History of E-learning

The word “E-learning” seems so general and common today, especially the speed with which it is becoming a learning norm nowadays, labels it as one of the widely practiced concept all over the world. But, till 1999, no one could even imagine that learning would be possible without meeting at a physical location and there had never been a term like “E-learning” till then. The word “E-learning” and its concept first emerged in October 1999, in a seminar at Los Angeles, organized by CBT systems. In this seminar, the origin and usage of this word in a professional field, was never thought to be the most admiring and adopted idea in just few coming years. It implies that the concept of E-learning is not that old.

The world “E-learning” is also associated with the expressions like “virtual learning” or “online learning”. Experts define E-learning as a mean to gain learning that is based on the utilization of new advanced technologies that permit access to interactive, online and sometime tailored training via Internet and other media like interactive TV, Intranet, CD-ROM, extranet etc so as to expand competencies while the course of learning is self-determining from place and time.

The growth of the e-Learning concept has derived from so many other ‘educational revolutions’. Some of such revolutions are quoted by Billings and Moursund (1988) as:

• The development of writing and reading
• The emergence of the teacher/scholar profession
• The development of portable technology
• The advancement of electronic technology

It seems that the basic ideas, didactical grounds and methodologies are not so new!

The history of E-learning has been a gradual evolution since long.

In the beginning of 1960s, Psychology professors from Stanford University, named Richard C. Atkinson and Patrick Suppes tested computers to be used to teach math to kids in elementary schools in East Palo Alto, California. These experiments gave birth to Stanford’s Education Program for Gifted Youth.

In the year 1963, Bernard Luskin set up the earliest computer in a community college for teaching. At that time he was working with Stanford along with others and made progress in computer assisted training. Luskin finished his milestone UCLA thesis while working with the Rand Corporation in examining the problems to computer assisted education in 1970.

Initially the e-learning systems, that are based on Computer-Based Training frequently tried to replicate conventional teaching methods whereby the function of the e-learning system was assumed to be for conveying knowledge, as contrasting to systems that were developed afterward. These were designed on the basis of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), which initiated the idea of shared growth of knowledge.

In 1993, William D. Graziadei introduced an online computer-conveyed lecture, seminar and evaluation project via electronic mail. The first most online high school was founded by 1994. Till now the e-learning has become the hot norm of societies at large, all over the world. The global e-learning industry is anticipated to have value over $48 billion as per some conservative estimates.(Nagy, A., 2005, pp. 79-96). From 1994 till 2006 i.e. just within 12 years, over 3.5 million students had been reported to participate in on-line learning environment at various higher education institutions in US.

E-Learning is now being adopted widely and used by a number of companies to update and educate both their customers and employees. Companies with big and spread out division chains employ it to teach their staff even for the newest product advancements without the requirement of arranging physical courses.

Reference:

1. Nagy, A. (2005). The Impact of E-Learning, in: Bruck, P.A.; Buchholz, A.; Karssen, Z.; Zerfass, A. (Eds). E-Content: Technologies and Perspectives for the European Market. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 79–96

-Jay Chun

Jay is an elearning developer and instructional designer, as well as a valuable contributor to the Collabor8 Learning team.  He has worked on eLearning projects for fortune 500 companies and in industries ranging from Healthcare, Military, and Education and Scholastic.  

To read more about his past work and experience, click here.  Jay can be reached at 949-407-6460, or at jay@jpchun.com. 

Correctly Attributing Creative Commons Photos in your E-learning Projects

One consideration when working on any e-learning project that both instructional designers and the subject matter expert (or client) have to decide early on is what look & feel to give a project.  By look and feel, were not just talking about the user interface for the course.  The imagery you use should follow similar design influences to avoid giving the project an amateurish or incoherent look.  For example, when building an e-learning solution for a bank, they made clear to our team that clip art or “anything that looked cartoon-ish” was unacceptable in their culture and should be avoided in the project.  They felt it would diminish the serious of the compliance topic we were going to teach. 

Couple this design consideration with a very little to nonexistent budget for the purchase of stock photography or a dedicated graphic designer and your new project can quickly turn into a nightmare.  One thing you can do to alleviate this constraint is to use imagery distributed under a creative commons license.  In order to do this however, it is important for you to properly follow any attribution guidelines requested by the provider of the image.  This infographic can give you some pretty good best practices to follow when using this type of image. 

