1.        Introduction: The diffusion of courseware in Higher Education

Likely outcomes of e-learning innovations in higher education using information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been hotly debated, with utopian excitement about the new media matched by critical concerns over their appropriateness in many contexts (Dutton and Loader 2002). With notable exceptions (Hara and Kling 2000), this debate has been illustrated more by anecdotal evidence than empirical research on the actual role of ICTs in higher education.

This study seeks to develop an empirically-anchored perspective on the implications of e-learning through a case study, informed by work on the social shaping of technology (SST) that highlights organizational, cultural, economic and other factors influencing the process of technological change and innovation (Williams and Edge 1996; Kling 2000). It provides evidence centred on an in-depth analysis of one e-learning innovation, in order to surface patterns and themes of potential relevance to a wider range of e-learning initiatives. The innovation we focused on was an institution-wide virtual learning environment (VLE) designed to support the management and operation of most aspects of an online course: the distribution of multimedia material (such as readings, lecture notes, assignments and images); student-teacher and group discussions; exam and grade administration; and other teaching and administrative tasks. 

We chose to study a VLE because such course management ‘courseware’ systems appear to be among the most rapidly diffusing e-learning technologies across the world.[1] The adoption of this kind of environment has become a symbol of innovation, with many higher-education institutions not wishing to be left without their own system. A VLE can also create incentives to invest further in electronic content, create links to other ICT applications within the university, such as wireless networks and services, and generally enable institutional innovations in learning and education.

Our study seeks to answer questions such as:

§                What is the actual experience of implementing VLEs?

§                Which main social, cultural, psychological, economic, technical and other factors facilitate or constrain the uses to which the VLE is put?

§                To what degree does a VLE complement or replace traditional learning environments?

§                What kinds of VLE-based teaching and learning approaches are most effective?

§                Which VLE capabilities lead to difficulties or are underused?

§                How easily can a VLE be tailored to the needs of particular contexts, teachers, students, administrators, etc?

§                Who in educational institutions are likely to be the winners and losers from the introduction of a VLE?

§                What kinds of policies and resources are needed to make a VLE effective?

§                What are the implications of the way a VLE can be used to reconfigure how faculty, administrators, students and others in an educational institution gain access to people, services, information and technologies (Dutton forthcoming).

The following sections describe our methodology, the patterns of eClass adoption and use we identified, and our findings on the main factors shaping these outcomes.

2.        Methodological approach

2.1         The analytical framework: social shaping of technology

Theoretical approaches from the social shaping of technology (SST) were employed to understand the responses of technical staff, administrators, instructors, students and other actors towards the adoption and use of the VLE at the university studied. This framework was chosen because it encompasses a broad perspective that enabled us to move beyond narrow speculation based on the technical functions and capabilities of a VLE to focus on how people design, deploy and appropriate these technologies in actual social settings.

At an institutional level, SST highlights the implications for innovation of the way a university or other educational establishment is, to some extent, organized to support and maintain existing standards and practices. This helps to focus attention on the manner in which an institution resists, assimilates, subverts or otherwise appropriates what is being proposed or imposed when a technical innovations threatens to disrupt the established ways of doing things. Thus, the values and assumptions of all relevant institutional actors need to be understood, including both supporters and critics of e-learning, as does the nature of the technological innovation if researchers are to discern the practical implications of VLE courseware.

In addition, an SST perspective guides researchers to investigate the ways in which specific users shape technological development and innovation. In Bijker’s (1995) words, this should aim to include a consideration of the different ‘relevant social groups’ involved in interpreting a technology, including the determination of whether a technology ‘works’. For example, a social-shaping perspective sensitizes research to the role of teachers at a university, since instructors are among the most critical decision makers on the adoption and use of technology in classes and for the way students organise their work with computers (Layton 1994). Decisions regarding computer use in classes are also affected by instructors’ teaching styles, flexibility in adapting to new teaching situations, attitudes towards computers, length of experience using computers in their own lessons and their self-perception as computer users (Levin and Arafeh 2002). Other relevant social groups include the specialist developers who implement systems within organizations; students as users; and administrators and senior managers, who often regulate and sometimes mandate the use of technology. Policy choices by those who run school or departmental systems can result in different units having different levels of access to the Internet, dissimilar requirements for student technology literacy skills and different limitations on student Internet access (Levin and Arafeh 2002).

