E-Learning: Education for Everyone? Special Requirements on Learners in Internet-based Learning Environments

Thomas Richter Information Systems for Production and Operations Management

University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany thomas.richter@icb.uni-due.de

Heimo H. Adelsberger Information Systems for Production and Operations Management

University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany heimo.adelsberger@icb.uni-due.de

Abstract: This paper addresses special skills, learners in E-Learning scenarios (Internet-based learning scenarios) need. In self-directed learning scenarios, as most E-Learning scenarios are designed, learners bear the responsibil-ity for their own learning progress. To ease this task, institutions could prime the learners for the situation, which may be quite different to the learning experiences, they previously made in face-to-face learning scenarios. We conducted a Delphi-study with experts from the Higher Education E-Learning sector in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and determined general requirements on learners in E-Learning scenarios.

Introduction

In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the traditional education in schools and universities is regulated and mainly financed by the government. In this context, learners traditionally are much more understood as beneficiaries than as customers (Leffers 1996). Different to this, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, higher and adult education mostly requires a fee if basing on E-Learning technologies, even if provided by regular (governmentally financed) universi-ties. With this change of the source of funding (the money at least partly comes from the students and not from the government), education becomes a charged service and thus, the status of Learners shifts from beneficiaries to cus-tomers. Different to the situation before, where most students simply accepted what they got, they now, in the charged E-Learning scenario, start expecting to receive the best possible individual support within their learning process, in order to foster their learning-success.

E-Learning gains influence (Rey 2009, p. 15) not only in the context of higher education but also in the fields of professional and adult education. In Germany, the E-Learning market is continuously growing: A remark-able increase in sales can be monitored (Rey 2009). However, the E-Learning based learning process provides new challenges as well for the learners as also for traditionally educated teachers (Heidenreich 2009, p. 55-59).

For the development of customer-oriented E-education, it first of all is necessary to understand the special skills this educational scenario requires from the learners. This knowledge enables educators to foster their learners in developing the necessary skills. Related to E-Learning scenarios, several learner-specific problems are detailed in the literature. A validated collection of skills, required to solve such problems, still is not available. Related learner-specific problems mostly resulted in learner frustration and based, e. g., on missing technological skills (Edmundson 2007), on a technological infrastructure that did not fit the requirements of a course (Selinger 2004; Gunawardana 2005; Arias & Clark 2004), on upcoming lacks of motivation (Keller 2008), and on problems in teamwork (Dennen & Wieland 2007; Ng & Cheung 2007).

Within the framework of a Delphi-study, we asked E-Learning professionals in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to identify special skills, which learners in E-Learning scenarios should have, and to evaluate the rele-vance of those skills in the E-Learning scenario. In the following, we first give a short introduction on E-Learning and discuss some general differences between the traditional classroom education and E-Learning, which are rele-vant for understanding the motivation for doing the research discussed in this paper. Afterwards, we describe the re-search setting and subsequently present the outcomes of the study. After a discussion of the results, we give some recommendations on what institutions providing education (in both forms, the traditional and the Internet-based one) can contribute, in order to support their learning efforts in Internet-based educational scenarios.

E-Learning

For this paper, we define E-Learning as any form of Internet-based distance education (Richter, Pawlowski & Lutze 2008). Different to the traditional classroom learning scenarios where an educator and learners directly interact with one another at the same time within the same room, E-Learning usually provides freedom regarding the location and time where/in which the learners do their courses (Lassmann 2006). What sounds promising on the first sight is challenging in its consequences (Wheeler & Shaver 1983). Particularly the missing face-to-face contacts (Conrad 2002, 210) cause special problems: Educators cannot recognize misunderstandings, upcoming conflicts, or starting demotivation among the learners and, thus, do not have any chance to react/intervene in time. In group-learning sce-narios, particularly in intercultural settings, establishing contacts to other learners is considered being much more complicated than in face-to-face situations. Relevant basic aspects for building social contacts, like eye contact and other tangible clues are not available (Moore 1991). Therefore, to build trust and avoid conflicts, much more explicit communication is needed. Although it could be arranged differently, in the context of E-Learning, self-directed learning is the usual teaching method (Carell 2006). As consequence, in E-Learning scenarios, learners bear much more responsibility for their own learning progress than in classroom-scenarios, be it regarding motivation, the or-ganisation and scheduling of all learning processes (often, even besides the all-days life), or the choice of learning materials. Additionally, learners need to have enough technological understanding to use the learning materials.

