Quality targets

Improving the quality of e-learning depends to an extent on your favoured paradigm. It also depends on the extent to which you are prepared to dispense with the past and mix and match freely, not just between the various computer-assisted methods, but with traditional methods as well. But before we worry about the blends, let’s look at the ingredients in turn, starting with interactive self-study, what we used to call CBT.

Interactive self-study has taken some knocks, primarily when it is derided as merely ‘page-turning’. Now there’s nothing wrong with page-turning as such; after all we don’t complain about having to turn the pages of a favourite novel. No the problem is not with the turning, but with the pages. So much web-based training is based on tired old behaviourist models of tell and test, and simply doesn’t take advantage of what computers do well. Learning requires interactivity, and if you can’t interact directly with the subject of your learning, then you sure need to interact with the computer, something that computers do rather well, as any gamer will attest. The best web-based training has yet to come. It will engage you in a stimulating dialogue, it will bring the subject to life using rich media, it will challenge you with games and simulations, and it will respond to you as an individual. What’s stopping this happening now? Easy-to-use authoring tools, perhaps, but principally design skills, or rather the lack of.

The distance learning model of e-learning depends upon regular, meaningful online communication between learners and their colleagues and between learners and tutors. With email, instant messaging, discussion forums and chat rooms, we have most of the tools we need to accomplish this now. Where there’s room for improvement is in the way in which these tools are used by e-tutors to bring online communities to life, and to stimulate and support learners. Where this is being done well already, the results are outstanding and the happy sheets back this up.

Perhaps the greatest wasted potential is in the use of virtual classrooms. Believe it or not, death by PowerPoint is as painful online as it is in the classroom (except you can read your emails or play Solitaire while you’re listening) and there’s really no excuse. All virtual classroom packages provide enough facilities (text-chat, audio conferencing, shared whiteboards, quizzes and polls) to satisfy any learner’s lust for interaction – all we need is for e-trainers to use them. As those delegates who have tuned in to one of the better monthly seminars run by Learning Technologies will tell you, a well-run virtual classroom can be a lot of fun and doesn’t require a train ride to London and back.

If there’s one area where trainers most need to develop their skills, it is in bringing all these ideas together, combining them with all those well-trusted methods we know and love, and doing this at the right time, for the right audience. Some cynics will tell you that ‘blended learning’ was just a sop thrown to training traditionalists and there may be some truth in this. A typical blend is no more than a standard classroom course, topped and tailed with online pre- and post-work, where, with a little imagination and some careful analysis, it should be possible to win on all counts – more learning, better learning, faster learning and cheaper learning. Just see.