Understanding the elearning landscape
One of the things that we've learned from our eLearning projects is that the term 'eLearning' means different things to different people. Once upon a time, eLearning just meant content - chunks of material that were self contained learning objects, with not much thought for the context in which learners engaged with that content. Increasingly, the term is expanding in it's reach and is now bit of a catch-all term that is used to cover a range of possible online experiences. And the number of possible online experiences is increasing dramatically.
If you don't believe me, check out the top 100 learning tools of 2009 collated by Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies
The list covers personal publishing tools, document collaboration and sharing systems, microblogs, video editing and broadcasting, web conferencing, learning management and portfolio tools and many many more. All of these tools in some way allow the creation of events that can form part of eLearning experiences. The trick is to understand what kind of experiences your learners need, and which tools are best suited to different learning experiences.
Each of the tools mentioned above are better suited to some tasks than others. They're also better suited to some environments, learning styles, content areas .. all the things that you would consider in a learner profile analysis. I've started to think about this as an eLearning landscape that is defined by these different dimensions (and I'm not the only one). If we can locate our learners in this landscape, and have a corresponding map of tools that work best in different parts of the landscape, we can more easily choose the best tools to use.
Let me give you an example. Lets say we have learners that can't meet face-to-face, and that there are three dimensions of interest when planning eLearning for this group:
- the number of learners (individual through to large group)
- temporal proximity (same timezone vs other side of the world), and
- the depth of learner engagement required (passive vs active).
With a large group of learners in the same timezone, we might choose a webinar tool for an expert-led seminar. When active engagement is required, we might introduce an online polling or survey tool to get real-time feedback on questions. When the audience is large, passive and in different timezones, a streamed video of the presentation and some reading material would probably be a better choice.
In contrast, a small group of people in different timezones with a need to be actively engaged in learning would have difficulty interacting in real time, so a webinar wouldn't be the best tool to choose. A better choice might be an asynchronous collaboration tool like a wiki or a forum where a small group can work together more effectively.
This isn't an exhaustive list of dimensions, or possible tools. But I hope it get's across the point that one tool does not fit all if your learners vary on important dimensions. If we want to achieve effective learning, and we want to make best choices about what tools to use, I find it a useful way to get underway. I'm planning on developing this idea a bit further in future posts and would be interested to hear your thoughts so let me know what you think.
Posted by Steve Gallagher at
02:14 PM
