CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Terry Anderson -
Number of replies: 19
John Biss has managed to get the release of a new and very relevant report today, in conjunction with his talk to our conference. The Report is available here:

International e-learning strategies:
Key findings relevant to the Canadian context

From the Abstract:
"This report concludes that, while Canada has played a leadership role and gained international recognition for several initiatives and achievements in e-learning over the last decade (infrastructure deployment, learning methodology, tools and practices; work on accessibility; research on learning object and repositories, etc.), it is starting to trail behind in these very important sectors. An e-learning strategy is urgently needed, together with a coordinating body which would respect the provinces’ competencies in education while mobilizing federal government agencies and other stakeholders towards clear, scalable, sustainable plans to support the new skills development agenda for the knowledge society and economy."

Please use this thread to discuss any surprising or affirming observations from the report.

In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by David Porter -
The report is marked 2006 - hardly new. For me it is very much a usual suspects approach with expected results.

I guess I don't quite believe the sky is falling -> (Canada) "...is starting to trail behind..."

In a federated nation such as Canada, good stuff happens despite overall eye-balling by centralized agencies or coordinating bodies. Maybe we're actually ahead of the curve in socially enabling linkages between people and organizations doing good work in an e-context. The centralized eyeballers either don't know where to look and are stuck in organizational mindsets that are oblivious to ad hoc collaborations and synthetic approaches to knowledge assembly.

The abstract cited in the initial post calls for a kind of revealed religion to counter ambiguity, instead of accepting a need for new ways of thinking and linking that might actually be where Canada needs to be (or is).

d.
In reply to David Porter

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Rory McGreal -
Thanks, David,
I think a few others have chimed in questioning any centralism. My view is that good stuff is happening across Canada. Unfortunately it is not getting out. I am writing an article with Terry on elearning in Canada and I would be grateful to you and to any others if they would point me to some of the great elearning things that are happening in Canada now. I would point to our English Second Language on Mobile Devices project http://eslau.ca

I am also very grateful to the contribution of Jason Barr pointing us to the interesting research and development being done in Canada's military. That is impressive.
Any other projects or networks etc. that anyone can point to???

All the best.
Rory McGreal
In reply to David Porter

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Terry Anderson -
I just reviewed Gilbert Paquette's slides scheduled for delivery Thursday morning and I think you will find his argument for our "behindedness"" and his proposed solutions at least interesting if not convincing.

No one is arguing that there is no innovation or research taking place in Canada e-learning, but we should be able to benchmark our accomplishments, inputs and outputs against other nations. The CCL report argues pretty strongly that we are doing well - either from a central or de-centralized perspective.

Canadians do excel at blogging- our cohort of edubloggers have world wide reputations, but maybe that is because it is easier (and cheaper) to talk about research, than to do it.

Stephen made the point on the Elluminate session that it is sometimes easier (and more cost effective) to just do something, rather than 'research' it. I guess I see good development doing both.Research without implementation seems to be so long sited as to rarely be effective and useful. Implementation without research seems so short sited as to rarely illuminate today's path let alone tomorrow's.

In any case, I would like to see Canadians leading and learning at least on par with other comparable nations. I believe we are falling behind, but that does not mean I support a centralized, top down, soviet style development plan.

Terry



In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by David Porter -
Terry, please say more about falling behind.

Where, and at what specifically?

Maybe we could address some of these issues with directed efforts.
In reply to David Porter

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Terry Anderson -
So many posts that deserve response- luckily many besides the organizers are helping to do so! Thanks.

David asks to be specific about where Canada is falling behind. It helps to be able to afford a bit of international travel to see countries that are much more involved in e-learning research and those that have less. Despite Paul B.'s comments about the UK funding generally winding down, judging by past experience, new programs will be funded.

But here is an example related to e-portfolio.

I am NOT saying that no one in Canada is using e-portfolios to enhance and document e-learning, but if you do a Google search on e-portfolio and Canada - you get 51,000 hits. The most popular coming from 2004 with the eportfolio Canada conference led by the indominable Kathryn Barker. After that nothing ...

Do the same with e-portfolio and UK and you get 459,000 hits, many of them from conferences, papers etc from e-portfolio sites, a Centre of Excellence and numerous other studies. Note that the UK has less than twice the population of Canada but nearly 10 times the number of e-portfolio hits.

