Electronic provision of education.
E-learning involves the provision of education via interactive, electronic means. It usually involves the delivery of training material via a computer and over. An e-learning system will typically consist of: a learner management system (LMS) which replicates the administration role; learning content or courseware within a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) which guides students through the material; monitoring tools that allows tutor to provide feedback and undertake marking; and tools for developing courseware. A range of benefits are suggested:
• Training can be tailored to meet a range of learning needs
• E-learning is cheaper than classroom learning
• Employees are able to learn faster
• Greater customer retention where employees learn improved support skills
• Flexible study time for individuals
• Self-paced learning
• Effective monitoring of student performance
Despite high growth forecasts success has been patchy. The e-learning market includes learner management systems, course content suppliers and software companies’ online guides. Forrester estimate the learner management system market will grow at annual rate of 22% from $450 million in 2003 to reach $1 billion in 2007. Datamonitor predict that the global e-learning market for higher education will grow by 12% per annum to reach $1.9 billion by 2008. However, while Forrester found that only 15% of respondents who had implemented an e-learning system were satisfied with it, 75% still planned to invest in the technology.
About to turn the corner?
While early e-learning systems were first developed in the 1970s, the explosion of the Internet in the 1990s created huge interest and huge hype. Universities developed electronic courseware (e.g. Open University) and companies re-engineered their training departments (e.g. Unipart). However, “irrational exuberance” resulted in some spectacular failures. The UK’s public funded e-learning university (UKeU) which aimed to attract foreign students to online courses at UK universities was scrapped in May 2004 at a cost to the public purse of £62 million. After one year the UKeU had attracted just 900 students at a cost of £44,000/student. The Commons Committee enquiry into the failure has noted a lack of market research, inadequate marketing activity, too much expenditure on technology (£14 million) rather than on content and a failure to learn lessons from similar failed experiments in the US. But the increasing availability of higher bandwidth internet connections is reinvigorating the e-learning sector. The main suppliers are universities and business schools, specialist e-learning vendors and mainstream technology companies who have added LMS to their products.
Future directions.
In the future E-learning is predicted to provide:
• Varied teaching styles. Teaching methods will vary to suit an individual’s preference for visual (e.g. diagrams) or auditory learning (e.g. spoken word).
• Student centred learning. Individuals will be able to design their own syllabus.
• Contextual learning. The leaner is profiled in relation to their work context and progression. Further learning is based on their individual requirements.
Recent Comments