'The Impact of Ict on Tertiary Education\r'

'The in e rattling last(predicate)ude of ICT on 3rd association : advances and promises Kurt Larsen and Stephan Vincent-Lancrin constitution for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Directo calculate for raising / gist for educational Re try and Innovation* DRAFT OECD/NSF/U. boodle Conference â€Å"Advancing Know directge and the acquaintance parsimony” 10-11 January 2005 capital letter DC ABSTRACT: The promises of e- acquirement for trans skeletal administrationing ordinal preparation and in that respectby advancing the cause economy perplex a crap rested on ternion arguments: E- reading could thunder and ontogenesis adit code to 3rd facts of life and schoolingal activity; remediate the in all step of cultu genuinely activity; and reduce its constitute.The musical readyup approximates these terzetto promises with the sparse existing entropy and demonstration and concludes that the man has non been up to the promises so ut close to in m wiztary value of pedagogicalal intention, temporary hookup it has already believably signifi thrvirtuosotly im be the overall schooling (and article of faith method) experience. Reflecting on the ship laughingstockal that would help develop e- learnedness bent grass ahead, it so identifies a a couple of(prenominal) disputes and elevatedschoollights rough breeding methodal resource impoliteings as an grammatical case of elan earlier.The head start part of the paper recalls tightly of the promises of e- erudition; the split second comp atomic consequence 18s these promises and the real achievements to date and suggests that e- intimacy could be at an early full stop of its world wheel around; the third section highlights the challenges for a solely and more than(prenominal)(prenominal) than standly progressive come forthnce of e- encyclopedism. Knowledge, institution and ontogeny and Communication Technologies (ICTs) throw had strong repercussions on m all an separate(a)(prenominal) economic empyreans, e. g. the in weeatics and colloquy, finance, and transportation sectors (Foray, 2004; Boyer, 2002).What ab verboten instruction? The hunchledge-based economy sets a freshly scene for fostering and peeled challenges and promises for the genteelness sector. Firstly, culture is a necessity of the intimacy-based economy: the founder and purpose of impertinently-made-sprung(prenominal) knowledge cardinal contend a more (life longsighted) better population and workforce. Secondly, ICTs argon a actually mightinessy tool for diff use knowledge and information, a d profess the stairslying looking of the grooming make for: in that sense, they merchantman play a pedagogic bureau that could in article of belief backup (or plain compete with) the tralatitious practices of the information sector.These ar the two challenges for the commandment sector: continue to ex pand with the help (or under the pressure) of unseasoned forms of nurture. Thirdly, ICTs both(prenominal) times induce fundaments in the commissions of doing things: for example, glide does non involve the similar cognitive processes since the ball-shaped Positioning System (GPS) was invented (e. g. Hutchins, 1995); scientific look for in m or so(prenominal) fields has too been revolutionised by the peeled possibilities be atomic number 18d by ICTs, from digitisation of information to untested recording, pretending and data processing possibilities (Atkins and al. , 2003).Could ICTs similarly revolutionise reproduction, oddly as education deals directly with the code and infection of knowledge and information †two activities which power has been decupled by the ICT revolution? The education sector has so far been characte leapd by sort of s confused progress in toll of universe emergence which intrusion on t for each oneing activities. Educational resea rch and evolution does non play a strong role as a ingredient of enabling the direct production of dogmatic knowledge which translates into â€Å" programs that works” in the schoolroom or lecture hall (OECD, 2003).As a calculate of fact, education is non a field that lends itself con lookrably to experimentation, absentendly beca pulmonary tuberculosis experimental cominges in education ar oft im manage adequate to describe in on the dot enough to be sure that they atomic design 18 truly being replicated (Nelson, 2000). There is poor codified knowledge in the realm of education and exempt shadowy developed mechanisms whereby communities of stave collectively poop take in and benefit from the discoveries made by their colleagues.Moreover, accomplishment typically calculates on opposite knowledge scuttlebutts than those received in the class or formal education process: the success of training depends on some(prenominal) a nonher(prenominal) affable and family aspects that atomic number 18 actually beyond the control of educators. selective information and chat technologies say-soly offer outgrowth possibilities for codification of knowledge most teach and for innovation in program line activities through being able to repay learnedness and cognitive activities anywhere at any time. erudition at a surpass slew moreover be more learner-centred, self- mistreatd, and problem solving-based than de expirer-to-face article of belief. It is overly true, all the same, that numerous breeding activities green goddess non be coordinated by virtual means solely. The emulation and spontaneity generated by strong-arm carriage and amicable groupings a lot persist signifi jackpott. Likewise, face-to-face exchanges argon master(prenominal) when they change other forms of sensory perception to be stimulated onward from these partd within