nilesh.dhande

"While meeting various organizations, educational institutes and various educationalists, I came across different questions, viewpoints on e-Learning. Most of the questions were related to their understanding of e-learning, feasibility, when to do and not to do the e-learning. Most of the questions can be summarized using the 4W and 1H. In this post I have tried to answer those to best of my ability. You are welcome to post your critical comments, suggestions that may improve our understanding of whole scenario."

What?

There are many definitions of e-learning defined by several authors, the term have many annotations associated with it. But, there is agreement between most of the authors regarding “E” of e-learning. The most common and acceptable meaning for “E” is electronic. The electronic (digital) media can be anything from television, radio, computer and any form of audio video etc. The e-learning pioneer Mr. Bernard Luskin suggests that if e-Learning is to be effective the "E" should be interpreted to mean exciting, energetic, enthusiastic, emotional, extended, excellent, and educational in addition to "electronic" which is most commonly used interpretation.

The objective of e-learning is to augment/ facilitate/ enhance teaching and learning. In the world where population is expanding and so does the need for skills, flow of information is ever increasing and knowledge is crossing the physical and geographical boundaries, learning and teaching also has to evolve to the next level where learning should not only be bound by the knowledge of his/her teachers. But teachers now have to act more like facilitator/ mentor/ guide to gain more knowledge collectively. As it is understood that no one can learn as much as all of us. Looking at the scenario it is imperative the learning and teaching makes use of technology tools. While the collaborative platforms and internet are making headways in the everyday personal life the same is bound to happen in the world of pedagogy.

While the definition of e-learning will keep evolving viz a viz technology the current meaning for e-learning for an enterprise may be defined as learning and teaching enabled with effective use of technology tools to facilitate knowledge distribution and assimilation for all the participants.

Why?

The question may be answered partially in earlier section. But can be answered more simply as since it is more convenient, cheaper and can be made more effective both for the students as well as institutions. 
For the knowledge enterprises the right uses of technology can help immensely. Typically, all the knowledge enterprises are bound by three major factors.

1. Availability of teacher’s time.
2. Availability of infrastructure
3. Availability of good quality course content.

And if we analyze these factors more closely one can quickly figure out if these resources are available in abundance then the growth potential of the institute is virtually limitless. But as in the real world we are  bound by whatever is available to us and the problem of scarcity. The teacher student ratio hovers officially around 1:74. The scarcity has happened due to

1. Increase in population and hence increase in demand for teachers as well as infrastructure
2. The rising prices of infrastructure
3. Increase in competition
4. Brain drain of good teachers towards industry

Information explosion resulted in situation where there is “Too Much Information, But Too Little Knowledge”.
And, these realities are not going to improve but will worsen over the period of time. Hence it becomes a necessity to look around for the alternatives to optimize on the current resources available. Also, in capitalistic world profitability in every activity is critical to the very survival of enterprises. Need is the mother of all inventions and so is and will be the case with education. Most of us have realized or are in the process of realizing that we will need technological aid to support us in the cause of imparting quality education.

With the use of information technology, it is very much possible to optimize the most critical resources for an enterprise.

• Teacher’s time availability can be addressed by
  • Cutting down physical travel
  • Virtualizing teacher
  • Opening up convenient and easy communication channels between students and teachers
  • Improve time availability by cutting down mundane jobs like
    • Student progress tracking & reporting
    • Assessments
    • Giving /getting feedbacks etc.
• Infrastructure needs can be addressed by
  • Virtualizing classrooms
  • Distance but personalized education
• Quality content can be ensured using
  • Getting quality resources at one place
  • Digitizing and indexing so that effective searching of content can be done
  • Content references of subject matter experts.

How?

Just typed e-learning in Google search it gave more than 11 million hits. Like any other popular word e-learning word is used and over-used. Same is the case with e-learning tools and techniques, you search for tools and you will get different tools doing different things each claiming it is next best thing. While we visited one of the leading coaching institute which provides coaching for MBA entrance examination. The institute director said “I am just too baffled looking at all these tools and not sure whether these will be useful in our context, our way of teaching. We are confident about our teaching but we are afraid that we may be left behind in the race if we do not do anything. But how do we make sure that we use correct tools, and make the change happen in the organization. My professors are too reluctant to use any new tools”. These are the apprehensions of most of the institutes when they look at changing scenario; people are anxious, little bit scared and skeptical about the usage of e-learning. Few years back when people started implementing ERPs in the organizations similar apprehensions were there. While everybody accepts change is the way of life, but most of them resist it. The other day we were talking to a leading educational institute which gives training to cream in Indian government the IAS officers. They said that we implemented learning content management system, we invested money and it is up and running but nobody uses that. It is too much of effort to come out of comfort zone. The hindrances are many and one of the most critical hindrances is MIND-SET. But with right strategy, training and by facilitating more participation from people the correct results can be obtained.

