Epic show report

Online Educa Berlin

December 2003
Report by Donald Clark, Epic

Good conference?

The poster for this conference proclaimed it 'the leading international e-learning conference' - and they might just be right. US conferences such as Techlearn, Online Learning and ASTD pretend to be international but they're largely 'stars and stripes' events. The UK conferences are quite small and very British. With 1,428 paying delegates from 68 countries we had 145 from the UK, second only after the Netherlands. The mix also went beyond Europe. There were plenty from Canada, India, Singapore, Australia etc.

As for the formula, all content was delivered in 20 minute doses and sessions were uniformly well chaired. This is a great improvement on the normal one hour session. All credit to Sally Reynolds, the organiser.

OUT at this conference are the old terms; LMS, LCMS, learning objects, Dublin core, SCORM.

IN are the new buzzwords; blended learning, pedagogy, online assessment and quality.

State of the learning industry
State of the e-learning industry
State of the e-learning industry in HE
The future is Finnish
Games and simulations

State of the learning industry 1

Speaker: Professor Brenda Gourley, Vice Chancellor, Open University, UK

Brenda Gourley has been hailed as the saviour of the OU, bringing some fiscal sense (she's a trained accountant), however she made a point of praising her predecessor, John Daniels, now of UNESCO, in his belief that traditional ways simply won't serve us any longer. If we want education to be a fundamental right for all people, things must change. Teachers must be better at understanding how people learn.

Brenda mentioned that the institutions themselves must change and referred, like everyone else, to pedagogical issues. For Brenda, expanding an ancient European university model is difficult. The model is not amenable to culturally diverse and mobile learners. Technology can give us reach at a low cost - but she has been disappointed by the poor quality of material on the web posing as education: we must get serious about quality in content. (This is a common complaint from those who clearly haven't looked beyond the simple page-turning stuff that people put in Blackboard and other educational VLEs.)

Learning through the internet is very different: you can't expect it to mimic the forms of old world, as different cultures have different knowledge production systems. Good learning practice is crucial, and e-delivery is not the same as e-learning. Brenda sees the death of time, space and title in learning, with a blurring of full and part time, residential and home, private and public. OU has no entry requirements and a complete commitment to improving access. This illustrates the shift from teaching to learning.

Any system that defines learning in terms of time taken to learn is, by this speaker's lights, meaningless. We have to be clear about the fact that it doesn't really matter where the learning happens, we only have to recognise that the learning has taken place: attainment, not attendance, is what matters. The teacher has to engage with this design.

Ironically, competition is strong but collaboration is necessary. We must promote and encourage mobility of teachers and students - as well as partnerships to make local offerings to students. We need a much more sophisticated assessment systems. The Bologna process has this in mind.

The task for a good curriculum must be to impart knowledge, but also to impart skills. Pedagogical issues rather than technological issues must drive the process. This is not what she sees on the internet, where pedagogically weak material is often from low quality, education-based production processes.

Education is a highly politicised business, so the challenges in this area are huge. We've had huge leaps forward in technology, but still in many parts of the world basic water, electricity and food do not exist. Poor people want medicine, not computers. This was inspiring stuff, but Brenda ended on a downbeat note: she was not encouraged by the state of the world today. We might have knowledge, she says, but we clearly lack wisdom.

State of the learning industry 2

Speaker: Wolf-Dieter Lucas

(The scheduled speaker, Edelgard Bulman, Federal Minister of Education, Germany, couldn't attend, so a junior minister was sent in his place.)

Mr Lucas described obstacles in the predicted growth of the market:

• Teacher resistance
• User resistance
• High production costs for content

A fragmented market also presents problems. In Germany the schools market is really 60 different federal markets. As an education minister, he was disappointed at how slowly the education market responds when innovation is introduced. It suffers from huge time lags.

Turning to Germany, Lucas mentioned the great success in having 600,000 in vocational training. It is now quite normal to use e-learning in this context, and increasingly in all aspects of further and higher education. Generally, he saw that education markets differ widely, as each country has a different system. High quality content must be developed and once again, pedagogic innovation was mentioned but there was little sign of what this meant.

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State of the e-learning industry 1

Speaker: Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz, DG Education and Culture, European Commission

Topic: Reforming Education and Training for the Knowledge Society. E-learning: designing tomorrow's education.

Some of the European Commission's current crop of topics for special attention were:

• Accessibility
• Interoperability
• Quality control
• Connection with society needs
• Language learning
• New role of universities

The usual 'we will report on progress, monitor, create a repository of good practice...' line was rolled out. More reports are on their way (just what we need!)... However, some interesting observations followed.

Investment in education in Europe is falling compared to US or Japan. Only the UK and Germany are close to these competitors. Too many young people are leaving the system - 30% of 15 year-old Europeans are below a basic, functional level of literacy. The emphasis is now on practice: organisational change, innovation and quality, breaking barriers between education and training, lifelong learning. It is interesting that the prime driver here is the 'poor performance' of the existing system.

