Three Future Directions of E-Learning

By Saul Carliner

At the beginning of the 1990s, experts predicted two trends in food. (I promise to show the connection to e-learning in a moment.) One trend was an emphasis on healthy eating. To encourage it, lower fat versions of popular foods would be developed, like low fat ice cream and fat-free potato chips.

The response to all of this healthy eating came in the second trend. To congratulate themselves, people would indulge in new lines of premium foods (in terms of calories, that is)—ones that were even less nutritious than their 1980s counterparts, like higher-fat ice creams (think Ben & Jerry’s and gourmet potato chips (think Cape Cod Chips).

When asked about the trends in e-learning, the contributors to the E-Learning Handbook: Past Promises, Present Challenges, saw a similar dichotomy. On the one hand, almost everyone thought the quality of e-learning would improve and become more responsive to learners. On the other hand, nearly everyone saw the emergence of less expensive, less thoughtful e-learning. In addition, the contributors saw one other trend that might help to reconcile this dichotomy: e-learning as a way of life. The following describe their insights.

Trend One: A More Responsive E-Learning

Although e-learning always had the potential to actively engage learners and provide a customized, learner-centered experience, many early efforts failed to do so. It’s not that the designers set out to fail, they merely didn’t succeed. In some instances, the developers did not understand the capabilities of the technology. For example, many designers did not realize that they could easily set up drag-and-drop exercises that could simulate, to some extent, the experience of setting up equipment. So designers opted instead for multiple-choice and similar types of questions. Other designers did not realize that, through the use of recordings, guest speakers might be used in online tutorials and opted instead for long passages of text.

In other cases, the limited library of examples and teaching ideas stymied designers. Familiar only with the few examples of high-design/high-budget simulations shown at trade shows and conferences, designers often lamented the lack of budgets to do a good simulation. They did not realize that a combination of a problem-based approach to learning and effective storytelling techniques could lead to similarly engaging learning environments, even if they lacked the eye appeal of the video and graphics.

Similarly, because most early e-learning textbooks emphasized an approach to designing instruction that applied Gagne’s (1985) events of instruction, few designers experimented with other approaches to learning, such as discovery learning or electronic performance support (though interest in these ideas was always strong). Most significantly, many e-learning designers primarily focused their efforts on designing courses. Many were surprised when they encountered a range of problems during implementation, from small oversights (like trying to avoid monotony by varying the wording of instructions and, in the process, confusing learners) to major blunders that were often beyond the scope of the course content, but had a significant effect on acceptance. For example, they might have failed to market an e-learning course, then they wondered why no one took it.

Research shows that experienced designers primarily work by instinct (for example, Rowland 2004 and 1993, and van Tiem 2004), so perhaps the challenge with some of these early applications of e-learning was that individual and collective instincts around e-learning had not been honed.

Now they have. As a result, designers have a more mature approach to e-learning. As Singapore- and London-based knowledge management consultant and Handbook contributor Patrick Lambe observes, “e-learning content design will be less constrained by the old ... school of instructional design, and there will be more adventurous design work using e-learning modules less for teaching content and more for engaging or supporting practice (modules become much more like tools).”

Lambe is one of several contributors who see e-learning increasingly moving into informal domains. Lambe and best-selling author and Handbook contributor Marc Rosenberg both see e-learning increasingly used for knowledge management and performance support, especially in the workplace.

Organizations will increasingly rely on their internal systems to provide meaningful content to workers at the time and in the context of need. The content will gradually grow to take different forms. Although sometimes the content will be in the form of tutorials, the content might also provide practice, reminders, quick facts, advice, and similar types of useful content. Rosenberg notes that the move to this type of learning represents a cultural shift for most organizations. Lambe suggests they might respond by moving training out of the training organization and into the line organizations, so that learning content is developed as closely as possible to the place where it is created.

Rosenberg adds that organizations will be sensitive to all of the non-technical issues associated with making e-learning a success. These issues include finding electronic alternatives to an instructor throwing out candy to class, assuring nervous managers that e-learning really can help workers develop their skills, and resolving a myriad of copyright issues with e-learning in university curricula (from the use of copyrighted material in an electronic classroom (rules differ because the class can be recorded) to resolving copyright issues with course content).  

This move to provide content on demand—also known as informal learning, workflow-based learning, and performance support—is but one of many attempts to make the material more meaningful to learners in the contexts in which it will be used. Handbook contributors Phil Abrami, Gretchen Lowerison, Roger Cote, and Marie-Claude Lavoie anticipate that this increased learner-centeredness will be increasingly evident in all e-learning, even material intended to be taken as more traditional courses.

Through the development projects in his research center, Abrami has worked to create environments in which learners are not only the center of the work, but also have tools to assess themselves and adjust their learning in response (self-regulated learning). But these learner-centered environments do not need to be solitary ones. Alphie’s Alley, developed by Abrami’s Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance at my university, is a performance support system for two—an elementary-aged learner who is trying to improve reading skills and a tutor, who is usually a volunteer and guided in his or her efforts by an electronic performance support system.

