The Auricle

So far, I've been resistant to the concept of a specific e-learning strategy but, being a canny Scot, I've been doing some groundwork just in case my mind decides to change itself; if so I'll be ready for it. As part of the groundwork, I've started by asking myself is e-learning really so special and different from what we know about pedagogy and student learning that, instead of viewing it as an integral part of a learning and teaching strategy, it requires a special strategy all of its own? In this article I'll consider a few of the arguments for and against before moving on to contemplate what an e-learning strategy could/should include. First a caveat, this article is a work-in-progress, so I may refine it.

The Case for a Specific E-Learning Strategy

• E-Learning has specific resource, infrastructure and cost implications.
• E-Learning can/should influence, and be influenced by, the direction of other investments/strategies, e.g. human resources, IT services, library, research strategy, i.e. strategic coherence or 'joined up thinking'?
• E-Learning has specific organizational change, staff development and technical support requirements.
• E-Learning has specific curriculum development implications.
• E-Learning has unique practice, quality, and social implications, issues, and potential which will reach well beyond the campus walls (flexible, distance, distributed, and lifelong learning), but it will also enrich campus-based learning.
• The knowledgebase and national investments in e-learning is growing and will continue to grow, e.g. The Higher Education Academy, the JISC E-Learning Programme and its other initiatives, European Initiatives.
• Without a specific strategy, the multiplicity of tools, environments and technical choice available will lead to divergence and replicated/wasted effort with a project-based short-term focus on innovation and not change.
• Institutions need to tune into the growing number of national and international bodies engaged with e-learning work.
• E-Learning involves multidisciplinary teams and new types of professional who bridge the academic-technical divide.
• Government and agency strategies and policies address e-learning specifically, e.g. the UK White Paper on the Future of Higher Education, the Department for Education and Skills e-learning strategy, Funding Council strategies, Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs).
• Student and their financial sponsor's have high expectations of a modern HEIs ICT provision.
• HEIs may co-operate with each other but they are also in competition; they don't want to be perceived as less prepared, resourced, or 'modern' than their competitors. Press reports, despite some inaccuracies and lack of context, are read by students and their financial sponsors.
• An e-learning strategy is a necessary transitional strategy, albeit one with a finite life, which is required to embed/integrate technologies and techniques within the normal activities of the HEI.

The Case Against / Concerns / Beliefs

• E-Learning should be considered as just part of normal teaching and learning and therefore be part of a learning and teaching strategy.
• An e-learning strategy will lead to technology led decisions?
• An e-learning strategy will lead to standardization of policy, procedure, pedagogy, practices, and tools?
• An e-learning strategy will constrain pedagogical innovation to only what the strategy defines as important.
• An e-learning strategy may adversely affect the quality of 'traditional' teaching/learning.
• An e-learning strategy will result in the setting of unrealistic and unachievable goals that eventually become a 'do-it-yourself hangman's kit'.
• An e-learning strategy will depend on other investments/strategies over which e-learning has no budgetary control or influence, e.g. human resources, IT and information services, library services.

Ethos, Influences and Issues

It's important to keep in mind that the strategy should be a guide to action, not a rigid prescription for action over the next x years. E-Learning knowledge and technologies are fast changing and, therefore, any fixed prescription is doomed to failure.

The e-learning strategy offers an opportunity for 'joined-up thinking'. The absence of this property can have an unexpected and direct impact on teaching/learning. For an example see my colleague Graham Blacker's Auricle article, eBeam me up Scotty: Drat, the lights have gone out!.

I know a lot of institution's thinking has moved on and that perhaps I shouldn't need to even say this, but just in case, there's anyone out there who still needs their thinking re-engineered … Strategies shouldn't be informed by a perspective that views e-learning as some sort of 'fast-food' cheaper substitute for 'traditional' teaching and learning methods which then frees up 'bags of time' for faculty to focus on their research and publication activities. As a previous Auricle article 'e' for efficiency proposed, there are, arguably, efficiencies to be gained, but only with planning, and over time.

