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Introduction This LoD meeting was organized to take advantage of the meeting at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) by the Advanced Distributed Laboratory (ADL), the first ADL Co-lab Plugfest outside the United States. A number of the 25 participants at the LoD meeting thus also participated in the ADL meeting on the following three days (for presentations at International Plugfest, go to the Resource Center at ADL's Web site: http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=srchrslt). In contrast to previous LoD meetings in Europe, where we have had one overarching theme, this meeting had presentations and discussions across three different themes (see headings below) that attendees had expressed interest in discussing. eLearning Standards: What's Ahead and What Does It Mean for Learners and Vendors? This theme was addressed first by Wayne Hodgins, strategic futurist and director of Worldwide Learning Strategies, Autodesk, and by Paul Jesukiewicz, director, ADL Co-Lab. Both Wayne and Paul have been active in learning standards for years and are two of the most well-known speakers on the topic of learning standards. But as a futurist who admits he is mostly concerned with issues that lie a number of years ahead and who views issues from a 40 000-foot perspective, Wayne deals more with conceptual issues and likes to frame the discussion. Paul, on the other hand, operates "closer to the ground." Here is a summary of a few of the main themes that Wayne addressed:
Paul noted that the focus of ADL's work has been on "does it really work?" and "is it interoperable?" and thus ADL has not really been able yet to focus very much on the "advanced" part of distributed learning that its name refers to. As part of this focus on the "here and now," Paul pointed to the fact that 28 LMS/LCMSs have now been certified through the various Certification Testing Centers that ADL has established. Ten content products have also been certified, and 94 vendors have become SCORM adopters. A key element of SCORM 2004 is sequencing (and dynamic sequencing of objects is what Wayne pointed to as the ultimate "me-learning"), which Paul defined as "predictable, consistent ordering and delivery of learning activities in an instructionally meaningful manner regardless of delivery environment." ADL has also been developing tools to assist with content conversion (from SCORM 1.2 to SCORM 2004). These tools include content-packaging converter (for manifests), sharable content object wrappers, meta-data converter, and sequencing rule examples. Questions about meta data came up during Paul's presentation, and he recognized that meta-data generation is critical for the overall success of the project. "Stamp" functions are under development to do this generation automatically. Various products are on the market, and a number of them were on display at the Plugfest exhibition. The available products are very technical at the moment, but they are the first generation. More user-friendly products will doubtlessly emerge. A parallel exists with Web-page construction: Authors no longer need to be proficient in HTML to do this it. The last slide that Paul presented showed two key areas of future activities that ADL will focus on as SCORM evolves. Besides maintaining and extending SCORM 2004, the following two areas will gain growing attention:
eLearning and Knowledge Management: What Is Truth and What Is Hype about Convergence and Integration? A number of our LoD reports—especially eLearning in the Life-Sciences Industry and the Third Quarter 2003 LoD Bulletin, "Integration of eLearning, Knowledge, and Digital-Content Management in Next Generation Learning"—have noted that a growing number of organizations at least now recognize and want to integrate eLearning and knowledge management (KM) but that relatively few organizations have come very far, at least until now. We wanted to use this opportunity to hear from the Europeans attending the meeting and the speakers about what the situation was in Europe on this front, and to what extent the situation in Europe is different from that in the United States. Andrea Back, who has done both research and consulting in this area for a number of years as part of her work at University of St. Gallen, noted that KM and Educational Management (EM) in Europe are two distinct and separate domains (with different roles and positioning) under Organizational Development, even though they have much the same goals (Andrea sees KM and EM as "two hemispheres in companies"). In most U.S. organizations, KM often involves the chief knowledge officer and an internal consulting group, as well as business-unit business managers. EM, on the other hand, is often led by a chief learning officer and involves people from personnel or corporate universities and training units and the HR units focusing on personnel development. Although Wayne Hodgins noted that the focus of either camp should be on "solving specific business problems" and that the labels really do/should not matter, Andrea noted that the reality of most organizations is that they tend to deal in boxes or silos—and this approach often causes problems and inefficiencies. For instance, in the case of one large European bank, successful eLearning activities in the KM group were uprooted and moved to the EM part of the organization because the manager of this group made it clear that there is "where this