Notes on E-learning

Last week, I had the opportunity to interact with a group of around 40 teachers from several engineering colleges. This was during a Dialogue on Competency Building - Sharing of International Best Practices, organized by Faith InfoTech Academy for Professional Advancement at Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram.

I gave two presentations - one on pedagogy and another on e-learning. I shall summarize the main points of my presentation on e-learning here.

I started the presentation, recalling the equation, L = f(P,E). Learning is a function of characteristics of the Person and of the Environment.

Related to the Person, I touched upon concept of Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner) and Learning Styles (Richard Felder and David Kolb). Related to the Environment, I listed four factors: Software Systems, Physical Infrastructure, People and Processes.

The subject of my talk was about how software systems, especially e-learning tools, can be used to improve the effectiveness of learning. E-learning is technology to implement pedagogy.

I mentioned a few features of e-learning, without making it an exhaustive list of features and benefits. Some of the features highlighted were:

• Flexible content development and presentation
  - Learning Objects
  - Personalization
  - Multimedia
• Enables iterative approach with increasing complexity levels
• Timely feedback at individual level
• Not distance learning; but enhanced collaboration across geography
  

I shared my observations on how e-learning has evolved during this decade. My observations are based on my personal experience with e-learning. I became a founding team member of an e-learning company in 2001, and was Product Manager for e-learning products. Looking back at the end of the decade, I see how many of my ideas about e-learning has changed over the last few years:

• From control to collaboration
• From top-down to peer-to-peer
• From technology to pedagogy
• From expensive to inexpensive
• From authoring by experts to authoring by everyone.

When talking about e-learning today, I would give more emphasis to Search, Wikis, Blogs, RSS feeds and Social Networks, than to what is traditionally considered as e-learning tools - i.e., LMS, CMS etc. It is not because it is the in-thing to talk about social media, but because we are at a juncture where a paradigm shift is taking place in the field of education. The shift is from control to collaboration. The impact of social media is only an indication of this shift in zeitgeist.

That's all for now... More in the next posting.