E-Learning: Are We in Transition or Are We Stuck?

What is E-learning? It depends on where you sit.

E-learning: Educational content, learning services, and delivery solutions that support and enable Internet-based learning. (International Data Corporation white paper abstract/2001)

E-learning companies: Those that are leveraging new Internet technologies to create, distribute, manage, influence, monitor, or enable learning at all levels. The products and services provided by these companies include: creation and aggregation and distribution of content, application services; online communities/portals; e-tailing of educational products; monitoring of learning outcomes and achievement; infrastructure/administration products and services. (CSFirst Boston Education/Training Marketplace report, 2000)

E-learning can be defined as instructional content or learning experiences delivered or enabled by electronic technology. (NGA/ASTD Commission on Technology and Adult Learning 2001)

E-Learning SchmeeLearning. “…I don’t like the word elearning. I’ve been elearning since I first started using the Internet, and that was several years ago. Got a question? Do a search on Alta Vista. Need some news information? Go to CNN.com. What’s so hard about that? And "elearning"? Whoever said that all we want to do is to learn? […] face it—the business world is not about learning. It is about doing business. If elearning can make people better at producing and marketing goods and services, and help customers get better use out of them, fine. elearning supports business processes; it’s not a process unto itself.” (Mark Cavender, Chasm Group and E-Learning Forum, Linezine.com/2.1, Fall 2000)

E-learning: Internet-enabled learning that encompasses training, education, just-in-time information and communication. (Cisco Systems E-learning site)

E-learning: Are We In Transition Or Are We Stuck?

The Devil We Know

Students and employees taking courses online do not constitute e-learning. This increasingly widespread mode of education and training represents an aspect of e-learning that offers a faster, more efficient system for delivering text- and classroom-based instruction to individuals anytime anywhere. It is perhaps more accurately described as “e-instruction”. It can be useful, effective and certainly cheaper than on-site education or training, but it is most well suited to those whose learning abilities – literacy, basic skills, comfort level with computers and technology, self-direction, expectation of success – are already established. The “transformational” aspects of e-learning – the technologies that enable learning tailored to the individual as well as the new modes of learning attendant on access to information and communication offered by the Internet and the worldwide web – are less widespread and less understood. They also offer particular value to individuals who are socio-economically disadvantaged, disabled, or others who have not learned easily or well in traditional educational environments.

Most of us think of technology’s potential in terms of its addition to things we already do. Technology adds speed, flexibility and – literally—a world of information and communication to our existing capacity to find and exchange information. The far more important potential, however, lies in technology’s capacity to enable us to do things that we cannot now do, or to do them in ways that are significantly different. The technology-enabled and enriched environment can offer support, advice, access, and opportunity to activities that combine work and learning and knowledge creation simultaneously and seamlessly.

Progress towards this new world of “e-learning” has been slowed by a combination of economic and business factors and the hold on our imaginations of the world we know. Transforming learning – researching, developing, testing, evaluating and integrating learning technologies and the principles and practices that undergird them – is very expensive. The slowdown in the economy and the momentary tarnishing of the promise and hype of the dot.com “revolution” has halted much of the capital flow that had been directed towards innovations that might or might not find a market.

The marketplace itself remains dominated by the large institutions of American education – still characterized primarily by geographical boundaries, institutional structures, proprietary certification, categorical funding streams and static learning models – and by a training establishment often focused more on justifying its existence than on overturning its traditions. Finally, most of the current leadership in the public and private sectors are themselves successful products of the existing systems. For them, concern about what might be lost in moving forward from what they know comes more easily than enthusiasm for what might be gained in a still speculative future.

The three segments of the population that are the traditional focus of workforce development policy are the employed and dislocated workforce; socio-economically disadvantaged and other adults who face a variety of barriers to learning and work; and young people coming up through the workforce “pipeline”. The first group has benefited from public policy, not least because of the success in establishing the premise that “the nation’s competitive advantage lies in a skilled workforce”. Those with barriers to work and learning have not benefited equally. This is not because of lack of commitment or effort, but because of the seemingly intractable nature of the problem: how to successfully educate, train, and provide access to jobs and careers for individuals whose lives are circumscribed by poverty, geography, ignorance, difficulties in learning or lack of expectation. Young people, on the other hand, often are not waiting for institutional changes and have begun to create their own forms of learning and communications through use of the technologies that are commonplace for them – cell phones, PCs and games – and by virtue of the sophisticated media to which they have long been exposed. The challenge for public policy and private sector practice is how to address these disparate and sometimes competing circumstances.

Technology @ Work

E-learning does not take place in a vacuum and, for adults, it is most often associated with work. Many, perhaps most, individuals who use technology on the job – whether management or frontline worker – view it as an add-on or substitution for what they do on the assembly line, in sales, in training, or in supply chain management. At best, technology contributes speed, efficiency and capacity to the job. At worst, user-unfriendly and unreliable computing and wireless technologies cause frustration and inefficiency and may also hold the threat of replacing the worker.

