Epic show report

Vocational e-learning and e-assessment, London

Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, March 2004
Report by Donald Clark, Epic

Steve Molyneux
Ann Limb
Ron Harden
Marc Prensky
Donald Clark
Jane Massy
Ken Boston

Steve Molyneux - Director, Learning Lab

Steve went off at a million miles an hour and gave an entertaining and visually rich presentation on the pace of recent technological progress. I particularly liked the clip from Ben Elton. There was one gem that emerged, the one that is most important, but least likely to happen - the need for radical organisational change to match the technological change.

He had a pop at the DfES 'Towards an E-learning Strategy' describing it as an internal DfES policy alignment document - fine if you work in the DfES, but of no use to anyone else. It is NOT the radical approach he expected.

Mary Curnock-Cook, the chair, described his talk as 'scary but stimulating': excellent summary.

Ann Limb - Chief Executive Ufi/learndirect

Ann presented the 'story so far' in Ufi and gave a good account of the 'what, where and why' of the organisation - 1.1million learners, achieving the widened participation goals.

Ann usefully outlined the main problems with current transitional assessment:

• E-assessment for traditional learning
• Traditional assessment for e-learning
• Doing old things in new ways

Ufi is currently piloting 'in-flight' assessment, namely formative assessment. She also fed back the results of a one-day workshop on e-assessment held in the same week. This focused on the important role interactive technologies play in e-assessment.

Ron Harden - Director of Education, IVIMEDS

Having worked with Ron in setting of IVIMEDS, a virtual medical school with 34 international medical schools, it was great to hear that the project is progressing well (read Epic press release on IVIMEDS). Faced with the almost impossible task of getting 43 institutions to contribute real money towards an exercise based on the sharing of resources was a tough challenge.

This initiative, along with the Interactive University, another Scottish project, has shown that the UK eUniversities model was not the only game in town and that other initiatives, taking alternative approaches are having the success which eluded UkeU.

Ron showed the importance of relevant learning theory, as opposed to technology in such projects. Everything is based on learning outcomes. There are 100 virtual patients and learning objects mapped under learning outcomes within a curriculum map. The 'learning objects' approach gives them the flexibility to rearrange the components to offer:

• guided learning
• problem-based learning
• exploratory learning
• assessment-led learning
• focused learning

Ron told his story through narrative and cartoons and it was his end slides that I loved most...

Charlie Brown says 'I taught Spot to whistle'
'I can't hear him' comes the reply.
'I said I'd taught him, I didn't say he'd learnt it!'

Marc Prensky - CEO Games-to-train

I've seen Mark's talk before, but it's even better the second time round. He's an evangelist for the idea that 'computer games could revolutionise learning'. In fact, he claims that computer games have already evangelised learning. This is all in his book, Digital Game-based Learning, which I've reviewed (read Donald's review of Prensky's Digital Game-Based Learning).

He delivered his slides at 'twitch-speed' showing that today's students are different. 50% of the world's population is under 25 - the digital natives. 'Not wanting to learn' is the hard problem. The bottom line is that when people want to learn something you can't stop them. In fact kids have learnt to 'ply' school. They know it's a grade-mill.

The answer to this is games - experiences that kids pay 50 bucks for, play for 30/40/100 hours, then pay for the sequel. It doesn't get any better than this. Well-designed video games are the most engaging intellectual medium we have; the very best learning tools there are.

We need a switch from:

Digital immigrants are people like you and me. At their worst they print out emails, or even worse, get their assistants to do it for them. They don't think 'internet first', don't text or use messaging and think that real-life is offline.

He despises a world in which we herd kids into classes, filter their resources and give them old not new technology.

'Games designers have a better understanding of curriculum design.' (Papert, MIT).

Quote of the day, from a kid: 'Whenever I go to school I have to power down'.

Donald Clark - Epic

It seems odd to be reviewing yourself, but here goes. I concentrated on assessment; showing, like Marc, how games and simulations point to a world in which summative assessment becomes less necessary. E-learning has given us an explosion of formative assessment. This is the assessment revolution.

Unlike Marc, I think that simulations have as much, if not more, to offer than games in learning, and showed an example of a performance simulator with no summative assessment. The Assessment is simply completion. Performance is all.

Current assessment must free itself from:

• its summative obsessions
• the tyranny of time (take at any time)
• the tyranny of location
• paper
• writing (one draft only)
• knowledge only (not skills)

The internet has already had a significant impact on assessment. Kids use web sites to revise for their exams, students download content and essays. Plagiarism has hit the HE system; with the emergence of dozens of cheat sites, check sites, and even pickaprof.com - where you can rate your professor! In schools, the workplace, colleges, universities and in the home, the internet has already changed the face of learning and assessment forever.

Jane Massy - E-learning Consultant and ASTD Board member

Jane brought a welcome dose of realism to the proceedings and talked about the importance of international standards, giving some advice to HE institutions who see e-learning as an easy way to enhance earnings: it's not that simple. The good thing about Jane is that she widens the debate out to an international perspective and always gives some excellent research references; in this case, work done by Carol Twigg from the Centre for Academic Transformation. There is, Jane claims, a dearth of socio-economic research.

She then piped in John Cone from the US on a transatlantic phone link. He's the ex-head of e-learning for Dell, who now works for the ASTD. Just back from his morning run in Arizona, where it was a comfortable 80 degrees, he gave a brief history of the e-learning industry. He reckons it was driven in the early days by the US corporate values of speed and cash, with early experimenters such as CISCO and IBM. HE institutions simply saw it as a new delivery channel for distance learning, which means they didn't really get it at all. By 1998 Dell had 50% of its training delivered by e-learning.

He then turned his attention to 'quality', an issue close to the hearts of the regulators in the room. The ASTD played a significant role in the early days by looking not at the quality of content, but at the quality of the suppliers. Their aim was to guarantee quality going into the pipeline. Standards, he thought, do make a difference, but rather than look at the quality of content, they decided that that was the role of the market. This was what led them to look at the source, not the outcome.

This is a very good point. Before rushing into 'pedagogic' standards or 'design' standards, UK government departments should take a deep breath and listen to this guy. He's talking sense and talking from experience. Well done to Jane and Mary for piping in this dose of excellent advice.

Ken Boston - CEO QCA

Ken made the very good point that the regulator (QCA) in the face of this sea-change, could not become a sea anchor on progress. He was honest about qualifications having 'grown like topsy' into a system that was now incoherent and lacking relevance, a system that in quality terms was 'not fit for purpose'. This led to the recent initiative for joining up 14-90 education. He wanted to be 'a gate-opener, not a gate-keeper'. As you can see, the cliches were flying thick and fast, but it was a good end to a good day.

If I have one criticism, it was that there was no opportunity for questions. An entire day on assessment without any formative experience and feedback, seemed a little odd. To be fair, Mary chaired the session well and was keen to get as much across as possible in the limited time available.

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