e-learning and its future
© Dale Spender

Global Summit
Adelaide
4^th March,  2002

‘e-learning’, or ‘online learning’ – or ‘digital delivery’ – are all new terms which are meant to designate the revolution which is underway in education.  But if there is some uncertainty about the terminology, there can be no doubt about the outcome.  Educational institutions (and corporate training units) are making the shift from the print to the digital medium, for learning purposes.

And this shift isn’t optional.  It doesn’t depend upon the assessment of educational experts as to whether it is good or bad.  It doesn’t depend on whether these institutions are ready for such dramatic change.

Regardless of whether they have the money, the infrastructure, the staff, the skills – or most significantly, the online content – digital delivery is now a reality of every classroom, even when it is unavailable.

Online learning is the next generation of educational product, and no more negotiable than was its predecessor, the book.  The printing press also transformed educational organisation and the process of learning (and work, and society, etc), and that great cultural change created as much upheaval as does the present shift to digital. 

This revolution is currently disrupting the early days of schooling; so many of the young arrive at the door, already knowing how to use a computer and how to interact with a CD/online game.  This in itself is a challenge to the traditional pattern of educational organisation – and the role of the teacher.

When print was the primary medium, children typically entered school unable to read (indeed, teachers often discouraged parents from teaching their children such skills).  So the young students were from the outset dependent on their teachers for learning.

The dependency syndrome associated with print does not stop here.

Print is based on a symbolic system – the alphabet.  Readers have to ‘crack the code’ of the symbols before they can get to the meaning and the learning (and that so many never managed it, or never managed it well, and have been effectively illiterate, is one of the major failures of the old pedagogy).

With the alphabet, the process of decoding the letters has to be mediated.  Someone has to be available to tell the hopeful reader that ‘a’ stands for a certain sound, which can be found in the word ‘cat’.  And so it continues.

This is in contrast to CDs or online games where even the youngest users can be independent.  Where they can go off on their own and do some ‘learning’ (including learning to read).  Where the interactive medium gives feedback, which can keep rewarding, stimulating, and providing a greater range of choices.  There’s no need for a teacher to be there all the time to tell you what to do.

This doesn’t mean that there’s no need for a teacher; teachers are no less important in the new system than they were in the old.  But teachers will play an entirely different role when the students can do their learning in their own time, at their own pace, at their own place.  And this ‘change’ should not be underestimated.

Teaching is on the brink of becoming an entirely new profession; that of learning management.  And this new and very differently skilled profession demands a revolution in teacher training.)

This difference from ‘teacher in charge’ to ‘learner in charge’ is probably at the heart of the shift to the online medium.  It is a shift from:

• the relatively passive and dependent readers whose task is to decode the alphabet, then to follow someone else’s ready made argument – in linear style; and to study – or commit much to memory for later testing; and

to

• the active users of the digital medium – who can change the information, make something happen, create their own meanings as they go – who access rather than memorise and  who look for outcomes (sometimes ‘wins’).

This is online learning in a nutshell. It is learning which has moved from teacher-dispensed and assessed, to learning where the student makes knowledge products.

And once they have experienced such independence, it is very difficult to get students to return to the old /constrained ways.  Print, along with movies, videos, TV, radio[1] and the lecture, are all broadcast media; they flow from one to the many; they are the mass media, where it is a case of one-size-fits-all.

To many of today’s net generation,[2] print - the one-to-many and non-interactive medium, where you can’t change the organisation -- can be very ‘boring’ (Harry Potter excepted).

This is particularly the case with adolescent boys who can be so competent with computers, but who frequently have these skills disparaged, even regarded as a ‘deficiency’ in a traditional classroom.  It is an interesting observation that in all the discussion that has been generated in relation to boys underachievement at school -- the explanations have focussed on there being something wrong with the boys, (or the girls).

Rarely is the question asked as to whether there is something intrinsically wrong with the school – with the extent to which the culture – the organisation, medium, curriculum etc – is ‘out of synch’ with the values, needs and interests of 21^st century young men.

The net generation, from kindergarten to college are immersed in online culture – and it is not just when they can get connected.  These are the young people who are spending less time than their parents watching television, and more time on the internet.

Even the undergraduates of Harvard, according to the most recent study, spend more time online than they do in the classroom, on campus – or in bed.

This revolution in the information medium isn’t just impacting on educational institutions.  The new technologies have produced unprecedented quantities of ‘information’ and it is this which is changing the nature of work, and wealth.

Where communities once farmed the land or toiled in factories, they now handle, process, make information.  And not only does this mean that they are trading in intellectual property, in knowledge products (goods and services), it means that work itself takes a different form.

According to Charles Leadbeater, most of us now make our living out of ‘thin air’ .  After all, this is what Bill Gates – the wealthiest man in the world - has done.  For the first time in history, the greatest source of wealth is not in farms or factories – but in ideas, intellectual property – information:

People with ideas – people who own ideas – have become more powerful than people who work machines and in many cases, more powerful than the people who own machines.  [3]

 So many jobs which once demanded human labour are now automated.  So many work activities which once demanded an assembly line, an office, a warehouse – can now be undertaken anywhere – online.  By any one at any time.