The introduction of technology into the workplace tends to play out in a consistent pattern. The initial installation offers hope of improvements in productivity and/or quality and, sometimes, substitution for inefficient or “uncooperative” human beings. The early returns usually demonstrate the necessity of engaging the employees, as well as re-organizing work and processes in order for the technology to succeed. Recent research and recommendations about these issues have coalesced around the umbrella term, “high performance workplaces” (1). In any case, with the introduction of technology the requirements for the employee tend to change, whether in skill levels, tasks or responsibilities, relationships with other employees, flexibility, or all of these.

New technologies often demand new skills that require higher levels of literacy to learn. Re-organizing work to support technology sometimes means working in teams that demand the so-called “soft skills” of communication or the ability to work with others, as well as technical skills. Teamwork also exposes difficulties with English language proficiency or cross-cultural issues that must be addressed. In industries with large concentrations of scientific or engineering work, including but not restricted to information technology and telecommunications, new technologies replace older ones in fairly rapid succession, demanding continuous skill and knowledge upgrading and often regular renewal of formal certification. In some cases, such as software programming, new technologies completely displace earlier ones, prompting either substantial “re-training”, or lay-offs and the hiring of individuals with the newer skill sets.

The essential role that information technology has come to play in most workplaces not only requires the specific skills of the “IT Workforce”, but also the ability of almost all employees to have at least some capability to use computers. A recent examination of technological skills by the National Policy Association argues that “virtually every worker in the new economy is an IT worker.”(2)

Within this broad scope, the use of technology as “performance support” has begun to gain momentum. The concept is not new, but technology and the Internet and worldwide web have transformed the possibilities. Technology-enabled performance support “tools” can include just- in-time access to information (new product specifications, pricing changes, customer data); diagnostic and repair tools (for automobile or aircraft engines, for instance); and skills assessment, customized learning and information on career development. They have been most commonly used in sales and in professions that require working with and repairing complex and dynamic technologies and systems, but the increasingly central role of information in most jobs is prompting more widespread use.

What this review of technology and work obscures is that changes in skill usually necessitate further education and training, which many employees find difficult to manage. They may lack the basic skills and computer literacy necessary for training, they may not have the time or cannot afford the training, or new technologies have eliminated their responsibilities or jobs and they must train for new jobs or professions. For those with low levels of skill and little or no access to training or jobs, the challenges are even more formidable.

Technology, which has the potential to reduce the gap between the skills individuals have and the skills employers want, so far has exacerbated this gap. The knowledge and skills required for work with technology and the basic skills required to learn with technology, navigate the Internet and access and use the information that is there, set the entry bar higher than in the past.

Where we are now

• Connectivity

In policy terms, “connectivity” usually refers to access to computers and the Internet, but the rapid growth in the use of cell phones, wireless handheld devices, and other portable technologies adds those connections to the picture of access. Further, “playing” games increasingly serves to develop – unintentionally or not – understanding of certain aspects of technology and familiarity with new kinds of communication. This is particularly the case with the advent of Internet-based games, in addition to those that are platform-based (such as Sony Play Station or Microsoft X Box).

Data in “A Nation Online”, the 2002 report from the US Department of Commerce on “connectivity” or the “digital divide” (depending on your point of view), demonstrates consistent increases in use of computers and the Internet across all demographic segments of the population, including race, age, gender, income, education and employment. Demographic factors continue to influence levels of use, with lower rates among individuals in low-income households ($15,000 or less), the unemployed (40.8%), African-American and Hispanic populations, and among individuals over the age of 55. The data also show a more rapid rate of increase in access for African Americans and Hispanics; although whether this is cause for declaring victory over the digital divide or for continuing programs to promote access is the subject of argument at the present time (4). Some pertinent highlights from the data:

• 65.6% of the population uses computers, 53.9% uses the Internet;
• Computer use has grown at rate of 5.3% on an annualized basis since 1997 and Internet use has grown at a rate of 20% since 1998;
• 71% of children aged 3-8 use computers; 92.6% of those aged 9-17; 71.3% of those aged 18-24; 70.2% of those 29-49; and 42.5% of those 50+.
• For Internet use, the figures are: 27.9% for ages 3-8; 68.6% for ages 9-17; 65% for ages 18-24; 63.9 for ages 25-49; and 37.1% for ages 50+.

The high percentages among school age individuals reflect the success of penetration of computers and Internet access in schools (in large part a result of investments from the “e-rate”: By 2000, 98% of public schools in the US had access to the Internet compared to 35 percent in 1994. While growth in Internet use is substantial, in 2000 the US ranked 6th in Internet use compared with the 17 EU countries.

Data for other connected devices were only available for cellular subscribers, but these are striking: In 2000, there were over 104 million cell phone subscribers in the US, from just over 5 million in 1990. Between 1999 and 2000, the number of subscribers increased 26.7%. It is not clear what the breakdown is in terms of demographic factors or in terms of use. Various kinds of evidence from around the world suggest that young people use cell phones for digital messaging as much as for voice communication. It is also unclear what the impacts of the recent additions to a cell phone’s “functionality” through email, web and PC access will have.

