The Auricle

The JISC/Higher Education Academy regional workshop series flying under the banner of Planning and Evaluating Effective Practice with e-Learning signals, perhaps, a growing recognition that the main challenges of the future are not technical or technological at all. It’s a people and organisation thing really.

I presented an opening keynote at the Open University Business School on Friday (23 September 2005) for the Cambridge-MIT Institute�s conference Innovations in the Reuse of Electronic Learning Materials: Enabling Communities of Practice. I had my Higher Education Academy hat on, but given the conference theme and the aim of the keynote to stimulate reflection and discussion, I took the opportunity to �rattle the bars� just a little.

Stephen Downes was the theme leader for the collaboration strand at ALT-C 2005 and, as expected, his combination of wry humour, incisive criticism and lateral thinking made him an ideal antidote to cognitive overload. But if you were someone who has tended to think of collaboration as inherently ‘good’ then some of Stephen’s points could quickly become the source of insomnia, dyspepsia and, or, hypertension.

Coming in from left field on the e-learning research arena and with more than a dash of common sense re accessibility, comes Lawrie Phipps of TechDis, Brian Kelly of UKOLN, and the University of Bristol's Caro Howell who scooped the best research paper award at ALT-C 2005. You can read the abstract of Implementing A Holistic Approach To E-Learning Accessibility or download a copy of the paper and get further details about this presentation from Brian Kelly's Web Focus site. Well done all.

Like many in the UK learning technology arena, we’re off to Manchester on Monday evening ready for the ALT-C 2005 conference on Tuesday. ALT-C 2005 has the overarching theme Exploring the frontiers of e-learning – borders, outposts and migration. The University of Bath has a number of interesting contributions but the Higher Education Academy (to which I’m currently seconded) also has some very significant inputs.

There is an interesting discussion in the Moodle forums about discussion forums and blogs. Martin Dougiamas has been considering adding a blog to Moodle but feels that he has found a big conceptual problem which he has thrown open to the Moodle community. What this lengthy discussion is showing is how much variance there is in the understanding of the differences between forums and blogs and how they can be used in a variety of contexts, not just within Moodle. Some of the postings are excellent. Check it out for yourself by clicking on Moodle forums (registration required).

BBC Radio4’s Analysis programme of 4 August 2005 titled BA UK (4 August 2005) is a must listen for those interested in all sides of the debate about the reasons for, and impact of, the escalting recruitment of overseas students to UK Higher Education. Compare and contrast the changing attitude and rationale of a tiny and highy-controlled country like Singapore with the various rationales and anxieties now being expressed in our part of the world. 3.5 billion Asian students hungry for Higher Education are concentrating a lot of minds and has the potential to have a profound impact on the nature of UK Higher Education. So even if you’re not a policy wonk invest the 30 minutes in listening to the issues … they aren’t as simple as they seem.

In yesterday's Keeping it simple - is it too late? post I was in medium level rant mode, so today I want to drop down a gear (but only a little:) and focus on one example of what I mean by discrete tools to support learning. Let's suspend reality for a moment. Let's assume that, in 2005, that VLEs didn't exist or that the political climate was so hostile to their use in HE that they never gained a toehold. Suddenly there's no legacy baggage to contend with. OK, I know it's an impossible premise because current thinking is informed by past decisions/mistakes/experiences, but would we simply reinvent what we have now?

An alternative reality of course is that the perceived return on investments in VLEs and supporting infrastructure were eventually found to be so wanting that eventually the political climate becomes so hostile that radical reviews and revisions of past decisions become the norm and change is forced.

Or you may opt (or pray) for a less traumatic alternative reality where the lessons of the past are learned and so the systems we have now evolve into something unrecognizable from our current VLE-centric perspective of e-learning.

My view has been pretty consistent. I've come to view the proprietary VLE-centric 'one-stop-shop', 'we can solve all your problems with product x' view of the world as fundamentally flawed and ultimately constraining upon the freedom of the sector, institution, faculty and student. But I also live in the real world. As yesterday's Keeping it Simple - is it too late? post and associated links highlighted there are few institutions left who have significant room for manoeuvre. So most institutions would probably opt for my third alternative reality in which they eventually evolve to a higher plane of existence. But let's consider for a moment what the thinking is that has enabled the one-size-fits-all VLE toehold.

