What exactly eLearning is Not – Difference Between Distant Learning, Mixed up Learning, and eLearning
When I talk to the boss of any training company, I will always be reluctant to say “e-learning.” Such a bad word which often, most of the time, smacks of “old and bad experience,” “bad quality,” “not our philosophy”… It sounds bad… but also, I think, this is a little bit unfair!
Your best would have to give a simple, clear definition of this expression… but, as the article about the subject on Wikipedia gives a feel, there is not one definition, numerous. And this is precisely the difficulty! So, instead of telling you precisely what e-learning is, let me tell you precisely what e-learning is NOT:
1 . E-learning is not blended learning but an integral part of it.
Blended learning consists of diversifying the way and the support involving teaching so that the student will not feel bored after fourteen days of training, remain induced and motivated, and keep concentrating. In a way, everybody proposes a kind of blended learning mainly because it has been obvious for many years how the classic face-to-face classes are too few; that’s why we should be aware that teaching mixes individual instructions, group lessons, and mobile phone lessons is blended-learning. Nonetheless, the key point of blended learning is the electronic digital support of e-learning that can be used to introduce a unique work environment for reviewing and doing online classes. Indeed, because efficient as time using the tutor or the other college students can be, we do think that a successful learning process ought to allow (or impose) a period per week for a private function, and to support this, all of us do believe that e-learning — as (not) presented in this post – is the best support.
Second. E-learning is not (always) multimedia learning or interactive learning,
but it ought to be! E-learning – or “old e-learning”- can be as dull as classic paper assistance (books and so on): certainly, what is the interest of providing a quiz with questions and answers on an e-learning system if it looks like the one in writing? For sure, these online questions will be accessible from any place thanks to the Internet, and the modification will be available immediately without waiting for the tutor to do their job of correcting this. But that’s how you could have defined and backed e-learning ten years ago! And it is not enough because nowadays, everybody knows that in balance, both of these real advantages may consider less than the obstacle that this electronic interface can symbolize for a lot of students. E-learning is usually more than accessibility and availability: it should also be interactive. Add MP3 FORMAT, videos, and pictures… to your routines; communicate with the student from the static correction of his exercises… allow students to interact together by simply sharing interesting multimedia written content they encounter in their day-to-day lives… E-learning should be more than two dimensions of a piece of paper: it depends on you to create as many dimensions as you want! (NB: but stay simple, that’s the basis! ).
3. E-learning is not self-learning or shouldn’t be (ever)!
Either as the core or maybe as an extra of the teaching (the two extreme cases), e-learning is often presented as a simple electronic way to learn: the scholar faces a computer, alone using himself, his spectacular bravery motivation. Considered as a simple instrument, e-learning will always lead to, at the very best decreasing motivation, at worst, failing; we encourage you to look at e-learning as a process that also includes:
– upstream, consideration of the whole training process (see point 1)
– a collection of an interactive platform along with the creation of multimedia written content (see point 2)
rapid transmission of the content is a task to do and keeping track of the achievement of this process
– downstream, request comments and feelings
At every action, you – as an educative manager or tutor rapid, have an important role to play to leave the student feeling that he’s carefully accompanied. Be sure that this dedication is not so costly when it comes to time (quick response to students’ questions, short remarks on their exercises… ) which improves the efficiency of your e-learning. Which is the only way to reach the primary goal usually assigned to e-learning: reduce the costs while keeping a high level of quality.
Four. E-learning is not distance-learning.
However, it can be. Suppose you have read as well as understood the above points. In that case, this might be obvious: first of all, because all of us encourage you to introduce e-learning most of the time as part of a blended-learning process (with classic courses, etc … see point 1) but also because we counsel you always to be close to your college student, even – I should instead say “especially”- if this individual attends a pure e-learning training. E-learning must always become close learning; that’s the key to success. But to successfully respond to the requirements of your students in a modern-day way of life (and work), it may be a good thing to propose some sort of pure distance-learning service: your e-learning becomes the main (or the only) interface with this training, thanks to the work environment but also and especially thanks to a conference system to support the classes typically. For these cases, you will need to keep in mind two key points:
rapid for long-distance training especially recommended to esteem a blended-learning process (by mixing online classes with mobile phone classes, for instance… )
rapid, the video conference system needs to be available from your e-learning software and with a share-screen (possibility for both tutor and student to interact for a fancy passing document) to keep the process as common and interactive as possible.
Hopefully, after reading this article, you may agree that e-learning is simply not a revolution, and neither would it be a useless extra, nevertheless a real “plus.” In my opinion, which is the paradox of e-learning: it has been introduced as the modern wonder to change everything in the training world. Still, we never gave it the chance to achieve these too great and unrealistic expectations. And — what a surprise! – this failed in this revolution, to the point that it can sometimes be considered an unhealthy word I was speaking about at the start of this article.
So yes, other types of relationships are the key point of any learning process (or show me wrong! ).
As well as yes, if we keep this in mind, a good electronic system can effectively support and even improve this particular learning process.
Read also: https://espaipriorat.org/wp-admin/post-new.php.
