything than experienced participants. Ensure that you use the most trained – and probably the most expensive – people (e.g. academics, faculty, experienced e-moderators) to do what they do best. Use less trained and experienced people, perhaps cheaper, for other tasks (e.g. use alumni as social hosts, or to man helplines shared with other departments). When choosing media and activities, make sure the time online is used for what it is good for, rather than to force-fit activities into online conferences, bulletin boards or forums. At the same time, reduce off line activities for participants by as much as you are providing online activities for them, so that looking after both sets does not overwhelm e-moderators.

Be explicit about who is going to do what online, how much time you expect them to devote to it and what their ‘payment rate’ will be. Ask e-moderators to do one or two important online activities in a time-bounded way, within a time limit, until they gain experience in managing their own online time. Most enthusiastic new e-moderators are unrealistic both about how much time they will need and the different patterns of working that are required. Develop a process of working together in e-moderating teams and in providing cover and breaks from online commitments.

Develop and publish for all to see ‘online office hours’ and tell participants how much time e-moderators are being ‘paid for’ so that there’s a reasonable level of expectation about the frequency of online visits. It is essential that the amount of elapsed time for an online activity (start and finish date) as well as online working time (number of hours per day, week or month) are agreed in advance and compensated for. Otherwise e-moderating gets a bad name for eating up huge amounts of time.

Coming to grips with the nature of asynchronicity can prove very demanding for trainers new to working online because of the complexity of conferences and forums. All e-moderators have some problems during their training (or if you allow them to work untrained with students). There is no quick and easy way around this problem. They really do need to experience it for themselves. For instance, participants ‘post’ contributions to one conference then immediately read messages from others, or vice versa. A participant might read all his or her unread messages in several conferences and then post several responses and perhaps post some topics to start a new theme. In any conference, this reading and posting of messages by a number of individuals can make the sequencing difficult to follow.

Since all the texts are available for any participant (or researcher) to view online, the sequencing of messages, when viewed after a discussion is completed, looks rather more ordered than during the build-up. Yet trying to understand them afterwards is rather like following the moves of a chess or bridge game, after it is over. When participants start using online conferences, bulletin boards or forums, this apparent confusion causes a wide range of responses. The twists of time and complexity can elicit quite uncomfortable, confused reactions from participants and severe anxiety in a few. Although many people are now familiar with email they are not used to the complexity of online conferences, bulletin boards or forums. The main difference between many-to-many conferencing is the huge range of potential posting times and variety of response and counter response.

A scenario is a descriptive forecast of a future landscape in which an organisation or institution might find itself in the future. Scenarios are not about forecasting the future but about looking at the creative possibilities. Here I offer four scenarios for you to consider the implications for your students, your e-moderators and their associated supporters. The names of the four scenarios are my own.

Contenteous uses technology as a delivery system. Applications and systems include Content Management Systems, multi media, industry standards, DVDs, digital and cable TV. The associated pedagogy is that of the transmission model of teaching, where information is transferred from experts to novices. Content is king.

Economies of scale in this model are reached only through reduced interaction between e-moderators and learners compared to lecture and question mode of teaching. Assessment of students’ learning is based on reproduction and critique. Customers make choices on where to study from media profiles, online resource availability and league tables of various kinds.

In Contenteous learning, a key role for e-moderators is as the content expert, to develop multi media programmes, to build online libraries and pathways through resources. E-librarians and e-moderators have closely linked roles. E-moderators need to captivate big audiences and be comfortable with virtuality.

The need to be a continuous and applied learner is especially apparent in domains influenced by scientific and technological advance . Instantia meets these requirements through sophisticated learning object approaches with information technology seen as the basic tools. The pedagogy for this scenario is usually called e-learning. Computer based courses are offered from desks at work or in learning centres. Learners work and learn almost simultaneously. Flexibility and instantaneousness are the keywords. The costs of travel, training facilities and trainers are slashed compared to the past. Individuals learners assess the value of the learning experience, asking: Is this learning just for me, just in time, just for now and just enough? Employers evaluate the fast delivery of learning by considering the extent to which employee and organisational performance improves.

With Instantia learning, e-moderators support autonomous learning (although many learners exist on little human contact to sustain them). E-moderators are available 24 hours a day, both synchronously and asynchronously. E-moderators focus on the development of skills in their e-learners.

Nomadict learning provides mobilised learning for the mobilised society. Learning the Nomadict way is mobile, time independent and individual. The learners are seen as electronic explorers and adventurers. There is little need for or identification with a physical campus.

Nomadict learning is called m-learning (for mobile-learning) instead of e-learning.