A strategy needs to set the right balance of being sufficiently visionary to provide a way forward but, at the same time, the strategic goals need to be achievable and, therefore, realistic. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the strategy which is so vague, ambiguous, ambivalent, or timid, that it becomes useless as an organizational beacon.

An institution's research activity should be considered a valued key input to e-learning and all modes of teaching/learning. An e-learning strategy offers institutions in which there is an unequal relationship between the values placed on research activity and teaching/learning an opportunity to convey a more balanced message backed by strategic goals.

An e-learning strategy perhaps also provides a golden opportunity for the institution to open up new threads of research activity into e-learning which can in turn feed into new teaching/learning about e-learning. Already, some institutions in the UK have declared the relative importance they place on this area of activity by the creation of senior academic posts in e-learning, e.g. the University of Leicester's recent advertisment for a Professor of E-Learning and Learning Technologies.

The room for manoeuvre may be more constrained in some institutions than others. Institutions that have invested in a flexible infrastructure, tools and repositories instead of enterprise levels VLEs will, I suspect, be in a much stronger position in the future. Institutions that have already made a substantial commitment to the first generation of enterprise level VLEs, and have no exit strategy, may feel that their strategies need to be constrained by decisions already made, e.g. increased use by more departments of product x. Back in February, Auricle published the article E-Learning Flexible Frameworks and Tools: Is it too late? in which I flagged my concern that the admirable flurry of JISC e-learning activity was perhaps compromised by the level of commitment of some institutions to one vendor 'off-the-shelf' solutions. A reader's comment made me even more depressed but I'll leave you to read that. The concern here is that we end up with institutional strategies dependent upon the strategic direction and future success, or failure, of a single vendor. A point for reflection, perhaps?

The UK HE sector is not a single homogeneous entity but consists of independent institutions each with different values, beliefs and traditions. The heterogeneity may extend to the institutions themselves, with different faculties or departments having greater allegiance to their discipline structures than any quasi-corporate centre. Some institutions are, however, more corporate than collegiate in their orientation. So into this potential minefield steps an e-learning strategy and, arguably, strategies are more easy to create and, critically, implement in a more corporate oriented culture. A challenge indeed! In my February article I refer to the article by James Cornford The Virtual University is (paradoxically) the University Made Concrete which should perhaps be required reading for all would be e-learning strategists:)

It's also important we move away from a model which only envisages the remote student interacting only with resources and applications accessed via a computer. E-Learning is as much about campus-based as distance students; as much about teaching/learning in the classroom as it is about resource-based learning; as much about groups and collaboration as it is the individual learner; as much about mobile learners as static learners.

It is also important that we revise the stereotype of the lone academic ploughing his or her lonely pedagogical furrow. E-Learning will involve at some time or another central IT services, librarians, central or departmental e-learning support teams, Estates management, as well as the one or more faculty … and in the spirit of a previous Auricle article, Student-centred eLearning: But not as we know it, don't forget the students who may be assuming more responsiblity and demanding more of a partnership role than is currently realized.

Another challenge is to create as pithy a document as possible whist covering the main territory a strategy should.

One way to keep the strategic document shorter is not to stray into becoming an operational document which will specifiy the precise detail of how the strategy will be implemented.

Some potential ingredients of an e-learning strategy

I don't claim the following is an exhaustive list of strategy sections but it may be a useful launch point for those, like me, who are contemplating the enormity of the task. Note how financial and organizational implications forms by far the biggest area for consideration and will, undoubtedly, pose the greatest implementation challenge. Being a strategy it is important that the drivers for change are considered at an early stage and that, although involving a degree of risk and uncertainty, the technical and pedagogical trends cannot be ignored; if we do ignore trends in five years time we could find a world we never envisaged has grown around us. I would also be very uncomfortable with a strategy that became too VLE partisan.