• The Market

Wall Street picked up on John Chambers remark that “education is the next killer app for the Internet” and has investigated its potential with a vengeance, including childcare and early education, K-12, post-secondary, training and individual consumers in their analyses. For investors, the channel into this large and growing market – estimated at $815 billion in 2000 – is e-learning and the private sector companies that provide education and training delivery, content, services, and allied activities such as testing and assessment. (5)

Entering “e-learning” into the Google search engine turns up 915,000 references (as of 2/25/02), including print periodicals and books, online versions of print periodicals (“linezines” or “webzines”), e-mail newsletters, web sites, and conferences. The majority of this information focuses on three components: the infrastructure required to establish e-learning in organizations (including learning management systems), online applications of text and classroom-based instruction, and information storage and search tools.

• Post-Secondary Education:

In 1997-98, 79% of public four-year institutions and 72% of public two-year institutions offered “distance learning” courses. An additional 12% of public 4-year and 19 percent of public 2-year institutions planned to offer them in the next 3 years. In other words, all but 9% of both public 2- and 4-year institutions either offered or planned to offer distance education courses in the next three years. Private 4-year institutions were much less likely than public institutions to offer such courses: in 1997-98, 53 percent neither offered them nor had plans to do so in the next three years. (6)

The majority of these courses are essentially e-instruction, delivering classroom- and text-based content via audio, video or computer technologies, with synchronous or asynchronous support from instructors and other members of the class, via email, telephone or face-to-face. This version of e-learning certainly is an advance and advantage, in that it provides an option for students unable to attend class on site at a specific time. It also encourages e-access – to information and individuals via the web and email – that enriches the learning experience in these courses. In many cases, instructors are encouraged or required to learn about properties of e-learning and to construct their courses accordingly.

E-instruction is the most widespread form of e-learning inpractice and thus has provided the field for most of theevaluation and assessment of “e-learning”. The results tend to demonstrate that the optimum format for e-learning is“blended”, in which the electronic information/instruction is supported by frequent interactions with a teacher/trainer via email/telephone and/or face to face. This outcome is not surprising, given that most of the curricula available online continue to be text-based, without much interaction or other forms of engaging the student. Without the support and/or goad of an instructor, few individuals have the self-discipline and self confidence to learn as effectively or to complete a course. The unanticipated result of this research, however, is to suggest that this format is best for all aspects of e-learning.

• Marketable and Portable Credentials

Employers for some time have relied on education credentials as assurance that a potential or current employee has certain knowledge, skills and abilities, including the ability to learn. Employees frequently learn or maintain skills in programs provided by educational institutions, sometimes customized to suit the needs of a particular employer, but within the traditional time/curriculum structure of learning. In recent years, the degrees associated with colleges, universities and community colleges have been supplemented by “certificates” from professional associations or companies, such as the technology-related certifications of Microsoft or Sun Microsystems.

The control of the market for degrees and certification by education institutions, professional associations and companies to some degree enables them to control the speed of dissemination of aspects of e-learning that are less reliant on institutional environments. The quality of the curriculum and instruction and the value of the resulting credential derive from the quality of the particular institution or organization’s brand. The system for branding education institutions in the United States derives from a quasi-private accreditation process that does not lend itself to e-learning. It is not that this process is without value for the institutional context it serves, it is more that it reinforces the continued dominance of institutionally based learning.

Understandably, post-secondary education institutions have a significant stake in maintaining the institution-based system of education, degrees, certification and accreditation. The expense of physical plant, professors and curricula, libraries and laboratories and activities for students is considerable. The loss of student revenue – both from tuition and from the public and private support attendant on the number of students – is a serious matter. And these institutions are not alone in their interest. State governments routinely include their education infrastructure in economic development promotions; alumni retain loyalty to specific schools; and communities derive numerous benefits from the presence of such institutions. Further, a significant amount of publicly and privately funded research is housed in colleges and universities.

Moving forward in the development and use of all of the aspects of e-learning does not require moving away from the traditional education systems in this country. But the question inevitably becomes: at what point does the cost of providing support to the status quo prevent providing support to new modes of learning? Public and private funds currently available for education cannot sustain parallel systems.

• Corporations

Most corporations are well on the way to transferring the majority of their internal training online and/or to outsourcing “e-training” to the growing number of providers (Digital Think, Smart Force, Net G, Click2Learn, etc.). The economic downturn in IT and elsewhere slowed or halted much of this progression, but there is no reason to think it will not resume when the economy has recovered sufficiently. Smaller companies have been slower to incorporate e-learning “systems”, handicapped by the lack of financial and human resources, but the reported cost savings are encouraging their interest. As with post-secondary education, however, most of this e-learning remains classroom and/or text-based courses delivered on internal platforms or the Internet.

For employers who have been able to afford the costs of establishing effective systems and of implementing mechanisms to ensure that employees use them, e-learning usually delivers cost savings. Reducing or eliminating the cost of travel, local logistics, and downtime not only saves expenses but also enables larger numbers of employees to take particular courses in a shorter time frame. In 2000, Dow Chemical Company launched Learn@dow.now, a $1.3 million e-learning system that delivers standardized online training around the world. In its first full year of operation, the site delivered an estimated total cost benefit of $30 million, including savings on training delivery costs, class materials and salaries (Web-based training requires 40 percent to 60 percent less of an employee’s time than its classroom equivalent). The company helped ensure a successful launch by holding traditional classroom training on how to use the online system and requiring all employees to sign up for its first courses. www.cio.com/archive/020102/dow.content.html

What is less clear is whether or not employees will take advantage of courses that are not required, or how much benefit they will derive from traditional formats simply transferred to the web. A well-known global telecommunications and technology company was pleased to note in 1999 that over 70% of its employees had logged onto online courses. When the infrastructure team examined the logs, however, they found that over 70% of the log-ons had lasted less than five minutes.

