eLearning

Transitioning to Online Delivery

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Technology has become integral to our everyday lives and today’s students, no matter their age, expect interactive technology to be part of the overall learning experience. Integrating technology into the classroom provides students with the necessary skills and knowledge to successfully navigate the technology-laden landscape around them.

A hundred years ago in the United States, more than 50% of school-aged children attended one of the more than 200,000 one-room school houses around the country. These classrooms consisted of one teacher who planned and executed lessons for students aged 5-18. As school systems were created and learning environments moved to more homogeneous groupings of learners, teachers were able to focus on one developmental stage or subject instead of preparing for all ages and subjects. As a result, learning became more focused and centralized- even more so once the individual state governments and the federal government began creating educational benchmarks for the different grade-levels. Corporate America and institutions of higher learning took their cue from the traditional classroom when creating training programs for employees or course materials for college students by following the lecture-then-test method seen in the traditional classroom.

Many institutions have fully embraced online learning models and are even requiring a certain percentage of online material be included in fully face-to-face courses. Many of these institutions believe that there is a higher level of accountability for both the instructor/trainer and participants when students complete assignments online. When course materials are delivered online, there is an assurance that all students are receiving the same information and equal access to the tools necessary to be successful in the course. Student participation and grades can be monitored more closely when using an online environment as well.

There is still reluctance on the part of some institutions to widely utilize technology-based learning for a variety of reasons, but this subset is rapidly becoming the exception. Many of these institutions cite lack of resources and/or tech-savvy individuals as the biggest roadblocks to instituting online learning. Others believe that learning online is not as effective as traditional course delivery methods, but to say that today’s learning environments are changing is an understatement. Whether it is in an educational institution or on-the-job training, tectonic shifts are occurring in the way content is delivered and in the ways students learn. Not since the rapid demise of the one-room school house in the United States in the mid 1940’s has the educational landscape experienced such change.

Making the Transition

As companies, corporations, and educational systems begin to integrate technology into their programs, it is important that a focused plan is created and followed. Simply adopting an LMS and having instructors move their course materials to a course shell won’t lead to any long-term success. So, how does an institution begin to transition to online-delivery? This process needs to be accomplished in stages and executed over several months with deliberate planning. Some things to keep in mind while making the transition:

  1. Decide on Content Delivery- Will you utilize and LMS/CMS? Will courses be offered in various formats (i.e. fully online, blended, hybrid, face-to-face)? The course delivery will influence the structure of the materials. Keep in mind that even face-to-face courses can successfully integrate electronic learning resources in the form of labs, homework, or evaluation.
  2. Develop learning objectives– What knowledge or skills do you want participants to gain? Depending upon the length of the course, keep these to a minimum. Creating focused learning objectives prior to creating learning materials is key to developing a cohesive and effective course (and for saving the course developer’s sanity!).
  3. Choose or create materials for online delivery– The use of an online platform opens up an unlimited number of delivery methods. Simply uploading static Word documents for participants to read is not an effective use of the vast array of tools available to even a novice course designer. Most learning management systems offer discussion boards, games, and other interactive learning tools that will help participants engage in the material more fully than ever before.

After the delivery method, learning objectives, and materials are in place, the course design will begin to take shape, and there are a lot of course design methods readily available, but keep in mind that “less is more” when designing online courses. Creating online materials that are laser-focused on individual learning objectives will produce an interactive learning environment that is effective and efficient for both the instructor and student.

Moving to the “How”

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We’ve moved from viewing online learning as a vehicle to share existing course materials out to a larger audience, to a realization that learning online can be so much more than a window into a traditional classroom environment. eLearning, when thoughtfully developed, is enhancing learning and teaching and creating new ways for students to assimilate a vast amount of information effectively and efficiently- but only when the learning materials are presented in a way that supports students in this environment. The focus is no longer solely on what we teach, but how we teach it.

Integral to enhance and support the learning process is the use of instructional media. Instructional media, or the “physical means, other than the teacher, chalkboard, and textbook, via which instruction is presented to learners,” not only help learners understand concepts more fully but also help the instructor to organize and explain these concepts more fully and easily (Reiser and Dempsey, 18). Traditionally, instructional media were viewed by most educators as supplementary materials, whereas “teachers and textbooks [were] viewed as the primary means of presenting instruction” (18). Technological advancements such as video, computers, and the internet, as well as the increase in online education programs in both the non-profit and for-profit arenas, have changed the scope of instructional media. One such instructional learning technique–collaborative online learning—should be included in any discussion of instructional media.

The design of an online course and the presentation of the course materials become larger determining factors of a student’s success; whereas even a decade ago, the learner’s success was based largely upon the presentation skills of the instructor. Engaging students in an online environment removes this integral part of the traditional classroom environment. In an eLearning environment, the course materials need to be engaging and interactive, and not just the instructor, in order for the student to assimilate the material.

One element which helps students interact not only with each other but with the course content as well in collaborative online learning. The educational benefits of collaborative online learning are numerous, and the use of these methods for teaching and course structure are quickly “becoming an instructional approach of choice for online courses” (Chiong and Jovanovic, 2012).

Learning has changed since I started teaching in the early 90’s. In the past 20 years or so there has been an increase in the use of educational computer games to support and enhance student learning. “Technological developments such as the Internet and Web-based applications have accelerated this trend and game-based learning has recently become a significant focus of attention in the field of education” (Wu et al).

One facet of online collaborative learning that has viable future options is the incorporation of digital games. Low-tech learning games (such as board games) have been utilized in learning environments for decades. Both low-tech and digital learning games allow students an opportunity to interact with each other and the material in an alternative and (hopefully) exciting way. Digital learning games allow students the opportunity to work not only in groups but individually as well, but this research focuses on those digital learning games which are collaborative in nature.

Technology will continue to influence the educational landscape in ways that we cannot imagine. As we move forward, developing meaningful learning environments for students who assimilate information in new ways, it will be increasingly important to not only examine what we teach but how we teach it.

Works Cited

Chiong, R., Jovanovic, J., & Gill, T. (2012). Collaborative Learning in Online Study Groups: An Evolutionary Game Theory Perspective. Journal Of Information Technology Education, 1181-101.

Kiili, K., Kiili, C., Ott, M., & Jönkkäri, T. (2012). Towards Creative Pedagogy: Empowering Students to Develop Games. Proceedings Of The European Conference On Games Based Learning, 250-257.

Wu, W. H., Hsiao, H. C., Wu, P. L., Lin, C. H., & Huang, S. H. (2012). Investigating the learning-theory foundations of game-based learning: a meta-analysis. Journal Of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(3), 265-279. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00437.x

Whitton, N. (2012). The place of game-based learning in an age of austerity. Electronic Journal Of E-Learning, 10(2), 249-256.

Romero, M., & Usart, M. (2012). Game Based Learning Time-On-Task and Learning Performance According to Students’ Temporal Perspective. Proceedings Of The European Conference On Games Based Learning, 424-431.