E P I C T H I N K I N G
Issue 9: July 2002
This month:
- White paper: Collaborative learning
- Epic Think Tank: Health & e-learning
- Reviews: Building learning communities
- Case study: RBS Branch Manager
- News: Epic covers the UK
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W H I T E P A P E R
1. 1. Making collaborative learning work
The internet allows individuals and groups to timeshift their
communications and annihilates physical distance, opening
up new possibilities for collaborative learning. We can now
learn in groups that are geographically dispersed and meet
across time on the internet, rather than in face-to-face classroom
events.
However, while many instances exist of successful collaboration
on the web, at least as many initiatives suffer from low participation
rates, disappointing collaboration and bad levels of learning
performance and satisfaction.
If there is such a thirst for online collaboration, why do
so few people participate? Collaborative learning, on examination,
might seem to be a world of the disappointed and disappeared.
This white paper from Donald Clark, CEO of Epic Group plc,
surveys the methods for online collaborative learning and
examines the factors that cause online learning communities
to succeed or fail, seeking answers to the following questions:
- Does collaboration enhance learning?
- Can collaboration actually inhibit learning?
- What works best, asynchronous or synchronous collaboration?
- What causes online learning communities to succeed?
White Paper: Collaboration in E-Learning
Mail us to get
your free copy.
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E P I C T H I N K
T A N K
2. Health & E-Learning
The NHS is Britain's largest single employer
with over 1m employees - a truly people-intensive business,
and one critically dependent on having the right knowledge
and skills to meet the formidable challenges it faces.
This recent Think Tank brought together a select
group of high-level Health Service managers focused on workforce
development both at national and regional level. With a presentation
of the IVIMEDS initiative as a focus, the group discussed
issues around the use of technology to aid learning in the
NHS.
In particular, the discussion examined:
- What challenges does the use of the new learning technologies
pose to traditional structures and methods of medical education?
- What are the possible benefits for the NHS from using
these technologies, realisable in the short term (i.e. 'quick
wins') that could form an immediate focus for initiatives?
- How, on a practical level, is the ideal of a 'learning
organisation' to be achieved in the NHS?
Read a FREE
full report of this exclusive, high level discussion, the latest
in a regular series of Epic Think Tanks.
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R E V I E W
3. Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace
Authors:
Rena M Palloff
Keith Pratt
Review by Donald Clark, CEO Epic Group plc
I like books that change my views on things.
First published in 1999, Building Learning Communities in
Cyberspace did precisely that; opening my eyes to the reasons
why so many efforts in collaborative learning fail.
At last here was an explanation for my own often
frustrating experiences online. I'd signed up for too many
so-called communities where the community felt strangely absent;
where threaded discussions lay empty, or after an initial
burst of fervour lapsed into one-liners and finally petered
out altogether. I'd been in too many virtual classrooms where
I felt so disembodied and bored that I drifted away to check
my email - and never drifted back.
Palloff and Pratt, in this book, go a good way
to explaining why the boredom and impersonality that wrecks
so many online community building efforts comes about and
how such failures can be avoided.
The origins of the book lie in the authors'
mutual experience as Ph.D. students at The Fielding Institute,
a distance learning programme whose 800 students are located
all over the world and linked by Fiedling's own electronic
network. Frustrated by the limitations of this network, they
began creating their own 'electronic seminar' dubbed 'The
Cyberspace Sandbox' to explore the use of electronic communications
as a means of delivering distance learning programmes more
effectively.
What they found was that with the rapid arrival
and adoption of computer-mediated courses and programmes,
little thought had been given to the possible educational
and social impact of new delivery methods: 'traditional teaching
methods (were) being attempted in a non-traditional environment'.
More attention needed to be given to what actually
happens in a situation where instructors and their students
never meet face-to-face: 'When the only connection we have
to our students is through words on screen, we must pay attention
to many issues that we take for granted in the face-to-face
classroom.'
Nipper (1989) an early writer in computer based
learning, identified a need for 'social connection', a need
that almost supercedes the learning goals for the course at
issue. Palloff and Pratt take this further, elaborating a
'new paradigm for learning, which involves a more active,
collaborative, constructivist approach.'
Not surprisingly, perhaps, this leads the authors
to consider issues such as learning styles and the psychology
of learning in general, but the book delves even further in
its examination of how the internet has redefined the meaning
of community, covering issues such as spirituality and ritual
in online communities.
