E-LEARNING TODAY AND ITS FUTURE

Relations between computer and learning

Halmstad Hgskolan, 2012 Teacher: Torben Svane

Adrien Dubois Ahlqvist

E LEARNING TODAY AND ITS FUTURE

TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY INTRODUCTION E LEARNING TODAY
ITUNES U: LEARN EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ANY TIME

1 1 3 3 3 4 5 5 6 7

CODACADEMY: INTERACTIVE, FUN, AND YOU CAN DO IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS OPEN UNIVERSITY: OPEN TO PEOPLE, PLACES, METHODS AND IDEAS E LEARNING TOMORROW GAMIFICATION INTERACTIONS REFERENCES

SUMMARY
This article aims to define what e learning is today, what it can be used to but also to figure out what could be tomorrows way to learn something new. To do so a first part will be dedicated to understanding what e-learning is today and how it is being used to improve the usual learning process that everyone is used to and how we are going towards a more do it yourself way of learning. A second part of this text will be focused on the improvements that can be made on e learning to the actuals systems in the next decade and explaining why improvements are critical.

INTRODUCTION
learning may be one of the most important markets of the years to come: people change their jobs more and more often, their functions in companies also change a lot during ones career and that means that people must be able to adapt and to learn faster. According to an American survey (United States Departement of labor, 2012) employees often do not stay longer that 4,6 years in a company, time when people made their complete carer in the same company is long lost and therefore this market was estimated for more than two milliards of dollar in 2000 by European organisms. In the same time, e learning has the potential to overcome many of the barriers that people encounter when taking part in education and training. It can deliver learning at a place and time of the learners' choosing, thus allowing them to fit learning into their lives. It can offer learners considerable opportunities to study at a speed that meets their preferences, although this depends on the approach taken. It is possible to E learning today and its future Page 1

study while caring for children or relatives, undertaking shift work and the many other complex arrangements that peoples lives follow (Clarke, 2007) and that it is why it is the best tool for adults wanting to learn or simply keep up to date with recent knowledge. Today e learning still does not have proven itself yet, many people continue doubting its efficiency for the reason that if lots of e-universities opened theses last five years, few have survived. People are not even one of what exactly e-learning is: is it on- line coursework for students at a distance? Is it the use of online tools to enrich, enhance, and extend content or collaboration? Is it totally online, or are only portions of the course online? (Oblinger & Hawkins ,

2005). Many people think that e learning cannot replace courses with a human teacher but the fact
is that it is not supposed to; it is a way to improve usual classes thanks to features like customization, gamification and direct interactions.

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E LEARNING TODAY
This first part is dedicated to describing what e-learning is today but also how people can learn what they want on the internet right now and also if the internet is able to fundamentally change the university and learning processes as we know them.

ITUNES U: LEARN EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ANY TIME

ITunes U is a way to get you to share your ideas in a powerful new way, and your students get a rich, immersive learning experience using the iTunes U (Apple, Inc., s.d.). Apple opened this free section of his store in May 2007 on which you could find course lectures, language lessons, scientific researches or files such as presentations or PDF. It was available for universities that have been recognized by Apple in the first place in the USA and other countries. On iTunes U you can find lectures from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Oxford and many others of the best universities worldwide completely free and wherever you are. Recently Stanford reached over 50 millions downloads per classes, a breakthrough in e learning history and making iTunes U the biggest elearning portal ever created. It shows there is a huge appetite for high-quality educational content, said Brent Izutsu, the senior program manager for Stanford on iTunes U. And that will only grow as more people look online to supplement their education. (Dalrymple & Cohen, 2012). For students this product is an absolute opportunity because it gives them real-world learning, curriculum flexibility, career preparation and global perspectives (Germany, 2011), that is to say it gives them exactly what a university has to offers in terms of knowledge and for free but without the opportunity of having a degree.

Despite its success, lots of teachers are not willing to go on the Internet and give classes to the world for free and because of this business model, lots of courses are not available on theses portals. Teachers also defend themselves saying that it lacks the human learning relationship and therefore you lose all interactivity. Last but not least, giving classes for free on the internet is a big issue in terms of intellectual property, everything you post there will be shared, downloaded, modified and transformed (ComCampus, 2010) by the community or by anyone with basics computer skills and lots of teachers do not want this to happen.

