E-Learning: The Product of a Risk Is a Lesson - Page 2

Another significant issue is what library users bring to the library in terms of experiences and expectations and how well or ill-prepared library staff is to respond to those experiences and expectations. Recent national reports indicate that elementary and high school students are increasingly familiar and comfortable with e-learning.

Furthermore, members of library staff who are still struggling to learn and become comfortable with e-learning options are discovering there is even more to anticipate. The rapid evolution of mobile technology is creating yet another learning format: m-learning—learning opportunities delivered through mobile devices. “Mobiles are already in use as tools for education on many campuses,” note writers of the New Media Consortium and Educause Learning Initiative’s 2009 Horizon Report (PDF file), and increasingly “sophisticated tools … are quickly emerging.”

In fall 2008, Abilene (Tex.) Christian University “became the first university to distribute Apple iPhones and iPod Touches to the incoming freshman class … to explore a new vision for mobile learning”; in spring 2009, the university also hosted a mobile learning summit “for campuses deploying iPhone and iPod Touch–focused applications, portals, and initiatives in higher education,” according to a press release on the university’s website.

“The fact that many students already own and carry mobiles remains a key factor in their potential for education,” the Horizon Report adds.

Given that students—many of them library users—are becoming more comfortable with and attracted to e- and m-learning raises a fundamental question for library staff: How can they be uneducated in or uncomfortable with how these tools function if they are to continue serving library patrons in an onsite-online world?

The good news for interested library staff is that there are plenty of books and articles to help all of us become grounded in the basic and advanced issues we face as we become adept at e-learning. (An annotated bibliography of resources is available at paulsignorelli.com/PDFs/E-learning_Annotated_Bibliography_June_2009.pdf.) The bad news is that we may currently be concentrating on less than central issues in terms of what produces effective e-learning.

OCLC’s Trends in E-learning for Library Staff (PDF file), based on a survey that drew 651 responses from across the United States, suggests that e-learning in the library field “is still young,” is attracting interest from a majority of those who responded to the survey, and is somewhat more likely to be purchased rather than produced by most libraries interested in e-learning because of the cost involved in producing original content and the level of expertise needed. Those who expressed most interest in adopting e-learning during the year immediately following the survey cited “convenience for learners,” “ability to reach more learners,” and “cost-effectiveness” as reasons they were interested in e-learning, while approximately 25% of the potential developers and 10% of the potential purchasers cited “instructional effectiveness” as a reason for proceeding.

Cost-effectiveness, however, may include unanticipated challenges for those interested in producing their own e-learning content. Citing the results of a study published in 1999, Canadian educator Tracey Leacock writes in an article (PDF file) published in 2005 in Issue 4 of The Learning Organization that “many organizations have found that, although putting material online can potentially save time and money in the long run, the up-front cost and effort is significantly greater than in traditional lecture-based course offerings. For a small organization that is growing rapidly, this front-loading of the development work poses a real challenge.”

Documenting the success of e-learning efforts also poses challenges for those working in libraries. My own interviews and online survey conducted in early 2009 found no U.S.-based libraries that were studying and documenting differences between results produced by classroom-based learning and e-learning. Peer-reviewed journal articles and other sources summarizing studies from a variety of nonlibrary sources offer some guidance through reports that well-designed e-learning programs can be equally if not more effective than face-to-face learning opportunities.

Those interested in trying e-learning within their organizations have plenty of options via the purchase and sometimes free use of offerings from Infopeople, LE@D (Lifelong Education @ Desktop), Lyrasis, TechSoup, T Is for Training, WebJunction, and others.

In participating in course offerings or helping to design courses through some of these organizations, I have found that there is nothing like personal experience to bring the world of e-learning to life. Attending and participating in one-time webcasts and webinars, taking multisession asynchronous workshops, and becoming completely immersed as a student in two graduate-level distance learning programs since summer 2007 has given me an experience that no amount of reading and interviewing can come close to matching.