Cisco Systems, under the leadership of Tom Kelly and The carte blanche support of his bosses, began in the late 1990s to transform Cisco’s existing information and training system, which was segmented with separate websites totaling more than 10 million Web pages. The new “Learning Solutions” system incorporated some of the existing courses, but focused more on customized access to “just-in-time, just right” information. The vision proceeded from there. [see box at right]

• Learner-centric not instructor-centric

Employers increasingly look to what people know and are able to do when they hire, train, manage and assess the performance of employees. Individuals in and out of work increasingly need to be able to access on their own the mix of learning, information and peer exchange required for successful performance at work. Such an approach moves beyond the largely institutionally controlled system of credentials to a more learner-centered approach in which credentials are earned for demonstrated competence in each segment of knowledge or skill, regardless of the source of the learning. There remains, however, the question of demonstration: How to ensure for the employer and the individual that necessary knowledge, skills and abilities are present, that the learner was given the right information?

One fairly recent innovation that begins to address some of these issues is the development of “passive” testing mechanisms that occur periodically throughout a course. Failure to interact correctly with the material alerts the manager or supervisor that the individual is not absorbing and/or learning the information. This process enables immediate intervention and support before the completion of the course and possible failure on a final test. The US Defense Acquisition University uses this tool, as does DigitalThink, a private sector company that serves many US corporations.

While there has been a good deal of talk about e-learning enabling “learner centric” courses (as opposed to “instructor centric”), movement in this direction is slow, both because individuals do not yet represent a viable market for companies selling e-learning and because individuals do not yet have the tools to tailor and use information for their particular needs. The same market forces that inhibit development and dissemination of these tools also inhibit the development and dissemination of learning technologies that transform learning for low skilled, poorly educated adults.

• New Business Models

As developers and vendors have learned, no one has yet come up with a good business model for e-learning. Two of the more recent and visible efforts – Cardean University and Fathom.com – were themselves derived from the market value of well-known, high quality branded institutions; yet each has stumbled with its initial offerings. Cardean (www.cardean.com) offers business curricula developed specifically for the online environment by faculty and experts associated with Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and the London School of Economics among others. It has found that the market for courses leading to a degree is not as fruitful as anticipated and has moved towards delivering short courses of more appeal to the corporate market.

Fathom.com, initiated by Columbia University, was founded on the premise that free access to “authenticated knowledge and information” from member institutions would prompt individuals to go on to pay for content from these same institutions, including Columbia University, the London School of Economics, New York Public Library, Cambridge University Press, the American Film Institute, RAND, and the British Museum among others. Fathom would receive a percentage of sales. This model also has been unsuccessful to date, leading Fathom to move towards selling access to online courses from its members.

A formidable barrier to the development of successful models for selling content or learning online is of course the availability of free information and learning. As the traditions governing the development, ownership and use of intellectual property as they have been practiced in university settings alter, the expanded possibilities for the free exchange of information in the digital age will force new thinking about incentives for investments in research, writing and other forms of intellectual property.

• A Note about “Young People”

We tend to associate “growing up digital” with children and young people now in school, but 18-25 year olds frequently have had a different experience of technology than those who are older. The data on Internet use from 2001 demonstrate the very significant difference in use between those 49 and younger and those 50 and older – 68.6% for 9-17 year olds; 65% for 18-24 year olds; 63.0% for 25-49 year olds; 37.1% for ages 50 and above. What these data do not show is the ubiquitous nature and high expectations of children and young people in terms of technology, media and entertainment. Paul Elsner, former Chancellor of Maricopa Community College, writes that “there are estimated to be 800 million teenagers and young adults who have been born into the highest video and audio standard ever known; yet these youth are, for the most part, disengaged learners in our schools. We have failed to find a pedagogical equation in their interests in MTV, film and media, and contemporary rock, reggae, rap, hip-hop, steel drum or any other form from sitar to slam-punk.”(7)

John Seely Brown, the noted thinker about of technology and learning and leading scientist at Xerox’s famous Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), described an encounter with “multi-tasking”, a habit of many young people with technology that worries many adults: “Recently I was with a young twenty-something who had actually wired a Web browser into his eyeglasses. As he talked with me, he had his left hand in his pocket to cord in keystrokes to bring up my Web page and read about me, all the while carrying on with his part of the conversation! I was astonished that he could do all this in parallel and so unobtrusively.”(8)

In Next: The Future Just Happened, Michael Lewis recounts examples of the power that the Internet offers to individuals to go around the carefully constructed systems and institutions that undergird much of our society. In this case, they are the stock market, the legal system, and copyright. In each example, the individual is an adolescent. Reviewing this and other instances, including how Nokia develops uses for cell phones, Lewis observes that “it does seem to me that when capitalism encourages ever more rapid change, children enjoy one big advantage over adults: they haven’t decided who they are. They haven’t sunk a lot of psychological capital into a particular self. When a technology comes along that rewards people who are willing to chuck overboard their old selves for new ones…the people who aren’t much invested in their old selves have an edge.”(9)

One role of public policy is to protecting the well being or potential well being of one or more segments of society. In the case of e-learning, much of this activity is focused on protecting systems to ensure the future well being (education and credentials) for a generation whose experience of learning is radically different than that of the policymakers. In considering assurances for the future, near or otherwise, it can be instructive to examine the “new models” that the generations now beginning to arrive are developing.