CODACADEMY: INTERACTIVE, FUN, AND YOU CAN DO IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS

The second example of what e learning is today is Codeacademy: Codecademy is a team of hackers working hard to build a better way for anyone to teach, and learn, how to code. We're determined to succeed in realizing our mission to turn a world of tech consumers into one of empowered builders (Codeacademy, 2012). They offer people a fun, interactive and direct way to learn how code works throughout a friendly user interface, points and badges rewards and invite you to compare your work with some friends. E learning today and its future Page 3

The softwares interface is divided into two parts: what you have to do for this exercise with important words highlighted on one side and the console (a compiler) on the other one. Once you are done with the exercise you just have to hit the run button and your program will execute, if there is an error you will be given a hint to help you do it better. Its highly rewarding because it execute instantly and you can actually see the result, giving you the thrill to continue. Once you learned, you can produce new content on any language you want so you can share your own knowledge with anyone. This is allowed by the format of classes: we are in an age now where people want everything to be in small chunks. If [the learning materials] are in small chunks, they dont have to be produced by the most expert and professional people (The British Computer Society, 2009). In fact the two reasons of CodeAcademys success are its community and their ability to make use of constructionism theory that advocates learning through design and construction activities (Bruckman, 2002), to some extend its a prequel to a do it yourself way of learning where knowledge is not given by someone but where you discover on yourself how to do something you did not knew how before.

OPEN UNIVERSITY: OPEN TO PEOPLE, PLACES, METHODS AND IDEAS

Open University has now became a major player in the e-learning world since it is a classical university, allowed to give classes and European credits for it but what make their big difference is that they have no campus. In 2011 they had more than 25 000 student in a year and since their creation in 1969 they claim more than 3 millions people worldwide have been following classes with them (Open University, 2011). They offer more than 600 courses in 250 formations, more than 70% of their students are full time employees and lots of their courses are free on iTunes U, the cost of 120 credits is about 5000 (in more than 59% of the university in England, the cost of one year study is about 9000 (Cursus Mundus, 30). As big as open university can be, they do not offer much more than video lectures and documents, they are not taking advantage of all that can now be done with the internet, for example their only pedagogic value is a tutor system in which every student can discuss with a specific person about how his classes are going on and about his future (Vetter, 2004). Open University has also become one of the biggest suppliers of the iTunes U library. In the end, Open University is nothing more than old fashion classical distance learning but they replaced paper and ink with videos and e mails. They dont really innovate in what they are offering but they now are a reference in e learning and that make their formation worthwhile now that they are recognized. This is major for e learning because that means that you can increase your skillset and abilities on the internet, add it to your resume and be paid more than if you did not had been studying for a while. This is an amazing opportunity especially for unemployed people since they can learn and adapt to what companies asks them to do and therefore be more employable.

LEARNING ON THE INTERNET IN 2012

As we have just seen, the Internet has made knowledge almost free: you can basically learn anything you want, where you want, how you want, when you want. Most of the available programs are free, you just enter an email address and youre in. The question that should be asked is now what, what could tomorrow bring to this new way of learning? Churchill would have said to improve you need to change therefore if you want to be perfect you need to change often and we will see that change is already happening. E learning today and its future Page 4

E LEARNING TOMORROW GAMIFICATION

School used to be cool, [] school should be exciting, interesting, teaching about skills and focused about individuals (Bushnell, 2009). In his conference Bushnell notes that classrooms are obsolete because people learn at different rates, cannot stay focus long enough because they do not have fun during their lecture time and therefore it should disappear and be replaced by software such as Snap who are allowing one to one relationships between a student and a teacher (or a software) and thereby increasing retention rates. Playing is also an amazing tool to help student outstand themselves, by design, every computer and video game puzzle is meant to be solvable, every mission accomplishable, and every level passable (and therefore players) stick with the difficult challenge and use the feedback of the game to get better" (McGonigal, 2011). This means that even tough students or kids can be frustrated by a game (or their studies) they will try harder and harder until they accomplish it. This could lead to a drastic diminution of the drop-off rate usually due to students low self-esteem. Some people introduced the word edutainment to explain the relationship that should be created between theses elements. A study from Research Centre Pew said that 97% of people aged between 12 and 17 play video games (it is considered that mankind spend more than 3 billions hours weekly playing games) (Hoffmann, 2009), its only logical to make use of what people already know how to use to make them learn new things. Then how can we create an adequate alchemy between games and education? What makes a good game a perfect tool in learning? According to Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (CEO of Serious Games Interactive) its all about the integration of the player / student, his motivation and ability to focus on what the game asks him (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2011). Gamification of education would allow to go from a learning by listening experience by a learn by doing and experimenting experience, increasing massively the time during which students will remember what they have learned. The following chart shows how much someone can remember of a class given on one day (Cordages Barry Lte , 2008), in green is the retention rate (time during which you are able to remember something) if someone revises ones courses, in red if one does not. Gamification has this ability to make people work more often so they will not forget as easily as they do nowadays.

