E-Learning II - The Promise

The Internet is continuing to revolutionize every aspect of human experience - business, leisure, socialization, and education. Used appropriately, either alone or alongside more traditional methods, e-learning is capable of producing high quality, lasting, and transferable learning.

Some areas in which e-learning offers the greatest potential for positive impact are:

* Individualized learning. Every learner is different; each has their own requirements, expectations, learning styles and circumstances. Effective e-learning adapts itself to the individual. From offering a choice of presentations, through adaptive learning in which delivery changes according to performance and preference, to individualized syllabi.

* Hypermedia. Traditional learning consists of fixed, pre-defined subject matter. The Web is based on hyperlinks between related documents. e-learning need not be limited to a fixed delimited content set. Instead, learning material should be a launch pad for the learner's journey through the Web.

* Social Networking. The defining feature of Web 2.0 is the extent of user participation. e-learning done right encourages learner participation. Distance learners are often mature people and often bring a degree of experience of the topic under study, or at very least a degree of life experience. The superset of all learners' experience is greater than that of ant individual. The challenge of e-learning (ie the facilitator) is to encourage the sharing of that experience.

* Multimedia. e-learning is able to deliver much more than static text and images to the learner's desktop. Audio, video and animation all have the potential to present learning material in a stimulating manner, appealing to a broad range of learning styles. Lectures and seminars may be recorded and digitized for online delivery extending their benefit to those unable to be physically present, and providing a review opportunity for those that were. Video can show natural phenomena or laboratory experiments to those unable to witness first-hand. Animation can demonstrate continuous processes more realistically than the discrete steps they must be represented as on paper.

* Simulation. Active learning promotes the deepest understanding and greatest retention. Simulations allow learners to engage with scenarios, changing parameters and observing results. In simulations it's OK to blow up a nuclear reactor, kill a surgical patient or crash a plane, and the impact of doing so is likely to remain with the learner.

While recognizing that educators are not immune from economic concerns, it is to be hoped that where e-learning is employed the resulting learning experience will be at least as good, and hopefully significantly better, than what went before.

Johnny is the editor of Educational Technology - an introduction for Teachers and Learners. Discover how to identify, and produce, good e-learning. Johnny is available for consultancy at info@twinisles.com.

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