For some, e-learning is only now coming into its own. For others, the word smacks of an obsession with technology. Donald H Taylor argues that it’s time to drop the ‘e’ and start concentrating on the ‘learning’.
It’s time to drop e-learning. Let’s be specific. It’s time to drop the ‘e’ in e-learning.
It’s time to recognise that the ‘e’ carries the stigma of past hyperbole, puts some potential learners and managers off and smacks of a love of technology that has everything to do with content delivery, rather than individual learning.
If the ‘e’ was ever useful, it has outlived that use now. That’s why ELIG – formerly the E-Learning Industry Group – is now ELIG, the European Learning Industry Group (although if you examine their site you’ll find the word e-learning scattered liberally all over it).
I’ve used the term myself happily in the past – as you might expect of the chairman of the Learning Technologies Conference – but the ELIG change has given me to reflect. And the result of that reflection: they’re right. There’s no need to differentiate now between methods of content delivery. The battle is over, and e-learning has won. It’s a regular part of the learning mix. As Joe Hegarty, Intel Innovation Centres director of business operations and co-chair of ELIG, puts it on the eLearning Weekly blog: The term ‘e-learning’ has been overused. Technology is now clearly embedded in all modern learning solutions.
Define your terms E-learning is a catch all term encompassing a great deal, and also – inevitably – meaning many things to different people. Although we’ve lived with it for about a decade, there is no single definition shared by experts such as Clive Shepherd and communities such as Learning Light. The Wikipedia entry recognises this explicitly: Electronic learning or e-learning is a general term used to refer to computer-enhanced learning. It is used interchangeably in so many contexts that it is critical to be clear what one means when one speaks of 'eLearning'. (Apparently the author believes that even e-learning’s spelling can be interchangeable.)
Catch all terms have their place – they often crystallize disparate strands of thinking around a subject. The term ‘informal learning’, for example, has been useful to coalesce a whole strand of learning by stressing the commonality between seemingly very dissimilar learning events. But while e-learning might have begun life like this – clustering different delivery media and design issues around a single term – it rapidly took on a life of its own, when it started to look like a free meal ticket. And that was when the rot set in.
The end of the last millennium was a great time for hype, and the term ‘e-learning’ was propelled to mass popularity, fuelled by deadly cocktail of self interest from suppliers, buyers’ love of the new, and executive interest in the cost-cutting power of this new technology. The energy and excitement became a self-feeding whirlwind, fed by analyst reports predicting massive increases, predictions based on buyer predictions, which were in turn based on what they were reading in the magazines and websites produced by the marketers and neophiles. And it was all caught up in the dot com boom.
The prince at the party Remember partying like it was 1999? The phrase took on a whole new meaning on 10 March 2000, when Nasdaq peaked at 5048 and then tipped over onto a long, dark decline.
Sure as nemesis follows hubris, e-learning entered a reputational dark age. Learning Management Systems fell grotesquely out of favour with the markets, with shares values losing as much as 97% of their value by late 2002. Prices are still way off a full recovery.
The market, though, got it wrong. Missing in all this vilification of e-learning was an understanding of what it means. It represents a cluster of activities, tools and ways of thinking that are essential parts of learning and development today. The markets, though, made it a millstone to be ditched as soon as possible. LMS providers now stress the terms ‘Performance Management’ and ‘Human Capital’ instead.
Yet the term persisted precisely because those in the know understood the value of electronic delivery of training materials. But it was also a problem – although it uses the term learning, learning is what we humans do. The ‘e’ in e-learning is all about delivery. Gutenberg didn’t rave about the b-learning his printed books provided; I’ve never heard a lecturer enthuse on v-learning for voices, so why the ‘e’? Even as the concept of e-learning was being slowly re-habilitated in the Learning and Development profession, the term itself was still flawed.
In a way the boom times had one valuable effect – they pushed learning onto the organisational agenda as never before. Suddenly learning was being discussed at a senior level. The good news: non-learning specialists were interested in what we did. The bad news: most saw e-learning as a cost-cutting measure, because that’s how it was consistently presented to them. As Kevin Kruse said on the otherwise excellent e-learning guru site about four years ago: technology-based training can substantially reduce costs associated with student travel, lodging, and instructor fees Executives still see e-learning as a handy way to trim costs.