I know Google searching is hardly definitive research technique - but certainly easy to do. Actually quite Canada, in that it is free and so researchers can afford it !!!

Meanwhile Kathryn Barker has emigrated to the United Emerites and though I shouldn't speak for her, I do know she tried and failed to create a research and development business in Canada and that she applied for at least two funding opportunities that I know about and failed - in large part I think due to the LARGE number of requests, couple with limited funding available from the funders.

So I give Dave a single example. I'm sure one could tell a similar story about mobile learning, work in immersive environments and other leading high tech areas of e-learning. But I suspect even research on the less techie compoenents of e-learning is suffering.

Can anyone give a counter example of where Canadian e-learning research is leading the world?

I think that Gilbert Paqueete will also address this issue at this morning's elluminate session.
Terry

In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by David Porter -
That's a very good example of where once Canada had a thought leadership position, Terry. However, it was not a monopoly. Europeans have been big in portfolio discussions, too, as have others.

I'd counter that portfolio's roots were not in e-learning specifically but in human development, recognition of prior learning, academic and workforce development. The "e" part of e-portfolio was and is a bolt-on. The real leadership and innovation came from the enabling part of the model and the values it encompassed. That's where the nuggets of value lived, in the disruptive theory that engaged people.

The work that Dave Tosh (a Canadian working at the University of Edinburgh) has done with Elgg took e-portfolio to the next level in a social networking kind of way and he shared the tools openly. That his leadership was not part of some laid on national plan was purely in keeping with the times and the ethic of open source developers - see a problem, solve it, share it. The work has been adopted by lots of instructors and institutions.

I'm also not sure we always have to lead on all fronts all the time to provide value to our citizens. I think adopt, adapt, and re-engineer are equally valid mantras --> or, research, review, remix.

I know that perceived leadership has a big effect on the the academic psyche and fuels national pride, but I think it's just as valid to "quietly lead" through the implementation of tools and practices that broaden the reach of instructors and their students.

Flickr is an example of a stellar Canadian technology. Moodle an example of a widely used Australian technology. There are other useful tools we can cite have been researched and built on various national turf and then were used in educational contexts, completely separate from the driver of a national leadership strategy for e-learning.

That said, if we are to lead it would also be in areas of the less-techie type that you note, and that were recently reinforced for me in this slide deck from a February 2008 European Commission presentation.

After E-Learning: ICT Policy Perspectives


I'm also a firm believer that good ideas attract money, either funding or research grants, despite any other hand-wringing factors. Maybe there's a Canadian lesson to be learned here, too.

Maybe the funders are not buying what we're selling.


In reply to David Porter

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by David Porter -
From the side deck noted above, Slide 4 contains a very straightforward set of principles that have been echoed in other discussions and one other presentation in this forum.

A qualitative change: the revised Lisbon Agenda

A new policy approach to education and training:
• As a core policy for innovation
• As an essential instrument for social inclusion
• As a driver of economic and social development

A new policy approach to ICT for education and training:
• From infrastructure and equipment to adoption and use
• From a skills gap to an innovation potential
• From tests and pilots to generalisation and integration
• From technological issues to pedagogical impact
• For more efficiency and equity in education and training systems

Not a bad set of principles that could help inform our work, without having to claim ownership of the ideas.
In reply to David Porter

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by George Siemens -
Hi David - great points. We can achieve important things outside of the umbrella of "government funding".

The fact that we are having this conference informally, rather than organized by gov't agencies, is a testament to the value of distributed and informal approaches in addressing potentially complex problems.

Most of us equate policies with funding. When a particular type of research doesn't get funded repeatedly, policy gets scrutinized. Ultimately, from an academic sense, what we are saying is "show me the money"...no, wait, what we are saying is "give me the money". For researchers, this is an important consideration because funded research is a critical activity (for personal and institutional reputation).

Perhaps one key outcome of our discussions here will be a Pan-Canadian agenda that is held/informed/guided by a group of practitioners outside of direct gov't funding. While this will likely not advance anyone's academic career, it may well be great for learning technology research and for national collaboration with interested groups and researchers.
In reply to George Siemens

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by David Porter -
I take your point George and appreciate its relevance to the formal academic community. The quest for funding is strong and carries with it implications for personal and institutional reputation, undeniably.

