You take the high road: National Programmes for the Development of e-Learning in Higher Education

by Terry Mayes, and Derek Morrison in Reflecting Education, Vol 4, No 1 (2008), 6-16

Abstract

The central question addressed by this paper is the effect of national initiatives in e-learning within the Higher Education sector. Two national programmes for the promotion of e-learning in UK higher education are described, and some tentative lessons are drawn from their comparison. One is the English Benchmarking and Pathfinder programme, still ongoing, in which £8M has been distributed widely across over 70 HE institutions, and the other is the £6M Scottish e-learning transformation programme, involving six large-scale collaborative projects. The scale of these two programmes is comparable to the Pew Grant programme in course redesign in USA higher education, which claimed both improved learning and reduced costs through the introduction of technology enhancements. This paper considers how these claims influenced the UK initiatives, and how divergent strategic considerations led the national programmes to be defined differently. A conclusion is that the way the initiatives were framed has influenced their outcomes. However, both programmes have succeeded in building a cross-institutional level of capacity development that offers a policy direction for the future.

Reflecting Education, Vol 4, No 1 (2008), 6-16; You take the high road ... (PDF)

Reflecting Education, Vol 4, No 1 (2008),  Table of Contents

Commentary by Betty Collis & Jef Moonen, Moonen & Collis Learning Technology Consultants

Date: 22 June 2008

We will make comments along three lines: the comparison of the UK initiatives with the Pew Grants, the observations about activity–focused pedagogy, and the final conclusion sentence of the report relating to the evolution of ‘e-learning’ national strategies in general.

It is interesting indeed to read this comparison of the two national initiatives in the UK although the comparison with the Pew Grant program is less strong in that there are fundamental differences in the US approach and the two UK national initiatives. One of the major differences is that of history: in the UK, the two national initiatives follow in the footsteps of a series of other national initiatives over more than a decade. There is no comparable knowledge and experience base in the US.  Another difference is the nature of the projects, with the two UK initiatives involving institutional capacity building (Benchmarking/Pathfinder) and collaborations among institutions (Scottish e-learning transformation projects) while the Pew projects involve instructor teams focusing on the redesign of a small sample of individual courses. We do not particularly agree with the comment that the activity in the UK programmes ‘is focused on a stage that precedes course redesign...Benchmarking/Pathfinder can be viewed as building the capacity to produce the kind of proposals that Pew Grant funded’ (p. 8).  Members of a course team can do substantial work on redesign of their particular course independent of capacity building throughout an organisation. Thus we feel the comparison with Pew in the paper is not particularly helpful in terms of understanding the UK initiatives.  A better reference is the HELIOS yearly report on e-learning in European institutions (http://www.education-observatories.net/helios) which deals directly with e-learning as a facilitator of change and innovation processes in educational institutions. Also in terms of analysis,  more space could have been given to a reflection on why previous UK national initiatives before the UK e-University have led to ‘a comparatively long period of disappointing returns from central funding targeted specifically at the development of technology-enhanced learning’(pp. 8-9).  Having studied similar ‘disappointing returns’ in other contexts over several decades of initiatives relating to technology-supported learning, we feel more discussion would be interesting as to why the two current UK initiatives were hoped to succeed where so many others have not.  Capacity development among teaching staff seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition. It also would be interesting to reflect further on the difference between the Benchmarking/Pathfinder focus on individual institutions and the Scottish focus on cross-sector collaborations.  The comment in the Conclusion section (pp. 14-15) that the Benchmarking/Pathfinder projects were characterised by the ‘desire for teams from different institutions to work together over the building of capacity’ is not necessarily supported by the way that Pathfinder Phase I activities emerged. The clustering of institutions was assigned by HEA at the launch of the project, not a natural development that emerged from the ‘desire of the institutions’.  It might be that the clustering is a construction that runs parallel to in-house work rather than a direct source of benefit to the institution.