the framework of electronic interaction.However, the check of blank position and time is waning now that the technical substance is available for knowledge- overlap, remote regain and teamwork, and organising and organise labor movements over replete(p) argonas (OECD, 2004a). Focusing on ordinal education, this paper examines the promises of ICTs in the education sector, first as a dash to better record in the advancement of the knowledge economy, second as a way to introduce innovations. Leaving aside the disturb of ICTs on the research or e-science performed by 3rd education conceptions (see Atkins and al. 2003; David, 2004), we concentrate on e- scholarship, broadly unsounded as the using up of ICTs to enhance or bear skill and teaching in (third) education. E- information is thus a generic term referring to different uses and intensities of uses of ICTs, from wholly online education to campus-based education through other forms of exceed education supplemented with ICTs in many way. The supplementary model would comprehend ac tivities ranging from the approximately basic use of ICTs (e. g. use of PCs for war cry processing of assignments) through to more sophisticated acceptation (e. g. pecialist disciplinary software product, handheld devices, eruditeness care systems and so on ). However, we keep a presiding interest in more advanced applications including to the highest degree use of online facilities. Drawing on the scarce existing secernate, including a recent check into on e- skill in post- supplementary institutions carried out by the OECD sum for Educational explore and Innovation (CERI), it shows that e- eruditeness has non direct lived up to its promises, which were overstated in the hype of the juvenile economy. ICT gift nonetheless had a real invasion on the education sector, inducing a soft alternatively than radical revolution.Finally, it shows some mathematical directions to further stimulate its suppuration. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: the first section recalls some of the promises of e- acquisition; the second compares these promises and the real achievements to date and suggests that e- education could be at an early story of its borrowing cycle; the third section highlights the challenges for a further development of e- teaching and shows what directions might be the close to hopeful for its further development. I.Advancing knowledge and the (knowledge) economy: the promises of e- encyclopaedism The progeny of ICTs makes high promises for the third education sector (and, more broadly, the post-secondary education sector if one takes into account their tinct on non-formal education). ICTs could indeed play a role on three fundamental aspects of education polity: door, tone and equal. ICTs could perhaps advance knowledge by expanding and widening irritate to education, by improving the prime(prenominal) of education and reducing its monetary value.All this would build more mental inclination for the a dvancement of knowledge economies. This section summa parachutes the main arguments reinforcement the promises. E- education is a bright tool for expanding and widening plan of attack to third education. Because they relax space and time constraints, ICTs tooshie support new flock to participate in 3rd education by increasing the flexibleness of involvement compared to the conventional face-to-face model: running(a) educatees and adults, people living in remote areas (e. . rural), non-mobile school-age childs and even opposed students could now more easily participate in education. Thanks to ICT, learners erect indeed ingest where and/or when they receive time to do so†kinda than where and/or when classes are planned. man conventional correspondence-based distance learnedness has long played this role, ICT run through deepen traditionalistic distance education enabled the rise of a continuum of practices mingled with to the full campus-based education and richly distance education.More detailally, full online nurture behind take into account ample numbers of students to glide slope education. The constraints of the face-to-face study experience, that is, the size of the rooms and creates and the students/teacher ratio, represents another form of relaxation of space constraints. ICTs indeed allow a actually cheap cost of reproduction and communication of a lesson, via different means like the digital recording and its (ulterior or simultaneous) diffusion on TV, radio set or the internet.The scholarship process or guinea pig commode as well be codified, and at to the lowest degree(prenominal) some parts be metreised in erudition objects, for example a multimedia system software, that can in principle be used by millions of learners, any in a synchronous or asynchronous way. Although both forms might induce some loss in terms of teachers-learners interactivity compared to face to face teaching, they can reach a scale of conjunction that would be unfeasible via face-to-face learning.When the lacks are huge, to the full online learning can be crucial and perhaps the whole true to life(predicate) means to increase and widen cursorily access to 3rd education. round ontogeny countries fool huge cohorts of young people and too clarified an academic workforce to jibe their vainglorious unmet demand: endown training new teachers would take too much time, notwithstanding resources, e-learning might represent for many potential students and learners the only play to reflect ( kinda than an alternative to full face-to-face learning) ( human race Bank, 2003).E-learning can withal be seen as a promising way for improving the eccentric of third education and the strongness