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To
paraphrase the old adage about the relationship between the US and the
UK: when the dot-com’s sneeze, e-learning catches a cold. The shake out
from the ICT dot-coms crashes, exacerbated by 9-11 and the US corporate
governance scandals put a temporary damper on developments in the ICT
and e-learning sector. But a more realistic attitude to investment in
the “knowledge/networked/ learning society” is surely a good thing.
This is a good time to
step back and see where we are in e-learning. So in November 2002 the
European Conference on e-learning was held at Brunel University in
London. More than 40 academics and practitioners from the private and
public sectors met to exchange ideas, from the Middle East, North
America, and all parts of Europe. It was decided to launch an e-journal
to continue this discussion,
to publish
papers from the conference as well as from other contributors.
This first edition of the
Electronic Journal of e-Learning (EJEL) includes a selection of
papers presented at the conference. These papers reflect the challenging
nature of designing, developing, managing and above all, evaluating
e-learning.
One of
the benefits of the recent shakeout in ICT is that most people are now
talking of blended learning – quite simply: using the media that are
available, and no longer trying to squeeze everything through a
not-very-broad-band Internet, for instance. So, WebCD’s are OK, paper
has its role, face to face training and learning is valuable, and the
trick is to get the “blend” right. And there is still plenty that
digitalisation will bring – in mobile/wireless technologies and
broadband particularly. All of this is most welcome, and very healthy
for the IT sector as well as for learning.
Research in e-learning is now starting to provide a systematic critique
of what might be called the first phase in the development of
e-learning. Up to now, much of the activity has been to get it up and
running, to establish the three or four VLE platforms, at least one Open
Source VLE – Bodington Common – (http://bodington.org/index.html)
and to deliver the goods. That has been done. The second phase will be
to develop the next generation of platforms, and provide more
user-friendly environments for learning, as opposed to just ensuring the
delivery of courses.
But in
order to do that, particularly in the current financial climate, we need
to know what works, what fields e-learning can be applied to, what other
modes of communication and learning it fits best alongside – in a
blended approach, and of course what it cannot do. We also need to know
what it costs. It is crucial to realise that most e-learning is just a
new form of distance education, and that in all good distance education,
the up-front costs are considerable – it is front-loaded as far as
investment is concerned. And that investment is not just financial. The
crucial element is to train and support staff and students who are
making the substantial transition from face-to-face teaching and
learning to e-learning. As Tracy Kent writes in her paper, quoting from
the JISC guidelines:
"the
implementation of a VLE [Virtual Learning Environment] without
significant investment in developing staff will almost certainly not
produce good results".
We welcome
papers from anyone who has interesting empirical, theoretical or
critical work that they would like to publish. We are also pleased to
have case studies, reports on action research was well as reports on
work-in-progress. All papers will be double blind refereed.
Roy
Williams
w.w associates
Reading, UK.
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