The document makes regular reference to a change in pedagogy for the ‘transformation of the student experience’ as being at the heart of the UK initiatives (as well as the Pew Grant projects).  The benefits of a more activity-focussed pedagogy, usually involving an increase in formative assessment, are mentioned several times. ‘Most institutions are now starting the process of embedding a truly student-centred, enquiry or problem-based e-pedagogy at subject teaching level...the (Pathfinder) pilots are all, in one way or another, trying to accelerate that process’ (p. 11). While it is not clear if this comment is also meant to refer to the Pathfinder Phase I projects as well as the pilots the implication is that this is the case. It is also seen as the basis of the ‘transformations’ in the Scottish projects.  While we are very happy with such a pedagogical orientation (we have been researching and practicing what we call a ‘contributing student approach’  for many years, see Collis & Moonen, 2001), we wonder if indeed pedagogic change does characterise the majority of the projects in the UK initiatives. On p. 11 the observation is made that the focus of many of the Pathfinder pilots (again, one supposes the Phase I projects are also intended) is to ‘put in place or strengthen, organisational links between a central unit...and practitioners in the schools and teaching departments’...  There is a focus on engagement and empowerment, but more at the level of the ‘teaching staff, rather than of students’ (p. 11). While staff development is clearly important as a component of pedagogical transformation, one wonders if the goal of the Scottish projects TESEP and REAP, ‘giving students a more active role in the design of their own learning activities,’ had any parallels in the Pathfinder projects? Some further reflection on the role of students in pedagogical transformation and in national initiatives would be welcome. Also the question of where best to house projects such as Pathfinder--in central support units or within faculties—could also be reviewed.

Finally, the last sentence of the article rang bells of familiarity for us. The sentence says: ‘Capacity is seen more clearly than before to involve an institution’s confidence and willingness to embark on course redesigns that favour an activity-based pedagogy, rather than favouring the development of technology-defined learning environments’ (p. 15). The sentence suggests an evolution that we are seeing in many countries: One of us (Moonen), in summarising an international comparison of national policy trends relating to technology in primary and secondary education based on contributions from regions throughout the world, has noted that ‘the explicit policy focus on IT and education is fading. Using IT in education is becoming more implicit and incorporated in a broader policy context, especially around needed qualifications and competencies of citizens in a knowledge society. This is most explicitly visible in the European region’  (Moonen, 2008, in press). We see this also emerging in the tertiary sector: there is a trend away from ‘e-learning’ policies, strategies, central units, and e-based mission statements towards a focus on targets for change within which technology with its affordances can provide a workbench and tools but are not the goals in themselves. In this sense, we suspect that ‘e-learning’ will cease to be a focus for institutional benchmarking and instead other targets such as student empowerment or workplace transitions will instead be the focus. We have been involved in national policy initiatives involving technology and learning since the 1980s; perhaps we, collectively, are coming to an end of this era?

References

Collis, B., & Moonen, J. (2001). Flexible learning in a digital world: Experiences and expectations. London: Routledge.

Moonen, J. (in press). Policy from a global perspective. In J. M. Voogt & G. A. Knezek (Eds.), International handbook of information technology in primary and secondary education.  Springer International Handbooks of Education, Vol. 20. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.

About the commentator(s)

Betty Collis and Jef Moonen took early retirement from the University of Twente in The Netherlands in 2005 and work now as consultants in technology for strategy, learning and change in the higher education and corporate sectors.  Both have been engaged with technology as a learning workbench throughout their careers.  The small book that they wrote on the occasion of their retirements from the University of Twente can be downloaded (no charge) from http://bettycollisjefmoonen.nl/rb.htm; in it, their commitment to learner-centred pedagogy and their awareness of the challenges involved in institutional change are discussed. For their CVs, see http://users.gw.utwente.nl/collis/ and http://users.gw.utwente.nl/moonen/. Email: bettycollisjefmoonen@gmail.com