• Public Policy

The “IT worker shortage” issue has generated a good deal of public policy discussion and legislative proposals, but little action beyond the H1B Visa grant program in the US Department of Labor. The Clinton Administration sustained and inaugurated a number of technology grant programs, targeted variously towards eliminating the digital divide; connecting K-12 schools; encouraging innovative proposals for using technology to improve communities, access to jobs, and training; and supporting public-private sector R&D in fields including education and training. Most of policy and legislative activity focused on technology from the individual’s perspective has targeted privacy, intellectual property and pornography. Pressing issues such as federal loans and grants for online education courses remain unresolved. (10)

Government agencies on the state as well as the federal level have successfully put many government services online (see Progress and Freedom Foundation report, “The Digital Ranking of the States”), and have developed e-learning strategies for their employees via special commissions, agencies and the increasingly powerful Chief Information/Technology Officers. Few of these plans have been put into action because they are expensive, threaten long-held beliefs and turf, and force unpalatable choices in reducing or ending funding for competing programs.

From the perspective of e-learning technologies and their use and practice, some of the more critical public policy issues are research, development, assessment and evaluation. To date, the public sector has yet to make any large investments in these activities, with the exception of certain kinds of work in the US Department of Defense. The President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) Panel on Transforming Learning concluded in its 2001 report that “IT accomplishments in education and training lag those in other areas, whether in research, commerce or communications. It is harder to find another application area of information technology where the promise-to-performance gap is wider, and some assert the gap is widening.” (11)

What’s coming is already here

• So how do we know it’s better?

Discussing the transformational nature of e-learning almost always involves talking about the future. The e-learning vision promises to transform learning through anytime anywhere access to knowledge and information that is going to be more interesting, entertaining, engaging, effective, faster, connected to diverse communities and, of course, cheaper.

Translating this vision into reality is a different matter. These technologies and the environments they require (technical infrastructure, teacher/trainer/coach skills, learner skills, supporting processes) are expensive to develop and to implement. As a result, the relatively few “test bed” sites do not yield sufficient data on assessment and evaluation of process and outcomes that could prompt expanded demand. While there is a significant body of information that describes and demonstrates the effectiveness of e-learning, it is scattered and usually too specific in terms of the technology and circumstances to be easily replicable.(12)

The most widespread implementation has occurred in the military and thereby information is often slow to filter out.

A sampling of what we may expect in the future includes:

• far greater reliance on distributed learning communities,
• intelligent tutoring systems that model subject matter as well as learners and their preconceptions,
• families of interoperable, simulation-based “clip models,”
• collaborative learning-by-design environments,
• and learning environments for core subject disciplines that have more in common with massive multi-player Internet video games – with their complex immersive worlds and constantly evolving rules – than with textbooks.
• Content will be available not just on desktops but on wireless devices using many different form factors, including cheap, non-obtrusive virtual reality displays that will provide a revolutionary sense of immersion and presence.”
• PITAC, Using Information Technology to Transform Learning, 2001

Much of the potential for transformation that we associate with e-learning in fact lies with new modes of behavior and interaction rather than with a particular learning technology. We have only begun to develop and make use of the possibilities of the Internet and the web. We can only speculate about the “network effects” of being (potentially) connected to everyone and everything and the consequent changes in government and society. This field is ripe with highly educated, skilled, thoughtful and imaginative individuals who are leading the way for the rest of us; yet their projections also are just projections. Within this somewhat treacherous terrain, it is nevertheless possible to consider several components of technology-enabled learning.

Access and Communication

The Internet and the Web

Access to the information available on the worldwide web already has changed the lives of almost everyone who has experienced using this medium, from corporate executives to villagers in developing countries. The immediate access to traditional text-based information of all kinds can still surprise, but the access to virtual environments is even more powerful. Images of the interiors of museums, hotels, halls of government; “strolls” through countrysides and cities, swimming undersea and traveling in space are examples of the virtual experiences that enable most of the world’s population to have some sense of places and things that not only can enrich a life but also help to make sense of much of the education that is available.

The web serves as a learning medium unto itself, advancing from the traditions that grew up around text. John Seely Brown writes that “This past century’s concept of ‘literacy’ grew out of our intense belief in text, a focus enhanced by the power of one particular technology—the typewriter.…with the Web, we suddenly have a medium that honors multiple forms of intelligence—abstract, textual, visual, musical, social, and kinesthetic.” (16)

As the technologies and methods for presenting information on the web are able to more closely mimic how individuals think and communicate and learn, the value of both information and communication will increase. Pilot activities such as the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History “History Wired” site [www.historywired.si.edu] are beginning to offer “visitors” the simultaneous opportunity to “tour” many of the museum’s holdings that are not on exhibit, and to provide comments and additional information of their own.

