During the early nineties e-learning was the province of only the technologically wired few. In fact, avant-garde positions like CKO - Chief Knowledge Officer, and CLO - Chief Learning Officer were just beginning to be defined. At about the same time conventional and élite brick and mortar institutions like Princeton, Harvard and even humble community colleges like Chabot in Hayward and San Francisco City College were heavily promoting the virtues of their respective academic systems. That was barely ten years ago. Today, those very same institutions that place bespectacled, information force-feeding pedagogues in their classrooms and whom we warmly address as professors appear to be going through self arm twisting just so they can claim that they too are in step with the new pedagogical modality we call e-learning.
Controversy rages whether e-learning will eventually supplant traditional classroom education or serve as a complementary medium. This is where the dichotomy arises. Everyone who seems to have a stake in the future of both pedagogical modes-independent, student-driven e-learning and teacher-led collectivist classroom learning is caught in a tenuous cyber slow dance of how much of traditional learning must be forgone on one hand and what technological tools are respectable enough to rival the reputed rigor of traditional learning on the other. While e-learning advocates strive to fulfill their roles as innovative partners to the knowledge building enterprise through technology, traditional university proponents endeavor to maintain their centuries-old status as knowledge generators through a myriad of proven learning tools, technology being one of them. Some educational theorists contend that e-learning will replace the old learning modality while others argue that it will augment it.
Web-based programmers, media producers, and content specialists recognize that rich media programming, computer mediated courses, and other techno-oriented pedagogical techniques are key to the new modality of learning beginning with child development to workforce literacy. News continues to trumpet the inexorable advance of technology touting incessant discoveries in hardware inventions to software formulations practically everyday. Children develop dexterity and superb eye-hand coordination with their Playstations while adults learn to manage their busy lives with Palm Pilots. Critical to these discoveries, however, are the learners, both the young and the old, the game-loving youngsters and problem-solving workers. Whether the learning needs of these target audiences of e-learning are met remains to be the Holy Grail for most e-learning delivery systems and their designers.
Let's first understand one thing: e-learning is a construct that involves the integration of technology, knowledge acquisition, and idiosyncratic human interpretations. It involves working proficiencies in email use, familiarity with CD-ROM's, e-books, and text messaging tools. It also requires an acculturation to a technology that in many instances appear foreign. To most people, it is a radical departure from the collaborative teacher-led classroom format. One element that new learners resist is the vagaries of the Internet and the demand of integrating it with other learning tools. Indeed this integrative convergence of both learning process and human dimension rides on the back of the Internet technology which is in constant motion. And just like any form of piggy backing, it takes skill and ability to stay aboard.
Organizations, institutions, and businesses of all sizes are just equally cognizant of the importance of technology-based learning systems and look to them as partners in progress as opposed to a necessary evil. Case in point: Penske Truck Leasing, a premier trucking and logistics operation in the USA, empowers its workers from top management to its truck drivers to use the benefits of computers and electronic devices to improve business performance. With a click of a mouse information about gas consumption, speed, tonnage, and number of stops are available in real-time to those who need it especially for those who work off site. This makes data easily convertible into an instantaneous a decision-making tool thus enhancing the company's competitive advantage. The effect is an engaged, motivated and empowered workforce. Was the transition that simple? Not by a long drive! After all truckers and their kind did not have the reputation for being computer savvy. Just two years ago, truck driver resumes especially those with computer literacy were a rarity at Monster.com and other resume data banks. Now, their resumes boast of various forms of computer skills that are as common as those found among sales, office administration, and IT professionals' credentials. Man, technology, and the quest for opportunities to learn are now intertwined in a spiral embrace that seems to be getting tighter with every passing day.
We-learning is what we all know: teacher-led, classroom-oriented, collaborative, and attendance and test-measured.
In extreme cases it is where learners, in almost catatonic state, passively receive information from a teacher who force-feeds information and personal perceptions constructed from unexamined views posted on dog-eared lesson plans. This appears to be a harsh indictment of a system that produced, and continue to produce the brightest minds on the planet and developed the most incredible inventions known to humankind. However, it begs the proposition that if Einstein were alive today, he probably would not be closed to the idea knowing what new tonsorial tools can do for his hairstyle. In short, even the best can be open to change.
But traditional learning institutions had entrenched themselves in sprawling real estate campuses, high rise edifices, and, commercialized athletic teams that making a shift to today's relevant and authentic learning environments would prove intractable. They are heavily invested in infrastructures that prevent them from making nimble moves when times demand immediate decisional shifts. Some, like Stanford Online and CalState University in Hayward promote programs to show a "getting with it" image by advertising online degrees but the fact remains that a majority of their programs are still traditionally structured.
Meanwhile, learners are caught in a learning transition whose outcome even educational institutions themselves cannot predict. Behind the scenes, neo-educationalists are prodding school leadership of colleges and universities to break-free from self-designed crucibles while administration officials are making sure that they survive if and when transition succeeds. Presently, learners are trapped in a pedagogical design that leave them dependent and reliant upon the very same system that espouses discovery and is supposed to liberate them the shackles of their unknowing.
Industrialized nations are poised to make the pedagogical shift much easier than developing ones who in some cases are still in the early stages of applying the Western method of education that was exported to them years earlier. Others in the developing world are in the thick of a teacher-fed, student-received learning paradigm and expecting them to shift at this point will be like asking a neophyte rider to change horses in the middle of a rushing stream.
