Thoughts about e-learning projects (Bernd Thaller)

philowiki: kooperative Philosophie

Right now I'm attending a conference about e-learning and there it was said frequently that we have entered a period where the funding of e-learning content is declining or even slowly coming to an end. Projects mainly focused on creating content are getting less and less attention.

What is required now is that e-learning projects have potential for a larger impact. In particular, one thinks about an impact for the development and change of the organisational structure of the institution offering e-learning (schools, universities,..). Perhaps on even thinks of projects devoted solely to organisation and strategy without any content! The second aspect is the implementation and exploration of new pedagogical ideas (for example, collaborative learning, constructivist model). A successful project should be innovative in as many areas as possible.

As the aspects involving organisational matters are not really in the list of topics for discussion at EuroMath, here are some typical points, or rather questions, and incoherent remarks that are perhaps worth discussing:

What can our institutions do to support e-learning better? For example: Making e-learning part of the curriculum. Accepting online-lectures as a possible form teaching (on an equal footing with frontal lectures, seminars, tutorials, excursions,..). Can we get our instition (or, at least, our institute) to declare support for our efforts and use our results? Does our content need some centrally managed software components to be used by teachers? Do we need support of media centers or computer centers at our University? (At least we need web space!) Will the support continue once the funding is over?

Does our project fit into existing organisational structures at our institution that organize and foster e-learning? Do we work together with local "competence centers" (if any) or are they rather a nuisance?

The character of a lecture will certainly change, if it has an online component. What changes do we want? Can we put a course online and offer to take examinations without ever actually holding a lecture? Do students get ETCS points for this? Can they get more points if they agree to learn more? ("Individualisation"). Will this be supported by the curricula?

What can we do to motivate colleages to make contributions to our project? For example, can we make contributions appear like regular publications that can be cited (and are therefore good for one's career)? Can a web course have an ISBN number? Can it be adopted as a schoolbook? Should we put up an editorial board, organize a peer-review system for contributions?

How can we motivate colleages to use our material? Ok, perhaps the answer here is simple. The product must be so easy to use and increadibly good so that nobody can live without it ;-) Do we want to propose organisatorial changes that urge colleages towards e-Learning?

What sort of advertisments will be needed? Will it be necessary to organize conferences that introduce teachers and fellow mathematicians to the new possibilities offered by our system? By what methods do we introduce colleages to the benefits of our system? How do we introduce students to use our material?

Do our efforts contribute to the individualisation of teaching and learning and to the diversity problem (the problem that people are different, have different background, and follow different strategies)? - well, perhaps this point belongs more to didactics.

What methods of evaluation and quality management do we use? (Peer-review, evaluation by students, evaluation of students). What about formative evaluation (evaluation at an early stage that influences the development of the product)? Should the development be accompanied by some sort of controlling procedure?

What about juridical questions? Copyright? Should everything be freely available, or do we protect content against commercial reuse etc? Can we reuse material from others? Will our institutions try to sell our material? What amount of individualization for teaching learning is allowed by law (or by curricula)?

These are but some issues vaguely related to infrastructure, organization, personell, support by our institution, etc. Certainly, there are others. Ideas and comments welcome.

Comment from Mike Pearson:

Bernd's thoughts make a lot of sense to me. It's certainly vital that we sort out IPR issues at a very early stage. It's also true that there would be some conflict of interest for me (and I'm sure others too) between the goals of producing content for my 'day job' projects (see http://mmp.maths.org) and any successful Euromath proposal.

I've been in this situation before with the European project that supported http://thesaurus.maths.org - and discovered that motivating colleagues to contribute content is not easy. There is definitely a need to find and exploit other incentives.

So I would very much welcome a movement towards a goal of integrating what has already been achieved in online mathematics education, which directly involves practitioners at a very early stage, which builds on some simple to use and already accepted web technologies and furthers the careers of those involved.

I'd like to add to Bernd's ideas one which may be more suitable for primary and secondary school educators - encouraging the use of weblogs and RSS for learning object discovery, sharing and further ellaboration (plus some shameless self promotion).

Comment from Dave Pratt, CeNTRE

I think there is a danger of ambiguous interpretation of Bernd's ideas since what is meant by content and strategy is crucial. e-learning as it has so far evolved appears to me to be a misnomer. "e-delivery" would be a better title. In this sense the accent has been on content. However, when I have talked to people involved in e-learning, I get the impression that their discussion is entirely about strategy. They discuss methods of delivery. I hope that what Bernd meant however is that we need instead innvation in methods of learning. We need to invent new pedagogies, or find ways of integrating well-established effective pedagogies, into e-learning contexts. My own projects, whether internet based or not, have emphasised placing ownership and control in the hands of the learner (Logo style). You could argue that conventional e-learning strategies offer the receiver (I find it hard to call them "learner") control in the sense that they have the option to engage or not engage and they can often make choices as to what they engage with. However such choices do not necessarily stimulate a sense of ownership and excitement. So perhaps in the end the student is likely not to engage with anything. I was impressed with the WebLab project in the Knowledge Lab, University of London, because of the way that the web was being used for children to share ideas and mathematical projects and write about ideas. My own projects have tended to offer stimulus for work away from the computer and for engagnement with other resources. Perhaps we should consider trying to combine these sorts of approaches.