Where can you find these images you ask?  Two of my favorite sources are Wikimediacommons.org and creativecommons.org.

- Alex Santos

Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

MOOC Lessons for Designers from the Coursera fiasco

Dr. Fatimah Wirth did not have a good week, and many instructional designers rushing into developing a MOOC should take heed.  This relatively new learning platform has the potential to revolutionize and disrupt education as we know it, but it is not without its pitfalls.  A week into the launch of a new course entitled “Fundamentals in Online Education” (ironically), glitches in the course forced her to send out the following message to her more than 40,000 registered students―

"We want all students to have the highest quality learning experience. For this reason, we are temporarily suspending the 'Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application' course in order to make improvements. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. We will inform you when the course will be reoffered." Read more here.

1.        Instructions have to be crystal clear,

2.       Don’t underestimate technology selection when designing a MOOC,

3.       Select the right technology for the level of collaboration in your class, and test, test, test, and

4.       Once your course development is done, have others field test it and play devil’s advocate with your activities. 

This last lesson is critical, as we designers sometimes fail to predict how learners will interact with a particular technology.  In this case, Dr. Wirth surely thought it a workable exercise to have students place themselves into groups by putting their names on a Google spreadsheet―would you have foreseen students going into said spreadsheet and deleting columns and rows with other students’ names in them?  There are some more concrete examples of what went wrong with this course over at online learning insights, and let’s hope this course is re-launched soon without these glitches.  MOOCs are hot, and they’re here to stay―but designing them will require some new thinking on your part.  I also suggest learning and studying the experiences of trailblazers in this arena such as Dr. Wirth.

- Alex Santos

Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

E-learning saves the day

This piece by our former governor of Florida Jeb Bush does a great job of illustrating several advantages of moving education online.  The learner in the piece, Kaleigh, was not just motivated but determined to continue her education under very difficult circumstances.  Due to a medical condition, it was simply impossible for her to complete a traditional “one-size-fits-all” classroom education.  Fortunately for her, online education was able to meet her needs where a more traditional approach was simply not feasible. 

This is a case where e-learning clearly saved the day, and not just states but companies can learn much from these cases.  In this case, e-learning:

1.       Met the learner at the point-of-need,

2.       Gave the learner the flexibility to learn on her own time, at her own pace, and presumably on her own device,

3.       Provided an alternative to a traditional education where a more traditional education was impossible, and

4.       Likely saved the state money in the process.

More importantly for me however, is that e-learning enabled Kaleigh to continue to grow and develop.  Jeb makes a wonderful observation at the end of the piece that is not to be missed-

“While digital learning may not be the best way to learn for all students, it is the best way to learn for some students.”

While I could write an entire post about the qualities that make Kaleigh an ideal virtual learner, I’ll leave you with this―many of your employees face challenges to their continued development.  These challenges include everything from a hectic schedule to a poor manager who does not coach properly or allow for sufficient training time.  E-learning can be blended into your existing training strategy to help eliminate several of these challenges.  

- Alex Santos

Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

E-learning standards and consistency―Don’t leave home without ‘em

As an instructional designer, it is critical to the success of any e-learning project to nail down some basic design standards prior to your beginning any development work.  A well written and thorough document takes time however, and you will find many clients unwilling to invest in this necessary step.  Whether working solo- and more importantly when designing and developing e-learning in a team environment―I encourage you to fight for the time at the very least to nail down some basics.  Skip this step at your own risk.  Done right, you can literally shave days off the project plan by investing this time up front.  Or, as I tell our clients, “I understand you don’t have the budget to allow us to develop a design document Mr. Client, I believe you will have the time later on to come back and fix all of the inconsistencies in the course that will pop-up.”

There are simply too many variables, interface options, fonts, colors, and other user interface tweaks available in today’s authoring tools to forego this critical step.  You wouldn’t pressure your homebuilder to lay the foundation to your new home before the architect has completed the plans for your home, would you?

Don’t allow yourself to be pressured into skipping this all important step.  To read more about what’s in a solid design document, click here.  

- Alex Santos

Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.