As RICHTER ET AL. (2010) found out, the E-Learning community provides a new learning-culture – but to become a part of this community, learners need a chance to adopt this learning-culture.

The Study: Setting

We had the suspicion (Conrad 2002, Carnwell 2000, Darabi 2006) that there are certain key-abilities, learners need to have in order to successfully learn in E-Learning-based scenarios, e. g., the awareness/experience that communi-cation follows different rules. However, we had no evidence on which those abilities were, and we particularly could not evaluate the relevance of each of those abilities for the learning-success.

The study was designed according to the Delphi-method (Linstone & Turoff 1975), which defines a three-tiered process:

1. Conducting Interviews (structured, semi-structured, or open) with a later proceeded transliteration 2. Analysis of the results, clustering into dimensions, and setting up a list of items 3. Evaluation of the items regarding the original topic of the interview by the former participating experts

On the one hand, we wanted to find out what the experts have in mind regarding special skills, learners need, to suc-cessfully participate in E-Learning-based Learning scenarios. We did not want to manipulate the experts by naming predefined topics. On the other hand, for the case, the interview stuck or went into the wrong direction, we needed a structure to push or intervene. Therefore, we decided to design the interviews semi-structured and telephone-based.

We selected experts with their commonly recognized expertise as main selection criteria, and conducted the telephone-interviews. The recorded interviews were transliterated and analysed. Critical statements were extracted, clustered into dimensions, and alphanumerically ordered within a list of items. The list has been sent to all former interviewed experts with the task to evaluate the listed items regarding their relevance for successful learning in E-Learning-based learning scenarios. For the evaluation, we provided the list as an online form including a six-point ordinal scale.

The interviews were planned to take 15-20 minutes.

The Field Manual

In the following, we present the field manual. We just asked the two initial questions (without giving further hints). Further hints were meant to just being used in situations when the interview had to be revived (it stuck) or in case it went into a completely wrong direction.

• What in your opinion are the basic differences between E-Learning-based learning and traditional face-to-face learning situations?

o space / time o communication o self directed learning (time, learning materials)

• In your opinion, which abilities does a learner need to successfully deal with an E-Learning-based learning process?

o technological knowledge/abilities o communication abilities o self-responsibility, motivation

Conducting the Survey

We invited 65 professionals from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to participate in our study. From the 65 invited experts, 18 participated in the interviews. The interviews took between 12 and 35 minutes. In two cases, the experts had to be pushed a bit by asking more than the initial questions. In all other cases, the interview turned to be a fluent conversation whereas we tried to keep the interviewees talking without giving hints on what we expected as an-swers. As well as the interviewer, all of the selected experts were native German speakers; the interviews were con-ducted in German language.

With the explicit allowance of the participants and the promise to publish the results without naming them, the interviews have been digitally recorded and afterwards transliterated. The transliterations led to an alphanumeri-cally structured list of key-items (table 1), which the participants had to evaluate according to their relevance by us-ing a six-point ordinal scale: 16 of the 18 experts returned their evaluated lists.

Findings

In the following, we show the results of the experts’ evaluation of key-competencies, which students should have when participating in E-Learning-based learning programs. The points, the experts allocated to each item were summed up. The items shown in table 1 are sorted, starting with the highest and ending with the lowest ranked item. The sum of the given points can be found on the right side of the table (Evaluation). The highest possible score that could be reached per item was 96 (16*6).

No. Criteria Evaluation 1 self-motivation 86 2 self-organization 85 3 capability to independently organize the learning

process 82

4 self-discipline 81 5 personal initiative 80 6 competency in self-learning 79 7 autonomy 78 8 self-responsibility 78 9 openness regarding IT 76 10 stamina 75 11 Internet competences 73 12 target-oriented working style 73 13 ability to adopt uncommon educational methods 71 14 ability and willingness to self-explore technical

environments (e.g., the Learning Management Sys-tems’ functions)

69

15 ability to assess oneself 69 16 competency for communication 69 17 ability to organize oneself (in order to build work-

ing groups) 66

18 media-competency 66 19 technological and technical understanding 59 20 humility (ability to accept personal criticism) 59 21 ability to collaborate (team related skills) 54

22 mediation ability 53 23 patience 52 24 competency to do scientific work 52 25 openness regarding cultural differences 49 26 given expertise 47 27 practical experiences 47 28 English skills 43 29 culture-competency 42

Table 1: Findings, sorted by sum of distributed points

One of the 16 evaluating experts was of the opinion that all items had the same high impact on a successful partici-pation in an E-Learning-based education program and allocated the maximum number of points to each topic. The first eight items which all are related to “self” have been evaluated by 14/16 experts with 5-6 points. The topics 9-24 have been evaluated quite diverse. Just 2 of the experts evaluated cultural competency (29) and openness regarding cultural differences with 5/6 points. All others allocated 1-3 points to the topics 25-29.