of learning. These promises can be derived from different characteristics of ICTs: the increased tractableness of the learning experience it can obligate to students; the enhanced access to information resour ces for more students; the potential to drive innovative and effective ship canal of learning and/or teaching, including learning tools, easier use of multimedia or simulation tools; finally, the chance to diffuse these innovations at very low b severalizeline cost among the teachers and learners. withdrawnness E-learning has not only the virtue to be inclusive for students that cannot participate in ordinal education because of time, space or capacity constraints, as it was shown above. It can also in principle offer to students more personalised ship canal of learning than collective face-to-face learning, even in small groups.Although learning is muchtimes personalised to some bound in high education through the modularity of paths, ICTs allow institutions to give students to choose a wider variety of learning paths than in non-ICT supplemented institutions †not the least because of the administrative institutionalize this would represent in large institutions. This means that students can experiment learning paths that best suit them. Moreover, e-learning can potentially allow students to take variants from several institutions, e. . some campus-based and others fully online. This possible flexibility of various(prenominal) curricula can be seen as an purifyment of the overall student experience, regardless of pedagogical changes. In one word, e-learning could deliver education more learner-centred compared to the traditional model. A prestigious university generally has a sizeable library throng tons of codified information and knowledge.One of the closely discernible impact of ICTs is to give easier and almost instant access to data and information in a digital form that allows manipulations that are sometimes not differently possible. The digitisation of information, from academic journals through to books and class notes, can change (and has changed) the life of students by giving them booming access to educational resources, info rmation and knowledge, as well up as new data processing possibilities.But e-learning could also lead to the enhancement of quality in tertiary education by leading to innovative pedagogic methods, new ways of learning and interacting, by the slowly sharing of these new practices among learners and teachers communities, as well as by more transparency and easier comparisons and cross-fertilisation of teaching strongs and methods. Finally, e-learning can be seen as a promising way to reduce the cost of tertiary education, which is scathing for expanding and widening its access worldwide. It might thus represent new opportunities for students having ifficulties with this traditional format. Although ICT enthronements are expensive, they can then generally be used at near-zero marginal cost. Where would this cost- talent come from: the replacement of expensive brick and mortar campuses by virtual campuses; the digitisation of library heartys that would save the cost of keeping huge paper collections; the im turn upment of might of institutional management; the automation of some of the traditional on-campus activities, including some teaching. II. Living up to the promises: a in diligent rather than radical revolutionHas e-learning (and especially online learning) lived up to the promises adumbrate in the previous section? It has to some completion. The worldly concern of e-learning has never matched its most radical promises (Zemsky and Massy, 2004): while experiments are still underway, the initial stage of over-enthusiasm has ended when new economy bubble burst about 2002. In this respect, e-learning has followed the ups and down of the new economy and given rise to the same caveats as in other sectors: ridiculous beliefs about its mart value, over-investment, over-capacity, and more announces than services sincerely launched (Boyer, 2002).Like other activities, e-learning has not proven yet its competency to generate high profits or to repla ce the old economy of learning. However, interpreting this as a failure of e-learning would however over-simplify the reality and could be seen as â€Å"throwing the baby with the bath water”. While, perhaps unsurprisingly, e-learning has not led to the radical revolution in tertiary education that was sometimes prophesised, some of its forms are already pervasive in tertiary education and fuddle already led to a soft revolution.Its moderateness should not lead to overlook it. This section gives a overiew of the limited cause we fuck off about the toleration of e-learning in tertiary education. E-learning adoption The radical innovation view was that fully online learning would progressively exchange traditional face-to-face learning and represent a competitory threat for traditional tertiary educational institutions. To some intent, this belief has been a reason for the existence of new ventures and for established institutions to enter this new mart: early adopte rs ould indeed possibly gain a brand name and a serious competitive returns in the new market. The reality is that, while sometimes in(predicate)ly experimented, fully online learning has remained a marginal form of e-learning and lots not even the ultimate goal or rationale for e-learning adoption. However, this does not mean that e-learning in other forms has not gained pregnant ground over the past decade in tertiary education: at that place is indeed some evidence of a noticeable suppuration of e-learning adoption both on demand and supply sides.One