Learning about E-learning at OnlineEduca Berlin

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Since years, OnlineEduca Berlin brings together practitioners, academics, government officials and private sector to discuss the latest development in e-learning.

The conference, now in its 14th year, is in fact a market place for the leading commercial providers of e-learning solutions in Europe. You will find there companies such as Fronter, Blackboard and WebCT and luckily also their open source brothers such as Moodle.

On request of the organisation, IICD was invited to moderate a panel on e-learning in Latin America. Keiko Ignacio of Bolivia was invited as a participant on the panel to present her experiences with the Chaski programme. Apart from presenting our experiences, it was an opportunity to update ourselves on the latest developments in E-learning. A summary of our lessons…

E-learning forum on Latin America

As part of the conference, a separate one-day session was organised to bring together academics and practitioners working in the field of e-learning for education and professional development in Latin America. During this day, I facilitated a session on e-learning with a presentation by Keiko Ignacio from the Chaski programme in Bolivia, on of the projects supported by IICD in Bolivia. This programme supports primary and secondary schools with the sustainable set up and organisation of educational telecentres and with the training of teachers in the development of teaching support materials for the different curricula. The programme has just signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education to support 15 schools participating in the national government supported ICT for education programme in Bolivia.

Particular feature of this programme is that the facilities are all available off-line. This is logic in the Bolivian context, with a 3% penetration of Internet, and provided participants in the seminar with an interesting case where e-learning can not be purely based on web-supported platforms if working with education partners in rural areas in Latin America.

Open Educational Resources

A big issue at the conference was the provision of open educational resources. The discussion was boosted by MIT (massachusetts Institute of technology) which launched open access to all their materials online. Now in 2008, many universities offer their educational materials online including written and video-based lectures. These include the leading US-based and European-based Universities. As known, many African students subscribe to online English or French courses directly or via programmes linked to local universities. Recently, also a collaborative network of Spanish and Latin-American based universities is developed to offer online materials and courses, providing also Spanish-speaking students an opportunity to participate. 

The main question raised by many:

The provision of open access education materials is really good. Yet, still this is about provision of materials, not knowledge. The materials are only becoming knowledge tools when embedded in a pedagogic set up. And, what about development of content in the South and content relevant for primary and secondary education?

Here some developments are worth to mention. Interesting is Ubuntu, which has bought content for primary and secondary education materials, developed in collaboration with the South Africa by the Shuttleworth Foundation. To be launched early next year.

Linking e-learning platforms and content development tools

While listening to the various providers of e-learning tools, we came to a better understanding of what e-learning is all about. I tried to summarise some lessons learned about the integration of ICT in education as a basis for this on three levels. In practise, we agreed to apply this approach to the Chaski programme in Bolivia in 2009.

• E-learning Content Development tools: On the basis of our own Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) findings, a combination of digitised local and international content is necessary to secure ownership of decision makers and teachers. To develop content for and by teachers, there are multiple tools available. Among the ones we work with are Exelearning in Tanzania, Powerpoint and Scratch in Zambia, Wikis, Flash and J-click in Bolivia. I guess I missed some in Burkina Faso and Uganda;
• E-Learning Management System: Content needs to be offered embedded in an E-Learning Management System, providing a structured lesson set up or format which can be used as a basis of used by the teachers. There are specialised E-LMS available, but in some learning environments, the E-LMS is embedded already, amongst this component is well developed in Moodle;
   
• E-Learning Platforms: Content is to be well stored and organised using a basic digital learning platform that can be structured in line with the formal local curricula set up. This allows teachers and students to search for materials in support of strengthening teaching and learning in line with the curricula. Off course, these platforms offer more features than just a portal, including online tutoring and meeting facilities, online collaboration, planning and examination. Various of the larger platforms offer facilities for this such as Black Board, WebCT, Moodle, etc. To ensure that partners can effectiveness participate applications must be available in an offline and online version. Where feasible, many of the latest Web2.0 tools are somehow integrated in the leading e-learning platforms. Most of these integrate the use of youtube facilities, wiki’s, blogs and RSS feeds as part of the features.