With serious implications not just for the bricks-and-mortar institutions, but for the viability of the university, the college – the school.  Learners won’t necessarily care about where the online product comes from; they will just be concerned with whether it is good.  So will we need these different graded institutions in the elearning world?

All the new work of the knowledge economy demands new skills.  And because the new technologies are forever changing, and putting pressure on people to keep up, the demand is for constantly changing skills.  These new skills, which are technology driven, are hard to separate from the technology output.

As distinct from the old system where, after you finished your learning in one place (school, college, university), you went on to do your earning in another (the workplace) -- the new technologies are putting earning and learning together, throughout life.

So young people in school demonstrate their entrepreneurship and sell their superior web skills to the business community; while older people within the workforce are engaged in learning new skills so that they continue to be employable.

Today’s earning – and learning – are dramatically different from the processes we have known in the past.  And every educational institution (and training unit) has to meet the knowledge economy challenge.  Where ideas are the substance, where talk is the means of production, where the embodiment of the idea/talk into a commercial reality is the intellectual property.  Where learning and earning equate with creativity and intellectuality!

And how many of our numerous educational institutions are preparing students for this form of creative work, where they are likely to be self employed (the fastest growing business in the US [4])?  Where we are all required to use our brains, our wits, our ingenuity in the knowledge economy.

It’s a bit like the old, elite model of the author, who gets the idea, refines it in discussion (or workshops it), embodies it in a manuscript that is their intellectual property, which is then turned into a commercial product such as a book or a film etc.  Or an inventor who gets a good idea, workshops it, documents it, embodies it in a patent as intellectual property, and then commercialises it.

This is the business we are in. The difference being that whereas authors and inventors were seen as but the talented few in the past, now everyone in a developed society has to use their brains to be inventive, creative and to contribute to the making of the new wealth -- intellectual property.[5]

It’s the democratisation of creativity and it has its precedents.  In the Middle Ages it was widely believed that only the very few were talented enough to learn to read.  The process took many years, and was confined to the chosen in the Church.  As the interpreters of the sacred texts, these professional readers had a special aura, when they read the lesson from the pulpit.

Then along came the printing press and the book.  And the rise of the mass reading-public.

Where it had once been a criminal offence to teach slaves to read in the United States, (and where print had been kept out of the hands of women because books gave them ideas) by the 19^th century, laws were being passed in some countries, which made literacy a requirement for everybody.

This was the democratisation of reading – and it has been variously described as the source of the reformation, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and the impetus for parliamentary democracy.

Along the way there was a great deal of resistance.  This is in the nature of cultural change.  When people have to give up their most cherished beliefs about the way the world works, there are difficulties.  And the cultural change associated with the place of reading took place over centuries.  We are trying to achieve the cultural change associated with the democratisation of creativity – within a decade. So of course there will be problems.

For today’s educationalists to give up much of what they know and believe to be true, is not only personally painful for them, but it calls into question the entire fabric of our educational practice and philosophy. It indicates a crisis.  And the evidence that this is occurring is not hard to find.

So how does education make the leap to resource the community – from cradle to grave – for the fast pace of the knowledge society of 21^st century?

Understandably, many educationalists may not like it, but it’s possible to describe the traditional educational system as one which prepared students for work in an industrial society.  The prevailing model has been that of the assembly line, and where quality has been seen in terms of standardisation.  So the qualifications of every graduate, in any one area, are supposed to be of the same standard.

Many analogies have been drawn between the factory system and that of the school -- the regimentation of the classroom, the bells, the ordered desks, the ranking and grading of students, the controlled ‘flow’ through the process, the use of an ‘overseer’ etc.

This model was perfectly appropriate for an industrial society; it delivered students with qualifications, which could fit them into existing, prescribed jobs.  But its emphasis has been on standardisation and conformity – when what we want now, is for students to become increasingly innovative and creative.  To take charge of their own learning - and to make knowledge products.

In traditional education, the primary method of instruction has been the knowledge transfer model, whereby the teachers have been the experts, the authorities, whose role has been to transfer the information they hold in their heads, to that of their students.  The role of the students has been to take it in, to learn it – to study it – which has generally meant that they are required to commit it to memory, and to reproduce it again under examination conditions, as proof that they ‘know’ the information.

The knowledge transfer system is a closed circuit system. The student must learn what is already known. In contrast, the knowledge economy depends on what is unknown – on coming up with the new, the creative solution.

I so looked forward to doing my MBA.  I’ve spent a few years as an accountant, as a chief financial officer, and it’s all very constrained.  And I thought this would be the opportunity to try out new possibilities, to fly a few ideas.  To think outside the box.  But now I’m only finishing it off because it’s cost too much to walk away.  You know, it’s just been about learning the answers they’ve already worked out. You just have to work your way through their set solutions No room for thinking - just for getting it right according to their preconceived conclusions.[6]

The new technologies have heightened the need for creativity and ongoing upskilling; but if they are the source of the pressure, they also provide the solution.