My thanks to Terry Wassall from the University of Leeds who in a comment to yesterday's post writes:

“Personalised and tailored solutions are hard to support at institutional level. Thus the attraction of structured and constrained one-size-fits-all (where it touches) solutions.”

His comment articulates the issue nicely and provides a welcome balance to my polemic. Nevertheless, he reinforces my contention of yesterday that learning management systems are primarily about the adminstrative efficiency needs of the system and less about learner needs.

Terry also states:

” … multiple packages may be the most exciting and/or effective way of managing learning but its time consuming to learn …”

Now some may feel that Terry's got a point, but let's stand back and look at the so called integrated VLE. In reality it's a hotchpotch of different functional zones each with its own interface and means of navigation. Of course, if you really want to add complexity import a few different documents types, say a Word document here, a PDF document there, A Flash movie here, a RealMedia movie there. What I'm suggesting is that anything beyond the simplest text/html page is always going to introduce some element of variance and interface complexity; and we've all learned to cope with (or at least tolerate) this because we only tend to use a limited range of tools and a subset of functions within those tools anyway.

Terry's comment also is a helpful reminder that terms like Podcast, aggregator, RSS, and wiki might as well be an unrecognized foreign language to the uninitiated. If we ain't introducing our colleagues to these new technologies how can we expect them to make informed decisions about their pedagogical usefullness? Of course your institutional polices may make such orientations difficult, particularly when they are considered 'off-message' or make service 'expectation management' difficult.

But Terry has hit the nail on the head with his 'time consuming' comment. Despite our desire to see VLEs become a vehicle for enriching the student's learning experience, in the absence of perceived alternatives within HEI's IT infrastructures, I believe that, with a few exceptions, the VLE has become no more than a de facto and oh so limited (and limiting) content repository which simply reinforces the all pervasive (and comfortable) information transfer model. I say 'comfortable' because the pressures on faculty, students, and estate are now so great that even a primitive content distribution system becomes welcome. Now I know many will rush to declare several innovative examples of excellent practice from within their institutions, but how many can truly say and “this represents the vast majority of practice within my institution”. And if we continue as we are, if I was to return in a decade, would the position have really changed that much?

But do keep in mind I'm not knocking the importance of content aggregation and dissemination to the learning process. I'm merely suggesting that a) let's not fool ourselves that when our Vice Chancellor/President proudly announces our institution has now got x000 VLE 'courses' (rounds of audience applause) that this represents meaningful e-learning and b) the VLE is not necessarily the best mechanism for supporting content aggregation and dissemination.

But yet, there are institutions around who have either eschewed the mass migration to proprietary VLEs or who appear to offer tool-oriented alternatives. In the UK, the University of Warwick provides a good example of a different and discrete tool way of doing things. I've waxed lyrical about them in the past, e.g.

“The more I look at what Warwick's been doing the more impressed I become. These people have really got it. They are providing their staff and students with tools that do discrete jobs and can therefore achieve a level of flexibility that most institutions can only dream of.” (Auricle 13 April 2005).

Visit Warwick's Web Tools if you want a reminder of what they're doing.

Another star in my book is the University of Washington's Catalyst Tools which continues to grow in functionality despite that institution's parallel engagement with a proprietary VLE.

And of course I warm to the UK's JISC funded e-Tools projects because the very existence of this initiative is a recognition of the need to think beyond the VLE; although we've got to be careful that we don't forget that the eLearning Framework (eLF), with which the e-Tools initiative is associated, remains a framework and doesn't transmorph into a new type of monolith. If you want a flavour of what the JISC e-Tools initiative is about then the Academic Talk project looks pretty interesting.

Anyway, now on to the substantive topic for today. Yesterday's Keeping it simple - is it too late? post stated:

“Not that I underestimate the importance of providing the student with an efficient mechanism of aggregating the content that's of importance to them, but let's not pretend that this is any more e-learning than is a pile of handouts distributed at the end of a lecture. And let's not pretend that we actually need a VLE with a recurring license expenditure to do this … the VLE is actually a pretty poor aggregator.”