For the most part, however, its advice is eminently
practical. Interesting discoveries that come from their work
include the following:
- Coalescence of a community must take place over time
- Instructors and students who experience performance anxiety
in physical-world group situations may be more comfortable
online
- Online systems work well for those with English as a
second language
- There is a significant danger of addiction to being online
- There is a significant danger of 'infoglut' Other issues
covered include those of ethics, privacy, group size and,
particularly interestingly, time.
One salutary warning that I have heard reinforced frequently
since first reading about the mechanics of online collaboration
in this book is that, as instructors move into the online
arena, they find that they need more time than they traditionally
spent preparing for, and handling, classroom delivery.
Also on this subject the authors deal boldly with one of
the really contentious issues at the heart of the collaborative
learning debate; that of whether *synchronous* or *asynchronous*
environments produce the best results. 'Our preference, based
on our experiences with online teaching, is for the asynchronous
environment,' they say, and for my own part, everything I
have seen and heard since has convinced me of the rightness
of this position.
Indeed, I have come to believe in a refined version of this
method, which I call 'restricted asynchronous collaboration'
- keep it asynchronous, but to a series of tight but agreed
deadlines. To sustain motivation, learners need clear goals,
and these need to be near-term time frames.
Collaborative learning is a burning issue in e-learning right
now. But as the technology for supporting virtual classrooms,
threaded discussions, bulletin boards, instant messaging and
SMS rolls out, have we really reflected on what works and
what doesn't work? Those who are tasked with building communities
online could do much worse than read this book, at least as
a starting point to consideration of such issues.
In closing, I'd like to commend the refreshingly 'real-world'
nature of the book that Palloff and Pratt have produced on
a subject which could all too easily have been made dry and
abstruse. Garlanded with insightful case studies, it contains
a multitude of references to the views of actual online students
and is rich with psychological insights gleaned from real
practice. Perhaps what is most heartening about the evidence
presented in this book is the sense of wonder and amazement
frequently expressed by those students at the depth and nature
of the interaction that can occur online.
Donald Clark, July 2002
Give your views on the subject: mailto:feedback@epic.co.uk
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C A S E S T U D Y
4. Case Study: Branch Manager
Client: The Royal Bank of Scotland
'This is probably the most successful example
so far of the application of e-learning to UK business,' said
Clive Shepherd, Director of the Institute for IT Training,
about The Royal Bank of Scotland's Branch Manager programme.
The programme was envisaged by the client as
a key element in their training and development programme
for new and existing branch managers - as well as an important
enabler in migrating existing customer service managers to
this new role within the company.
Branch managers are busy people, balancing the
demands of customers and staff as they strive to meet performance
targets. Epic's challenge in creating the 40 hours of new
learning content was to make it engaging, relevant and useful
to a target audience for whom training is rarely top of the
'to-do' list.
Discover how Epic fulfilled this brief, making
extensive use of practical examples, case studies and work-based
scenarios, with video clips and photographs rooted in the
users' day-to-day experience.
Read more
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E P I C N E W S
5. Taking it to the country
In recent months, Epic has made a series of
appointments designed to increase the effectiveness of its
service to clients in many different areas of the UK.
- Therese Coyne, based in Cambridge, will be bringing her
extensive experience of knowledge management and learning
management systems to bear in the Midlands and the North
of England
- Graham Flanagan comes to Epic from Xebec McGraw Hill and
covers the West of England and Wales
- Lorn Campbell, based in Edinburgh, covers Scotland. Read
more about Lorn…So there is now even less chance of escaping
the omnipresence of Epic!
Further Epic news stories this month…
Cambridge University
More
scope for a growing market (FT financial training survey)
Steve
Rayson joins Epic board
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F O R E T H O U G H T
The next Epic 'Think Tank' focuses on collaborative
learning.
The list of guests confirmed so far features
top-level decision-makers from both public and private sectors,
but we are still open to offers to attend from subscribers
who have a valuable contribution.
The Think Tank meets at a restaurant in central
London on the evening of 7 August. If you are vitally involved
in this area and would like to contribute to the debate, please
email mailto:thinktank@epic.co.uk. Attendance is free, but
numbers are strictly limited, so don't delay.
Alternatively, if you have any questions that
you would like to see this Think Tank address, or suggestions
for further sessions, mail
them now.
R E T U R N O F P O S T
If you have:
- a question to put to the Epic Thinking user base
- a response to any of the points raised here
- a suggestion for a topic you'd like to see covered mail
us right now at: newsletter@epic.co.uk
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H O U S E K E E P I N G
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