However, having been a part of large-scale project (eduSource Canada), which had a pan-Canadian mantra as its funding attractor, the danger for me is in talking "pan" without really doing "pan." In reality the eduSource funding got distributed regionally and despite efforts to synthesize activities in a pan-Canadian manner, it didn't really happen. So, I'm all for "pan" efforts that actually pan out.

In an effort to stimulate applied research in our own backyard, our organization has just made available a series of small $10K applied research grants for faculty and instructors. We have taken some steps to insure that we get a systemic effect from this applied research as noted on the grant offering:

Applied research dissemination grants

Our most recent grant to support Capilano College's OCW repository became national news and did more to stimulate good open educational resource chatter than just about anything else we've seen at a much larger scale.

We're betting that a series of $10k grants and wide dissemination of results model will actually bootstrap more of this type of activity at an institutional level as well.

d.

In reply to David Porter

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Terry Anderson -
Thanks for your descriptions David. I agree on two points. Our track record with 'pan' projects in e-learning has not been great. I think there is a sense in Ottawa (and amongst survivors) that social scientists are not very good at large scale project management. We haven't had the opportunities nor developed the skill on large scale projects like managing telescopes, distributed gnome, cyclotrons etc. Which is why I think we need a wide variety of distributed projects that can use modern distributed tools to aggregate and synthesize -without a huge bureaucratic overhead.

Secondly BCCampus (from which your examples are drawn) is one of the very few provincial system wide development efforts still alive (maybe add Sask Tel project). Most of the other provinces do not have a source for even $10,000 grass root research projects. Unfortunately most people across Canada including both policy types and researchers probably no next to nothing about BCCampus successes and lesson learned. We don't have a "pan" knowledge network allowing us to coordinate work with each other.

Stephen says he doesn't want to be coordinated, but it depends what we mean and the extend of the coordination. I know Stephen doesn't drive, but even on his bike, I am glad to know that he 'coordinates' his pedaling with others in that he rides on the right side of the road. We all need some type of coordination, but the optimal degree varies by personality, task, content (institutional, individual), technology etc.
Terry
In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by David Porter -
No disagreements, Terry. Thanks for your comments and further stimulation.

So, going with the flow ...

I think there are a number of excellent project efforts being undertaken across Canada, both of a pure and applied research nature. The most direct-action form of dissemination would be to begin to map and tag those efforts in ways that would allow them to reported or found in a series of meaningful aggregations. For me the creation of a pan-Canadian research effort may need to take a more bottom-up direction and be intentional in its bias towards this approach.

Too many times I've seen failed efforts to create a "centre of excellence" or a pan-Canadian initiative engineered from top-down approaches that actively repel the likes of Stephen and others (me, included). I'd classify some of the national approaches beginning with "C" mentioned already in this forum as emplars of this ilk. The fabled CMEC repository project is an example.

Really, shouldn't you be doing something excellent before you presume to create a centre for it? I guess I've seen plenty of examples of the reverse assumption with the resulting electro-pablum being disseminated to the masses.

I think it's healthy to disclose our biases for how a pan-Canadian effort might unfold. From such a disclosure I believe a nice set of shapes, affinities and aggregations may emerge.

d.

In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Stephen Downes -
I'd be a lot more impressed if it wasn't dated 'July 2006'.


In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Glen Gatin -
The "A Review of E--learning in Canada: A Rough Sketch of the Evidence, Gaps and Promising Directions" linked on the CCL site was interesting. It looks like they started in the right direction. The methodology and the Argument Catalog Codebook seem to have potential.
In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by minhaaj ur rehman -
This report has been a fantastic overview of canadian accomplishments in e-learning field. New initiatives have been taken and serious efforts are being made in this field. Next logical step is methodical and systematically designed elaborate e-learning strategy that would help government and academics alike in their efforts of promoting distance learning. This is inevitable and a broad debate is urgently required on this topic.