Instead of just tut tuting about how terrible it is that the vast majority of VLEs are just used as content repositories I tend to look upon this reality as a statement of need. Of course I would rather all faculty embraced student centredness, active learning, social constructivism and all these good things but, if VLEs have taught us nothing else, it's that people want some means of distributing and sharing content. At the same time I don't want these content wallahs distorting an institution's perception of e-learning activity; those distortions eventually end up as data returns which in turn can have a profound effect on policy making, and so will eventually undermine the Vice Chancellor's/President's public claims of widespread e-learning success in their institution. The question needs to become not how much you are doing but how much of what you are doing.

No, what we need an e-tool, let's call it a shareable content aggregator (SCA). What form and function could such a beast take? Let's consider the following:

• Each student and staff account would automatically be allocated an initial SCA URI and quota.
• Processing requests for further SCA accounts and allocations should be automated where possible, e.g. staff can easily request further SCAs to support specific cohorts and groups. The relative ease with which new weblog accounts can be automatically generated by 'free' providers sets the benchmark here.
• The SCA should value student content as much as it does tutors and lecturers.
• The SCA's access management features would enable a high degree of user control over who could read, write or edit content and so would support individual, group, peer-to-peer, and student-tutor work. By 'invitation only' should be a feature.
• The SCA would be media type agnostic and thus place no restrictions on content types.
• The content linked to by the SCA could be both centralized and distributed.
• The SCA should provide simple user management of content, e.g. directory tree.
• It should be possible for staff to 'auto-populate' a series of SCAs in support of a module or series of modules.
• It should be possible for designated students or student groups to auto-populate a series of SCAs with the permission of the owners.
• The SCA should support both ad-hoc and formal groupings.
• It would not be sufficient for access rights management within the SCA to assume that all groupings necessarily have accounts in the host institution. The reality of academic work is that much is done across disciplines, across institutions and across national/international boundaries.
• Content could be both manually and automatically downloaded to a device or folder/directory of the users choosing or accessed in situ.

Hmmm … mind bending … but let's see if a couple of scenarios brings this to life (ok, narrative 'use-cases' if you're so inclined:)

Scenario 1
A tutor stands before large cohort of students. Let's say 300 or so. He/she is briefing them on a collaborative assignment (could be formative or summative). The tutor wants them to work in groups of 6 and report back their process, deliverables, and outcomes in a fortnight. The deliverables will include supporting evidence in the form of multimedia content uncovered in their investigations. Because each student has a SCA the groups already have a key tool at their disposal and so the question then become one of how groups are allocated. Again because the enabling tool already exists the tutor may choose to leave this to the students to sort out as part of the exercise; the student owner of the SCA would grant access to whoever they were going to work with on this assignment. Alternatively, there could be fixed cohort groupings for a module.

Scenario 2
An inter-institutional project or research team want an efficient way of sharing content. Only some members of the team are based in an institution which provides SCAs. The team leader logs in to his computing services Web page and fills in a brief form which requests a new SCA to be allocated. His current quota is automatically checked and displayed and the new SCA URI is displayed and emailed to him. Because some of the team don't have host institution accounts the access management system requires some data to generate the relevant permissions.

Now Scenario 2 poses a few challenges to the status quo. For example, you can almost hear central IT services rushing to challenge the right of people who don't have institutional accounts to access resources? But the work of the HEI can never been confined to the borders of one institution. That didn't matter too much when communication and collaboration took the form of physical travel, face-to-face meetings, the postal service, and the telephone. Perhaps most HEI's IT policies have not caught up with the reality of ad-hoc groupings involved in collaborative work across national borders and time-zones. Attempts to constrain this or force registration on endless local accounts will only increase the administrative burden, irritate faculty, and will merely result in yet more multiple copies of content navigating its way via the email backdoor. If you don't think this affects you then consider again what your existing VLE is being used for. Does not your existing Blackboard or WebCT support just what I'm talking about? Are these 'externals' just registered manually to save the adminstrative hassle or do they all have institutional accounts? Time to brush up on Shibboleth perhaps?