Hangover cure The hangover from the party lasted. There is no neutral outcome from the sort of hyperbole that surrounded the early days of e-learning. From the start there was push back, which only increased after the crash. This came partly from those resistant to technology and change – the neophobes. And that’s one big reason for dropping the ‘e’. In learning, the emotions are both catalyst and inhibitor. If you don’t like electronics, then you’ll be inhibited by that ‘e’. Are these people Luddites? Maybe some are. But Luddites are learners, too.
And the other bitter aftertaste of the hype is a lasting cynicism among management. Too many see e-learning as yesterday’s fad.
Humble beginnings It doesn’t have to be that way. Learning Technologies Manager Claire Line has accumulated considerable expertise in this area both during and after the boom. In her implementation at top international law firm Lovells, she uses e-learning but resolutely drops the ‘e’. “We call them online presentations” she says, of her in-house authored e-learning content. And very successful they are, too, in delivering learning content to the firm’s 26 international offices. She has been resolutely extending the reach of electronic delivery into just-in-time performance support at the desktop and videoed presentations. Avoiding the big-bang hype of massive e-learning implementations typical of the early 2000s, she takes a different approach. “Start humble” she counsels “build great content, and an enthusiastic following.” Clearly, you don’t need an ‘e’ to succeed. And what about that bastard child of e-learning, e-learning 2.0? Tony Karrer described it enthusiastically in February 2006, while David Jennings has a marvellously scathing post on it from December. For a broad, well-written exposition, see Stephen Downes’ piece from elearn Magazine.
And yes, I have used this term myself in the past, too, but I now believe we need to drop it. Why? Because we cannot shake the burden of the past. Everything that is true of e-learning is also true of e-learning 2.0.
Starting over The new term may be about learning and collaboration and not about delivery and hype. It may not be a way of selling software, but an inspirational vision of mash-ups. Still, the cynical managers and the Luddites will never get past the term and its history – and that’s reason enough to me to drop it. Instead, let’s just talk about finding and using the right tools for the job.
One of the very first to use the term e-learning, Jay Cross, puts it very clearly: I wouldn’t get hung up on vocabulary: all learning is part formal and part informal; eLearning has lost all meaning.
Rather, I suggest a focus on how to help people do their jobs better. That leads directly to creating platforms, not programs. Where’s he quoted? The elearning weekly blog. We may have some way to go.
Keith Comley , 26 September 2007 @ 15:07 PM Systems Approach
e-learning is one medium that may be a appropiate solution to a customers need. but the approach to identifying the need is always the same.
Identify the training need, then agree the learning outcomes, then select the appropiate solution, which may be a e-solution.
I currently am designing a induction package for a multi location organisation and an e-solution is part of that coupled with workbooks and on the job coaching and mentoring. Keith Comley
Garrie Owens , 24 September 2007 @ 13:55 PM Putting the l in earning
I love gadgets, technology, wireless gizmos, ipods, a absolute techy freek. I qualified initially to teach online, I ran a learndirect hub and a online e commerce centre and despite my love affair with technology I absolutely agree that its learning that is more important. Quiet simply I feel that e-learinig is the technological advanced version of the OHP or the common place DBPP ( death by power point) As learning professionals we always try to use more intresting ways of engaging our learners but actually it always comes back to one point. Technology, learning aids ( or props?) need a good teacher behind them to support, encourage, drag, push the learner to achieve thier potential, without this precieved out dated form of technology learners do not learn. The other point is learning styles. For my learing style e-learning regardless of how good, without a tutor and peers to work with bores me absolutely ridgid. Garrie Owens
David Montgomery , 07 August 2007 @ 10:05 AM Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose
At a meeting (April 2005) in Brussels on elearning in the pharmaceutical industry the same idea was floated that next year's meeting should drop the e- and talk solely about learning. Therefore, we should be grateful that elearning succeeded in putting learning on centre stage where it rightfully belongs. But elearning itself is a misnomer since humans learn while e- provides a platform for delivering training or, like books and videos, learning content.
Like knowledge management elearning suffers from being perceived as technology driven and some vendors are at least in part to blame...then again, if users and purchasers were more savvy then this would not happen or happen less frequently.
