College Education

In E-learning Reaping the Rewards of the Recession, Donald Clark expresses frustration at the proliferation of communities and associations directly or indirectly supporting e-learning in the UK. This got me thinking about the positioning of the various bodies involved and I resolved to clarify this in a posting. Donald must be right, because the data I generated was far too complex to display here and I ended up having to present the data in the form of a separate PDF, snappily titled Communities and professional bodies directly or indirectly supporting workplace e-learning in the UK.

I agree with Donald that there are too many bodies and that it would be better if efforts could be more concentrated, However, UK workplace e-learning is difficult to isolate as a concept:

• because e-learning also exists in education and there is a great deal of overlap of interest across education and training;
• because e-learning also exists outside the UK and there is much that professionals operating in different countries can learn from each other;
• because workplace e-learning is generally part of workplace learning and development which is in turn usually part of workplace HR; e-learning strategy needs to be integrated up through this chain;
• because digital multimedia content has multiple purposes – learning, communications, sales, etc.

We also have to look at who’s interests are being served. Is the community run as a commercial venture? Is it government sponsored? Is it administered by its own members? And what is it aiming to achieve – the raising of professional standards? the provision of networking opportunities? information and training?

As part-time chair of one of these bodies, the eLearning Network, and an active user or contributor to just about all the others, I’m up for change. Just don’t expect it to be easy.

Source: Clive Shepherd