So here it is, HEFCE's 10 year framework for e-learning in UK Higher Education (with three year reviews). The strategy has managed to incorporate all of the key concepts; from tools which enable student management of their own learning and personal learning environments on the one hand to VLEs on the other, and then mentions of interoperability, open source software, and peer-to-peer solutions. And partnership is the name of the game, so no more UKeUs are in the offing. So everyone should be happy … shouldn't they? You can access the HEFCE e-learning strategy here or, for the terminally time poor, here is my concept list extracted from my first reading:
- embed
- develop
- sustainability
- evidence
- pedagogic opportunities
- student focused
- flexible learning
- workplace learning
- benchmarking tools
- pathfinder projects
- partnerships (no more UKeUs)
- seven implementation strands
- pedagogy curriculum design and development
- learning resources and networked learning
- student support, progression and collaboration
- strategic management, human resources and capacity development
- quality,
- research and evaluation
- infrastructure and technical standards
- virtual national e-learning advisory and support centre
- continuous review and refinement
- no hard targets
- tools for tutors
- coherence and collaboration
- sharing within subject communities
- integrating registration and learning
- reward structures
- digital resources and discovery tools
- HEA, JISC, CETLs, FDTL
- what's the human capacity in the HE sector to deliver further e-learning growth?
- kite marking resources
- MLEs, VLEs
- personal learning environments
- interoperability
- open source software
- peer-to-peer solutions
But my weasel word extractor also finds words like:
“aim to …” and “seek to”. Such words always leave the reader with a sense of 'maybe', 'perhaps', 'if we're allowed to', 'if we're lucky', or 'not quite sure, but we've got our fingers crossed'
On the other hand, it's great to find statements like:
“Encourage the design of technology for students to manage their own individual and shared learning”
But we will need to watch that earlier statements in the document about 'integrating registration and learning' and '… integration and access to virtual learning environments across schools, further education and HE' doesn't just translate into more wall-to-wall proprietary VLE usage. Has your local primary school signed up for Blackboard yet?
Our current VLE centric view of e-learning is a quantum leap from students 'managing their own individual and shared learning'. HEFCE will do us all a terrible dis-service if their strategy is allowed to resolve into more of what we've broadly got at the moment. We need to broaden our concept of a VLE pronto … As a start to this process see Scot Wilson's visualization of the Future VLE.
It's also great to see some emphasis on personal learning environments, interoperable resources and learning material, and peer-to-peer solutions. But, again, I perceive a potential conflict with the MLE/VLE centric view of the world … or at least the current implementations of VLEs in which so many have invested so much that they will defend their corners (or jobs) to the death.
HEFCE, JISC, the HEA and all of us involved in e-learning really need to expend more effort in broadening the HE community's understanding of what an effective online learning environment needs to be … and it ain't what we've got at the moment.
HEFCE, sensibly, has built in review points so it should be possible to adjust the policies in line with the inevitable changes that will occur over a decade. In a world where the pace of technological change, obsolescence, and opportunity can be measured in months, a strategy fixed in stone is not a strategy at all.
One of the key challenges that HEIs will face over the next decade is how the development and implementation of their strategies can adapt to new circumstances, opportunities and technologies. It seems to me that many institutions are hell bent on creating apparently stable, but inflexible, e-learning infrastructures which sometimes are less to do with learning and teaching and more to do with command and control.
It's already happening, but over the next decade, students and faculty are increasingly going to expect the richness and diversity of functionality and content they are exposed to over the internet to be present also where they work and learn. Our current way of thinking, for all but the lucky few, can easily lead to institutional e-learning provision which can be just … well .. so uninspiring and is, in reality, just a mechanism for disseminating content. So, if we don't get our thinking skates on, we'll continue to create our walled gardens which will be ever so secure but, meanwhile, any student or faculty with a grain of knowledge will be exploiting the RSS/Atom aggregators, search engines, content repositories, and social networking software outside the walled garden, leaving the institutional provision behind like a desolate Chernobyl which once produced useful power, but which also delivered a terrible sting in the tail.
Anyway, credit to HEFCE for trying to please everyone. But, like most strategies, what matters is implementation, and that my friends is open to the interpretation of you all. May your god or belief system make you wise!
