Are we there yet?

A professor and doctoral studen at the University of Wisconsin conducted a survey in 2005 that set out to capture the future of e-learning in higher education and training environment.  Over 12,000 requests were sent to college professors, instructors, and designers who were members of MERLOT, and more than 20,000 request were sent to workplace training professionals. Although the respondents were surprisingly low (562 for higher education and 239 for workplace), the authors apparently concluded the sample was sufficient to warrant some conclusions (Bonk & Kim, 2005). 

The higher education survey consisted of 42 questions on the future of online learning in higher education. The workplace survey consisted of 49 questions regarding the current status and future directions of e-learning in workplace learning settings (Bonk & Kim, 2005). 

While the survey and results are dated, I believe we can make some assumptions about the accuracy of the respondents' predictions.  Higher education respondents were asked to comment on the "future growth of online education and blended learning, the quality of future online education, future e-learning technologies, and online pedagogy and teaching skills" (Bonk & Kim, 2005).  Workplace respondents were asked about their "attitudes towards e-learning, future growth of online and blended learning, future of online trainers/instructors, quality of future e-learning, and future e-learning technologies and pedagogy" (Bonk & Kim, 2005).

Higher education respondents predicted a shift from "warehousing students in online environments to engaging them in interactive and motivational activities" (Bonk & Kim, 2005).  Further, these respondents identified "collaboration, case learning and problem-solving learning" as key online instructor techniques, and also noted that the future should see the Web as a tool for "virtual teaming or collaboration, critical thinking, and enhanced student engagement, not as a tool for student expression" (Bonk & Kim, 2005).

Workplace respondents predicted their organizations would focus on "creation and delivey of e-learning content, as well as evaluation of the content" over the next few years (Bonk & Kim, 2005).  Additionally, workplace respondents believed "knowledgement tools, online simulations, and reusale content objects" would impact online learning the most in years to come (Bonk & Kim, 2005).  Further, these respondents thought Internet technologies, multimedia presentations, authentic learning experiences, and global collaboration and perpsective sharing would most significantly impact online learning (Bonk & Kim, 2005).

So how did these prognosticators do?  I'm still searching for a recent survey that will address these same or similar topics, so in the interim I'll opt to use my own experience.  In the world of higher education, collaboration and problem-solving techniques are in widespead use at my university.  Instructors encourage and facilitate student interaction and collaboratio through wikis, blogs, discussion boards, and voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) technology, notably Skype.  While the higher education respondents were on the mark concerning virtual collaboration, critical thinking, and enhanced engagement via the Web, they missed the mark on the student expression prediction.  The Web has evolved from a read-only version 1.0 to the much-bandied read-write Web 2.0.  The advent of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and the likes has made "expression" possible.  Couple this ability to publish content to the Web with the ability to capture critical reflective thought in e-portfolios  and I argue that the e-learning possibilities far surpass the 2005 predictions. 

As far as the workplace predictions are concerned, my workplace offers numerous online courses, some moderated, but most multimedia, self-paced instruction.  As predicted, the Internet, and more importantly I think, the Intranet, has had a tremendous positive impact on the proliferation of e-learning within my workplace.  My work is still struggling with how to effectively incorporate collaboration and perspective sharing, but my hope is we get there soon.

References

Bonk, C. J., & Kim, K.-J. (2005). Future of e-learning in higher education and training environments. Paper presented at the 20th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/Resource_library/proceedings/04_1404.pdf.