Institutional/organisational
changes as a result of ICT and e-learning implementation
Main institutional changes resulted from the introduction
of ICT and ODL into existing structures
Universities
are undergoing fundamental changes, as sources of knowledge; they
are tasked with mass education programmes in their undergraduate
programmes. In addition to this, they are under considerable pressure
to create vocational streams. Knowledge in itself is not enough,
education must lead to employment and the mission to ensure vocational
education includes the responsibility for maintaining it and for
developing it within a framework of continuous learning. In
such a context, information and communication technology (ICT)
appears today as one of the most appropriate tools. It affords
the possibility of allowing everyone to learn, when he or she
wishes it, whether as part of initial or subsequent learning.
Networked
and computer-based learning cause an
increase in costs for the organisation: costs to develop and
deliver online courses, the cost for the technical infrastructure
(e.g. connectivity, network access, etc.). There are several barriers
related to copyright issues which raise questions for organisations.
For instance, ample time is needed to apply for permission from
government entities to create new programs and market the programs
successfully.
A successful reorganising process moves the use of
ICT as being primarily up to the individual teacher to being a
part of the responsibility of schools. E-learning is used to establish
research partnerships as agents of change where professional
researchers and researching practitioners co-operate purposefully
on formulated development targets. In research partnerships, on
regional as well as trans-national level, different actors in
the educational system co-operate purposefully on formulated development
targets. Teachers and school administrations have immediate access
to up-to-date know-how and are engaged in the development process
of their specific school.
The
role of Staff training
Characteristically, teacher training
is assumed to be part of the innovations. Any strategic ICT implementation plan needs to consider teacher training. The view
that the teachers' role changes considerably with the introduction
of e-learning based training courses and this change requires
tailor-made teacher training in ICT in general and tailor-made
teacher training courses in particular is apparent. Teacher training
is recognized of utmost importance:
a)
for developing multimedia materials:
New ways of working therefore should be devised which put an emphasis
on the exchange of knowledge and skills between different specialists
in support of the new pedagogical project. It will almost certainly
take a few years before this changed paradigm can be really put
in place
b) for integration of new methodologies:
Institutions should re-think their recruitment systems, the on-going
training of both academic and administrative staff, but above
all their promotion criteria
Teachers and tutors need training on LMS.
There is no general strategy for online teaching and the uniformness
of e-learning platforms suggests that a given toolset is sufficient
for the implementation of any course. There are crucial issues
for the successful use of online courses in teacher training which
include: a) learning and working in groups; b) rich student activities;
c) guidance by tutors and teachers; d) integration of face to
face seminars; e) and classroom and field work examples and tasks.
Online education cannot avoid the need for integration of real
contact and field work from local and regional settings.
Besides, before the introduction of projects in the classrooms,
it is wise to train the teachers, either online or face-to-face,
in order to serve as a reference guide for the implementation
phase.
Universities should re-think their recruitment systems,
the on-going training of both academic and administrative staff,
and consequently, their promotion criteria.
Main actors, adopters and resisters to the adoption
of the innovation as identified in the project
Managers, teachers, students and researchers
are the key actors in innovations.
Active participation by the students is a clear indication that students
in principle tend to become adopters of such innovations. Examples
of teaching each other and their teachers how to work on
the Web and often working on the projects on their spare
time, are signals of adoption of ICT
innovations. Students show also resistances specially when they lack computer literacy and technical skills
on using the online environments.
Teachers range from potential adopters to potential
resisters to innovations. Resistance of actors appears for many reasons: many instructors do not like to learn
how to use a new electronic learning environment; they
are sceptical about the potentials of ICT for teaching. Lack of
technical background, lack of basic computer literacy of the instructors,
and lack of technical support are obstacles in introducing ICT
in education. The new roles of teachers (from transmission of
knowledge to teach how to learn) cause also resistances. Changing
what they think as appropriate pedagogy for the learners themselves
and their subject area may be difficult. This can be even harder
when teachers act in isolation from one another and are not exposed
to innovative models of learning.
Many experiences mention that resistance arise when these are not part of the regular courses.
This is part of any innovative implementation.
Other pressure groups identified as playing
a potentially important role in the adoption or rejection of an
innovation in schools are parents, school administrators, pedagogues,
enterprises and political authorities. In the school sector,
parents tend to exert minimal pressure to schools. How their demands
are taken into consideration depends on local conditions and how
good a relationship parents have with teachers in the school.
Pressure from administration and political authorities over schools
to integrate ICT into school teaching appears to be universal,
systematic, and strong but there is not clear indication if this
pressure includes e-learning related innovations.
Non-economic lobbies do not always share positions.
Some are against the computerisation of schools and the tendency
for commercialising education that they believe goes along with
it. Conversely, enterprises can be active promoters of ICT adoption
in schools and innovations related to their interests.
It will be necessary therefore to define what some
people call a new
educational contract between the different partners establishing
the rights and responsibilities of each one.
Organisational
conditions that are (un)supportive to
innovation
Furthermore, an organisational culture
that is characterised by teacher collegiality and formal or
informal collaborative work, both supports and facilitates
the development of the organisation's members.