Discussion of the Outcomes

The participating experts are of the opinion that on the part of the students, there are indeed general skills which are required or at least very helpful to have, if they plan to study in an E-Learning-based learning scenario.

All skills, listed in the table, were at least mentioned by one of the interviewed experts as being relevant for E-Learning-based learning scenarios. With exception for the English language skill, all the listed skills are consid-ered not being essential for traditional (face-to-face) learning scenarios. Almost all experts were of the opinion, that an advanced English language skill is just necessary within traditional learning scenarios but not in situations of E-Learning-based learning.

E-Learning has the potential to be distributed worldwide to everyone who is connected to the Internet. However, the not relevant English language skill and the fact that, for E-Learning, cultural competencies and open-ness regarding cultural diversity were not considered being very relevant, allow the conclusion, that E-Learning, in the German speaking countries, mainly is limited to local learners (independent on where they live). In three addi-tional informally conducted expert-interviews, we asked for exactly this assumption. Those experts stated that edu-cation in international or intercultural scenarios is not understood enough. Therefore, they do not even dare to imag-ine such scenarios: The risk of causing serious intercultural conflicts (through the contents themselves, the presenta-tion form of the contents, among learners and between learners and educators) is considered being far too high.

All experts considered E-Learning as a scenario of self-directed learning. The opportunity to fully adapt the traditional teaching forms into an online scenario is not focused.

All of the mentioned skills are skills related to a certain maturity level of the learners (soft-skills) and/or to broad experiences with Internet technologies and learning environments. Learners are expected to be able to orga-nize their learning processes themselves, have to be mature enough to show patience when something goes wrong, and need to be able to motivate themselves.

The items 24-28 are fully related to advanced learning-experience and can be seen as an indicator that in the German language speaking countries, E-Learning is mainly used in Adult (AE) and Higher education (HE). Surely, all interviewed experts were affiliated to HE or AE institutions, but the question explicitly was not limited to those sectors. It seems that in the opinion of the interviewed experts (at least when using their approach and methods), E-Learning is not appropriate for basic or advanced school education: The highly advanced level of maturity which can be deduced from the skills, the experts considered being required, simply cannot be met by children; it even is doubtable that teen-agers may be able to meet those requirements. However, regarding a comprehensive report on the use of E-Learning in K-12 settings (Powell and Patrick 2008), E-Learning is successfully used in the K-12 sec-tor: In most cases it is not exclusively used but supplementary to the traditional education form (Blended Learning). In cases where it is exclusively used, synchronous online-lectures (video) with are given.

Further on, there still is a large and widely unused potential for the integration of E-Learning in the fields of professional training and apprenticeships in the crafting disciplines. E-Learning could be very useful within this sec-tor, but most potential participants “just” finished the middle school and lack the expected learning-skills. In Ger-many, in a lot of professions, professionals (for courses regarding the master of craftsmanship) and teen-agers (for

apprenticeships) from all parts of the country have to travel to central educational institutions, to learn the theoretical background of their professions. Using E-learning technologies in this field, time and costs (particularly travel-expenses on part of the learners) could be saved. However, those learners, particularly when being new to this learn-ing form, are in the need of further support (Furnborough & Truman, 413).

How can we support the learners?

What easily could be done is raising the learners’ awareness on differences between the two forms of education. From the three later on (again) interviewed experts, just one said that in the related institutions, there are preliminary talks with the applying students, in which at least the issue of self directed learning is a focused topic. Making such preliminary talks a standard, would enable the learners to understand what they really are going to be confronted with, when taking E-Learning-based learning technologies into consideration as an alternative for the traditional learning forms. They then may be in the position to decide whether they consider themselves being fit for that chal-lenge.

Also group-work related and communication skills could explicitly be taught or at least, awareness of the differences between E-Learning and traditional learning scenarios should be built by the providers of E-Learning programs. Regarding the basic communication (and other soft-) skills, maybe schools and/or universities should take their part of responsibility and focus more on related preparation.

