This article is grounded from speaking with numerous directors of educational institutes across UK and Europe, whilst closely working with an expert with over 15 years of experience in innovative training solutions.
Myths of e-Learning…
Majority of educational providers claim that they have ‘e-Learning.’ However, once their current learning systems are carefully assessed their façade is often revealed. As a result students are misled and deprived of effective e-Learning.
Training providers with some of the following mistakenly believe that they have effective e-Learning:
a) Skype + teacher = Not a Virtual ClassRoom (VCR),
It’s a free social networking site that’s not exclusively developed for training purposes. More importantly it fails to provide any form of automated tracking of a student’s progress integrated with their overall course. So why should students have to pay high course fees for free Skype lessons? Despite this, it is most popularly used amongst small to medium sized training providers.
b) Pre-recorded lesson videos + Documents (Word, PDF, PowerPoint) + Emailing = An Intranet
Video lessons might contain helpful content, but often lack quality. There is no constant track to check a student is actively learning. Documents are good additional materials, but if used alone lack structured learning. Emailing is most common; however fail to provide instant interactive feedback.
c) Community Facebook/Skype = Not an exclusive learning community.
This is a public community, despite the option of making groups private and open. Anyone can join a page; there is no real person verification of who’s joining. Facebook is a business and makes money from advertising so it is in their interest to have as much information open to the public. Worryingly, some schools use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with parents about latest news, events and even upload photographs of pupils. They fail to recognise that it’s not a secure platform for private information, even if the community is private, Facebook itself can see everything!
d) Use of free online materials = No structure or track of students progress.
Most teachers direct students to free online materials, but fail to keep a track of the student’s progress. For example, to learn new language one will need to go from 0-100, increasing without any lag of information. Free materials from various websites often lead students to get lost in overwhelming information and they end up losing interest. Public funded schools and surprisingly many Independent schools fall under this category, this might be due to Government spending cuts. Moreover, many training providers direct their students to free resources, yet forget that students could easily access these resources alone, therefore fail to give students added value to their course fees.
Educational institutions offering the above should ask themselves, is this form of online learning effective? How can we be sure a student is constantly learning? Indeed, depending on the size and budget of the institution they will improvise with the above. However, let us not fall into the trap of assuming anything that you can access online is effective e-Learning. In my next article I will explain the key components that make effective e-Learning.
By iMeeta © 2013
iMeeta 