If we factor socio-cultural nuances into a pedagogical structure that is still in the throes of gaining a foothold, we will find some intriguing perspectives. For example, Asian learners-because of their influx in campuses the likes of which have not been seen before-have become a growing interest among university researchers in the USA, Australia, UK, and other developed countries that are in step with the digital revolution. Of interest to researchers is the impact of their learning patterns in a predominantly technological environment.
Asian learners, as other communal societies like in Africa, and in South America, exhibit unique learning patterns that reflect social and cultural constructs such that pedagogical genres like essays, project reports, theses, and oral presentations are produced differently from their Western counterparts thus reflecting prevailing value and interpretive systems. They adhere to a traditional educational paradigm where teachers are viewed as disseminators of information and students as passive recipients. Learners are classroom-oriented where academic materials are arranged in a sequential format which involve rule to sample, memorization and recall, practical application, and test-taking modes of teaching. Learning as a group is expected and placing the teacher dead center at the teaching-learning experience is the norm. This reflects the long-practiced tradition of teacher-centered, linear, discipline-based pedagogy.
In today's Asian family the value for education is still highly held but it does not merely transcend the altruistic desire for a family's simple intent to see a household member succeed. It is also seen as a ticket for advancement for the rest of the members. This cultural "we" and its peculiarities impact their learning in more ways than we can imagine. Consequently, the Asian we-learning tradition that involves collectivist practices reflects a pedagogical mode that stands diametrically with e-learning environment demands - or so it seems.
Individually and organizationally, e-learning has ascended from mere support to the knowledge enhancement phenomenon in the 90's to prime currency in the emerging digitally literate environments of this new decade. Moreover, e-learning is moving to becoming the de facto learning interaction model in schools, through commerce, and to daily discourses. However, a shift toward e learning entails an understanding of its distinctive characteristics and how it impacts our traditional methods of gaining knowledge. For us acculturated to the nuances of the Internet and its value as an educational tool, we can appreciate how we can exercise the freedom to question, reflect, analytically think, and act independently even across great distances.
Whereas we-learning is teacher-centered, e learning is learner-centered. Learners work independently but also find motivation in group-work (this gives we-learning a good case not to be discarded altogether). Gilly Salmon of Open University - a pioneer in e-learning since the 60's - proposes an e-learning model that captures the essence of enculturation of e-learners. Her five-part model is summarized as follows: 1) access and motivation 2) online socialization 3) information exchange 4) knowledge construction 5) development. As opposed to traditional learning classroom-dependent and teacher-fed method, e learning empowers the learners by keeping them involved in structuring their learning modules. Good e-learning materials are grounded in solid adult learning theories and place learners' learning styles at the center stage of the pedagogical design. Sound, animation, interactive productions for e-learning formats are formulated not just to inform, entertain, and teach but also to ensure that learners are able to respond in such a manner that transforms newly acquired information into productive efficient activity by involving different senses.
We and e-learning make strange bedfellows. As depicted above, both learning environments show dichotomous features. At closer look, however, both pedagogical methods can be seen as two dimensions within the same continuum. Instead of binary opposites, they may actually complement each other depending on what the learner judges to be the more appropriate method in a given learning situation thus making the two ever present in all learning experiences. Imagine being able to research a school project by accessing libraries and date bases of some of the advanced institutes and organizations across the globe at different time zones, at one's convenience, and 24/7. Imagine still being able to do that, earn a degree while keeping a job and staying home. Imagine yet still to be able to virtually globetrot, keep the job, stay home and still develop ties and friendships with folks in far flung areas of the planet-relationships that otherwise wouldn't have been possible without the aid of technology.
Frances Mayo in Training Technology and Human Resources, official magazine of the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning in the UK makes a good case of establishing a balance between e-learning and traditional classroom practices. She posits that many of the practices observed in conventional teaching methods such as teacher-student interaction, collaborative in-class projects, and teacher-personality influence can be exhibited in an e-learning environment. She adds that communication via e learning can be made as lively and warm as in traditional classroom-based setting through synchronous methods. Even in asynchronous sessions, student-teacher interaction can be optimized through more competent teaching skills adapted to the technology. Spontaneous interaction common in conventional classrooms can also be replicated in virtual learning settings by having highly socialized participants especially when their personal and course goals reflect their objectives. This aspect clearly reflects the Gilly Salmon e-learning model.
Strong support for e-learning is seen in both educational and business sectors. Traditional universities consider e-learning as a must-have in their course offerings. Other institutions seem to be more purist in their approach. For example, the University of Action Learning at Boulder and Canadian School of Management in Toronto offer programs from certificate credentials up to MBA degrees via online. Also, Jones International University in Denver offers degrees strictly online with their unique "shell" model of curriculum design for its faculty. Businesses, with their corporate universities, seem to be more aggressive in applying e-learning in their premises as demonstrated in the Penske case. Sears University and Motorola University have given rise to highly effective management strategies like Six Sigma and CRM. Their learners comprised of managers and employees form a "closed set" of homogeneous learners thus allowing for a communal atmosphere akin to a traditional classroom setting. Synchronous learning modes such as live online chats, video conferencing, and telephone conferencing all contribute to a warm, personal, and collaborative atmosphere that characterize the much maligned classroom environment.
What may be emerging here is a convergence of two learning modalities that are still in the midst of a shuffle. It looks that as technology forges ahead so will the shift or convergence; whether one will dominate the other remains to be seen. After all e-learning technology is still developing and its we-learning partner does not seem to be in a hurry. In spite of lightning speed developments in technology one thing is certain: this cyber dance is not going to foxtrot speed anytime soon.