Another e-learning programme has just been adopted in Brussels with digital literacy as a pre-requisite for citizenship, co-operation across Europe, and school twinning via the internet (this one I like). In short, a strengthening of e-learning initiatives.

State of the e-learning industry 2

Speaker: Jurgen Gallman, Chairman of Microsoft Germany

If we build it, will they come? Yes, we now know that they will says Jurgen. However, no evidence was given for this statement, only some Microsoft corporate aims.

Gallman's one good idea was to put the learning process at the core of the entire process by not calling it learning. Wouldn't it be great if e-learning wasn't seen as learning at all, just a part of our general life, integrated into our normal and daily working environment? It must also create a desire for lifelong learning... We must get away from the traditional methods... Acceptance is not as strong as we'd like...

The main challenges as far as Jurgen sees it are the need for high impact, higher retention and higher transfer. He also wants to see higher productivity and quality. And what a surprise, this means a class server (provided by... you guessed it, Microsoft) the platform for a new form of teaching. This server is the main building block of Microsoft's Learning Gateway.

He also mentioned another contribution to the growing mess among standards - SIF (Schools Interoperability Framework), a standard/specification for the common exchange of information between schools.

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State of the e-learning industry in Higher Education

Speaker: Kurt Larsen, Centre for Educational Research, OECD, France

Topic: Challenges to higher education

Benefits
E-learning may allow us to meet the huge demand for HE in developed countries, developing countries and in lifelong learning. Global demand for HE in 2003 is 70 million globally. This will rise to 160 million in 2025, with growth especially strong in Asia. Over half the students in 2025 will be from Asia. It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how this rising demand can be met with the traditional face-to-face model of teaching alone.

India and China are switching rapidly to online delivery. In the US, the Sloan Foundation reported that 1.6 m students had taken at least one online courses by Fall 2002 (11% of US students) with 4% who took their whole course online. Expected growth in 02-03 is 20%. There were no comparable figures in UK but it was felt that the numbers were generally lower in Europe.

The Commonwealth University Association reported the following benefits of e-learning:

• Enhancement of teaching - 94%
• Flexibility for students - 92%
• Entry to new markets - 53%
• Cutting teaching costs - 20%

They note no fundamental change to the model.

In general, universities were following two strategies:

Strategy 1
Safe strategy

• Operate alone
• Focus on students on campus
• Not-for-profit
• Provide degrees
• Use existing brand names

Strategy 2
Ambitious strategy

• Collaborate
• Focus on new markets
• Gov/private sector
• For-profit
• Create a new brand name

Most seem to be following Strategy 1.

Conclusions from Kurt:

Is this satisfying demand? Potentially it can help to meet demand. It is not very developed yet, but growing demand for e-learning is seen, mainly in adult education.

How are we doing for flexibility? There is good progress here, with a loosening up of entry requirements, more learning at a distance, and a wider age of students.

Is it cost-effective? Not yet. And cost-effectiveness is often not measured.

Is there increased competition? Yes, especially in US and Asia, but less so in Europe.

Are we seeing better learning? This is difficult to assess. Further experimentation is a must.

More information on this subject can be gleaned from reading "E-learning: The Partnership Challenge", from the OECD - detailed case studies of 20 post-secondary education institutions from 13 countries. It identifies best practices/innovations, faculty changes and academic trends.

Conclusions from Donald:

These reports may be asking the wrong questions. The institutions may be slow in using e-learning, but students are not. It is difficult to find an undergraduate or post-graduate student who is NOT an e-learner, coming as they do from a generation which has grown up with the internet and Google.

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The Future is Finnish

Speaker: Markku Markkula

Topic: Knowledge-based society in Finland

Finland has the strategic goal of being a pioneer in innovation, education and culture - a laudable aim. Maybe the future really is Finnish. However, to claim that Finland is the leader in e-learning stretches credibility: US, UK, Canada, Ireland, and others also make this claim: surely they can't all be right!

Innovative pedagogy was the mantra here. What the speaker actually meant by this was a deeper look at process, which is fair enough, but the term pedagogy (the science of teaching) is a little one-sided. Lifelong learning also got big billing, but this drifted off into a description of eBologna (see above).

Markku wants to be radical. Lifelong learning needs new learning environments and mental models.

Why is the future Finnish? Well, Finland is a small country of 5 million, about the same population as Scotland, yet comes first or second in many global indices including those for:

• Technology development and utilisation
• Education
• Technology and information
• Ranking for competitiveness

So outstanding was Finland's showing in the PIS study of 15 year-olds that it was only by splitting the results table into two - one for large countries and one for small - that the US could get itself to the top!