Anway, that's my starter for ten … anyone wanting to take on the development of a SCA? … Or does anyone feel they have already done this under some other banner? … But do remember we're not looking for a swiss-army knife here (that's just too VLE-like). The goal, instead, is a tool that does one thing spectacularly well, a bit like a podcast aggregator with extra bits:)

In today's post I'm back to the theme of let's create/exploit really simple learning support solutions instead of endlessly trying to lock ourselves to increasingly complex multifunction 'managed' learning environments whose inevitable bias always ends up more towards the 'managed' than the 'learning'. Regular readers will know that since the inception of Auricle I've tried to do my bit to highlight the role and impact of technologies which perhaps initially lacked a provenance recognized by the major corporates or specifications/standards bodies, but nevertheless gained considerable traction despite this. Members of this former maverick class include Weblogs, Wikis, RSS and RSS aggregators, Podcasting, Videocasting, Social networking and bookmarking (inc Friend-Of-Friend - FOAF) solutions, and mixtures thereof. To this we can now add the new maverick proprietary entrants, like Skype, who are so destablizing the formerly comfortable telecoms interests.

Let's pump up the discomfort level a little by winding the clock back to my ALT-C 2004 paper E-Learning Frameworks and Tools: Is it too late? - The Director's Cut which, as the title suggested, asked a simple question, i.e. is it too late? Too late for what, you may ask?

You'll need to go back to the original paper for the full discourse but, in essence, my argument was that way back in the late 1990s into 2000 we all tended to rush headlong into this e-learning thingy (technical term:) As a result of this mass groupthink, many HEIs and other bodies made some pretty fundamental strategic decisions and investments, and thereafter built computer and human infrastructures to implement them. The result is that, in a remarkably small amount of time, we've built an awful lot of legacy artefacts, processes and, above all, thinking, which can make it very difficult to even consider, never mind comprehend, the new.

And as for starting again, when you've just invested, say, 5-6 years locking yourself into your enterprise level proprietary system? … But your institution did state it had an exit strategy didn't it? … Or did it do have a review and decided that the status quo was, well, … less traumatic?

Or is the dominant thinking now along the lines of “we've got to justify this expensive investment so let's lock ourselves even more firmly into the embrace of our proprietary supplier … after all we've got a good relationship with them and it would be pity to rock the boat. OK it's meant to be a VLE but surely we can use it for more than this? What about supporting research groups? OK people only want to use the discussion forums but we'll give them a xyz (substitute favourite VLE here) account. And I hear the've recently discovered Weblogs so anyone who wants a weblog can have an xyz account as well. In fact everything should go through the VLE and if it isn't VLE compliant then we aren't going to use it. Oh, and I've also heard they've even made it possible to access open source functionality so, there, we don't need to change horses.”

Let's pause for a moment's reflection. Some of these vendors used open source solutions to develop their commercial products and they now generously make it possible for you to access other open source solutions for which your institution is expected to pay generously and recurringly for the privilege? And where are the new ideas for development of these increasingly complex environments coming from? … It's certainly not from within some of these proprietary VLE companies. Instead they take the concepts developed elsewhere and merely bundle them within their own infrastructure. The effect is that their customer's dependency (that's you) increases year by year and so each time that review finds it easier to justify staying just as you are.

But let's try and be honest. Does what we have now really represent the best we can do? Is the brave new world of e-learning envisaged pre-dotcom / UKEU collapse now in danger of degrading into a prosaic reality of wall-to-wall Blackboard and WebCT courses all looking the same as each other, with most, with a few outstanding exceptions, not doing anything more than being expensive vehicles for content delivery with a few token underpopulated, largely unsupported, and unfocused discussions for good measure?