It sometimes looks like pedagogy, or perhaps for this forum androgogy, is being hijacked by technology. It is therefore incumbent on trainers to seize the initiative and restore the balance. To some extent, blended learning is admission that elearning is not the wunderkind but another tool in the trainer's toolkit which must be used together with others rather than on its own……so plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose.....one wonders what Caxton would make of all the hyperbole surrounding technology?
Except that technology affords the possibilities of greater connectivity and shared learning even though geographically dispersed. Then again discussion boards encourage both idea sharing and also shortcuts.....hey, can anyone tell me about X,Y, or Z or send me an A,B, or C? Much still needs to be done to promote thinking and making use of technology (i.e. do some searching)before action although many value a second opinion....but hang on how can you have a second opinion when you haven't got a first one?
You may well ask yourself if this post reflects the ramblings of yet another Luddite .....now where did I put my chalk?
Colin Mansell , 18 July 2007 @ 09:17 AM It's as meaningful as 'paper-based'
The term e-learning simply tells me I need to look at my computer screen to see it - nothing more. Hence it has been used for everything from mile-long web pages to sophisticated simulators, much to the detriment of the latter.
However, we do still have a problem with the term 'learning' as it is still perceived by many to relate only to the school classroom. But, I guess, we can't win them all! Colin Mansell
Karyn Romeis , 16 July 2007 @ 10:09 AM e-barriers
In some organisations, where the level of IT literacy is still a little on the low side, the term e-learning can be a huge barrier to learning. This was the case in my last job. The MD was adamant that the culture wasn't appropriate to e-learning (or vice versa), but when I created some nuggets to cover the helpdesk's FAQs, popped them into the public folders and got the helpdesk to refer people to them when they phoned with the usual questions, he was delighted. "Who needs elearning when we can have this?" I didn't have the heart to tell him that "this" *was* elearning. When we didn't call it elearning, the culture problem stoppped being a problem. Karyn Romeis
Donald H Taylor , 13 July 2007 @ 12:04 PM Comment on comments to date
Joanna - thanks for your comment. I did leave community learning out of the article, deliberately, because (I would argue) it was never part of the original meaning of e-learning. That doesn't mean I don't think it useful. I absolutely agree with your identification of 'generous sharing', and its great value to learners.
Rob - you picked up much the same point when you talked about the medium realising its potential now with the 'realisation of collaboration'. Your point that 'It is time for people to learn how to learn and not worry about descriptors of the medium' is quite right, and is just about the thrust of the article.
Editor_Researcher - I have no idea what you're talking about, or even whether you're agreeing with me or not. Donald H Taylor
Editor_Researcher , 12 July 2007 @ 01:05 AM e-Gads
"e-" has been affixed so many times to so many words to represent so many meanings that "e"-words have become meaningless. In fact, e-learning is an unnecessary embellishment of learning—an unmeasurable residue of successful education that lacks any direct relationship with distance or with distance education. The creators and users of "e-" words all play the role of Humpty Dumpty, who said when speaking to Alice (in a rather scornful tone): "[A word] means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." The professional literature of e-learning should not consist of continuous confusion, muddled prose, smoke and mirrors, and Humpty Dumpty language. As Marc Prensky says, "e-Nough."
Rob Wilkins , 11 July 2007 @ 22:57 PM Web 2.0?
The problem with this article is that it ignores the historical origins of what the "e" was intended for. i.e. a description of the medium.
The hyperbole is only now being realised with the realisation of collaboration and what that gives an individual in terms comparison, contrast and validation.
It is time for people to learn how to learn and not worry about descriptors of the medium but worry about what the medium brings in terms of learning opportunity
joanna howard , 11 July 2007 @ 13:09 PM participation in 'online learning'
I notice that you haven't included the advantage on of line community learning in your list. I agree very much with the rest of your article.
"E-learning" can include the huge amount of generous sharing seen in technical forums and other user groups - learning is less and less limited to "delivery" and I think the shift on to user-generated content etc needs acknowledging. joanna howard
For some, e-learning is only now coming into its own. For others, the word smacks of an obsession with technology. Donald H Taylor argues that it’s time to drop the ‘e’ and start concentrating on the ‘learning’.
