Summary: What do instructors mean when they say, "I do e-Learning"?
Title: “Mapping the e-Learning Terrain”
Name: Stephen Casmar
Date: July 12, 2011
Reference: Marshall, J. & Rossett, A. (2011). Mapping the e-Learning Terrain. International Journal on E-Learning, 10(2) 169-198.
Problem:
The study examined the meaning of eLearning. The authors noticed that there are large discrepancies in the definition of eLearning among various organizations including the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), the eLearning Guild, International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), and Wikipedia, among others. To better understand how practicing professionals, “in the trenches” are doing eLearning, the authors surveyed 968 professionals asking them to identify which of 26 activities, subdivided into five categories, they were doing.
Context:
The authors conducted an exploratory descriptive study. They developed a survey that consisted of 26 types of eLearning and segregated those types into five categories. These included, Instructional Design Strategies, Instructional Design Measurement, Programs for Individuals, Programs for Groups, and Use of Web 2.0 technology. The survey gave respondents a three point Likert scale to rank their use of technology; 1 = rarely or never use, 2 = use some of the time, and 3 = use most of the time.
The authors invited participants from members of various ID societies to take the survey. Nine hundred sixty eight individuals completed the survey. The survey was purposefully meant to give a big tent picture of the field. Survey Monkey was used to collect data. Seventy three percent of respondents were from the corporate sector, 13 percent were academics and eight percent were government or military. The authors used Anova and t-tests to look for variance between, age, gender, years in the field, and role in the organization. They also ran Chi-Square analysis to tease out differences between organizations; military, business, academic, and government. Further analysis was inferentially based.
Findings:
From the data gathered, the authors concluded that current practices in the field of eLearning do not match the portrayal of eLearning in literature, blogs and at conferences. The map shows that eLearning professionals are doing what they have always done with emphasis falling on measurement, communication of results and individualization. Far less used are some of the most touted technologies; mobile learning, user generated content, games and simulations, and social networks.
The most used category of eLearning was Measurement, testing skills and knowledge with respondents reporting 2.3 of 3.0 (from the Likert scale the authors developed). This is doing what educators have always done – but electronically. The second highest usage was reported in the category of ID Strategy, presenting content and receiving feedback, with a score of 2.12 of 3.0. Programs for Groups, allowing communal experiences, synchronous and discussion tools were reported as 2.29. Programs for Individuals, like asynchronous and learning modules received only 2.02. Finally, use of Web 2.0 Technology, online construction of knowledge and collaborative tools, was found to be only 1.71. A look at the literature blogs, and conference schedules would lead one to believe usage of these technologies to be far higher than a score of 1.71.
Recommendations:
Further research on this topic should improve some of the limitations found in this study. That mostly involves improving the sampling, the sampling found in this study was opportunistic, coming from volunteers that received invitations from the professional ID groups and that were willing to complete the survey. This biases the study due to the entire responding population has some interest in continuing education in the field or some other reason to belong to a ID society in the first place. Further, all of these professional groups were based in the United States. Thus the population surveyed was not randomly generated or selected for balance; in order to represent any particular aspects of the field.