With the capacity to customise, to create a learning product ‘just for me’, the digital environment is a long way from the one-to-many products of old.  The new technologies provide the learner (or customer) with an extraordinary range of choices that they can ‘do things with’ rather than simply memorise or learn. 

Faced with so many global options, the learner can shop around for quality learning products which grab your attention, which enhance your skills set, and which let you come up with something new.  They can browse through the world’s online learning supermarkets – looking for the latest and the most suitable resources on the shelves.

And this is how education is being transformed.

From the old to the new:

• From education as a right, as an established system, to learning as a commodity, where the consumer can choose (and where the learning products increasingly can be purchased);
  
  
• From education which controls entry, which regulates availability, to learning for all, to deregulation;
  
  
• From education as a qualification or credential, to learning and skilling as a lifestyle; where instead of working your way through someone else’s prepackaged information, you cherry pick from all the available courses to get the skills you need for the work you want to do; and
  
  
• From education as a scheduled activity, to learning any time, any place, any pace; what ever you need for as long as you want it and you only pay for what you use;
  
  
• From taking in content (studying), to making information, doing something with the resources, creating something new – a solution, process, methodology;
  
  
• From memory testing, to the demonstration of performance; it’s not what you know (which has little value in itself) but what you can do with it – the value is not in the known but the new; and
  
  
• From competitive to collaborative practices; whereas the book, the essay, the exam, have all been isolated activities, the online and networked environment allows for a much greater degree of collaboration.

Probably one of the greatest changes (and the one which could result in the greatest cultural shock) is in relation to the processing of information. For in the digital environment, you don’t have to study in order to learn.  You don’t have to be ‘disciplined’, to go off to a room on your own to learn your maths or geography.  While many may hold to the belief that this spells an end to the capacity for concentration, and represents a drop in standards, it is clear that keeping information in your head is not a practicable activity in an online context.  There is just too much information which is changing too quickly, and the computer is much better at storing and retrieving it.  Being a good learner is being able to access it (remember all the fuss about calculators?)

There is perhaps one other mindset which could prove hard to dislodge and it is that learning must be serious, difficult – even painful – if it is to be any good.  Whereas the lure for learning in the new lifestyle is that it is enjoyable, rewarding, and above all – fun!  More like playing computer games than studying a text book.

And of course, you don’t have to be in a classroom to do it.

It’s not possible to showcase the best of online learning in the present context – for we haven’t even begun to realise the potential of the medium.  We are at the silent movie stage of the digital learning revolution.

Any new technology generally starts by making use of the old – so the first books were versions of the old manuscripts; the first movies were stage plays that were filmed.  Likewise the first online deliveries have been the old lecture series, course packs, or readings, from the traditional educational model; they have just been transferred to the screen.

(Sometimes elearning has even been referred to misleadingly and meaninglessly as distance education; it’s not geography, but the medium, which defines the product.)

Given that we know that screens are not for reading (more than one para of dense text has users reaching for the print key) it is no wonder that so many students have been unimpressed by the pseudo- transformation.  Reading lecture notes online is the worst, not the best, of both worlds.  In order to evaluate the effectiveness of digital delivery – we need purpose made digital content.  And as yet – we can only glimpse at the possibilities.

At the very least we need a national/cultural database; a digital content repository which contains every conceivable learning object; from newspaper cuttings to video clips, from magazines, comics, photographs, diagrams, animations, illustrations, to text and music.  On everything from indigenous culture to the history of the harbour bridge, from Australians who have made a difference, to a register of problems which still need solutions.

That’s what teachers and students can use.

We need digital rights management systems so that all the creators of the intellectual property that is traded in the digital repository can be paid for their work.  And produce more.

Teachers, at all levels, have new roles as learning managers – but this does not include that of being expert creators of rich digital content.  Teachers/ lecturers, were not required to make all their own teaching materials in the old one-to-many system; they had books, and films, and videos and school broadcasts, along with a huge rage of teaching aids, of charts and diagrams and models and kits.  And it is little short of ludicrous to expect that as we enter the sophisticated and content voracious information era, teachers and lecturers will be the makers of professional digital content.

All over Australia, individual lecturers and teams of teachers are trying desperately to fill the gap; they are doing their best to meet the learners’ digital content demands.  Some of their efforts are innovative, imaginative, and highly commendable.  But they are just the first steps on the way to the learning revolution.

What elearning requires - as its starting point – is a huge digital content industry, which is not only available to the Australian community, but which can be sold to the rest of the world.

This is the foundation for elearning.  To focus on infrastructure, inadequate computer skills in teachers and students, or even to get bogged down in delivering professional development, is to miss the point.  While these are all essential, what good are they without the dynamic, quality digital content in accessible form? 

There’s no point in constructing a television station, in creating audience interest and training the employees to transmit the content — when you have no programs.

Dull though it may sound, the biggest challenge for scintillating and successful elearning which can transform a community into knowledge workers – is that of generating as many marvellous reusable digital learning objects that it is possible for our society to produce.