Week 2, e-learning
My assumption is that e-learning is anything that comes through an online experience. I have both experienced this as a learner and a teacher. My experiences as a learner have been good with online learning. In our company we use brain sharks (similar to audio PowerPoint) and Q-stream for continuous learning as well as modules located on the WBT system, they are all engaging and often interactive. As a teacher, I am involved with training new hires and we moved over to online modules quite a few years ago – except they weren’t properly designed online modules, they were just PowerPoint presentations put online without even a voice-over and some of the concepts are fairly tricky! To say this was less than adequate is an understatement. eLearning is only as good as how understandable it is.
Is elearning a branch of T&L or IT? Hmmmm, in our company it is overseen by Education although there is IT involvement when people have access issues which are common for some reason. Generally though IT have little involvement 🙂 I do feel like I’m sidestepping the bigger philosophical question here… Personally I feel it is part of T&L. Maybe that’s because of how we have designed our new online modules – educators have created the content and then an external company has taken that and created the module . Both of the external creators have Masters in Clinical Education which (I hope) they apply during their designing. Interactivity is included through quiz questions. IT will have been involved as someone created the design platform that has been used (Articulate) but this is then taken forward by the designers and the content experts – ending in the students learning…
Consider innovation critically; what are the drivers for innovation, and how should/could it sit within your working culture. Consider, for instance, whether innovation is down to the individual, or should be viewed as a condition arising from adequate institutional/societal commitment. If you look at the company mission statement:
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as well as the value of Meaningful innovation:
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The drivers are patients, customers and employees and the commitment is from the organisation. This is one side of the coin. We have to innovate to stay competitive! Being innovative and customer centric are big drivers for the company at every level right from the individual employees. Innovation in education is what we strive for. We want to have creative and dynamic online learnings as well as engaging and practical face to face trainings but as I think was mentioned in Amy Woodgate’s interview, you never get the time to work on it.
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Hi Kim,
It has always seemd the case to me that e-learning is a matter of T&L for academics, whilst it is a matter of IT for administrators. And where there is often interest in T&L for innovation, there is seldom the same degree of enthusiasm in the administrative layers of our institutions. This has always been a point of friction. T&L want to bring in whatever is needed to make their teaching work. Admin/IT is more concerned with normalising service, containing risk, etc – and very seldom do these two perspectives align neatly.
I find myself thinking a lot about the economist Mariana Mazzucato and her views on innovation in society. She does a very clever job of picking apart famous innovative interventions, usually credited to a single – usually male – inventor – and shows how actually the innovation has taken root on account of large scale, civic, funded initiatives. A good example may be the internet itself. Credited usually to two guys, when, really, its heart was in the arpanet – a public funded, national development project. The underlying civic projects never get credit – and, therefore, its easy for current administrations to overlook the value and the need for funding innovation at core.
I empathise with your company’s ambitions. My sense is that the biggest hurdle is facing the point where all of the innovative thinking has to be reduced – so many times – to being packaged and delivered by one of a very few, corporate systems that can’t help but homogenise the experience 🙂