Institutionalising e-Learning

In recent years, e-learning has been use to change how education is being delivered not only for the functions as a academics but to support administration and communication functions.

To build a well-produced e-learning project, a strategy needs to be well produced. It is important to take a good look at the policies, infrastructure and resources needed for the e-learning requirements. According to Clark (2002), an e-learning strategy is important because it builds the process that will lead to the decisions taken to build an e-learning environment. Also, De Vries (2005), says that the e-learning strategy will give an outline of the what, why and how on the technology chosen as a new way to deliver the teaching.

It is important that both the teachers and students are given the opportunity to be taught on how to use the system. This means that the technology used should not require the users to require an advanced level of skills so that it can be accessible and manageable. The system should not be developed to accommodate only commercial software but also open source software.

An important part is to produce manual that help during the training and online activities and simulations. They are needed as the users would require a tool to help them understand the applications available in the e-learning system.

When building an e-learning it is important to search for the right multimedia that will help the teaching and learning approach. It is important to recognize that not every user will have an ADSL internet meaning having a slow download time if the multimedia files are large. E-learning can therefore be combined with CD as resources.

E-learning is then integrated with the human resources process such as training, evaluating the teachers’ performance and tries to motivate them to teach in a different way. This can be achieved by giving the teachers’ an evaluation form after each training session. When there is new staff, they should introduce to the e-learning resources.

This showed just an over view of how schools or organizations can implement from the ordinary school teaching to the e-learning approach.

Ref: http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=419&layout=html

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources are prospective tools to remove barriers such as distance and financial issues. OER became very popular in short time with teachers and learners although they test the present teaching and learning practices.

OER where created to provide knowledge that be shared for free through the Internet which anyone is can take advantage from excluding any barriers on the use. Initiatives giving steps of how open sources and learning objectives should be created have been presented.

· www.opensource.org (dedicated to software source code)

· www.opencontent.org (dedicated to content of information)

· www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/openaccess (three milestones to create an open access movement for school work)

OER are made up of three parts:

The Learning Content should include full courses with adequate notes, activity worksheets, homework and test divided into modules to help the learners, and journals that complement the course.

The Tools needed are to develop, use and reuse the content which can be searched and organized and providing learning communities where the learners can communicate.

The Implementation of Resources should happen through Intellectual Property licenses which can sponsor the open material.

As a conclusion, I would like to quote the Cape Town Open Education Declaration which describes open education as

“Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge…”

Ref: http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/0/0b/OER_Briefing_Paper.pdf