The experts didn’t consider cultural competencies being very relevant in (their) E-Learning scenarios. In-stead of carefully preparing the students for intercultural learning- and working scenarios by confronting them with related situations, the programs are limited to national or at least to culturally homogenous learners. More and more, intercultural competencies get to be strong requirements in the professional life. Alternatively, even if not providing intercultural learning situations, the institutions could point on or explain the differences, e. g., in communication style, group-behavior, and gender-related questions and thus raise at least the acceptance threshold for cultural di-versity. If (whenever) E-Learning is considered being expanded to international scenarios, also cultural awareness (at least) will be a meaningful teaching-issue for educators and providers of educational services: As RICHTER proved (2010), most of the required soft-skills, listed in table 1 are influenced by culture.

Deducing recommendations from the findings

The study showed that E-Learning programs require special skills from the learners: These skills are different or ad-ditionally required to those that are implied for programs in the context of the traditional face-to-face education. The institutions, providing such programs, are aware of such special requirements but mainly assume the related skills to be given and see no need for providing a special course for preparation. Particularly for learners who never before participated in a distance education-based program and/or are less familiar with computer technologies (e. g., “sen-ior” participants), the dropout rate is significantly higher than in the traditional educational scenarios (Brachos et al. 2003, p. 18). In case of too little experience with Internet-technology, the higher dropout rate often turned out to have its reason in the missing acceptance of the technology. In case of the learners with no or too little experiences in such a scenario, particularly a lack of the ability to self-motivate leads to abandoning the studies (Bonk 2002).

The interviewed experts concordantly considered ‘self-motivation’, ‘self-organisation’, and the computer-/Internet literacy (at least acceptance) being general success-factors for E-Learning programs.

Different to the traditional educational scenarios in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, learners in E-Learning scenarios mostly are paying customers. Therefore, the support, which can compensate the additional chal-lenges, should not be understood as a value-added service but much more as a basic one to facilitate the learners’ ef-fort (in the opinion of the authors). In a learner-oriented educational scenario, learners need being picked up individually wherever they are. A pre-test would help the learners to figure out if they consider themselves being able to manage this challenging situation. Particularly in the fields of self-motivation and self-organization of learning processes, they are in the need of addi-tional instruction (Dennis & Labone 2006). In the traditional educational scenarios in Germany, Austria, and Swit-zerland, teachers and institutions organize the learning processes for their learners (on a general level). Also, in the traditional learning scenarios, motivation individually is fostered when educators realize motivation-loss on part of the learners. In a scenario, where face-to-face contacts are not possible, this often can not be realized by the educa-tors in time and thus, the learners need to learn how to self-motivate. Providing related courses that support the

learners to develop would be very helpful. Frequently provided qualified (individual) feedback by the instructors would help the students to keep motivated and therefore, on track.

In case of Internet-based group-work scenarios, support through the educators is needed because of the pos-sibly unfamiliar (for the learners) communication setting. At least, the learners need to be aware of the different situation and its consequences. The learners should be introduced regarding a certain code of conduct, e. g., by ar-ranging commonly agreed communication-rules. Without the typical social indicators from a face-to-face world, the learners often have difficulties in choosing group members and building fruitful working groups. Educators should form the groups themselves to simplify the group-forming processes, at least for the first time, when groups are to be formed within a course.

Regarding the education of pupils and learners with less experience in diverse learning scenarios, more in-dividual support is required. Particularly for apprentices, the concept of blended learning (Kaltenbaek 2003, p. 4) could prove to be the better choice, at least for the first lectures. If E-Learning is a suitable technology for pupils on the level of primary school and what support particularly would be needed, could not be determined, because the re-search itself focused on HE and AE.

Conclusion

In Internet-based educational programs, special skills are required from the Learners which the experts did not con-sider being relevant in the context of face-to-face education. Those additional skills are not naturally given or con-currently taught during school education, but need to be trained explicitly. It seems obvious that providers of E-Learning-based educational programs, if they want their learners (customers) to succeed, are challenged to render every possible assistance instead of just providing content: Particularly newcomers (learners) in E-Learning-based educational programs and children have to become friends with the uncommon scenario, else they may loose their initial motivation and fail the program. E-Learning should not be understood as a budget-friendly way to simultane-ously teach great numbers of students (in the meaning of a simple process where content is provided to the learners), but requires a considerable amount of personnel resources in order to provide painstaking care.

As shown, there are various opportunities available to support the learners in their effort. Some of those ac-tivities do rather have a general and preparative/informative character and can be delivered as documents. Others have a more individual continuing character and, on part of the educators, require personnel attendance and care. Depending on the learner types and their prior knowledge, tailor-made actions are required.

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