Elearning - streaming knowledge?

Overview

The best way to learn is through one-to-one instruction in an environment where the student and teacher share the same motivation and recognise identical goals. In the real world, this is seldom possible and streamed e-learning is becoming the de facto standard for companies wanting to educate their staff and clients.

The rapid growth of the market has led internet analyst IDC to predict that e-learning will be a £8bn global industry within three years, driven by demand for the flexible, user-driven method of delivering tailored solutions known as an e-learning portal.

However, as with any innovation, there are pitfalls. The unseemly haste with which both public and private-sector bodies have invested in web-based courses can lead to expensive mistakes. This article reviews the case for e-learning and stresses the need for time to be spent establishing requirements.

Characteristics of e-learning

E-learning is an interactive combination of data sources, designed to convey a structured message. This message can be anything from a lecture on metaphysics to a course on customer relationship management. As the learner progresses through a course, new material is delivered via streaming technology in real time; thereby ensuring information is up-to-date.

The advantages of combining media in an e-learning portal are well documented:

• Better learning - studies by the entrepreneurial investment firm WR Hambrecht + Co show a 30% higher learning retention and up to 60% faster learning curve than other training methods.

• Interactivity - users can choose the information they receive.

• Convenient - any time, any place, any computer, the user just needs a web connection.

• Cost effective - no travel, no expenses and no downtime - a 50-70% saving is possible (Training Magazine).

• Consistent and scalable delivery.

In practice, the realisation of these advantages is often difficult. The Holborn-based Gresham College has been providing free public lectures for over 400 years and last year moved to make its resources freely available on the internet. The two-stage process began last year with the college putting in place a permanent webcasting studio that allows lectures to go out live. This year, the material from 20 lectures is being combined in e-learning portals that include slides, lecture transcripts, chapterisation and the facility to discuss the issues raised.

Gresham College e-learning portal

Gresham College has the freedom to offer information as a resource, but with this freedom comes problems. The interface must be intuitive and the audience must be able to receive the data.

An intuitive interface is required because accessibility is of prime concern. In order to maximise the potential audience, the complexity of the portal has to be minimised.

The target audience in this case is the general public and recent research by NetValue shows that only about 3% of UK homes have broadband connectivity. Europe-wide, the best figure is only 6%.

Consideration of bandwidth limitations is paramount, as Amy Prehn, an analyst at the Yankee Group explains: ‘Streaming media files are highly sensitive to quality degradation due to packet loss, latency and network congestion; and they effectively require a robust network infrastructure.’

General considerations

The Gresham College case study illustrates two of the most frequently neglected areas in the development of the e-learning experience:

• The underlying psychology of the learning experience

• The substantive delivery conditions for key elements, most notably streaming video.

Each individual within an organisation will have an individual learning style. For online learning, this is compounded by differing levels of computing skill. Since e-learning is essentially self-study, the goals and motivations of the project must accord with those of the learner. In many cases, support from a respected mentor is also needed to provide feedback and a sense of progress.

The delivery conditions must also be fully appraised and contended with. Despite the continued predictions of a broadband explosion, if the vast majority of the audience are on 56K modems, then the experience should be optimised at this level.

To solve Gresham’s delivery issues, an interface was developed according to three basic principles:

• That the critical audio track should be prioritised if connection problems start to squeeze transmission

• That redundancy must be in-built in the form of transcript and slide back-up to the audio stream

• That moving images should be crisp and clear, rather than large and woolly.

The final solution is an example of a general-purpose portal with features that suit the purpose.

By Duncan Burbidge, Stream UK Director.