Because access can also lead to information that is incomplete, idiosyncratic, or inaccurate, individuals must learn how to navigate the web and to assess the value of the information they find there. The traditional education system of “mastery”, in which the learner “learns” a body of knowledge, must be complemented by a new system of “inquiry”, in which the process of seeking new information, experience, opinion, and knowledge from other people and sources becomes a continual process. In this environment, the ability to communicate and establish relationships with individuals is essential. Many of the early technological barriers to easy communication and joint work are being overcome by new technologies and methods.

• Portal Sites

Although portal sites are a very basic use of the web, many are beginning to assume important roles in providing support for navigating information and for encouraging and supporting access to training, testing, and job search for individuals outside of the system. Culturally specific portals offer access geared to particular cultures and nationalities, including providing information in the relevant language. Other sites attempt to link these communities with the opportunities to learn particular skills [www.alct.org]. While most of these are not yet well developed, and suffer from the challenge of finding sufficient ad revenue, they are a valuable tool for populations that may be daunted or alienated by the western and English-dominated web.

Skill and job matching sites, while still in start-up mode because of the lack of rigor and value in electronic assessment and testing for many skills, increasingly will be an effective tool for employers and potential employees. At the moment, sites of this kind tend to be part of the economic development “portal” provided by cities and regions to encourage companies and employees to re-locate [www.austinatwork.org; www.stlouisatwork.org]. Sites that provide information on training options to date are geared primarily to those with education and employment history [www.monster.com; www.flx.gov]. Career development sites are also beginning to appear, along with “electronic resumes”, such as the Career Management Account developed by the US Department of Labor (www.csu.mnscu.edu).

• Peer to peer and computer to computer communication

Peer to peer computing, in which individuals can transmit and receive information from computer files without going through central servers, has become well known as a result of the possibilities for sharing music and video. New technologies are enabling direct communication from computer to computer. The new, highly publicized “Groove” platform enables individuals to communicate and collaborate using the same workspace on the Internet without having to go through the organization’s or individual’s firewall/infrastructure. (14)

Computer-based collaboration across the Internet is increasing in part because computers have become powerful enough to enable resource sharing across institutional boundaries. As computers begin to interact differently, so do the humans who use them. A new level of connection is emerging that not only helps companies do business more efficiently and more economically, but also augments human intelligence. Employees who are not integral to a project and would not have been eligible for travel to meetings, may now participate in these discussions and add their value. Experts working on similar issues around the world may communicate their work in progress directly, adding to the general stock of knowledge. (15)

Content

• The Shareable Courseware Object Reference Model (SCORM)

Undoubtedly one of the more significant developments in fulfilling the opportunities of e-learning goes by the rather unlovely title: the SCORM. From the layman’s perspective, the SCORM serves to promote a common standard for tagging, storing and managing blocks of information that can be mixed and matched in different combinations and then re-used (reusable information objects – RIOs – or reusable learning objects – RLOs). SCORM is not a standard itself, but rather a reference model that serves to test the effectiveness and real-life application of a collection of individual specifications and standards. The public-private sector partnership that developed these standards, which are voluntary but which are in the process of acquiring almost universal agreement, was led by the US Department of Defense “Advanced Distributed Learning” initiative [www.adlnet.org]. Such standards help to ensure that access to learning and information is as widespread and equitably open as possible. They also help dramatically reduce the time and cost of developing high quality content and applications. New versions of the SCORM focus on clarifying remaining issues and developing mechanisms to respond to them. (17)

Intelligent tutors, scaffolding technologies, voice recognition and visualization technologies are just some of the new options to enable effective and efficient learning for those who do not learn easily in traditional classroom or curriculum formats. Many of these and related technologies are the subject of examination to determine the format of the content and the structure of the learning process. Some have begun to enter the marketplace, voice recognition being the most widespread. New programs that have used brain research to develop technology supported processes for teaching literacy to individuals with difficulty in learning with conventional instruction, such as those for reading and math developed by Scientific Learning [www.scientificlearning.com], have found a small market in K-12 education. These programs have adult applications that have been validated but for which there is not yet a market. Other programs, such as the skills assessment tool developed by Intellicue [www.intellicue.com] have begun to be tested in schools in low-income neighborhoods and in prisons.

• Games

Games in some sense are in a class by themselves, in that they can provide sophisticated technology-enable learning opportunities and they also have become a ubiquitous part of the environment for children and young people. The learning in games for young people has been largely unintentional until recently. Using games to train adults is becoming more prevalent but its constituency remains relatively small.

Simulations and games are particularly successful in motivating individuals to learn and to provide the learner an opportunity to react and respond to a variety of environments and circumstances. Marc Prensky, a leading theorist and practitioner of games-based learning for business, argues that games are especially well-suited to material that is dry or technical, subject matter that is really difficult, audiences that are hard to reach, difficult assessment and certification issues, complex process understanding, sophisticated “what if” analyses, and strategy development and communication. The online environment offers learning to the individual alone, without the traditional monitors of rewards or penalties that have been provided by instructors in the classroom. The entertainment value in games frequently offers the necessary incentive.