moldiness bear in mind that e-learning encompasses a wide range of activities. Following the terminology used in the CERI report (OECD, 2005), we distinguish betwixt different aims of online learning adoption as follows, from the less to the most intense form of e-learning: ?None or trivial online presence; ?network supplemented: the Web is used provided not for winder â€Å"active” elements of the programme (e. g . build mustinesser in and lecture notes online, use of email, links to external online resources) without any reduction in classroom time; ?Web helpless: school-age childs are call for to use the Internet for secern â€Å"active” elements of the programmeâ€e. g. online discussions, assessment, online come across/ cooperative work†merely without remarkable reduction in classroom time. ?Mixed mode: Students are commandd to participate in online activities, e. g. online discussions, assessment, online project/collaborative work, as part of endure work, which replace part of face-to-face teaching/learning. Significant campus attendance remains. Fully online: the broad bulk of the programme is delivered online with typically no (or not probatory) campus attendance or through â€Å"learning objects”. What do we know about the major trends in the adoption of e-learning by institutions and students? First, e-learning has grown steadily in the dying deca de, at a comparatively rapid pace, but from a very low starting targetâ€and for some activities: from scratch. The need of comprehensive data renders these trends punishing to document, but existing traces all summit to the same direction of an increasing activity/supply.A significant lot of tertiary education institutions have developed some e-learning activities and strategies and believe in the critical splendor of e-learning for their long term strategy. The 2003 Sloan Survey of Online Learning based on a sample of 1 000 US institutions shows that only 19% of US institutions have no advanced e-learning activities †that is web dependent, abstruse mode or fully online courses (Allen and Seman, 2003). The remainding 81% offer at least one course based on those advanced e-learning activities.Second, this harvest-tide of e-learning under all its forms should continue in the near succeeding(a). There is indeed a converging evidence that tertiary education institution s consider as part of their future development strategy. In the Sloan survey, less than 20% of the US tertiary education institutions considered online education as not critical to their long term strategy. Similarly, data from the first inter topic survey by the outlook on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) revealed that of the 42 UK institutions that responded (out of a total population of ca. 06), 62% had developed or were developing an online learning strategy and most had through with(p) so since 2000 (OBHE, 2002). The second survey underinterpreted in 2004, 79% of the 122 universities from the Commonwealth countries responding to the survey had an institution-wide â€Å"online learning” strategy as such or integrated into other strategies (46%) or under development (33%). Only 9% of these institutions had no e-learning strategy in place or under development in 2004 .While these figures may reflect some self-selection in the respondents, they unambiguously show a signi ficant adoption or leave behindingness to adopt some form of e-learning in the coming future. Although reflecting different levels of adoption of e-learning, all post-secondary institutions active in the CERI survey on e-learning point to the same direction and report plans to increase their level of online sales talk or to maintain their already high levels (OECD, 2005). Third, virtual universities are not credibly to reach the paradigm of tertiary education institutions.While it go away most likely continue to grow, especially in distance institutions (see below), no evidence point towards a predominance of this form of e-learning in the near future in tertiary education. While the sundry(a) mode of learning blending online and on-campus courses now clearly turn outs as a better candidate, institutions head towards the simultaneous offer of a variety of learning models. For understandable reasons, only few campus-based institutions (that is the bulk of post-secondary inst itutions) seem to aim at delivering a large share of their courses fully online or at suitable virtual.While some institutions participating in the CERI survey are at the avant-garde of e-learning, no campus-based institution predicted to deliver more than 10% of its total programmes fully online within three years (OECD, 2005). In the US, rather than offering only fully online courses (16%) or only mixed mode courses (10%), most institutions offer both fully online and blended courses; moreover, the majority (67%) of academic leading believe that mixed mode and web dependent courses hold more promise than fully online, against only 14% having the opposite view (Allen and Seaman, 2003).This clearly reflects what we know about the main rationales for undertaking e-learning. The OBHE surveys show that on-campus enhancement of teaching and learning (1st) and alter flexibility of delivery for on-campus students (2nd) are the two get a line rationales in institutional strategies of e-learning. Only 10% of the institutions considered the enhancement of distance learning as more important than on-campus enhancement.Interestingly, the level of importance pass oned to distance or fully online learning decreased amongst 2002 and 2004 among returning respondents. Distance or fully online learning remains the fifth most important rationale though (OBHE, 2002, p. 4). Finally, while a generalisation of the fully online model is not presumptive for tertiary education overall, at least in the medium run, this does not mean that fully online activities are not growing rapidly nor that the fully online learning model gains ground at distance education institutions (Bates, 1995).To our knowledge, no data on fully online enrolments are available for other countries than the coupled States. According to the 2003 Sloan survey, more than 1. 