Meeting the e-learning challenge

Individual access and the ability of participants to use online learning tools are essential prerequisites for participation in online learning (stage one, at the base of the flights of steps). Stage two involves individual participants establishing their online identities and then finding others with whom to interact. At stage three, participants give information relevant to the course to each other. Up to and including stage three, a form of co-operation occurs, i.e. support for each person’s goals. At stage four, course-related group discussions occur and the interaction becomes more collaborative. The communication depends on the establishment of common understandings. At stage five, participants look for more benefits from the system to help them achieve personal goals, explore how to integrate CMC into other forms of learning and reflect on the learning processes.

Each stage requires participants to master certain technical skills. Each stage calls for different e-moderating skills (shown on the right top of each step). The "interactivity bar" running along the right of the flight of steps suggests the intensity of interactivity that you can expect between the participants at each stage. From stage two onwards, it is important to provide online activities that encourage participants to engage in active learning and with each other in meaningful and authentic learning tasks.

In 1999 the OUBS began its first presentation of an MBA elective course, B823, entitled "Managing Knowledge". To deliver the course existing electronic support through bulletin board system (FirstClass) was supplemented with Lyceum, a synchronous internet-based tool developed by the Knowledge Media Institute (KMI) at the Open University. This delivers audio communication and a shared graphic workspace via a single connection. Lyceum represents the new technologies available for the support of knowledge-based organisations and provides students with experiential learning opportunities.

An account of the development of Lyceum in the context of other Computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) applications is available as a set of PowerPoint slides at

There is an overlap between the synchronous Lyceum mode and the asynchronous FirstClass mode, in that both applications include a synchronous text-chat option. The use of both FirstClass conferencing and Lyceum discussion has revealed a need to capture interaction in both media as a resource to be shared by successive cohorts of learners. FirstClass conferences are archived during course presentations, but a more accessible means of creating a shared resource is being assessed at present.

In August 2000 the Odyssey Group of organisational researchers piloted Lyceum in a research context, by using it to provide "electronic adjacency" to a distributed team of researchers, an academic variant of the "virtual" or "distributed" organisation.

The results linking physical and virtual participants during a two week workshop are discussed at

The group had already developed the notion of a "Virtual Journey" as a means of accessing experience without co-presence. A web page (or small set of pages) containing images gathered during a journey is constructed with links to relevant web-sites discovered either on route or subsequently.

Web technology can be used to capture key aspects of an environment or a pathway through an environment allowing virtual participation in workshops and discussion asynchronously. Lyceum provided synchronous interaction in this context.

The richness of this simple medium is a means of surfacing aspects of implicit knowledge. Some examples can be seen at

The addition of web-based resources to the learning support repertoire allows a form of "course memory" to be created. Such a resource can be developed by successive cohorts of learners.