The country is implementing a lifelong learning strategy with strong collaboration for innovation. The mantra is 'Invent the Future'; but it is easy to write strategies, difficult to implement them. So lifelong learning is not just a phrase - it's real activity. This, he thinks, is made easier by the fact that Finland's political system tends to produce coalition governments, so politicians are used to working collaboratively.

This is an important point, because it is at the political level that foresight, assessment and social innovation are most needed.

The pioneering role sought by the Fins expresses itself in valuing learning through:

• Learning skills for the child
• Basic skills and learning to learn
• New role of the teacher
• Secondary level without frontiers
• Flexible liberal adult education
• Short courses
• Open learning environment
• Seeing all as learners and teachers
• Joined up government working with private sector
• Accelerating e-learning development
• Taking lifelong learning really seriously
• Developing advanced procurement
• Versatile approach through collaboration
• Projects of effective size
• From pilots to process thinking
• Public support for e-learning projects
• National Knowledge-sharing platform, a knowledge agora
• Emphasis on human capital
• Seeing education as undergoing a fundamental change
• Learning from the private sector
• Finnish Virtual University, the networking of universities
• Bottom up and top down activities
• Learning together to invent the future
  Above all - ACTION

Unfortunately, while Markku Markkula was enthusing about seeing children as young as one year old using a mouse, as it is easier to use than a pen, he suffered what must be every presenter's nightmare - the technical hiccup that destroys one's point entirely. Right on cue he inadvertantly right-clicked, throwing an unexpected menu up onto the screen - at which point he panicked and someone had to show him how to get back to the presentation!

Back to pedagogy. This time it meant 'pedagogical leadership'; the renewal of school laws six years ago and the pedagogical leadership of principals wholly towards an atmosphere of encouraging learning.

Technical hitches notwithstanding - and despite some pretty dense slides - this was an excellent talk by someone who has the evidence and success on a national scale to prove his case. But why is it that 'knowledge' presentations have slides that are overly packed with information and poorly presented?

www.dipoli.hut.fi

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Games and simulations - some examples

Carlton Reeves presented the excellent Virtual School from the National College of School Leadership. You pick your own school then get shown around it by Margaret, the school secretary (school secretaries, of course, know everything).

This is a time-based simulation in which the results of your decisions are experienced as you proceed through the game. Time can also be fast-forwarded or reversed. Scripted by a team of schoolteachers, authentic scenarios are thrown up to which you have to respond. These scenarios are randomised from a pool of 100 and it takes around 10 hours to complete. Graphs showing ratings across time on variables such as morale and improvement are also affected by your choices. For example; the heating may go off and you have to deal with the problem by choosing between text choices. Isometric views of your school are cartoon-like but give the simulation some visual appeal. Online community features allow others to join in discussions within the simulation.

It was piloted over 9 months with 200 teachers, and now has 2,000 participating. The hope is to spread out into the 250,000 teachers.

An excellent demonstration showing how simulations and games are having an effect on complex learning tasks in created environments like a school.

Peter Schultz of Provadis showed an adventure game populated with 40,000 questions, used in the German chemical industry.

This game has a character who wanders down into Hell and has to answer questions to proceed. There are eight different rooms with different games and questions posed every couple of minutes. This adventure game/quiz format has gone down well with its audience: young adults with low levels of literacy. It is used in both formal and informal settings such as recreation rooms.

An interesting feature of the scoring is that the teacher only gets the results of the group, not the individual. Students seem to prefer this anonymity.

Unigame was a one-year funded research project with partners in five countries; UK, Italy, Austria, Sweden and Greece. Its aim was to focus on social skills and knowledge training. First you have to understand the ethics of negotiation, select a team, select a role within the team, choose a strategy then form a consensus. There's scoring through 'chips' which you win and lose and you can add an image of yourself within the game. It is largely text-based and there are templates available for your own game.

Some interesting research is going on in Scotland at the University of Abertay. Douglas Leith presented some fine examples of focused research on using computer games in business:

Netplayers uses off-the-shelf games to improve performance of virtual teams. They've used Groove and Age of Empires among others.

Partner Player uses models of computer game play to improve performance of partnerships. An electronic board game where you stop and play sub-games is used, projected on to a wall, then played socially.

Divide and Conquer uses a model of a computer game configuration which allows multiple entities with their own competing and conflicting objectives. A Nintendo Games Cube is used with downloads and uploads to Gameboys. The same thing can be done with PCs and PDAs.

Mental Gym uses microgames, some as short as three seconds, to help prepare for imminent activities.

Face Your Demons takes on stress in the workplace, nurturing inclusive behaviour and attitudes to change in change management settings using cameras and narratives.

This was fine stuff. Good research with a set of clear objectives and innovative solutions.

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Conclusion

This was only a small selection from the many sessions run in parallel. This is a content rich conference which, although weighted towards higher education, had an excellent mixture of corporate, HE and policy makers. There was something for everyone. Highly recommended.