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1、The Illusion of e-Learning:Why We Are Missing Out on the Promise of TechnoloFrank L. Greenagel, Ph.D.August 2002E-learning has not kept pace with the development of increasingly rich IP-based delivery platforms because the e-learning experience is far too often puerile, boring, and of unknown or dou
2、btful effectiveness. Developers dont seem to be aware of how people learn, for they continue to use mostly flawed models. Corporations are more interested in throughput and low unit cost, so solid measures of effectiveness are infrequently developed or applied. The available platform drives the inst
3、ructional strategy, which may not be appropriate to the learning style of trainees or to the learning objectives. The cost of development is high, so bad (cheap) programs drive out the good ones in the absence of any commitment to measure effectiveness. Effective e-learning experiences for complex c
4、ompetencies are rarely scalable.Why does the situation persist, when so many knowledgeable people have sat through a course they know to be bad? Habit, and perhaps low expectations by traineeswe dont expect to find the courses stimulating or engaging, so we dont complain too much when they are prett
5、y much like the boring lectures we used to sit through.A flawed model of cost-effectivenessAt a moment when higher education has become increasingly convinced that the standard classroom lecture is not a particularly effective way of teaching, how ironic that many of those responsible for e-learning
6、 say the ultimate goal is to mimic the classroom experience as much as possible. Perhaps thats one indication that e-learning is no longer an unproven cutting-edge experiment, but has moved into the mainstream. A few years ago, only a minuscule percentage of corporate training was technology-based,
7、but in the year 2000, that figure was up to 24 percent and compares impressively to the 57 percent delivered through traditional classroom methods. There are other signs that higher education is looked to for systems of learning management and measurement. The “Carnegie units” model of counting nose
8、s (one person in one course for one term) is a standard component of ROI calculations and, while no school system or college would ever mention ROI publicly, they do employ all kinds of ratios to determine “efficiency.”It is difficult not to conclude, however, that there is relatively less emphasis
9、on outcomes measurement in corporate training, certainly in comparison with higher education, where it is intense; my experience over more than 30 years in the corporate world suggests that most businesses give more weight to anecdotal accounts than to efforts to measure outcomes rigorously. Where t
10、here is an effort, it seems to be directed toward measuring the cost side of the dyad, especially where training staff can claim substantial cost savings. The trade press is replete with articles quoting training managers boasting of how many hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) they expect to
11、 save with e-learning, generally through less travel, fewer hours lost to training, and lower staff costs. Years ago, ROI never came up in discussions of corporate training budgets, primarily because the knowledge/skill level of the workforce was regarded as an intangible asset that did not show up
12、on the balance sheet. That may still be the case, but the telecommunications and systems infra-structure necessary to deliver e-learning does appear on the balance sheet, so ROI has become a tool of the trade in training departments. “In tough economic times, you have to demonstrate the ROI of an e-
13、learning project back to the business sponsors,” said an HR director at a major firm quoted in Online Learning.Why development of standards is a distractionIn addition to the emphasis on cost savings, there is another dimension that has received considerable attention in e-learning circlesthe develo
14、pment of standards such as SCORM (Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model) and IMS (Instructional Management System). These are not standards that treat learning outcomes, but instead deal with tagging, coding, and indexing Learning Objects to facilitate reuse of digitized training materials. So
15、me have likened that effort to “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic,” but that is perhaps harsher than necessary. The emphasis on adoption of standards is clear: “Implementation of SCORM specifications can help learning technology to become reusable, interoperable, stable, and accessible.” Who
16、 would be opposed to standards, except there is nothing in any of those standards that focuses attention on the effectiveness of the Learning Objects. Indeed, the term Learning Objects itself ought to cause some unease. An LO (Learning Object) is defined as a “discreet small chunk that can be used a
17、lone or dynamically assembled to provide just enough and just-in-time learning. Learning Objects can also enable learners to select the training that is most relevant for them, perhaps even in a media format that matches their preferred learning style (auditory, visual, etc.).” A Learning Object is,
18、 thus, a thing that has physical dimensions (type, number of megabytes) that can be measured; it can be tagged and indexed for future use. No one knows, however, whether that LO has ever resulted in anyone learning anything or subsequently demonstrating any competency. We know that learning doesnt h
19、appen in discrete chunks. An acquaintance at the University of Colorado once said, “We have to cross the line between ignorance and insight many times before we truly understand.” We get it, then lose it, then kind of get it again, then find out we dont quite have it right, and ultimately, after str
20、uggling to master the concept, we have it. Learning often appears a little ragged, and does not generally come in nicely packaged objects, no matter how systematically tagged. Efforts to measure outcomes are difficult enough, but to substitute for those efforts a set of standards which tag and index
21、 inputs seems to me to be mistaken.The lack of emphasis on outcomesWhen the e-learning industry attempts to quantify content elements, the concern is misplaced; it diverts attention from the more important issue of measuring effectiveness, e.g., under what conditions does e-learning work? The drive
22、for standards, originating in the mutual efforts of the aviation industry and the Department of Defense, appears to be part of an attempt to make e-learning programs more acceptable to IT departments, who are reluctant to consider anything that involves audio, video, and other features with bandwidt
23、h or security issues. The next step, presumably, will be to measure the mean number of megabytes in a Learning Object, so IT can estimate how much additional capacity they will need to add in order to teach the sales force how to sell the companys new gizmo.It appears that this push for standards re
24、ally has little to do with measurable learning outcomes. The move toward standards arose, we are told, because of “complaints about previous generations of e-learning products which range from integration issues and interoperability concerns to bandwidth and scalability problems.” Those complaints d
25、id not, it appears, come from trainees, who often found the training dull, rigid, and not related to their work, but rarely complained about interoperability and integration issues.In the absence of a sustained emphasis on measurable outcomes, there is little incentive to value anything but “through