Flexible time-tables, flexible allocation
of staff tasks and roles, supportive administration and incentives,
are also organisational conditions that support ICT-based innovations
In the case of higher education
institutions, key aspects to taking into account in order to implement
successfully e-learning and/or virtual campuses:
- Access to local facilities. In a distributed environment it is a challenge for the university
to making library resources available for distant learners and
giving access to e-libraries is an important issue.
- Timing: Co-ordination and planning problems may emerge because
of learners and teachers working in different time zones.
-
Registration: Institutions offering
programmes across countries should take care of some administrative
problems.
- Payment: Registering for a course
usually implies payment.
- Security: When all contact and communication
between universities, teachers, and students is happening through
the web, security becomes an important issue.
- Infrastructure/access: students
can be frustrated by the computer and network facilities available to them or
by features in the electronic tools they are being asked to use.
- Financial
aspects Networked and computer-based learning cause an increase
in costs for the organisation--costs to develop and deliver online
courses, and the cost for the technical infrastructure.
- Accreditation/credit transfer: courses attended at another university
or offered by a consortium on line may not be accredited in the
student's home university.
- Copyright – intellectual property: The creative effort of the academic staff should be protected from
copying, use and sale elsewhere, keeping the different national
legislations in mind.
- Competition: Universities face a
significant and growing competition from other and new types of
e-learning providers.
- Networking: Gives opportunities to universities
to collaborate not only on the design and development of courses
but also on the delivery of courses, and on Internet or web based
education materials and curricula.
When evaluating and implementing virtual campuses, the
elaboration of a “map of competencies” that identify
and analyse all the competencies required by an institution in
order to define, implement, manage, and evaluate a virtual campus
from the educational, technological, organisational and economic
standpoints. It has been proposed three types of indicators: structural,
practice and performance indicators. The aim was to develop
a set of meta-indicators to mirror all particularities of virtual
learning organisations that need to be characterised. These are:
a) Learner Services; b)
Learning Delivery; c) Learning Development; d) Teaching Capability;
e) Evaluation; f) Accessibility; g) Technical Capability; h) Institutional
Capability
Within the adult education and school sector
implementing and servicing electronic learning management systems
is extremely difficult and often cannot be sustained within existing
organisations. A very important point has emerged that is related
to the need for experimentation and testing and which does have
organisational implications. Current e-learning systems and platforms
show a wide variety of systems based on different paradigms and
emerging standards: most systems have a very specific focus and
feature set. The ideal situation would be to develop the whole
content and the course structure, devise all tasks for individual
students and groups with the appropriate evaluation procedure
and then survey and select existing systems and choose the appropriate
platform.
Cost
effectiveness
Cost effectiveness in e-learning can
be achieved through joint working and sharing of infrastructure
and by entering into contractual arrangements with commercial
and other entities. Within the university and higher technical
sector analytical frameworks for cost analysis exist and this
is particularly so with the further development of the joint information
infrastructures that most European universities operate collaboratively.
This area is opaque for other sectors.
For
some, online learning can be at least as cost-effective as
face-to-face teaching. Moreover, the development of virtual
delivery models will most likely result in a higher degree of
cost-effectiveness and a cost reduction. Costs can be reduced
through standardisation, resource sharing, economies of scale,
increased productivity, and by purchasing hardware and software
jointly. Additionally, travel costs can be lowered.
One of the key elements put forward for not investing in new educational approaches
concerns the costs. That’s why an accurate analysis of costs
is necessary. The proposed direct costs to analyse
in online learning would be:
-
Cost of materials (servers, PCs, peripherals etc)
-
Cost of software Costs of network infrastructure
-
Costs of communications Cost of maintenance and updating
-
Staffing costs (technical staff managing infrastructure and cost of those responsible
for the development of projects)
-
Cost of tutoring
-
Cost of technical assistance
-
Staff training costs
-
Costs of consumables (cables, diskettes etc)
Other indirect costs to be taken into account are time spent by academics learning the educational
technologies.
Flexibility
Flexibility is a key concept
in e-learning. Flexibility can be understood in many ways:
-
Flexibility of the tools selected: Institutions will customize Web portals to suit them and
furthermore, it will be very quickly alterable to suit differing
sets of circumstances.
-
Students access: to improve quality of service to their existing students and
increase flexibility of access in order to build new markets for
their course offerings.
-
Curriculum: One major challenge which teaching institutions
will face during the coming decade, most especially in higher
education, will be the transition from traditional institutions
with fixed courses and relatively stable programmes towards organisations
where flexibility will be the central element.
-
University structure: In the development of new operational model, it
has striven to cater to a much wider range of students, and also
to implement a much more flexible access provision for these students.
-
Course management: Online teaching increases the teachers’ flexibility
with regard to time and place. Teachers appreciate this, but on the other
hand they realize that online workload is higher.
Accessibility
Access, and more specifically online access is
understood also in many different ways:
-
Access to online learning services
-
Access to a vast amount of knowledge, instead than access trough the teachers
-
Access of tools as freely available software
-
Access to training products and materials
-
Access to information to everybody
Distributed
learning can meet the needs of people at a disadvantage (geographical
reasons, un-regular working hours, social reasons, special needs,
etc). |