The previous item in this blog made me angry. It linked to an article featuring typically poor research leading to typically bad conclusions folded into a typically unrelated thesis. The article grew from a Forrester Research study showing that e-Learning is a failure so far.
Where do I start?
* E-learning is big. It covers everything from elementK self-guided courses on Using Windows Me, to University of Phoenix MBA programs, to corporate universities, to software certifications. What exactly did Forester Research study? I can’t answer this myself because I don’t have access to full-texts of Forrester’s research. Forrester does allow me to search abstracts, however, and the only seemingly relevant hit (out of 6 total) was to an August 2000 study titled “Online Training Needs a New Course”.
* Wired Magazine’s review of the study gives us some more data: Forrester interviewed training managers and knowledge officers at 40 Global 2,500 companies. 77% of the interviewees said they don’t track the number of workers who take advantage of online education. The training managers referred to the trouble they have getting employees to utilize “boring, text-heavy content.” Half of the companies only use online training to teach programming and application software skills.
* According to those numbers and facts, we’re not talking about e-Learning, we’re talking about corporate online training. The study also only applies to some of the largest companies in the world, and only a small subset of those. Out of the 40 companies in the survey, only 23% even knew who in the company was taking the courses. Programming and application training courses range from the marketing-driven tutorials which come with most software to mass-market CD courses to custom-developed training.
* This survey was reported 2 years ago, yet the author, Kaliym Islam, makes no mention of the time lag between the research and the writing of the article. One of the e-Learning experts the author quotes claims that the problem is that “the high-school curriculum that was developed in 1892 is now outdated.” High school? How did high school get into this discussion?
* Islam starts talking about “typical e-Learning modules” but gives no indication how the definition of a “typical” module was arrived at, although he is certain it is built “using pedagogical principles.” And then, he concludes that: “The use of these pedagogical instructional design principles is what has gotten the e-learning community to where we are today, a 30 percent completion rate, with no standard method of identifying if the training is actually making a positive impact on those who take it or if it is affecting the bottom line.” The “today” Islam is talking about is 2 years ago, the 30% figure is completely unsubstantiated, and assessing the value of any education is one of the biggest problems in educational research.
* Of course, there’s a solution to all our problems: Androgogical principles, defined as “spurious neo-Greek for adult learning.” Whatever that means.
* And then, the paragraph which negates every premise so far: “Note that e-learning courses are not currently classified as being pedagogical or androgogical in nature. Thus, it is difficult to produce analytical data showing the benefit of designing e-learning using androgogical as opposed to pedagogical principles.” So that “typical course” (from 2 years ago) could possibly be an androgogical course — we have no way of telling. But Islam has no intention of letting this interfere with his thesis.
The saddest part of all this garbage is that the discussion of androgogical principles in teaching was interesting and could be useful. But wrap it all in some sensationalist pseudo-academic hogwash — which wouldn’t have made it past a high-school debate team — and it can make headlines.
Oh, one last thing: the conclusion, under the subtitle “The Reality” shows that this author has no concept of the reality we in the e-Learning field deal with every day. After insulting us by claiming that we need “more savvy instructional designers and more proficient authors or programmers,” he says, “This, perhaps, is the reason that more e-learning courses are not designed using this methodology.”
So it is the fault of the practitioners. Not the fault of stingy corporate training budgets, unrealistic timeframes, cutthroat competition among design shops, a doddering economy, marketing groups which will promise the moon to get a signature on a contract, commercial LMSs which are not even out of the design stage when they’re installed in client sites, or LMSs which were purchased before the client had any idea whether it supported the kind of courseware they wanted. Nope. Its my fault.
I’d hang my head in shame if I thought this author had a clue.