Where then does the new fit into the scenario above? Where then the discrete tool or process which doesn't so easily fit with the architecture of chosen VLE? Where then the engine of creativity when everything becomes dependent on the 'good' relationship with a supplier and their commercial motivation to implement the enhancements you want/need. A supplier whose primary motivation, let us not forget, is, despite their protestations, not your institution's welfare, but is instead that of their company or corporation. And with each addition that's made, the base product grows ever fatter with of course the ongoing requirement for the user to navigate the interface to access the process or functionality they want.

The rhetoric is we are breaking away from monoliths. Yet, we seem to be trapped in a reality of constantly reinforcing the monolith's walls. Our learning technologist talk may be of eLearning Frameworks, components, Learning Objects, Web Services, Distributed architectures, Service Oriented Architectures, Portals, Reusability, Learning Object Repositories, and eTools, but this is far from the mundane e-learning reality of what's on offer, or even worse what's being 'allowed'.

For example, what's your institution's policy on students and staff's use of Skype? Managed to get institutional support for standalone weblogs and wikis yet? Have you got a podcast and videocast policy and delivery infrastructure yet? … Or are you still thinking some simple streaming from within xyz (substitute preferred proprietary VLE here) should be all they need? And what's the policy and delivery infrastructure for distributed resources? … What do you mean the students are using RSS aggregators and free services like Flickr, Blogdigger and Bloglines to access resources we haven't approved of from outside of the VLE? And what are we going to do with that guy whose developed or exploited an e-tool which doesn't work with our VLE but yet the student's love it? Shall we get his Head of Department to send a stiff letter warning him to stop it because it contravenes our institution's policy?

Readers of Aurcle and other weblogs in this space will know the questions I raise above are very much grounded in the actual experience of some of our global e-learning community; there's no exaggeration here.

So why do we march ever onwards into this monolithic world? Put simply, centralized organisations like to try and create tidyness, stability, predictability, or sameness. As Neil Pollock and James Cornford have pointed out in their various writings this is a corporate model which technology tends to reinforce but is, at the same time, at variance with the creative, diverse and collegiate nature of many HEIs. The University if meant to be the nursery of diversity and the ideas which emerge from this, at times, hot cauldron but, yet, if the example of e-learning is anything to go by we are beginning to lock ourselves to systems which allow little opportunity for, and show little evidence of, diversity. The rhetoric may be about student-centredness and active learning, but the reality is so often just providing access to content which doesn't actually require a VLE to deliver it. Instead, the VLE so often just provides the increasingly research-focused academic with a mechanism for content delivery which doesn't require face-to-face student contact.

Not that I underestimate the importance of providing the student with an efficient mechanism of aggregating the content that's of importance to them, but let's not pretend that this is any more e-learning than is a pile of handouts distributed at the end of a lecture. And let's not pretend that we actually need a VLE with a recurring license expenditure to do this … the VLE is actually a pretty poor aggregator.

I've argued on many occasions that we need to be developing a more flexible technical infrastructure to support e-learning than the current bland proprietary VLE-oriented diet. Such a diet was perhaps useful as an initial starting point for e-learning but, for many, has rapidly becoming the end-point, i.e. “we've got e-learning because we've got a VLE”. Go on, ask a random member of faculty about e-learning and count the seconds before the VLE dominates the discussion.

If we pause for a moment, however, and look outside of the institutional lens there's a world of tools, services, examples and ideas which we should be utilizing (undoubtedly some 'street aware' staff and students are already doing so).

For example, I've already asserted that VLEs are pretty poor content aggregators but yet, in the absence of alternatives, they've taken on that role in education by default. But yet, in the non-education world, I can set up my RSS aggregator and Podcast download application to either bring to my attention what's current or even to download automatically the content I've identified as valuable to me to my preferred player/reader device; that's an example of a discrete and very efficient tool which doesn't require a complex interface or an expensive recurring license to allow me to use it, but yet it does some pretty powerful things.

My mind often backtracks to the bygone era when VLEs first came on the scene. There was the big boys on the block and the 'others'. Among the 'others' was the little Colloquia which had the temerity to be practically invisible to central services (it used the user's email inbox for asynchronous input and output). Nowadays we would call Colloquia a Personal Learning Environment, a concept given a new respectability via the distributed E-Learning strand of the JISC's E-Learning Programme. There is perhaps still a lot to learn from at least the concept of Colloquia because it is easier to view this as a tool which is trying to do a limited number of jobs well rather than conquering the world (well at least the market). Perhaps the Colloquia team have the mindset to develop my non-VLE dependent content aggregator … Are you listening Oleg? 🙂

I'll give further thought to the nature of such an aggregator in a future posting.

