The Network is the Teacher: Collaborative E-Learning
By Richard Horn

Ready to cede control to learners and let them drive the learning experience? Scary as it sounds, empowering learners in a collaborative e-learning setting fosters interactivity, responsibility for learning, and measurable learning outcomes.

One of the greatest laments I hear from people who build online training programs is that they don't have the time, budget, or technical skills to build true instructional interactivity into their online learning programs. I'm not talking about those things some developers consider interactive--such as selecting a Next button or clicking on bullets that reveal additional text that swirls around to music. In fact, what often passes for interactivity is gratuitous use of multimedia to compensate for the lack of strategic interaction.

What's really needed is interaction that promotes insight, skill, and the ability to reapply knowledge in numerous work contexts. Remember your favorite grade-school teacher? The one who created a highly participatory learning environment, rich with imagery, stories, and interaction? That's the kind of interactivity I'm referring to--the kind that really makes you think and hone in on the knowledge you'll need back on the job.

At the risk of sounding like one of those types that tell you to "just do this (fill in with the buzzword du jour) and your training will win all sorts of awards," my purpose is to describe an approach to creating highly interactive e-learning--in almost no time and practically for free. It involves harnessing the Internet to create a collaborative learning network. Allow me to overview the concept and provide examples of how a collaborative learning network can deliver small miracles.

What is it?

That said, an e-learning strategy cannot be based on the simple transmission of content. Chunking (a term I've heard enough times to conjure up unpleasant associations) is not an instructional design technique. Chunking content and then prettying it up with multimedia fluff is what I call "shovelware."

Yet, the practical constraints that face e-learning managers and developers make extended business and instructional analysis a tough sell. Building instructional interactions can drive budgets way up and deadlines way out--which is the wrong direction in the face of surging learning demands and shortening development cycles.

Collaborative learning is really not a technique so much as an architecture. It is architecture because the approach applies numerous, connecting components to foster a learning environment. I'll explain these components later.

How it works

The extra "oomph" that a collaborative learning network provides is that students are prodded to consider how this information will impact them on the job. And questions they form to reflect this thinking will determine their value on the learning team. It introduces competitive and peer components to the learning equation--and puts the trainer in the role of facilitator rather than lecturer (see figure below).

Here's a quick outline of the collaborative learning approach: A group of participants, called a learning team because they have the responsibility for the quality of learning outcomes, are enrolled in a collaborative learning course.

Reading assignments (yes, plain old reading will do) and deadlines for completing those assignments are distributed to team members over the Internet. These materials can be either online or offline--it really doesn't matter. A trainer or facilitator provides lesson objectives for each assignment; the material used may not necessarily have been developed with those learning objectives in mind.

After completing the reading assignment by a specific deadline, each learner formulates and submits a question about the assignment, like a teacher creating a test. Again, the learner consults the learning objectives before creating a question.

Once a learner submits a question, he or she can view all questions submitted by other learners on the team. Each learner answers questions submitted by teammates.

Once a question is answered, the learner votes on the learning value of the question. Value is subjective but is grounded in whether or not the question falls within the assignment's scope and whether it works towards achieving the stated learning objectives. Once all votes are in, the facilitator fosters a discussion among students about the questions (using the voting measures as a guide), then moves on to the next assignment.

The purpose of the voting and ensuing discussion is to keep the learners honest in their intent to learn. Questions that are clearly inferior or even flippant are quickly surfaced by the team through voting and by the facilitator. The student is motivated to pay attention by his or her peers, not the authority figure (the instructor or facilitator).

A collaborative learning example

The first move (see figure below) is to click on the course to resume reading the assigned material. You can see I have a deadline for completing the reading material, submitting a question, and answering teammates' questions.

The next step is to go to the online reading assignment. Notice that I can submit my question at any time by clicking on the link.

Now, assume I have completed my reading assignment and it's time for me to submit a question to my team. In this example, I've been provided a number of question templates, from multiple-choice to simulations. Also, I can select images from the reading material if I want to use them in my question. In this case, I have selected a circuit diagram. I will use the blank form to complete my question and submit it to the team.

The system tells me when all the learners on my team have submitted questions. Once they're all in, I can access everyone's question. I must answer all the questions and vote. In the above example, someone has written a multiple-choice question about a DSI circuit pack. Also, in the status information at the top of the screen, I can see how I'm doing. I have already missed a question (number 1) that I thought was OK (3 on a 1 to 5 scale). My teammates felt the question was a little stronger than I did; they gave it a 4.

Once all the questions are in and answered, the facilitator jumps in. Using a chat session, we discuss how the assignment readied us for work. The facilitator also uses compare-and-contrast techniques to determine why team members felt differently about certain questions. When the facilitator feels we have covered the material and worked out our different viewpoints, he or she submits the next assignment, and the process repeats itself. 

The facilitator's role

• sets up the assignments for the team and follows up with indiviudal learners
• controls the collaborative process if questions or issues arise (via email or phone)
• guides the authoring process (via email or phone)
• determines the roles and privileges of participants.

How does this approach compare to Web-based training? Besides the obvious differences between collaborative learning and WBT, there are certain economic and learning differences that make CLN and WBT distinct choices in your e-learning toolbox. The main thing to remember is that collaborative learning represents a transfer of authority for learning from instructors or subject matter experts to learners connected via the Internet. The following table points out additional differences:

A summary of benefits

• is an inexpensive form of training to develop because you can point to (or provide) reading assignments that aren't instructionally designed while learners create the interactions
• has very low startup and run costs
• makes use of both online and offline materials
• produces measurable learning outcomes
• does not require specific time and place logistics (groups of learners take the course in an asynchronous format framed by deadlines)
• is highly interactive and promotes learning
• is appropriate for any curriculum phase of learning (early or mature) but is particularly good for the mature phases
• is deployed via the Internet or an organization's intranet
• uses simple software to run what is built only once for as many courses as you want.

Here are some other issues to consider:

How does collaborative learning work with large groups? There is a practical limit to how many people can comprise a student group in a CLN--the limit seems to be around 15 to 20. If there are many more people, too many questions are generated for each team member to review and vote on, and the efficiency (and enjoyability of the learning) starts to suffer.

The solution for large groups is to divide into subteams that create questions and vote. These questions make it to the next round and the entire team votes on those. Additionally, you may need software to manage the question migration from the subteams to the overall team.

What about free riders? Free riders are members of groups who contribute little but who benefit from the hard work of others in the group. A free rider, in this instance, would be someone who doesn't attempt to form a question diligently or who votes without thoughtfulness.

My assumption about the fate of free riders in a collaborative learning environment is similar to that in any other team situation: Sooner or later they'll be found out. At some point, others will realize a team member isn't exerting a genuine effort that enables the team to learn. The role of the course facilitator is to step in, talk to the member, and clarify his or her role. If the situation continues, the facilitator may ask that the member be removed from the team.

Collaborative learning is only one valuable technique in a larger e-learning program. But it's especially useful if you need to implement learning quickly, inexpensively, or make use of materials that haven't been chunked into multimedia fodder. Given the low costs and high impact of collaborative learning I've seen thus far, the concept is sure to prosper.

Richard Horn (richardh@
horninteractive.com) is the founder of Horn Interactive, which specializes in designing e-learning platforms that focus on interactivity, feedback, and data mining for high-tech corporations (www.horninteractive.com). He has been credited by Gloria Gery with creating the EPSS concept and designing the first EPSS, and he has won numerous first-place National ISPI awards, including the first use of the Internet in a performance application.