In his own words the author focuses on the 'L' for learning rather than the 'E' for electronic. In order for technology to improve learning, it must fit into students' lives, and not the other way round.
Rominowski categorises four major topics related to e-learning, being Learning itself, the Electronic technology, the Needs that justify the project in the first place, and Management issues involved. (E/L/N/M).
He highlights cases where the 'learning' part in an e-learning project is not the primary objective, which is not a favourable idea. This reflects the fact whether the authors come from the information technology, education, management or performance improvement areas.
Technology (electronic) before learning, needs and management.
In such cases authors of such projects have the premise that technology is the answer...what is the question?
People on the information technology side would have these typical guidelines to go about to create a successful project in this field of work:
1. Design the E-Learning product - starting with a powerful learning management system and creating the structure to house content into 3 categories (static pages, multimedia content and hands on labs (quizzes etc)
2. Build the content and delivery infrastructure (consisting of filling in the three structures with content you have created earlier)
3. Create student services and administrative support (system troubleshooting, password management etc)
4. .... sell the system
Following such steps is a clear case where emphasis is being put on technology rather than on the learning. This also comes before the establishment of a need... a case of putting the cart before the horse. Here we are selecting the technology, then the content and then giving attention to the practicalities of actually making it work. This is an entrepreneurial approach, and quite risky as well, where we first create the product and then try to create a market for it.
Further posts related to e-learning failures shall be found in this thread.
Did you feel compelled to adopt an e-learning solution in your institute by looking at the technological side rather than the needs that have to be satisfied and the effective learning that would take place?
My opinion about the ICT institute is that although moodle has been adopted, it is being used as a repository of data aiding the educators and students to organise themselves via a central storage of notes, rather than a tool to aid collaboration and effective learning. The technology has satisfied the need for effective organisation of course material, but did not satisfy the need of providing a healthy collaborative environment for student difficulties and research, as these needs have been initially disregarded.
The full text of this paper is found in the following link:
I agree with the paper by Alexander J. Romisowski, presented by Chris Bajada, dealing with factors leading to success or failure of an educational technology innovation especially, where he mentions the four typical guidelines to go about to create a successful project in the field of work.
ReplyDeleteHowever, coming from the sales and marketing sector, I would put a lot of emphasis on the last last point ... selling the system. This is very important and crucial to the success of any project/course being e-learning or not. Its not the first time that, I come across someone who devotes a lot of time, energy and financial resources towards a great and innovative idea, but then has a poor communication plan.
Communicating the message across is the most vital point, you can have the most creative idea but, if you don't know how to sell it, its worthless!
Therefore, if we want our students to embrace e-learning we need to sell it to them! Not hard selling as you see on TV where, they break every rule in the relationship marketing process but, we need to show them the benefits not just speak of the features. This is one of the fundamentals of selling, you need to create a need that will later result in a want and a repeat sale (they keep coming for more).
Furthermore, we need to present e-learning as something positive and beneficial to our students... 'look at what you are gaining, knowledge at your fingertips, where and when you want it'
True content delivery should always be the main focus of avery educational experience. And I encourage all to use technology in order to facilitate the encode decode process between a teacher and a learner. However I find my self fascinated when I can see that just the practice of applying technology in learning is enlightening to individuals. This is because self-confidence is built vis a vis with the level of communication that an individual holds when interacting with others. One can say as well that technology is one of today's main contemporary languages where people are more feasible communicate in binary methods rather than face to face language. However the level of balance is here. Is the individual using technology in order to facilitate the transfer of his message or else is it a matter of self-hiding in order not o give away one's true colours?
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