• E-Learning operational definitions.
• Rationale for change and current evidence (Government and funding body strategies, do more with less, e-learning affordances, local and national market research and comment, e.g. The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education).
• Trends in the development of systems, tools, environments, and practices (EPrints initiatives, DSpace, Sakai, Open Courseware, open source software, specifications and standards ,ebooks and e-journals, learning objects, learning object repositories (centralized and distributed), ePortfolios/progress files, Portals, web services, resource discovery, Google alliances, Content Management Systems and web publishing, CAA, simulations, CALL, LMS/MLEs, plagiarism detection and education).
• Legislative trends, e.g. accessibility, freedom of information, data protection.
• Current situation? What local initiatives/expertise/experiences can inform the strategy?
• Strategic goals (what will be developed, sustained, increased, improved, enhanced, liberated, utilized, emphasized, expanded, shared, refocused, reused, retained, saved, strengthened, exchanged, changed?)
• Strategic milestones (for implementation, for evaluation).
• Linkages with other institutional strategies.
• Technical and support infrastructure requirements. Going beyond innovation (innovation is easier than change). Embedding. But at the same time making provision for testing and experimentation and allowing for, and learning from, failure. Staff (and student) development and dissemination activities. Examples of note include the University of Warwick's Sitebuilder and Lobster systems, the University of Washington's Catalyst tools, and the Maricopa Community Colleges' Learning eXchange (MLX).
• New module/programme opportunities (Certificate, Diploma and M level). Such opportunities could be attractive to internal staff.
• Integration with institution's research activities. Opening up another branch of research.
• Scope for senior research posts at reader or professor of e-learning and learning technologies level.
• Collaborative e-learning research and development bids.
• Financial and organizational implications/investments/budgets/structures.
  • Balance between central and departmental provision (lines of accountability/responsibility).
  • Joined up thinking and co-operation, e.g. Estates Management talks to other groups like the audio visual team (and vice versa).
  • Senior level executive, i.e. Vice Chancellor/Principal's Office, chair of e-learning group which can bypass factional interests?
  • How to join up budgetary thinking, e.g. the technical infrastructure needs to be aligned with e-learning requirements and goals and not develop independently with e-learning playing catch-up.
  • How to get people to work as teams not individuals?
  • Recruitment, retention, incentives, and career progression, e.g. institutional annual e-learning award, secondments, sabbaticals, recognition and promotion on teaching/tutoring excellence grounds.
  • Going beyond attempts to virtualize existing practice, e.g. not just substituting e-lectures for the face-to-face equivalent but considering learner needs.
  • Internal development funds.
  • Need for senior acacemic posts in e-learning and learning technologies to raise profile and provide focus?
  • Involving students in their own teaching and learning and in the decisions about their future learning experiences?
  • Involving academics in peer-review of e-learning 'modules'?

One e-learning strategy which really stands out for me is that developed by the UK's University of Warwick. I get a real sense of Warwick's e-learning strategy being an engine for action and progress.

Here's a little taste:

“This strategy will place particular emphasis on enhancing active learning, research-led learning and teaching, small-group teaching, collaborative work, and the opportunities for face-to-face contact between staff and students. These practices have made universities like Warwick successful up to now; they are highly valued by staff and students alike; and they will continue to be the essential elements of a good university education.”

The above extract is from a relatively short document which describes itself as an articulation of Warwick's 2001 e-strategy, a Behemoth of a document which carries an incredible amount of detail and concepts within. Of particular interest was the following additional extract which hints at the changes in thinking since the original 2001 strategy document has proposed the recording and dissemination of lectures plus support materials as a substitute for large-scale lecture courses:

“Pedagogical experience does not straighforwardly support an assumption that audio or video streaming should supplant lectures …”

But the time released has apparently been used constructively by some faculty:

“Electronic techniques do, though, offer opportunities for enhancing or varying the character of large-group teaching activities. Some staff already use scheduled lecture slots to hold discussions or question sessions about electronically delivered material …”

I also admire how Warwick, instead of viewing the ubiquitous mainstream VLEs as the only way forward, has apparently invested in developing a rich range of flexible/usable solutions and software tools based on a sound web infrastructure. Now that's what I consider strategic thinking, and just as important, strategic implementation!