Tom Kelly, Cisco Systems’ VP of Worldwide Training observed in early 2001 that scenario-based online games is useful in assessing a salesperson’s customer interaction or a system engineer’s router knowledge. Extending the thought, he went on to say: “Learning could very easily become a competitive part of your job, if there are ways to keep score. It’s like Doom without the blood and gore – how many levels have you been through?” (18)

The US Army US Army Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM: http://www.stricom.army.mil/) has commissioned the Institute for Creative Technologies (a DOD funded instituted at the university of California) to “develop a new paradigm of cognitive learning experiences with both military and consumer applications. …The first two games – C-Force and CS 12 – will be high quality, real-time projects that will leverage ICT’s research in advanced artificial intelligence, graphics and sound to create emotionally believable learning environments.” (19)

Many of the new games ostensible developed for young people – whether platform or Internet-based – increasingly offer experiences beyond traditional game play. In Nintendo’s highly touted new game, “Pikmin”, a space traveler crashes on a poisonous planet, scattering parts of his ship across a vast terrain. He must reassemble the parts and leave before the bad air kills him, but the parts can only be carried back to the ship by Pikmin, local creatures that sprout out of the ground like plants. “The challenge of the game is to try and develop what its inventor calls an “inter-relational dependency” between player and Pikmin. The player must learn – mostly through patient observation – what each group of Pikmin can and cannot do and then organize them according to their talents to get the ship in working order. (20)

Challenges for Policy and Practice: Can we make a revolution incrementally?

We have struggled in this nation to provide sufficient education, opportunity for work and ongoing knowledge and skill development to all of our citizens; yet few would argue that we have succeeded. While a small, but growing number are experiencing the integration of work and learning in very new ways, too many still lack access to learning and work opportunities that can help them advance in the new economy.

The challenges are multiple: How do we craft policy to support learning in a technology-enabled environment when the populations we are concerned with approach it in different ways? How hard do we push action for the future without risking equally necessary action in the present? How do we increase awareness of the complex issues around technology in a shorter timeframe?

The points raised here are not to dismiss the essential value of instruction and instructors; of curriculum developed and validated by individuals who understand the principles of learning and who know the field; of environments in which learning is not only made possible but also made easy. They are meant, however, to suggest that we begin to think about learning outside of these familiar spaces and familiar processes. If we were to develop and support the sale of programs to teach English to uneducated adults; to use games and simulations to teach reading or math or business economics to high school drop outs, what are the environments in which these efforts could be most successful? If there were no need to defend the role of teachers and trainers in the learning process, what might be the support systems to substitute for them?

In the end, e-learning will develop and become integrated into society regardless of public sector interventions. We can simply wait for the market to decide what and when and how this happens, and in some instances that will work very well. But there also are opportunities to use the technologies that exist now to respond to the challenges in workforce development, and take up the slack in market failures. In considering where to begin, there are a number of recommendations already on the books that can serve as a useful starting point.

Recommendations for Public Policy

With a few exceptions, these recommendations are taken from four reports (three within the last two years) that represent the most forward thinking in terms of technology and learning. In almost every case, these recommendations can be found in each report. The report from which the particular language was taken is noted in parentheses. Issues that affect e-learning but that already have strong interest from other constituencies are not included (such as privacy and intellectual property which already have strong constituencies promoting them). The recommendations that are noted here include necessary steps, options for leadership, and a practical agenda.

Suggested Recommendations

• The Federal government [should] set as a national priority the effective integration of information technology with education and training. (PITAC, Using Information Technology to Transform the Way We Learn)
• Establish and coordinate a major research initiative for information technology in education and training, including learning technologies and sciences, information technologies for education and training, and requirements for learning and teaching information technology fluency. (PITAC)
• Build a new research framework of how people learn in the Internet age. A vastly expanded, revitalized, and reconfigured educational research, development, and innovation program is imperative. This program should be built on a deeper understanding of how people learn, how new tools support and assess learning gains, what kinds of organizational structures support these gains, and what is needed to keep the field of learning moving forward. (Web-based Education Commission, The Power of the Internet for Learning)
• Spur Innovation to Raise Living Standards Because innovation and change are disruptive, they tend to spark strong political demands to insulate affected segments of the economy and slow down economic change. Such demands, while understandable, inherently deny opportunities to less politically powerful interests in the guise of "protecting" those with clout. […] As a result, to effectively promote growth in the New Economy, government must facilitate, rather than resist, the processes of economic change and modernization as these changes create new opportunities and increased incomes for all Americans. (Progressive Policy Institute, Rules of the Road: Governing Principles for the New Economy)
• Develop high quality online educational content that meets the highest standards of
  educational excellence. Content available for learning on the Web is variable: some of it is excellent, much is mediocre. Both content developers and educators will have to address gaps in this market, find ways to build fragmented lesson plans into full courses and assure the quality of learning in this new environment. (Web-based Education Commission)
• Provide reliable and universally accessible consumer information about the
  quality of e-learning content, services and providers. (NGA/ASTD, A Vision for E- Learning)
• Develop fair and reliable assessment and certification methods. (NGA/ASTD)
• Revise outdated regulations that impede innovation and replace them with approaches that embrace anytime, anywhere, any place learning. (Web-based Education Commission)
• Provide incentives and foster public-private partnerships to promote broader access to e-learning among underserved communities. (NGA/ASTD)
• Partner with the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation and other technology-focused programs.