But let's begin to wrap this up with a few final bursts of polemic. Is it that the single one stop solution in the form of the VLE has just beem so seductive that few have stopped to think what the implications are of allowing them to be embedded in the information arteries of the institutions before we know enough and before the technologies have matured enough? Have we really now acquired so much knowledge about the structures and processes of learning that we can now confidently write institution-wide prescriptions that standardize the systems that some may believe will come to determine a significant part of the form future teaching and learning will take in our Universities? Or is the more prosaic reality that far from widespread transformation, all that the considerable investments in enterprise technologies like VLEs has so far achieved in most cases is bags of innovation, pockets of excellence, and some interesting research foci, but otherwise it's back to widespread adoption of the transfer model of learning as usual? … Or worse, we've actually introduced an even more efficient mechanism which magnifies the transfer model?

But have we just gone so far that few have the motivation to try to reverse engines? It may be that we've introduced a mass into the system which like oil tankers are good at travelling in one direction, tend to crush what gets in their way, are the devil to turn, and are impossible to stop over a short distance.

But I could be totally wrong. Maybe the years of enterprise VLE use have transformed and enriched the learning experience of countless students and staff. Maybe Blackboard, WebCT et al have been the Trojan Horses which enable the widespread organizational development which provides the justfication for enterprise wide integration by some. The problem is that we just don't know and, anyway, there's few rewards for asking awkward questions which may produce some pretty unpalatable answers.

But as I have stated in an earlier Auricle post:

“It would be an absolute tragedy if, in 10 years, time all we've got to show for all this effort is still a load of unexciting textual content plus a few quizzes embedded in a proprietary VLE purporting to be e-learning, online learning, enhanced learning or whatever terminology has currency at the time.” (Auricle 8 April 2005)

As expected from one who makes his living from learning technologies, I do believe that technology has the power to transform. But we human beings do have a recurring tendency to opt for such all-or-nothing multifunction big solutions which provide the comforting illusion that we are in control, we are managing the process; which is perhaps why the alternative North American terminology Learning Management System is perhaps a little bit more honest than our preference for the rather weasel-worded Virtual Learning Environment.

But let's never forget that the act of learning is always a unique and deeply personal process which always takes place in the head of the individual learner, although that process may be socially mediated/facilitated. And that unique act can never, ever, be managed no matter how good the systems we put in place under the illusion that somehow we can manage another individual's learning. We can help provide the conditions, we can help optimize the chances, but we can never ever manage learning because that in the end that is down to the individual, and even they only have partial control.

End of polemic 🙂

Recently I was asked to give a presentation to a group of lifelong learning tutors at my university wih the theme 'e-Learning in the lifelong learning context – opportunities and challenges' and so this post provides a brief summary of this event. Most UK HEIs are still pretty much based on the premise that most students turn up on campus so that the teaching can be delivered. The Government's Lifelong Learning agenda, however, has led to an increased number of 'tutors' who are usually part time and who 'teach' on modules covering a wide range of subject areas, including arts and humanities, languages, IT, archaeology, philosophy and so on. And students are not necessarily 'on-campus'. Online learning and Lifelong Learning should be complementary concepts, but how are these part time tutors to be prepared for what we all know can be a challenging role?

First, here's a little background to help establish the framework for my presentation. The majority of the lifelong learning courses are now accredited by the university. In a university context such lifelong learning usually implies mature learners. Each course is designated as 100 hours of study, and this breaks down into 20 hours of face-to-face contact and 80 hours of private study.

Accredited lifelong learning courses attract central funding and so they are subject to the same scrutiny and requirement for assessment as any other university course.