I think this should be the guideline for all other countries as to how to implement and design e-learning strategies.
In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Eugene Kowch -

This report is a good selective complilation of what other countries have been doing both to plan and operationalise e-learning. I see more evidence of lots of planning (thinking) around the operation and governance. Indeed, the report reflects the emergence of entirely new industries that have grown around e-learning. I worry about planning industries, for I study them too. I focus my response here on the suggested rather old-world organization structure that would severely constrain actual e-initiative planning and the critical subsequent operationalising of e-learning leveraging knowledge unique to Canada, though, as an organization:

This chapter draws on lessons learned from countries surveyed and on the organization scheme suggested in CCL's preliminary strategy framework, to go a step further and propose a more elaborated organizational structure for implementing an e-learning strategy in the Canadian context (CCL Report, 2006, p. 79).

I am thunderstruck by the classic organziation and governance structure proposed (page 80) that would no doubt affect strategic planning for e-learning in our great country. This heavy regionalization and public choice (policy) thinking along with classical structural (shared power) functionalism that will be extremely difficult to negotiate, if not impossible to realize efficiently. It works for policy if true community and strong interdependent networks exist .. but my work shows me that is easy to say, much tougher to do and as Garrison/Anderson point out such sustainable relation-building takes time and new kinds of work. Such an organization model, as presented reflects some regional political structures but I suggest that for a sustainable e-learning project in Canada, this model nees work. It would however sustain a continued lucrative e-learning industry in some sectors.

I am a bit troubled and yet encouraged in some ways to see almost no capacity developoment and sustainence design elements (deep, impactful intel - research initiatives, inter and intra-agency knowledge sharing) offered in the proposal that would tap our best minds as we think ahead over the long term. All plans must change in our complex world, and creating more complicated structures to address such complexity is just a bad and unproductive jest. We've got to go beyond our classic disciplines (governance, admin, technology, design, e-learning, social service, industry, k-12 etc..) if we are to a uniquely cross-country organization to realize short and long term planning, we need to think more about the relational elements, core issues and strengths (and weaknesses) in our e-learning systems. We need to think well beyond tools and infrastructure to involve all the sector needs, and coalesce our thoughts on strategy before implementiong or operationalizing (including funding) such work. Such is the nature of contemporary complexity informed (but not complicated) planning that precedes any form of futuristic structuration. I've studied this for years wondering when research would inform such lead thinking and this seems interesting. We need to think way beyond near term horizons before we start funding structures like this (see figure attached).

As the kind of guy who would love to see this happen in my working lifetime,  I would revisit the actual planning process ahead of suggesting or binding that thought by considering both near and long term planning well ahead of this kind of suggestion about structuration and governance - ahead of setting structures to guide that critical work for e-learning. I'd also like to see the intelligence and experience of Canadians uniquely leveraged in such work that will no doubt have to integreate with a much larger arena. Overall, this is a fascinating report filled with great grounds for comparative analyses of what has been happening elsewhere. Systemic change will mean different kinds of policy and leadership/governance thinking, however to create capable, action-driven e-learning in this country.  

We can't just meld organizational elements and call them 'communities' or 'networks' - they have to .. 'work' eventually :-). We can design new systems that are unique to Canada. We clearly must for e-learning. This must be thinking that is informed less by old power/structural thought and more by relational, issues-based interdepent networks that cut across sectors, institutions, regional politics to serve future Learners!  Sorry for the hasty/long post but this really has me thinking. I agree with Biss.. we have to reflect on the past and chart past experiences across the globe, true.. but we must also include our unique Canadian e-learning intel and governance/policy perspectives with our technology savvy as well, while we plan...

Figure: Strategic and Operational Planning for Education Technology. Source: Kowch, E. (2005).  Do we plan the journey or read the compase? An argument for preparing educational technologists to lead organisational change. British Journal of Education Technology, 36 (60, 1067-1071.

Planning process kowch_norris

In reply to Eugene Kowch

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Deirdre Bonnycastle -

Hi Eugene, nice to see your smiling face.

Very important points! We had provincial funding to initiate our distance education strategies at both the K-12 and post-secondary level and a central location to advertise provincially http://www.campussaskatchewan.ca/, but very little thought was put into a provincial research strategy. After a quick perusal of the site, I don't see any evidence of that now (5 years later). Most of the research I've seen that was produced in Saskatchewan was the result of individual initiatives and dissemination, therefore, depends on that individual's connections.

How many administrators does it take to change a lightbulb? Change!!!