Notes

1) See, for example, work by Paul Osterman, Anthony Carnevale, Eileen Applebaum, Peter Capelli, Shoshanna Zuboff and organizations such as the NAM and ASTD.

2) National Policy Association, Building a Digital Workforce (2001), p. 9. Also see U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Technology Policy, The Digital Workforce: Building Infotech Skills at the Speed of Innovation (1999).

3) President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, Panel on Transforming Learning. Using Information Technology to Transform Learning (2001).

4) US Department of Commerce. A Nation Online (2002). http://www.esa.doc.gov/508/esa/nationonline.htm

5) CSFirst Boston, e-Learning: Power for the Knowledge Economy (2000).

6) National Center on Education Statistics – 2001 report on 1997-98 data.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000013.pdf

7) Paul Elsner, www.paul.elsner.com

8) John Seely Brown, Growing Up Digital in Change, March/April 2000. www.aahe.org/change/digital.pdf.

9) Michael Lewis, Next: The Future Just Happened (2001), pp. 18-19.

10) Web based Education Commission, The Power of the Internet for Learning (2000).

11) PITAC, p. 5.

12) Some of the more persuasive research is built on the “two sigma” shift that results from one-on-one tutoring (cited in PITAC, p. 7 and elsewhere).

13) Executive from eRoom.com in CapGemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation’s “eWorkplace” event (1/24/01). http://cbi.cgey.com/research/current-work/connected-innovation/.envisioning-the-eworkplace.html

14) Jazzed About Work, Fast Company, May 2001.www.fastcompany.com/online

15) Machine-Made Links Change the Way Minds Can Work Together, New York Times, November 5, 2002, p. 4.

16) John Seely Brown, Growing Up Digital, p. 17.

17) Wayne Hodgins, et.al. Making Sense of Learning Specifications and Standards (March 2002). www.masie.com/standards.

The U.S. Department of Defense and its partners initiated a project to ensure that all branches of the US military could use, exchange, manage, track, and re-use their learning technologies, content, and data no matter the source or application. Their current documentation is called the Sharable Content Object Reference Model, or SCORM. SCORM provides a foundational reference model upon which anyone can develop models of learning content and delivery.

Through the application of the specifications and standards from the various groups, SCORM provides the framework and detailed implementation reference that enables content, technology, and systems using SCORM to "talk" to each other, thus ensuring interoperability, re-usability and manageability. The 2nd version of ADL’s (Advanced Distributed Learning) SCORM documentation centers on web-based learning content and is intended to enable the following:

• The ability for a web-based Learning Management System (LMS) to launch content authored by tools from different vendors and to exchange data with that content
• The ability for web-based LMS products from different vendors to launch the same executable content and exchange data with that content during execution
• The ability for multiple web-based LMS products/environments to access acommon repository of executable content and to launch such content. Meta-data Dictionary (from IEEE)

18) Information Week, 1/01

19) The games are to be available commercially within the next two years. www.futurecombat.net

20) Success of Nintendo Game Cube May Rest on Pikmin, Wall Street Journal, 1/25/02.

Resources

Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative: www.adlnet.org.

Brown, John Seely. “Growing Up Digital”. Change, March/April 2000.
http://www.aahe.org/change/digital.pdf

Center for Studies in Higher Education’s large-scale umbrella program, Higher Education in the Digital Age http://ishi.lib.berkeley.edu/cshe/projects/university/ebusiness/index.html)

Capelli, Gregory. e-Learning: Power for the Knowledge Economy. (CreditSuisse First Boston, 2000).

Dertouzos, Michael. The Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 2001).

Federal Learning Exchange: www.flx.gov

Hodgins, Wayne. Into the Future (paper commissioned by NGA/ASTD Commission on Technology and Adult Learning (2001): http://www.learnativity.com/whitepapers.html

Lewis, Michael. Next: The Future Just Happened (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).

NGA/ASTD Commission on Technology and Adult Learning. A Vision of E-Learning for America’s Workforce (2001):
http://www.nga.org/center/divisions/1,1188,C_ISSUE_BRIEF^D_2128,00.html

National Policy Association. Building a Digital Workforce (2001): http://www.npa1.org/DigitalDivide/part1_sum.htm

Prensky, Marc. Digital Game-Based Learning (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2001)

Prensky, Marc: www.games2train.com

President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, Panel on Transforming Learning. Using Information Technology to Transform the Way We Learn. (February 2001). www.itrd.gov.

Progress and Freedom Foundation. The Digital State 2001 (2002). http://www.pff.org/publications/digitalstate2001.pdf

Progressive Policy Institute. The State Economy Index (1999); The Metropolitan Economy Index (2001); The New Rules of the Road (1999). http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_sub.cfm?knlgAreaID=107&subsecID=294

Web-based Education Commission: The Power of the Internet for Learning (2000). www.webcommission.org