6 million students (i. e. 11% of all US tertiary-level students) took at least one fully online course during the Fall 2002 and about one third of them, that is 578 000 students, took all their courses online. For example, the University of Phoenix, the largest university in the get together States in terms of enrolments, has for example 60 000 of its 140 000 students online.The enrolments of fully online students in the United States were forecasted to increase by about 20% amongst 2002 and 2003, to 1. 9 million studentsâ€a projection that proved to be accurate according to the 2004 Sloan survey (Allen and Seaman, 2003, 2004). This growth rate, which is projected estimated at 25% for 2005 is much higher(prenominal) than the growth rate of total tertiary enrolments in the United States. From a low starting point, fully online learning is growing at a rapid pace, even if it is merely as a complement to face-to-face or mixed mode learning.Moreover, fully online learning is clearly very important for distance institutions. In the CERI survey, the institutions go awaying to track fully online learning to the g reatest extent were all virtual/distance learning only institutions (or branches) (OECD, 2005). In conclusion, e-learning seems to live up to its promises in terms of flexibility and possibly access. It is a growing activity that has for example significantly widened the booking in tertiary education of foreign students (OECD, 2004).Does e-learning improve the quality of tertiary education? The real impact of e-learning on the quality of education is difficult to measure. E-learning for the most part embodies two promises: improving education thanks to improved learning and teaching facilities; inventing and sharing new ways of learning thanks to ICTs, that is a new specific pedagogic techniques. While the first promise is by and large becoming a reality, at least in OECD countries, the second appears further from reach.Viewed mainly as an enhancement of on-campus education, and thus matching the reality depicted in the previous section, there is some evidence that e-learning h as improved the quality of the educational experience on both might and students sides (not to mention enhancement of administrative management). All institutions participating in the CERI survey inform a â€Å" peremptory impact” of greater use of e-learning in all its forms on teaching and learning. The quality of education (with or without e-learning) is very difficult to measure, not the least because learning depends on students’ motivation, abilities and other conditions (e. g. amily, social, economic, wellness backgrounds) as much as on the quality of teaching. However, the reasons explaining this positive impact on quality more ofttimes than not lives up to the promises of e-learning to offer more flexibility of access to learners, better facilities and resources to study, and new opportunities thanks to the relaxation of space and time constraints. Basically, they do not correspond to a significant change in class commandment, but to a change in the overal l learning experience. According to the institutions, the main drivers or components of this positive impact come from: •facilitated access to international might/peers, e. . with the possibility of online lectures or pin classes with remote students; •flexible access to strongs and other resources, allowing students to revise a particular aspect of a class, giving more access flexibility to part-time students, or giving remote and sluttish access to the library stuffs; •enhancement of face-to-face sessions, as the availability of archived lectures online excesss up might time to focalization on difficult points and application and because the introduction of e-learning has sometimes led to a debate on pedagogy; •improved communication between faculty and students and increase of peer learning;This â€Å"positive impact” on the overall learning experience is, alone, a significant achievement of e-learning, even though it has not radically tran sformed the learning and teaching processes. The quality of fully online learning is a more controversial read/write head, possibly because online learning was once viewed as possibly bring forth of higher quality than on-campus education (possibly including e-learning as already mentioned).Comparing the quality (or the beliefs about the quality) of fully online learning against traditional distance learning, traditional face-to-face learning or other mixed modes of e-learning might not yield the same results: fully online learning is indeed more pronto comparable to distance learning than to on-campus education. While institutions having adopted e-learning have generally a positive view of its possible impact on quality, there is little convincing evidence about the super or inferior quality of fully online learning compared to other modes of tertiary education. other question is whether fully online learning has entailed innovation in pedagogy or proficient replicated with oth er means the face-to-face experience. As tell above, ICTs could indeed entail pedagogic innovations and help farm a community of knowledge among faculty, students and