26、put” and low unit cost. But dropout rates (defined as failure to complete a course) for e-learning are much higher (70 percent) than for standard instruction in four-year colleges (about 15 percent). Although three-fourths of corporations use course completion as a measure of effectiveness, some ven
27、dors and training executives seek to downplay completion rates as a significant measure of success. Community colleges, on the other hand, pay close attention to course completion rates and consider them a most significant indicator (though not the only one) of their success.Some concerned voices wi
28、thin the industry have been raised: Eliot Masie, in response to an InformationWeek question about the scariest question regarding e-learning: “Does it work? If I invite 50 people into a session, is there learning? If its well-structured, theres the right content, weve taken care of who we invite, an
29、d theres a payoff at the end, theyll probably learn as well as they would in the classroomwhich isnt very well.” Still, Masie is among those leading the push for adoption and dissemination of standards, so he apparently sees no inherent contradiction between the centrality of learning effectiveness
30、to the long-range success of e-learning and the drive for interoperability. Indeed, he specifically notes that “all the work on standards and specifications will play a similarly critical role in causing the take-off of the learning industry, but they do not, in and of themselves, look after ensurin
31、g the quality or effectiveness of learning.”The fact is, e-learning has become well established and will only grow, whether there are standards or not. The cost savings are too great to ignore, regardless of the lack of measurable outcomes, and e-learning has made available to people in remote locat
32、ions a variety of courses they would not otherwise have had access to; if their motivation was high and their perseverance strong, I have little doubt that many of them learned. So we are not talking about the survival of e-learning. But we may be talking about a degrading of quality if we are conte
33、nt to measure only the cost savings, the compliance with standards and the number of Learning Objects dispensed. Clearly, we should be under no illusions about effectiveness if the failure-to-complete rate remains at 70 percent. What can be done?Lets begin with the learning experience. If that is no
34、t engaging, only the most highly motivated (or those under duress) are likely to complete the course. How would the typical trainee describe the typical e-learning experience? Boring is the first word that comes to mind, whether the instructional strategy is reading text, watching a streaming video
35、of the average instructor, or following an audio-over-PowerPoint presentation. The developers attitude seems to be similar to my high school biology teachers, who often reminded us, “If youre smiling, youre not learning.”Some may call it a masochistic tendency, but I have an irresistible urge to exa
36、mine e-learning courses whenever I get a chance. Not to complete the course, but to sample it and see how the designer engages my interest, allows me to move through the material, tests my understanding, reinforces appropriate responses and my ability to apply the learning, and corrects my mistakes.
37、 I like to see if that designer has made any attempt to adapt to people with different learning styles or perhaps with a different purpose. So I examine the free demonstration courses offered online whenever possible, expecting that purveyors would put their best foot forward and show content that w
38、as interesting and well designed. But it is not so. I hope those demos are their throwaway materialdogs they couldnt get anyone to register forbecause if they are representative of the rest of their curriculum, a lot of customers are being taken.At the heart of the problem lie a couple of factors be
39、yond the unwillingness to insist on measurable outcomes: 1) available technology is driving the instructional strategy, 2) developers dont know anything about how people learn, and 3) a desire to produce courses at the lowest unit cost leads to cutting corners and/or to repurposing of material that
40、wasnt very good to begin with. Absent the chance to network with peers, students find e-learning technologies to be very unforgiving. Lets examine the first of those factors.Technology is not an e-Learning strategyThe need to calculate the ROI for a training initiative should lead to an insistence o
41、n definition of an e-learning strategy, which is a very good thing. But the strategic statements Ive seen are driven by technology, not by corporate objectives. The infrastructure (largely network bandwidth and telecommunications capability) is the strategy in some of those statements. To me, thats
42、backward. Begin with the organizations objectives, extract the competencies required to attain those objectives, examine the constraints (time, distance, trainees experience, corporate culture, etc.), and then you can begin to outline the kind of learning experiences that will be necessary to develo
43、p those competencies. Only at that point (or when describing the constraints) do you consider the technology and whether its capabilities and limitations are congruent with the learning experiences necessary to achieve the outcome. Because there is not an established track record for the effectivene
44、ss dimension of e-learning, we might examine the extent to which the available programs and the enabling technologies rely on established models of how adults learn. There are two dominant learning models that, consciously or not, are employed in IP-based learning systems: Presentation and Programme
45、d.Presentation models range from streaming audio and video to PowerPoint programs that have been repurposed and sent over platforms such as PlaceWare. This is the traditional learning model, used for centuries. Sometimes called the “information transmission” model or, more skeptically, “the-sage-on-
46、a-stage,” it assumes that most people can learn the content through aural and visual means. At its worst, it is simply a talking head, or a voice over a slide show. Frank Zvi, President of the webcasting vendor Interwise, makes it seem very simple: “If youre an enterprise, human resources can use st
47、reaming audio, video, and data to have the CEO talk to everyone in broadcast mode, and at the same time also talk to specific groups in seminar mode.”At best, the speaker may be excellent and the graphics, video clips, and other visual aids add materially to the listeners understanding. Presentation
48、 models have been one-way until recently, when live, interactive videoconferencing has become available, if somewhat unreliable. Still, there are doubts. We teachersperhaps all human beingsare in the grip of an astonishing delusion. We think that we can take a picture, a structure, a working model o
49、f something constructed in our minds out of long experience and familiarity, and by turning that model into a string of words, transplant it whole into the mind of someone else. Perhaps once in a thousand times, when the explanation is extraordinarily good, and the listener extraordinarily experienced and skillful at turning wordstrings into nonverbal reality . . . the process may work, and some real meaning may be communicated. Most of the time, explaining does n