The use of systems to provide helpful advice during learning and to facilitate interpersonal communication is also likely to increase in the coming years. Intelligent agents, like the ones used by Amazon.com to recommend products, are increasingly finding their way into learning programs so that learners can have a tailored learning experience.

Similarly, Web 2.0 technologies, like those described by Handbook co-editor and industry consultant Patti Shank, are working their way into learning contexts. For example, many university instructors are assigning projects in which students develop entries for the Wikipedia (either the main one, or Wikipedia-like resources). Others are using blogs to conduct virtual class conversations.

One of the most significant issues for e-learning is interoperability. Though initial attempts at establishing standards fumbled, the increasing reliability of standards, along with the growing use of open source software, especially in primary, secondary, and higher education, should promote the increased interchange of learning materials, In fact, this might facilitate the exchange more than the establishment of learning repositories, in which interest seems to have waned. Through this interchange of materials comes the interchange of ideas and, ultimately, a further honing of our design instincts.

Trend Two: E-Learning by Assignment

Although most of the contributors saw positive developments in the design of e-learning, most also observed that, just as organizations are learning how to design and implement effective e-learning, they also are looking for ways to do so “on the cheap.”

IBM consultant and Handbook contributor Margaret Driscoll expressed concern that the increased use of informal learning might result in reduced use of training, because employers will figure that workers already have access to the content. In other words, organizations will use content that is developed for other purposes, such as user guides and references, as learning material (an approach known as repurposing content).

Brigham Young University professor and Handbook contributor David Merrill agrees, but observes that much of that content in the workplace—both informal and formal—will be developed by subject matter experts, whom he labels “instructional-designers-by-assignment.” Instructional-designers-by-assignment prepare content as an adjunct responsibility of their work, usually with little or no training in how to train others.

This trend raises several concerns. Because instruction is a secondary responsibility of instructional-designers-by-assignment, most instruction will be designed rapidly (called rapid e-learning), such as existing PowerPoint presentations converted to a recorded presentation in Adobe Breeze, with a recorded narration. Because these subject matter experts are not likely to be questioned about their instructional choices, what they develop may not be the same quality as other solutions.

Other contributors question the role of instructional designers in such an environment. Several wondered what formally trained instructional designers might do if engineers, programmers, and others with technical knowledge are actually developing the learning content. Most likely, instructional designers will find themselves in the same situations that many technical writers did earlier in this decade—that of production wonk.

Production wonks take the material produced by others and prepare it for publication by copyediting it, running it through an authoring tool, and verifying that it runs correctly online. In some instances, instructional designers might also prepare templates for the SMEs to use. Although this is honest work, it hardly uses the skills that most instructional designers possess.

More significantly, rather than requiring that instructional designers participate in projects as early as possible—as advocated by most instructional designers—this support of instructional-designers-by-assignment limits most of our work to the final stages of an effort, when our influence will be at its most limited.

Because they will likely be unsatisfied with this role, University of Colorado at Denver professor and Handbook contributor Brent Wilson suggests that that instructional designers might need to wage a struggle for control of content: “The learning profession (instructional designers, distance-learning specialists) needs to assert its role in articulating standards, roles, and values that should be reflected in professional products and practices.”

But he adds, “My fear is that a weak professional presence will continue to plague e-learning initiatives.”

Trend Three: E-Learning as a Way of Life

In contrast to these two starkly different alternatives is a third trend, e-learning as a way of life. Matthew Davis, the acquisitions editor for the Handbook, was the first person I heard verbalize this observation.

In practical terms, e-learning as a way of life means that e-learning will become part of the standard repertoire of all learning groups and most learning professionals, and will regularly be offered as one of the choices for presenting content. The cultural barriers to adoption and acceptance will be lowered and, as a result, managers, learners and learning professionals alike will not consider e-learning as something special and different, just a choice.

Although some learning professionals will certainly choose to specialize in e-learning, generalists are more likely to include it in their bag of tricks, and will develop increasing comfort moving back and forth between e- and other forms of learning.

Perhaps the prospect of this integration of e-learning into the mainstream of learning prompted the initial excitement over blended learning. In its most common implementation, blended learning usually involves linking e-learning and classroom learning.

Perhaps, too, the idea of e-learning as a way of life might also help to reconcile the two other perspectives on e-learning. Because e-learning can be quick and easy to produce, organizations can provide more of it.

But because many of the tools enable subject matter experts to produce their own e-learning, instructional designers need not develop all of it themselves. In some cases—such as material with low volumes of learners and low impact on a large organization—it does not make much sense to invest full instructional design resources. Instead, it might make sense for us to help instructional-designers-by-assignment do their work most effectively. We can provide them with templates, some production assistance, and consciousness raising about the importance of learning and how they can be most effective in that task.

Similarly, for courses of high interest and that affect large numbers of learners, making sure that the instruction is “right” is essential and, freed of the responsibility for developing all of the material available, instructional designers can focus our talents, instead, on those projects where our efforts are most needed.

Perhaps, more than anything, this differentiation of roles is the future of e-learning. E-learning—like all other online ventures—is making learning more democratic, not only in who gets it, but also who designs and delivers it.