Somewhere, A Place To Learn


The promise of e-learning to provide anytime, anyplace learning leaves us with an awful lot of options. But trainers and learners alike have to make a choice – what is the ideal environment in which to be an e-learner? In this chapter, I explore the advantages and disadvantages associated with learning at the desktop, at home or in the learning centre, and reflect on whether all options can work given the right conditions.

A time and place for us

Way back in the mid 1990s, the Internet was beginning to attract the attention of a wider public. Educationalists, who, in universities and research establishments around the world, had actually been using this technology for 20 years, were woken up suddenly to the potential of computer networks as a channel of communication that had a purpose beyond shopping and pornography. And so e-learning was born, and no sooner was the ‘e’ word uttered than the educationalists showed their age and trotted out that Martini thing (you know – ‘anytime, anywhere, any place’, three sentiments, two of which mean the same thing).

Now, the Martini claim is a grand one and, of course, overstated. If anything, the claim applies more appropriately to books, which are more portable and require less sophisticated connectivity than computers (although they can’t mark your assessments in a nanosecond or allow you to engage in chat sessions across continents). Yes, online learning does add something unique and valuable to the educational toolkit but no, not really anyplace.

As we all know, the idea of independent, self-paced learning is hardly new. People have sat quietly and reflected on experience for thousands of years, and with the aid of books for hundreds. In 1840, Sir Isaac Pitman taught shorthand by mail, heralding the arrival of correspondence schools. The idea that this form of learning requires a special place, away from the madding crowd, came in the early 80s, with the first open learning centres. Forgive me if I reminisce. Was it really 20 years ago now when I opened the pretentiously-titled ‘computer learning centre’ at American Express, complete with an on-screen catalogue of resources, navigated with a light pen, and induction courses running on Apple II computers connected to VHS players? With a blaze of launch publicity, the centre was well used, particularly at lunch times and after work. Is it there now? No, of course not. People don’t really use learning centres, do they?




E-Learning's Greatest Hits
E-learnings Greatest Hits
ISBN: 0954590406
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 198

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