The project’s aim is to enhance public knowledge on sustainable and cost-effective large-scale e-learning by analyzing the trends and contributions to large-scale success and to identify laws and recommendations for success and failure in e-learning.
January 17, 2006
Welcome to the Megatrends blog
This blog is used by the project members to post information and updates related to the Megatrends project. You are welcome to post comments, which may be accepted by the blog moderator.
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Definition E-learning, in english, is an abbreviation for 'electronic learning' and e-learning should therefore be defined as 'The provision of education and training electronically, that ia via the Internet or the World Wide Web. There is another definition 'The use of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as remote exchanges and collobaration'. I do not believe that a technology can 'improve the quality of learning' but it is the vagueness in the definition of 'the use of new multimedia technologies' that I wish to discuss here. It is said that this definition is supported by the European Commission. Any face to face lecture in a conventional university I have attended in the last 5-10 years was heavily dependent on technology. The professor stood beside the technology, the overhead projector, and either wrote on it, or drew designs on it or showed pre-prepared slides on it. So dependent was he on the technology that is was switched on before the students entered the lecture theatre and was not switched off until they left. In the same way the se of multimedia technologies has been standard for decades in childrens' classrooms in schools, where audiotapes, videotapes, overhead projectors and multimedia kits are standard equipment. Thus the European Commission can be shown to be defining e-learning as exactly the same as face-to-face, conventional teaching in school classrooms or university lecture halls. This is ridiculous. To maintain the difference between face-to-face education and electronic learning (e-learning) on emust insist on the inclusion of electronic technologies in the definition of e-learning, as the new multimedia technologies are central to face-to-face lecturing or school teaching.
Yes. I agree. Wage definition do not help much. It is made to be able to reach an easy target. However Definition makers themselves do not belive that this kind of definition works, as in the evaluation and benchmarking documents we have a much darker picture on Europe's e-learning.
On the other hand our sub-society of education is also in constant change. Different cultures of corporate trainging and face to face education and distance education are converging. Or at least are using tools that was originally used by other segments of the market.
There are emerging trends like team-work and peer-group support or collaborative learning are challenging both face to face and traditional distance education theorists, as both systems were basicly built on individual perception and learning outcomes: mostly with no student interaction either in classrooms or in distance courses.
So it is not easy to find the best definition to e-learning which is: stable in time for at least 10 years, handels all variations and modifications of this form of learning, and serving also to distinguish traditional education where learning is mostly instructed by Human from other forms where learning is done mosty by self-instruction.
I've received copies of my 'megatrends' boooks and am absorbing them - thanks to the authors and contributors, they're really valuable for me. Gilly Salmon
3 comments:
Definition
E-learning, in english, is an abbreviation for 'electronic learning' and e-learning should therefore be defined as 'The provision of education and training electronically, that ia via the Internet or the World Wide Web.
There is another definition 'The use of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as remote exchanges and collobaration'. I do not believe that a technology can 'improve the quality of learning' but it is the vagueness in the definition of 'the use of new multimedia technologies' that I wish to discuss here. It is said that this definition is supported by the European Commission.
Any face to face lecture in a conventional university I have attended in the last 5-10 years was heavily dependent on technology. The professor stood beside the technology, the overhead projector, and either wrote on it, or drew designs on it or showed pre-prepared slides on it. So dependent was he on the technology that is was switched on before the students entered the lecture theatre and was not switched off until they left.
In the same way the se of multimedia technologies has been standard for decades in childrens' classrooms in schools, where audiotapes, videotapes, overhead projectors and multimedia kits are standard equipment.
Thus the European Commission can be shown to be defining e-learning as exactly the same as face-to-face, conventional teaching in school classrooms or university lecture halls. This is ridiculous.
To maintain the difference between face-to-face education and electronic learning (e-learning) on emust insist on the inclusion of electronic technologies in the definition of e-learning, as the new multimedia technologies are central to face-to-face lecturing or school teaching.
Yes. I agree. Wage definition do not help much. It is made to be able to reach an easy target. However Definition makers themselves do not belive that this kind of definition works, as in the evaluation and benchmarking documents we have a much darker picture on Europe's e-learning.
On the other hand our sub-society of education is also in constant change. Different cultures of corporate trainging and face to face education and distance education are converging. Or at least are using tools that was originally used by other segments of the market.
There are emerging trends like team-work and peer-group support or collaborative learning are challenging both face to face and traditional distance education theorists, as both systems were basicly built on individual perception and learning outcomes: mostly with no student interaction either in classrooms or in distance courses.
So it is not easy to find the best definition to e-learning which is: stable in time for at least 10 years, handels all variations and modifications of this form of learning, and serving also to distinguish traditional education where learning is mostly instructed by Human from other forms where learning is done mosty by self-instruction.
I've received copies of my 'megatrends' boooks and am absorbing them - thanks to the authors and contributors, they're really valuable for me. Gilly Salmon
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