E-learning thoughts and direction

"Education has to face the fact that the world has changed, searching is part of our lives, we go to Google, and that is the world we have to prepare our students for," said Professor Paul Leng, head of the e-learning department of computer science at the University of Liverpool.

Last week IWR was invited into a round table discussion on the future of e-learning.  As ever with these discussions, you need to go away and think about what you've just heard before you can make any judgements.  A wide range of areas were covered including digital rights management, copyright and the failings of the current New Labour government (as you can imagine the latter could have gone on all day).

But the core discussions about information, search and learning were by far the most interesting. Professor Leng's comments ring true, but at what cost, do we leave publishing and books on the shelves to waste away?

That's another discussion, but this scribe left the forum feeling that we have hardly touched the tip of the e-learning iceberg yet.  So far the number of highly successful implementations are few. "People come to e-learning for the wrong reasons, they are driven by the technology," said Russell Beale, a research lecturer from the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. Leng agreed, adding that IT does dumb down students, but in doing so the technology is replacing skills that are no longer needed. This is surely the ultimate thumbs up for search, humans are de-skilling because search works.

Search may find information, but it doesn't produce it, and we came away from the session realising that for publishers, online information providers and information professionals the role is changing, but no less important. The role has to change, because the way that students, who then become workers, find information has changed, as Suw Charman, executive director of the Open Rights Group explained. "You used used to go to the library and you quoted from the books there. Uni lecturers knew where the information you used came from. The books in the library were bought by the university, ergo they were a reliable data source."  That entire model is now almost entirely defunct.

But the term "reliable data source" will never go away, students and lecturers will always need these, and its for information professionals and providers to look at e-learning and student behaviour to ensure their future.