SST also reveals how conceptions and responses across all this range of policy makers, administrators, developers, instructors and students can support or frustrate technologically-enabled change. From this perspective, Dutton and Loader (2002) argued that educational technologies were underpinning the emergence of a ‘digital academe’ – a change in the institutions of higher education that is supported by the increasing application and use of ICTs across all higher education management, administration and operational processes.

The main premise of this view is that ICTs are becoming increasingly central not only in terms of how higher educational institutions accomplish their tasks, such as promoting their institutions on the Web, but also in relation to the nature of the products and services they provide, for instance in considering new initiatives in distance education and e-learning. This directs attention to discerning just how far VLE technologies are going, and could go in the future, towards being more than ‘electronic white boards’. One possibility is that they could alter the whole manner in which faculty, administrators and students will gain access to one another, to information, services and technologies that support these processes and their outcomes. In going further along this route, VLE courseware could undermine or support the role of traditional gatekeepers in education, such as faculty instructors, at the same time as fostering new gatekeepers, such as the technology administrators and technical support staff that control access to digital library resources and make decisions about technology upgrades.

This SSE background convinced us that we use both a comprehensive survey questionnaire and ‘embedded case studies’ to undertake more detailed interviews that drill down to get a richer feel for the actual issues confronting everyday use of the system. This provided a balance between institutional and user perspectives. Given the significance of instructors to any innovations in e-learning, we used our research resources to focus on this group, while using knowledge from SST research to take account of the critical role played by others in the innovation process in order to detect more general patterns and issues.

2.2         The case study: A university-wide course management system

We examined the diffusion and use of a proprietary, commercially-marketed VLE at a private US university. To protect the confidentiality of our respondents, individuals involved are kept anonymous and fictitious names are used for the university (‘North East University’ (NEU)) and VLE (‘eClass’). We chose NEU because eClass had appeared to diffuse rapidly within this university. The principal organizational actor at NEU was ‘the Centre’, which was responsible for the use of ICTs in teaching and research. As the study progressed, we discovered the diffusion and impacts of eClass were more limited than anticipated, which shifted the focus of our study on the social and institutional factors constraining this e-learning innovation as well as the likely impacts for the most innovative adopters.

2.3         Research approaches used

We employed a variety of empirical approaches to gain a systematic understanding of how eClass diffused, and with what effect on learning and education. For instance, we undertook a detailed analysis of the electronic records and reports on everyday use of eClass. These had to be restructured and inspected to develop a reliable count of actual adopters and users. The electronic facilities of eClass enabled us to email all registered current and former instructors, asking them to complete (in about 15 minutes) a Web-based questionnaire, asking for information such as participants’ use of eClass and their overall usage of personal computers and the Internet. Two reminders were sent, yielding a response rate matching half of the estimated population. In addition, we conducted in-depth embedded case studies (through interviews of about an hour each). These involved 20 instructors who were among the most intensive or creative eClass users.

These surveys and interviews were complemented by interviews with key staff of the Centre. We also attended training sessions and eClass courses, enabling more participant-observation of these events. These sessions created many opportunities to speak informally with eClass technical specialists, department coordinators and users. Finally, we reviewed the content of selected eClass course sites, focusing on sites of our embedded case studies.

Survey responses from 225 individuals were gathered from January to March 2002, representing about a 50% response rate, based on our estimate of the number of actual users. Of these, 191 were completed fully and the rest were typically from individuals ‘registered’ for eClass but not actually using the VLE.

3.        The multi-layered diffusion of eclass

3.1         Booming eClass Registrations

The Centre introduced a trial version of eClass at NEU in the Spring 1999 semester. Workshops and training sessions for faculty and instructors plus general word-of-mouth recommendations led to rapid growth over the next two years, from six at the start to over 1000 by Spring 2001 (Figure 1).

Despite continuing growth in demand, in Spring 2001 the introduction of new courses was stopped because eClass had reached the limit of the pilot version’s capacity. The Centre therefore upgraded in Summer 2001 to a newer version that could support many more courses. When the Centre began migrating older courses to the new system, implementation problems arose that caused many instructors to abandon their use of eClass because they were no longer able to use it effectively.

Figure 1: Change in the number of registered eClass courses, 1999-2002