In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies

by Nalin Abeysekera -

I Like the word of “competency” because once we are taking about KSF(Key Successive Factors) in the organizations .e-learning can be considered as one of the KSF.In management we are taking about the competition.To get edge over your competitors you have to have competencies or KSFs .There is a need to  take e-learning into the private sector. If your firm can incorporate e-learning and it is a learning organization in the private sector then you can get Strategic Advantage or you can open strategic window than your competitors.

In reply to Terry Anderson

Re: CCL Report on International E-Learning Strategies - some UK divergences

by Paul Bacsich -

Hi all

(I apologise for intervening so late but I was on holiday last week and this week I have been in incessant meetings and travelling between them with inadequate access to internet. And it will continue next week too. So my interventions will be brief and sketchy.)

I think one has to take care when interpreting international reports as it is very easy to get the wrong view of a country. It is particularly hard when there may not be much agreement even within the country as to what is going on and why. So I read with interest (even if quickly) the international report as it related to the UK. I have to say that I found many points I would disagree with even at a general level. Some may have been due to the age of the report (as others have noted) as much has changed in the last two years, but others not.

  1. UK is no longer (nor has been for some time) a country with a monolithic approach to education across the four home nations - England, Scotland and Wales are all now different in their emphasis on and approach to e-learning, some considerably so (N Ireland is small and a special case due to history and politics). The writ of DfEE (now replaced by DCSF and DIUS) runs to England only and not beyond that in any meaningful sense. Likewise Becta.
  2. There is far more to e-learning development and operational activity than DfEE, JISC and Becta - even in England. DfEE and its successor bodies do little now directly at an operational level. In the last three years the Higher Education Academy has been very active in fostering the more pedagogically oriented aspects of e-learning through the Benchmarking and Pathfinder projects involving over 50 universities - and there are also more specialised but vital agencies such as the Leadership Foundation with their Change Academy (joint with HEA).
  3. Despite having four nations with separate approaches, there are agencies especially JISC and HEA that do do coordination between the home nations, to an extent. This is tricky for them - but perhaps a clearer understanding of how this works in UK would help Canadians to get the right balance between central and provincial activity.
  4. UK in fact now does relatively little fostering of e-learning research. There is an active Technology Enhanced Learning research programme run by ESRC wth support from EPSRC but this has a small budget and currently has completed its second and last round of funding allocations. At present for various reasons (and with some notable exceptions) the UK is not well represented in European Framework projects in e-learning and the main e-learning strand in FP7 is in fact only a half-strand (and the smaller one) of the "Digital Libraries and e-Learning" strand.
  5. Analytic work we are carrying out under the Re.ViCa programme (http://www.europace.org/rdrevica.php - funded under the EU Lifelong Learning Programme) across Europe suggests that there are only a few Major E-Learning Initiatives (MELIs) based in UK HE institutions. (See also the MegaTrends report.) Going beyond the obvious cases - the Open University, University for Industry and the University of London External Programme - one probably comes down to a list of well under a dozen universities across the UK with significant "throw weight" in operational e-learning - where by "significant" we mean they could stand comparison with the top tier of US, Australian or Canadian HE players in e-learning services.

But that is enough of criticisms from a UK standpoint. It would be particularly useful - including to me - if we had similar analyses from French and Korean experts on these sections. The French situation is not clear even to UK experts so near to it (geographically), whereas for various reasons we feel we understand more about Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland.

My final remarks that in order to compare one has to know what it is one wants to compare? I still do not have a clear sense of what Canada wants to do in e-learning - and why. (Maybe it is buried in the 100s of messages.) Don't worry - this dilemma affects many European countries too, especially IMHO the Netherlands and Finland among countries of potential relevance to Canada. The current UK focus is increasingly on reskilling workers for the global economy - but that begs many questions.

Sorry for not providing a good report as an attachment for you (I wish I could - most of our stuff is very much confidential and contested work in progress). If you wanted just one URL which perhaps Canadians are not very familiar with yet and gives a good flavour of HEA work I suggest http://elearning.heacademy.ac.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. And yes, it is a wiki so it might be of relevance for next week. It links to blogs too.

If any of you are coming to the EDEN conference in Lisbon in June, or ALT-C in Leeds or the EADTU conference in Poitiers (both in September) I will be pleased to have much more discussion on our work both in Re.ViCa and in Benchmarking.

Paul Bacsich