eLearning Fundi

Due to the requests and responses I have received on the presentation I made during the ICEL 2008 conference in Cape Town, I have put it up here for everyone.

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Are you an academic in higher education? Are you from or working in any of the following countries (Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe)? If so, you are invited to participate on an eLearning adoption survey. Click here to participate.

Over the last few decades, there has been a worldwide surge in the use of information and communication technologies (or digital technologies). There have been reported mixed results of the ‘digital revolution’ to the different angles and spheres of our daily life including education. However, there is a perceived lack in terms of both research and success stories in African higher education institutions with regard to the adoption of digital technologies in teaching and learning despite their promise and potential. There is therefore need to study and document the contributing factors, and at the same time develop frameworks and/or guidelines for successful use of digital technologies in teaching and learning, popularly known as eLearning.

You have been kindly requested to participate in a research on the adoption and use of eLearning/Learning technologies in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in selected countries in Africa. The questionnaire seeks to gather information about the perceptions, motivation, organisational and environmental factors affecting the use of eLearning with the aim of understanding the kind of interventions required for faster adoption and continued use of eLearning. The results of a statistical analysis of the data will be used to make specific recommendations on the areas of personal characteristics and attitudes, organisational realignments, technology policy, implementation, and operations for HEIs for successful adoption of eLearning

It will take you approximately 20 minutes to fill in this questionnaire. For internal validity of the questionnaire, some items may appear as if they are repeated. To fill in the questionnaire, copy and paste the following URL onto your browser: http://www.elearningfundi.net/survey/index.php?sid=37667 OR http://tinyurl.com/64lmob

We have the main players in eLearning as the researchers in online learning best practices, the technology providers, the learning material experts (in my case the lecturers), and then the recipients(learners, students).
The researchers will come with all the best practices (some tried and tested others just too theoretical or imaginative). The technology providers will come with “the best tool in the market that would do just everything you would want to do in eLearning”. The lecturers will be the source of knowledge to be transfered to the learners, and in most cases would not care how it reaches their learners as long as it is convenient for them(lecturers). There is the learner, who needs to acquire the knowledge using the most convenient means available.
While the researchers come with the ‘dos and don’ts’, hoping that the technology provider will incorporate them in the technology, the technology provider provides a product that in most cases does not reflect the dos and donts, which leaves the bulk of the work to the lecturer. The lecturer has to juggle with the technology, the research and the students’ interest. The technology provider would market the technology as “cutting edge” and will not always have the lecturer’s and students interests at heart. They all all in the game for different reasons. On the other hand, the target audience, the students, would want to have the best and like any other consumers, they would want to demand how, when, and in what state their materials is presented. This tends to insert more pressure on some of the players. Hence the question, whose voice should be heard?
For now, I would argue that the technology providers voice is the king, and we have technology as the main drivers of our eLearning initiatives. There is a gradual move towards the target audience voice but still it has a lot of influence on the technology providers and how they market their products.

I remember sometimes listening to a radio interview, a person who had quit a high paying job to start his own business. In the interview, he said he wanted to find out if he is was locomotive or a couch. The idea being, if he is a locomotive, he will just look for coaches to attach to his business idea and off it goes. If however, he was a coach, he was just to halt. For sometimes, I have been thinking of the coach and locomotive idiom presented here as used in the adoption of elearning. But in my case is a situation where some coaches of a fast moving locomotive got detached along the way but due to Newton’s Law of Inertia (simply: An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force) they are moving as though they are still attached. The locomotive captain on the other hand is too concerned about the speed (of getting there) and testing the limits of the new machine in total disregard of the signals that are being displayed showing that some of the coaches might be left or roll back.

It is reality though that a well powered locomotive can pull several coaches. This is the story of the champions or leaders in the whole adoption and diffusion of innovations process. In all the cases considered this are people who are willing to test the “limits of the new machines” and also move fast. They are people, who are willing to bear some risk to determine if they are locomotives or coaches. These risk takers, because of their tendancies, they entice a good following (coaches). Most of these followers do not live a life of transformation into locomotives, and due to the speed of their engine, the risk being left behind.

Can you find an association with the locomotive and the coaches in your environment?