E-Learning:
The Second Wave:
February 2nd, 2001
By Paul Stacey
The
second wave of e-learning is upon us. Justification for
e-learning has been established and those who were early
adopters have successfully piloted exemplars. The
question is no longer "if" you should do
e-learning but "how" to do e-learning. Those
just getting started look to develop how-to action
plans. Those with successful early pilots, look to scale
up. The second wave brings dramatic increases in
adoption and participation.
One
way to think of this transition from justification to
implementation is in terms of Geoffrey Moore's
Technology Adoption Life Cycle. In my view Moore's
ideas, expressed eloquently in his books Crossing the
Chasm, Inside the Tornado and others should be required
reading for everyone involved in technology. For a quick
familiarization on some of Moore's basic concepts have a
look at the Slide Set at http://www.chasmgroup.com/publications.htm.
Moore's
Technology Adoption Life Cycle is shaped like a bell
curve. Every technological advance begins with
innovators who invent or develop a new application.
Released into the marketplace these new technologies are
picked up and used by early adopters. The number of
users of a technology in these initial two stages is
relatively small. However, if a technology works and
provides significant benefits it crosses over what Moore
calls the chasm into more widespread use by the early
majority. Once it makes this transition the number of
users starts to really increase as the bell curve
swells.
In
terms of technology adoption the past few years have
seen e-learning transition through the innovator and
early adopter stages. Now, having proven its
effectiveness, e-learning has crossed the chasm and
begins to move into the mainstream.
So
the question becomes - how to do e-learning? Well there
are lots of options. There are over 100 e-learning
applications in the marketplace and more than 680
organizations supplying services or products in the
e-learning space.
Some
organizations have turned the responsibility for
learning over to their employees.
Ford
Motor Company and Delta Airlines have provided employees
with a personal computer and Internet connection to do
e-learning on their own time.
FedEx
has established a $2,500 personal learning fund for each
employee. This tax deferred learning account complete
with a dollar spending limit allows employees to
purchase e-learning consumed on their own time.
Left
to their own employees can turn to e-learning portals
such as Hungry Minds http://www.hungryminds.com
or Thinq.com http://www.thinq.com.
Another source of on-line offerings are universities and
colleges who are putting more and more courses for
credit on-line. The choices are rapidly growing.
Leaving
employees to fend for themselves in the face of a
plethora of vendor offerings creates a need for vendor
neutral evaluations and reviews of e-learning offerings.
The most prominent exchange, offering TV Guide like
reviews of e-learning is LGuide http://www.lguide.com.
If you are thinking of buying an e-learning course you
might want to go to LGuide first and read what the
reviewers have to say.
Another
answer to the "how to do e-learning" question
is a hosted solution from an Application Service
Provider (ASP). Instead of spending time and money on
evaluating, selecting and installing e-learning
infrastructure, organizations that pursue a hosted
solution are more interested in speed to market and
getting e-learning content out to employees and
customers as fast as possible.
Hosted
solutions are generally of two types. Those who provide
the infrastructure and content and those who provide
just the infrastructure. Companies like Smartforce http://www.smartforce.com
and NetG http://www.netg.com
provide infrastructure and content. The hosted solutions
from these companies are proprietary. You can only use
their infrastructure to take their content. You can't
develop and deploy your own content on their
infrastructure. Neither can you use their infrastructure
to take someone else's content.
The
second type of ASP is where the provider gives you
access to e-learning applications hosted on their
e-learning infrastructure and servers. You use the
e-learning applications provided to develop your own
content which is installed and served up on their site.
If your IT department is raising major roadblocks to an
e-learning implementation based on concerns over traffic
and bandwidth issues a hosted solution like this allows
you to move forward with e-learning at a relatively low
price point without impacting what might be perceived as
more mission critical IT business systems. Application
Service Providers offering this kind of solution include
Blackboard http://www.blackboard.com
and Docent http://www.docent.com
among others. Even these solutions are somewhat
proprietary in that content must be specifically
developed using their tools for their infrastructure.
The whole field of e-learning is maturing and with that
maturation are coming standards that will allow for
interoperability and easy porting of content from one
e-learning platform to another - but that's a future
column.
Most
organizations view e-learning as an important business
strategy over which they want more control. In addition
the extensive firewall and security aspects of some
company's Internet implementations prevent easy access
to ASP solutions. These companies want to install
e-learning infrastructure on their own internal IT
infrastructure inside the firewall. Some of the
suppliers mentioned above are not just ASP providers but
also license their technologies to companies for
internal implementations. Other new players are emerging
including Canadian provider ISOPIA http://www.isopia.com.
The
how-to do e-learning solutions for those who want to do
it themselves are a little more complex and require more
forethought and planning. Since starting to write this
column I have been getting an increasing number of
requests to provide e-learning consulting services. I
recently changed my role at the Technical University to
allow me to take on these kind of requests. Let me share
with you in general terms some the second wave work I
have been pursuing.
Educational
institutions interested in e-learning solutions are
engaged in second wave e-learning issues around
organizational change, transformation, and readiness. At
the recent EduCause National Learning Infrastructure
Initiative (NLII) meeting I was impressed with a
prototype web-based tool being developed for senior
administrators that engages them with key issues related
to assessing their organizations e-learning readiness in
the areas of student support services, faculty
engagement, learning technologies, and marketspace
partnering.
You
can get a sneak peek of the prototype version of this
tool at http://www.educause.edu/ready.
While targeted specifically at the needs of universities
and colleges it nonetheless provides an excellent
framework for any organization seeking self-assessment
on a whole range of second wave e-learning issues.
In
the private sector, organizations pursuing the
do-it-yourself strategy are actively developing plans to
operationalize their e-learning initiative by trying to
answer such key questions as:
- How will our
e-learning be planned and managed?
- What is the optimum
business model for us to provide e-learning?
- Who are the human
resources that will create, deliver, and support our
e-learning?
- What are the
e-learning success models and pedagogies that we
should use for our e-learning?
- What curriculum and
content should we target for e-learning deployment
and what business goals will it solve?
- What educational
technologies will we use to develop and deliver our
e-learning?
- What is the
production process we will follow in developing our
e-learning?
- How will our
e-learning be evaluated and revised over its life
cycle?
In both the private and
the public sectors one of the biggest second wave issues
is establishing a common baseline understanding for
everyone on just what e-learning is. It has been in the
service of that goal that I write this column and have
begun plans for an accompanying workshop. Hope it helps.
Another source for
developing an understanding is the TechBC sponsored New
Media BC E-Learning Special Interest Group (SIG). See
the New Media BC web site http://www.newmediabc.com
for upcoming local E-Learning SIG events.
Paul
Stacey is the Director of Corporate Education and
Training at the Technical University of British
Columbia, a long time education professional in the high
tech private sector, and an e-learner.
Contact: Paul
Stacey
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