learning program belonged." Andrea presented a "business engineering perspective on eLearning and KM" consisting of three key central layers of strategies, processes and methods, and systems and technologies (at the technical level, Andrea thinks that the convergence between KM and EM is most prominent, but in other areas much wider gaps exist, as the discussion below shows)—with a management layer on either side (representing KM and EM). This model focuses on formal learning—or education and training—and thus leaves out a major part of learning that is more informal and may in fact bridge the KM and eLearning. eCollaboration, which Andrea places in EM or eLearning, could also be a process or activity that tends to fall within both EM and KM and thus can be a bridge between them. Andrea ended her presentation by contrasting EM and KM in the following four areas:
In my presentation I pointed to factors both favoring and preventing integration, but I also provided a broader framework for eLearning (which includes formal and informal learning and connects them to the value chain; see the figure in my presentation) within which we can see a greater degree of integration between eLearning and KM than we may see in the more formal learning framework presented by Andrea. Quality Issues in eLearning: What Do They Mean for Industry and Academia? This last topic has been gaining increasing interest in Europe, and a number of initiatives and research projects, many funded by the EU Commission, are now under way to try to provide some clarity about what "quality in learning" means and what steps are necessary to improve it. Some of the European initiatives include the eLearning Initiative of DG Education and Culture, a number of national initiatives (including in Germany and the United Kingdom), Learning Regions initiative, and European Standardization work. Issues in many of these projects and initiatives include localization/contextualization (dealing with culture, language, and didactics), harmonization versus localization, regional aspects, and integration/inclusion (of new countries joining the EU). Clearly, the "(e)Learning quality puzzle" contains a large number of pieces and will likely continue to gain considerable attention for years to come. Sabine Seufert of the Swiss Center for Innovations in Learning, and Jan Pawlowski of the University of Duisburg and the European Quality Observatory presented different perspectives on the topic. Sabine's discussion focused on a framework of four key questions about quality and related these questions to University of St. Gallen's collaboration with the European Foundation for Management Development, which has an accreditation program for universities (EQUIS) and an accreditation for corporate universities (CLIP) on eLearning Quality Improvement Program (ELIP). The quality framework and criteria to be used in ELIP have emerged from interviews with 25 experts and a Delphi study of 37 experts and two roundtable discussions. These processes have resulted in 47 quality criteria and a self-assessment guide and review guide for auditor teams. The four questions and their implications for ELIP are the following:
Jan Pawlowski followed Sabine and started with a figure showing a number of different factors that one might want to include in an individual quality profile, such as individualization/personalization, interoperability, accessibility, flexibility, ergonomics, and organizational success. He discussed eLearning quality issues within a more general and conceptual framework, but with specific reference to the European Quality Observatory (EQO). The latter is still under development but will become a major repository of information on quality in learning. Jan showed one graphic that showed EQO in the center of a circulatory flow between the following four phases of a quality approach: First, identify requirements and options (input into this phase might include quality-management approaches, quality-assurance approaches, and specific standards and criteria). Second, analyze and compare quality approaches (this step could be done through the use of an EQO model that Jan's presentation shows in slide 8). Third, make a decision for an approach, and fourth, localize and adapt harmonized model (this model could address country and company specific needs). Both Sabine's and Jan's presentations gave the attendees a good picture of the complexity and diversity of approaches (and needs) that one will have to cope with in the area of learning quality. Although work on many of these issues will very likely continue both at the EU and the national level, we did had insufficient time to discuss how eLearning vendors will likely be affected by this ongoing work and continuing concern about quality. Companies adopting eLearning will have very specific quality needs, and the bottom line for them is: Will eLearning have a significant and cost-effective impact on business performance? If it does, it is likely that the quality of the various components of the eLearning program—consisting of a multitude of formal and informal learning elements and processes—is reasonably good. But the question still remains: How can the quality of the program improve further to ensure maximum performance impact? Thus, the discussion we started in Zürich on these issues will continue, both in future meetings and in our future research publications. Presentations: |
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