InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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February 26, 2001 |
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ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
E-Learning Crossfire
Randy Accetta, Ph.D., of Magellan University, an Arizona online university, and Yoram Jerry Wind, Ph.D., of the Wharton School of the University of Pennylvania, debate the pros and cons of university E-learning.
Randy Accetta, Ph.D.
Director of Professional Education
www.magellan.edu
Magellan University, an online university in Tucson, Ariz.
As economic institutions that must generate profit to sustain economic growth, universities can find additional revenue with E-learning by using outside curriculum vendors to reach a broader audience with new curriculum. But that benefit can come at a high price. My fear is that if E-learning is used solely as a revenue source, the job of university student and university faculty will change.
At their core, universities represent a community of people linked by the pursuit of knowledge. If done poorly, Web-based learning can be detrimental to that long-cherished ideal. If E-learning is done simply to generate revenue and without leadership by the faculty, students may lose the personal interaction with teachers and other students that is the hallmark of excellent higher education. For instance, even with such tools as chat rooms, interactive Web sites, etc., E-learning students have little opportunity to practice such valued skills as public speaking or to experience collaborative learning. Moreover, because much E-learning is self-study and not instructor-led, students do not have the opportunity to challenge or call into question the information that is disseminated to them. Students in this case will become mere sheep, passively feeding on the information given to them by content vendors whose only concern is to generate a profit.
If E-learning is done poorly, the job of teachers will change. Teachers will no longer be able to develop their own curriculum for a given course, but will be forced to rely on the vendor-created course content. Instead of keeping up with advances in their field, instead of participating in the on-going intellectual debates within their disciplines, and instead of engaging students in intellectual study, faculty will become mere shepherds herding their passive sheep through pre-prepared fields of out-dated and insubstantial information.
E-learning will also exacerbate the digital divide because those who have access to the technology will be at a significant advantage over those who don't. However, the digital divide is less of a worry to me than the intellectual divide. We are on the verge of creating a caste system of education in the United States. My fear is that if Web-based academics are not done well, those who take Web-based education courses will receive simple training in basic information, whereas those who attend a brick-and-mortar campus, whether a community college or an Ivy League school, will receive a broader and deeper intellectual training.
Now, E-learning can certainly help students and faculty keep abreast of the rapid changes in technology, the sciences, and other disciplines. But it needs to be teacher-driven; it needs to be driven by the interaction between students and faculty. Done well, E-learning makes use of the best interactive tools and uses trained instructors to generate debate, conversation, and participation. Such an intellectual environment is crucial for a democratic society to sustain itself.
Randy Accetta, Ph.D., is the director of professional education at Magellan.edu, an online university committed to providing high-quality E-learning programs to individuals, academic institutions, and businesses.
Pros:
Yoram Jerry Wind, Ph.D.
Director of the Wharton Fellows e-Business Program
Wharton School of the University of Pennylvania
Before we sound the alarm about online education's effect on universities, remember that E-learning is in its infancy. While detractors of E-learning focus on current practices, the challenge is to understand E-learning's capabilities. Just as retailers learned to combine bricks and clicks for maximum effectiveness, education works best with a combination of face-to-face sessions and electronic interaction. There is sometimes no substitute for onsite sessions, particularly for interaction with faculty and classmates and hands-on contact.
However, there are some classes that could be appropriate for pure E-learning and no classroom interaction. That's something The Wharton School of the University of Pennylvania is experimenting with right now. We're trying to determine if basic courses such as fundamentals in statistics or economics would work well for this, so some MBA prerequisites could be done entirely online. Encouraging this sort of experimentation is the key to successful E-learning.
E-learning's greatest impact on university education (and learning in general) is to encourage experimentation with bold new approaches to content creation and delivery, as standalone new offerings and, most important, as an integral part of university education.
Vendor partnerships can be beneficial. As with any strategic alliance, the two parties need to have a shared vision--the vendor has to be interested in more than maximizing short-term value. But if the two parties share educational objectives, vendors can provide competencies that universities don't have. Vendors can provide universities with resources to develop first-rate multimedia material, an area in which a lot of universities don't have deep expertise. They also can provide marketing and distribute E-learning to a broader audience than universities have access to.
Ultimately, E-learning's profit potential won't lead to the downfall of universities' education quality. The university culture has never been about profit, and most universities will continue to place the quality of education and research far above financial returns. If universities don't apply that same approach to online education, they'll be in for a struggle. That's because any E-learning program that does not deliver high quality will not be around long. Customers can "walk" too easily in the online environment.
Yet, there is not necessarily a trade-off between efficient, profitable programs and quality. The greater challenge for universities is not economic pressures, but lack of competencies in using these new online channels. Some quality has suffered as brilliant teachers in the classroom have struggled to translate their courses into E-learning--too often, educators have simply taken existing course material and posted it online.
There is one aspect of E-learning that's superior to classroom instruction: adaptability. Knowledge changes so quickly, and you cannot go back and earn a degree every time it shifts. There is no better way to stay current than with an online learning community--this includes Web-based courses as well as online discussion groups. No university course or textbook can be updated as quickly as online educational resources. That's why the learning community for Wharton Fellows in the E-business program (a learning program designed for top executives concerned with E-transformation) exists on the Web, with periodic face-to-face gatherings. The site, efellows.wharton.upenn.edu, combines face-to-face meetings with online education.
In addition, E-learning also can help students master critical Web skills to enhance their education: using search engines effectively, joining appropriate virtual communities, and learning how to cross-validate information by evaluating sources online.
E-learning also has benefits on a broader, sociological level. While the digital divide is a major problem facing all societies, the ability to use multimedia and self-paced learning anytime, anyplace, is the solution. Access to the Web won't be an issue. Right now, even some of the poorest villages in China are looking at providing Net access in schools. Within the next few years, my assumption is that access to the Web will be free, and it will be much easier to access as well, through TVs and various information appliances.
Web-based learning can give kids in the most disadvantaged schools access to the best educators in the world. It can also expose students to diverse parts of the world when they can't even afford to leave their neighborhoods.
However, the most important aspect of E-learning is not the access to information, but the ability to customize learning approaches to match students' learning styles--pacing the learning approach, speed, and depth to reflect students' prior knowledge, level of comprehension, and areas of interest. Traditional educational approaches have failed to solve the problem of functional illiteracy, but E-learning has the potential to address that by putting the right educational resources in the hands of more people.
Yoram Jerry Wind, Ph.D., is director of the Wharton Fellows in e-Business Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennylvania. He also is Lauder Professor and a professor of marketing at The Wharton School.
back to main story, "E-Learning Branches Out"
Illustration by Lorraine Tuson
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