Such accreditation, however, is a break with the traditional model of liberal adult education in which such courses could be free from formal assessment. Non-accredited courses can still be part of the portfolio of lifelong learning but they have to be self financing. At the same time the real costs and the assessment requirement can be a positive disincentive to adult learners who wish to learn for learning's sake. And so many non accredited lifelong learning courses are being considered economically unviable with a concomitant rise in the accredited course. The role of the tutor is such accredited lifelong learning is key to the success of such courses and so it's important their staff development needs as met, particularly when they are expected to support online learners.

When I was asked to give the presentation it was clear from the discussions I had at the time that whilst the word 'e-learning' was familiar, there was little understanding into its meaning. I asked the rather pointless question 'Why do you want to do e learning?' As expected the silence spoke volumes! It was an unfair question but it did give me my starting point by listing the drivers that e-learning may help to address.

Here's my list with some brief comments of what I had in mind. It's not exhaustive but it did prove to be a useful stimulus for discussion and questions after the presentation.

• Offering a more flexible way to study
- The fixed two hours a week face-to face is too restrictive and could be excluding a large number of students.

• Keeping ahead of the competition
- Competition is not only coming from other academic institutions but also from independent providers who increasingly are offering online courses.
• Coping with a wide range of abilities
- There is often a range of abilities of students starting on life-long learning courses and it is difficult to help those that struggle when the face-to-face time is so short
• Ensuring that the course is at a level that is appropriate for university study
- Often the wider university community considers that lifelong learning courses have no place in universities. It is incumbent on those responsible for the delivery of the courses to show that their courses do stand up to any academic scrutiny. At my university there is the intention of providing part-time degrees and this can only increase these demands.
• Supporting the private study time
- The 80 hours of private study time is a very grey area and it is often difficult to justify how it is being used. At Boards of Study the external examiners are increasingly questioning the utilisation of this time. Again this can only become more important for any degree level course.
• Developing a sense of community
- The two hour weekly meeting does provide some sense of community, but the students can feel isolated at the other times. This does intensify when problems arise during the week perhaps when faced with difficulties when working on an assignment.
• Providing better student support by giving timely feedback on their work
- The time for feedback on work submitted by students can be up to two weeks – or longer – from the time when the student first started the work. This represents a significant proportion of the time for the complete course.
• Analysis of the end of course feedback
- All students on lifelong learning courses complete a questionnaire and they can provide a valuable insight into areas that need to be addressed in the course.

When you look at the list of drivers these do become the opportunities and challenges that the talk was all about. My audience in the main had no experience of e-learning and its possibilities to address some of these opportunities and challenges. In the time I had available I couldn't possibly do an in-depth analysis, but I did hope to end up with tutors having some feel for what this is about and stimulating them to look at each of their courses to see if they could put the 'e' into the course.

I mean 'enhanced' when I refer to 'e' in this context.

In my presentation I considered:
• Recognising that learner behaviours and expectations are changing
• Plugging-in to pedagogy, not a browser
• Thinking of e-learning as a process not as content or a single product – in other words e-learning is about process not an event
• Designing with an 'e' framework of outcomes, events and activities, resources and assessment in mind
• VLEs – first generation and the later open source alternatives
• eTools
- Weblogs
- Wikis
- RSS
- Podcasting
- Discussion forums

I gave examples of the VLEs and each of the eTools. Weblogs and Wikis produced a lot of interest and discussion after the presentation. In particular the concept of a Wiki was difficult to take on-board. The Wikipedia entry about the London bombing of the 7th July help clarify the concept by showing how the wiki entry had developed from its first entry within hours of the events unfolding. My audience was impressed and sold on the potential of wikis!

So what was achieved? In the feedback that I received after the event, the presentation has raised a number of questions in the tutor's minds and also some concerns. The concerns were largely about the extra work that could be generated for the part-time tutors and also some anxiety about the use of the new technologies.

A positive outcome is that a discussion forum will be created for the tutors because they too sometimes feel isolated and in need of peer support.

So what's the general message? Quite simple really. With the increasing migration away from non-accredited course to accredited lifelong learning in HE plus the expectation that online learning will make a significant contribution, the tutor's role becomes essential and their ongoing development critical.