eLearning Concepts

The term e-Learning does not have a single definition. Furthermore the term is very often used interchangeably with other words like online learning, Internet-based learning, web-based learning and computer-based learning. However, if we look closer to the terms, the implications may be different. eLearning can be seen as an acronym for electronic learning. In other words, every form of learning that takes place using digital media as mode of delivery would be seen as e-learning. For instance, an educational programme on television would definitely be e-Learning. However, this technology is quite primitive and lacks interactivity. New e-learning technologies are more interactive that the television mode of delivery, for instance an interactive multimedia education program that runs on a personal computer.

The word online is normally associated with an event that is taking place live and in real-time. For instance, suppose we are watching a movie on television and suddenly the programme is interrupted. Then you see the reporter talking to you live from the stadium where your country has just won the World Cup. So you see him in live telecast, and the reporter on TV can exchange words with the live reporter using a videoconferencing system. The word online is nowadays very much associated with virtual presence on the Internet and the World Wide Web. If you are on a chat room and your colleague is chatting with you, then both of you are online, i.e. virtually present in a place at the same time. So, in the context of online learning, a nice example would be that you are engaged in a chatting session with your lecturer who is away from you but present in a virtual classroom like space to interact with you and offering tutorial support.

The terms internet-based and web-based learning are basically the same. These two terms are also closely related to online learning since the Internet and the World-Wide Web provide the main platform for online learning nowadays. Web-based or Internet-based learning however may comprise of a mix of self-directed learning (through Interactive Web-Sites) and online learning. In this case, there are two types for interaction. The first type is system-based interaction where students interact with the system by browsing through the course material, doing self-assessment exercises and interacting with multimedia elements. The second type of interaction is community-based interaction supported by the system. In this type of interaction, students communicate with peers and lecturers to get academic, pedagogical and sometimes technical support.

On the hand, computer-based learning may be seen as using the computer to learn from interactive stand-alone multimedia CD-ROMs or using the computer to carry out online or internet/web-based learning. In fact, nowadays the computer is the primary tool or mediating instrument to support e-learning.

Can Kids Teach Themselves?

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.

In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."

"Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong."

Linux Journal
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The sad truth about F2F by Martin Weller

 http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/

Martin Weller says :

I've never tried face to face (or f2f as it's known by the sad geeks who participate in it), but I know I don't need to in order to understand that it is a facile, shallow form of interaction compared with the rich dialogue we have built up over centuries in social media.

F2F gatherings often take place in specially designed physical spaces. The spaces cannot be altered, people here think moving a chair around is rearranging. Gone is the rich possibility of creating virtual worlds, of being a flying cow or a twelve foot purple cat in a world with 1/3 earth's gravity. No, here people sit around at tables and inanely flip cardboard 'beer mats' against a backdrop of red flock wallpaper.

But if the environment itself were not depressing enough, then the level of interaction is enough to have any right thinking citizen weeping. F2Fers talk about football, what they had for dinner and that bloke in the office, over and over again. Gone is the rich debate, the informed discussion - here there is no recourse to wikipedia, instead interlocutors call upon a mythical 'bloke in the pub told me' as their sole source of fact.

"Even more worrying we seem to be abandoning our cultural history of considered debate. In a F2F setting there is no time for reflection, the imperative is always upon the immediate. the sound-bite, as if the motto were 'say anything rather than be silent'. I don't know about you, but I was always brought up to believe that taking your time to reflect, research and compose your response was the best way to proceed."

Experts warn that f2fing could damage our communication skills (photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/74321115@N00/4219119825/)

Another disturbing factor is the drastic pruning of social relationships. Having developed skills at maintaining a complex set of relationships that are not limited by geography, time or demographics, the F2Fers now find themselves only able to be 'friends' (they have misappropriated the Facebook term) with people they can meet at a set time in a set location. Psychologists believe that this contraction to a restricted set, what is being termed the Dunbar number, will severely limit the capacity for social growth and innovation.

When we think about the great bloggers of the past, such as Montaigne, we can ask where are the great bloggers amongst the F2F set? They are almost entirely consumed with 'chatting' with people in cafes and bars. Would Montaigne have written so many thoughtful blog posts if he had spent all his time sipping lattes? I think the answer is no.

But all this might be dismissed as the ravings of an old misery, which is fine, but the implications could be far more sinister. No less a scientific dignitary than Baroness Brownhouse has recently decried the rise in F2F popularity, stating that 'it is a fact that less online interaction will rewire these kids brains resulting in them being less capable of processing complex information. By tweeting to 2 or 3 people I know that restricting your social field to those you can meet on a real time basis reduces an individual's neurological capacity for reflection, empathy and social understanding. Fact. Fact. Fact.'

Lastly, this F2F phenomena has seen a rise in a new, voodoo form of economics and publishing, where instead of gathering the inputs from everyone and allowing the best to rise to the surface, contributions are 'filtered'. This has led to paper based productions, labelled 'newspapers' being passed around for money. The so called writers (termed 'journalists') of these, don't contribute their ideas or opinions based on beliefs or knowledge, but rather are led by the business motivations of the newspaper owner. In one story I heard, a sinister underground figure known only as 'Murderok' owned several 'newspapers' and made the journalists write what he wanted. And yet the F2Fers proclaim this as a form of freedom because it allows for journalistic privilege! What happened to the wisdom of the crowds?!

So, while new blog darlings rush to embrace the F2F rebellion and abandon their twitter accounts for Starbucks loyalty cards, and reject considered thought in favour of inane blatherings, I'll stick to what has worked fine for the past few hundred years. As Shakespeare posted, 'I blog, therefore I am.'

Academic Year 2010/2011 Starts......

Six cohorts of students currently enrolled on VCILT programmes. Currently there are a total of approximately 200 students enrolled.

The following programmes are being offered:

• Diploma in Web and Multimedia Development
• BSc (Hons) Educational and Instructional Technology
• MSc Educational Technologies

The VCILT also launched a new e-learning server which can be accessed at http://ilearn.uom.ac.mu 

The platform is being hosted on a latest powerful DELL server replacing the 10-year old veteran that was struggling to provide a good service at this age.