Learning takes place any time and any place. Learners no longer sit in front of computers. Learning devices are carried or worn. Pedagogy is various so individuals choose based on their cognitive preferences and styles. New e-universities and e-colleges assume greater importance. Assessment of learning is in small bites, based largely on projects and outcomes. Portfolio learners expect to transfer their learning credits easily from one institution to another.

Technologies are highly portable, individual, adaptable and intuitive to use . Main technologies in use are Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and Palm Tops, 3^rd generation mobile phones (UMTS), GPS, wireless and personal networks, low orbit satellites, national and international communications network networks, high bandwidth, infra-red connections and e-books. All students have laptops, palm tops and text mobiles. Styli are commoner than pens. Mobile technologies are seen as essential communication and learning tools (rather than as disruptive, as at the turn of the Century).

E-moderators are as mobile as their students. Many are portfolio e-moderators, working for several educational institutions and providers, all over the world, at any one time. They work for institutions that provide them with the best support for their mobile working lives. They have not only a highly developed awareness of the ways in which traditions of learning and expectations vary in different cultures but also the ability to work across discipline and levels of education. They know how to make online assessment work, and have technologies to ensure that the students they are assessing are the same ones that they are teaching. They can relate well to students without needing to meet with them. They focus on promoting the concepts of ownership of the learning process, active learning, independence, the ability to make judgements, self-motivation and a level of autonomy. They provide and support resource based learning, working with skilled technicians and e-librarians.

Cafélattia Learning is built around learning communities and interaction, extending access beyond the bounds of time and space, but offering the promise of efficiency and widening access. The key technology is the developed, entertaining, effective Internet (beyond the browser!) to allow immediate and satisfying interaction between students and students, and between e-moderators and students. Asynchronous and synchronous group systems support a wide variety of environments for working and learning together. Both co- and remotely-located learning communities (clicks and mortar) are of key importance. Learners connect through both low and high bandwidth devices and systems. The technologies are seen only as mediating devices, promoting creativity and collaboration. Cafélattia learning appeals to a very wide range of people including the increasing numbers of ‘grey learners’ who have a great deal to offer to others, often a great desire to learn through non-traditional means and who have the time and resources to access networked technologies.

The pedagogy is based on the notion of a very strong social context for learning with the model of acquisition, argumentation and application. A key activity for learners in online communities is finding like-minded individuals anywhere (e.g. by gender, by interest group, by profession,) and by being intellectually extended by dialogue and challenge from others. Learners express themselves freely through speech and text. The roles of reflection (an essential tool of expert learners), professional development and the sharing of tacit knowledge are of critical importance. Learning is contextualized and given authenticity by the learning group and the learning community (rather than by the University or College). On and offline resources are important, but electronic and structured information support and stimulate the learning group rather than replace the active, participative learning experience. Cafélattia approaches are very popular in professional and Higher Education such as nursing, medicine and management but increasingly, young undergraduates are expecting these kinds of approaches. Assessment is based on complex problem solving and knowledge construction skills.

E-moderators on Cafélattia think globally but are able to turn their thinking into local commitment. They see the technologies as yet another teaching and learning environment rather than as tools. They are experts at mentoring individuals online and may be seen as companions in the democratic online learning process, rather than lecturers. They also have very highly developed skills at online group development for learning. They act as intelligent agents and facilitators. They have the ability to visualise others in their situations. They know how to allow a sense of humour to manifest itself online. They know how to welcome and support learners into the online world and to build effective online groups and communities. They know how to use online resources to stimulate groups. They know how to build gradually on the processes of exchanging information and how to turn this into knowledge sharing and ultimately into knowledge construction. They know when to take part as a tutor, when as a peer and when to stay silent.

To be innovative and online, you will need some passion and commitment. You need to experience how to deal with Participation, Emotions and Time online- as highly purposeful interactive activity. At the moment, working online involves shifting time about and changing patterns of how you work with others. It involves setting up a computer and getting the software to work to your satisfaction which may involve going cap in hand to others for help. You may need to rethink your teaching and what’s important about the subject matter you want to teach. It’s great fun when it works. It has its own momentum.

Currently, the ‘richness’ of the Web depends largely on its volume and the multimedia presentation of information. However, I believe the future brings us greater interaction – and interaction is fundamental to learning, so long as it is appropriately e-moderated and embedded in the overall learning methods. Focus is essential- explore the scenarios and find the most appropriate combination for your niche. From these small beginnings a new body of knowledge and practice will build up that will transfer again and again as even more connected technologies become available. The need for skillful human intervention will not disappear, regardless of how sophisticated and fast-moving the technological environments become. Train your e-moderators carefully and through the online medium itself. I think that the most successful teaching and learning organisations and associations will be those that understand, recruit, train, support and give free creative rein to their e-moderators, whilst addressing the natural fears of loss of power and perceived quality from traditional teaching staff.

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