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INTERACTIONS
As we said previously one of the things that holds e learning back right now is the argument saying that e learning cannot work because it lacks too much of the interactivity that you have with a human. What we see more and more emerge is a learner-content interaction that allows multimodal communication, with sensory learning through audio, visual and simulation resources creating new possibilities for understanding and control (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001). We might ask why interactions are that important in a learning process, according to (Schone, 2007) engaging interactions are necessary because they are more likely to keep learners interested and mentally stimulated in a learning session. Today most of the interactions you are likely to experience in e learning would be a passive one: this includes PDF files or recorded lectures where it could be about manipulating elements real time respond, simulations of real situations, game based learning, virtual labs or basically anything pedagogy might need. There is always the difficulty of distinguishing a good interaction that helps learning to a simple click to continue that does not help anyone; it needs to be challenging, decision based, need to allows constructive mistakes and also, it needs to be fun (Schone, 2007). Another important interaction type is student-to-student interaction, its really important because it can significantly increase motivation, engage collaboration and socialization, creates the idea of participation and allows student to teach back to other students who might have more difficulties with a specific topic. Furthermore the ability to ask questions, to share ideas with others, or to disagree with others is a basic need in the learning process (Bouhnik & Tali , 2006). Forums email groups, video conferences are things that should develop in the future if interactions between learners are to be more important in the e learning development process. At school we all had a favourite teacher with whom learning was really a pleasure and much easier, so can e learning really get rid of teachers? What study have shown is that teachers verbal (i.e., giving praise, soliciting viewpoints, humor, and self-disclosure) and nonverbal (i.e., physical proximity, touch, eye contact, facial expressions, and gestures) immediacy behaviors can lessen the psycho- logical distance between them and their students, thereby leading to increased learning (Bouhnik & Tali , 2006). There is actually two ways to imagine human contact in e learning, one is throughout syncrone learning where e learning can be used to simulate classical classroom but where former student could animate the lecture. The second option is throughout asynchrony learning where learning is done only thanks to software and human contact is kept thanks to e-mails and discussion forums.

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REFERENCES
Apple, Inc., Available at: [Accessed 11 October 2012]. n.d. iTunes U. [Online] http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

Bouhnik , D. & Tali , M., 2006. Interaction in Distance-Learning Courses. Journal of the american society for information science and technology. Bruckman, A., 2002. The future of e-learning communities. Communications of the ACM, p. 60. Bushnell, N., 2009. Game Based Learning 2009 - Nolan Bushnellased Learning 2009. [Online] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7XilAAZI8I [Accessed 12 October 2012]. Clarke, A., 2007. The future Of E-learning. Adults learning, March.p. 14. Codeacademy, Available [Accessed 11 october 2012]. 2012. at: Meet Codeacademy. [Online] http://www.codecademy.com/about_us

ComCampus, 2010. Itunes U : avantages et inconvnients. [Online] Available at: http://www.mille-watts.com/comcampus/2010/04/itunes-u-partie-4-les-avantages-etles-inconvenients/ [Accessed 11 October 2012]. Cordages Barry Lte , 2008. Mise jour Barry, s.l.: s.n. Cursus Mundus, 30. Cursus Mundus. [Online] Available at: http://www.cursusmundus.com/etudier-en-angleterre/frais-de-scolarite-enangleterre-quel-est-le-cout-des-etudes-8989 [Accessed 2012 october 12 ]. Dalrymple, J. & Cohen, P., 2012. Stanford, Open University reach 50 million downloads on iTunes U. [Online] Available at: http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/04/03/stanford-open-university-reach-50-milliondownloads-on-itunes-u/ [Accessed 11 October 2012]. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., 2011. What Makes a Good Learning Game? Going beyond edutainment. [Online] Available at: http://elearnmag.acm.org.ezproxy.bib.hh.se/archive.cfm?aid=1943210 [Accessed 12 October 2012]. Germany, L., 2011. iTunes U: an opportunity for students. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 28( ), pp. 175 - 182 . Hoffmann, L., 2009. Learning Through Games. Communications of The Acm , August.p. 21. Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T., 2001. Multimodal Discourse. s.l.:Hodder Education. McGonigal, J., 2011. In Reality Is Broken. s.l.:Penguin Press.

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Oblinger , D. G. & Hawkins , B. L., 2005. The Myth about E-Learning. EDUCAUSE review , July/August.p. 14. Open University, 2011. History of the OU. [Online] Available at: http://www8.open.ac.uk/about/main/the-ou-explained/history-the-ou [Accessed 12 October 2012]. Schone, B., 2007. Engaging interactions in e-learning. [Online] Available at: http://www.elearningpulse.com/eBook/EngagingInteractionsForELearning.pdf [Accessed 14 October 2012]. The British Computer Society, 2009. E-learning: the future. IT Now , July.p. 28. United States Departement of labor, 2012. Employee Tenure Summary. [Online] Available at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm [Accessed 10 October 2012]. Vetter, A., 2004. Les spcificits du tutorat distance l'Open University : enseigner les langues avec Lyceum. [Online] Available at: http://edutice.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/06/62/06/PDF/alsic_v07_06-pra2.pdf [Accessed 12 October 2012].

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