So, it becomes important for educational enterprise to have right strategy in place to adapt to such change. While implementing e-learning it is important to have

1. Correct e-learning strategy
   1. Selection of right e-learning tools  The e-learning tools can be categorized mainly into two
      1. Computer Based --> Computer based tools are mainly trainings developed to be run in offline mode without need of internet. These are rampantly used in the scenario where internet is not available or one have to provide rich end user experience having heavy contents like high definition multimedia movies/ content or simulations etc. The development of such tools is typically costly and need high level of expertise in instructional design since there is no person to person interaction. One of the drawback of CBT is, it is not possible to track the usage, and hence nearly impossible to receive and give feedback about student understanding of the concept.
      2. Web-based --> Web-based training are the training which are delivered over internet or intranet using web-technologies like Learning Content Management System (LCMS) e.g. Moodle, aTutor etc, web-conferencing solutions e.g. DimDim, web-ex, Spontania etc. These tools are really gaining rapid acceptance because of availability of cheap or free solutions and ease of use. The web-based training can deliver highly interactive training where each training can be tailor made or personalize to individual student which increases effectiveness of the training. Student progress tracking, reporting, feedback and course corrections are possible with virtually no or very less administrative overheads.  And unlike CBTs where person to person interaction is zero or very less, one can configure these tools to facilitate the teacher-student, student-student and teacher-teacher interaction. This make these systems highly attractive to the educational institutes who want to conduct courses without limitation of geography or who wants to add value to existing student base. The only limitation of such kind of system when delivered over internet is the internet availability.
   1. Selection of correct courses --> the selection of courses for e-learning can be tricky business. One has to make right choice of courses that can be taught online or to which e-learning can augment without causing too much of overheads. The other day we were talking to one of the leading textile research organization who give training to corporate as well as students about textile testing and machinery involved. The Director of the institute said they are contemplating the e-learning solutions for multitude of courses they are conducting but not sure how to select the best one. Now, one of the course they were running which were about textile testing machinery, she said it was virtually impossible to say if the student have understood the concept unless they get hands on experience in working with the machines. Since nothing is impossible it is actually possible to simulate working of the machine and demonstrate the usage to students. But when the cost benefit analysis is done it was easy to figure out the creating simulations was too much expensive that giving hands on experience. When doing the selection process we need to figure out answers to the questions below
      1. What is objective of this training?
      2. What should be the outcome?
      3. How am I going to evaluate whether student have understood the concept?
      4. What would be level of interaction that is needed between various stakeholders who are involved?
      5. Is it cost effective to deliver this content through e-learning format?    
   2. Correct designing of e-learning content --> picture can speak thousand words and correctly designed content can actually speak hundreds of thousands. But, while designing the content it is extremely critical that you take in to account the idiosyncrasies of the target audience/ student group. The design of the content needs to take into account the nature, culture, level of understanding and in some cases willingness as well. The degree of multimedia/ interaction may vary based on the above parameters. Take an example of the person who is seriously preparing for some entrance examination which will get him through some renowned institute with bright career prospect. Through content design it is unnecessary to motivate her to read further gain knowledge further so a simple and effective design will work here. But, consider a case of school drop-out who has little willingness to learn. It is critical that we keep him engaged through content/ course design we give him quick wins motivate further to read on. Although end-use experience is critical in the course design the levels of interactivity/ attractiveness can be decided on case to case basis and optimizations are very much possible to do just enough and not more or not less.
2. Organizational processes in place --> unless and until we gear up the organization to accept the change and work towards success of the initiative; none of the initiatives really sees the light of the day. There is absolutely nothing different about e-learning. Involving, engaging the key stakeholders like management, teachers, content creator/ designers and administrators holds the key to success of this initiative. Following are some of the key processes that needs to be designed and enhanced continuously
   1. Admission, induction, scheduling and certification in e-learning context
   2. Content development/ updates and the frequency
   3. Teacher-student, student-student interactions
   4. Evaluation/ Assessment and feedback

When?

ELearning is an initiative and results can be seen after a long enough time. Immediate results cannot be expected in most of the cases.  So e-Learning is more associated with institute’s vision and future predictions.  If you see infrastructure shrinking and cost of delivery increasing for your courses, that’s the right time to take your first step in this direction.  First step can be as simple as just creating CBTs for your few critical courses. But initiation is important to test out your internal processes and change the existing mind set.  Beta is always recommended, which you should be able to launch. The internal training and seminars needs to be conducted to raise the e-learning awareness and more importantly the benefits of using the same.  All the stake holders from the institute should be aware of all limitations and strengths of new medium and technology and delivering the education.

Where?

Technology is already impacting our everyday life and it will be and it is in the case of education. Whether the institute is teaching fine arts or professional training or just focusing on increasing the employability of the students it is being impacted and will be impacted with the changing world. The most agile and adaptable institute will stay ahead in the race.

Where is explained in the context of demography in the following paragraph. The education delivery mechanisms will need to adapt to the demography of the students and teachers. E.g. In metropolitan cities where the internet connection is widely available the content can be delivered over internet.  In case of tier2/3 cities where internet connectivity is question mark the same course delivery can happen in the form of CBTs. In case of rural areas where availability of computer itself I question mark we need to find some other means like videos to be playable on the video CDs, television, radio and in most of the cases printed material. Question may arise using printed material is this a form of e-learning. I would say yes as the material which we will be producing will directly come from the professor who will use electronic means such as LCMS or different editors to produce the same content over various mediums.

Hence, it becomes critical to understand the demography of your student base to deliver the courses through various means where reach and effectiveness is maximum.

Conclusion

It can be said that when an enterprise thinks about e-learning it asks the all these questions what, why, how, when and where to itself in the light of knowledge gained and come up with the correct e-learning vision and then strategy implement and reap benefits of the technology solutions that are available.

While we tried a little to answer the queries in broader context by looking at all encompassing scenario, it is not possible to cover all aspects and every facets of e-learning. Each of the questions can become research paper in itself.

Please feel free to send us your critical comments or suggestions or questions related to this article to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We would be more than happy to answer any of the queries you may have or incorporate your suggestions in our further work.

Tags: elearning