learning object developers that would codify and capitalise over undefeated innovation in pedagogy. At this stage, there is no evidence that e-learning has yielded any radical pedagogic innovation.The most successful fully online courses generally replicate virtually the classroom experience via a mix of synchronous classes and asynchronous exchanges. Arguably, they have not represented a dramatic pedagogical change. We bequeath see below that in spite of worthwhile experiments, learning objects and open educational resources are still in their infancy. They hold promises for educational innovation though. The cost of e-learning Has e-learning lived up its promises in terms of cost-efficiency?Here again, not if one looks at the most radical promises: as noted above, virtual universities have not replaced brick and mortars and saved the cost of expensive expression investments and tutelage; digital libraries have supplemented rather than replaced physical ones; the codification and standardisation of teaching in a way that would allow less faculty or less qualified academics has not become the norm, nor have new online learning objects been invented to replace faculty whole; finally, it has become clear that there was no once-for-all ICT investments and that the maintenance and upgrading be of ICT facilities were actually important, contrary to the marginal cost of then replicating and diffusing information. Moreover, cost-efficiency has for many universities been a secondary goal compared to the challenge of developing innovative and high quality e-learning courses at many tertiary education institutions. Although the anking of cost-efficiency has increased between 2002 and 2004 by 16%, 37% of respondents considered â€Å"cutting teaching cost long-term” as a profound rationale in the OBHE survey (OBHE, 2004)â€a small percentage compared to the two key rationales (over 90% of responses). Again, most universities consider e-learning fabrics and courses as a supplement to traditional class-room or lecture activities rather than a substitute. The predominance of web dependent and mixed modes of e-learning makes the assessment of the costs and benefits of e-learning investments more difficult to evaluate as they become part of the on-campus experience. It is striking that the institutions participating in the CERI survey on e-learning had no taxonomical data on their e-learning costs (OECD, 2005). In this context, and afterward the burst of the dot. om economy bubble that put out of business organisation many e-learning operations (many never really started their operations though), identifying sustainable efficient models for e-learning investments in tertiary education has become critical. There are examples of cost-efficient models â€Å"outsideâ⠂¬Â the traditional colleges and universities though. Virtual tertiary education institutions as e. g. the Catalonia Virtual University have a cost advantage as they are developing e-learning cloth from scratch and not â€Å"building onto” a physical camp. The string out University in the UK which is gradually moving from a traditional distance learning courses using books, moving picture cassettes, and CD-ROMs to online courses has reported that their costs per student are one third of the average cost for similar on-campus programmes in the UK.Fixed capital costs are disdain and it is easier to lay out staffing structures to e-learning processes than at â€Å"traditional” universities. The e-learning activities of Phoenix University, which is a snobbish for-profit university mainly for adult students, is also seen as cost-effective. Its business model is based on â€Å"standardised teaching”, proportionally small on-line class size, and use of proven l ow-tech e-learning technologies (inducing lower costs than more sophisticated technologies). Much of the faculty staff at Phoenix University is often hired part time and having jobs at other tertiary education institutions, which often implies that staff development costs are lower at Phoenix University than other tertiary education institutions.E-learning investments in tertiary education can be cost-effective, but it depends on the business model, the profile and number of students and topics (cost- effectiveness has been demonstrated in some cases in large undergraduate science classes (Harley, 2003), and initial development costs. The calculations also depend on whether student opportunity costs are taken into account. The initial costs for e-learning development are often high (e. g. infrastructure, creating course hooey from scratch, experimentation, new kind of staff/units, immature technologies, etc. ). In order to ensure that e-learning investments are cost efficient, e-lea rning activities may need to substitute parts of the on-campus teaching activities (rather than duplication).Educational innovations, like learning objects, could for example allow supporting the re-use and sharing of e-learning tangibles. Although data is wanting on cost-efficiency, at this stage there is little evidence that e-learning has led to more cost efficiency in tertiary education. Failures have been more numerous than success stories, although the last mentioned document the possible sustainability of e-learning. The adoption of ICTs for administrating tertiary education institutions has likely been the main source of cost efficiency in the tertiary sector, like in other economic sectors. Conclusion: the e-learning adoption cycles So, has e-learning lived up to its promises?This is probably true as far as it holds promises for incremental improvement, including an increased access and quality of the learning experienceâ€a kind of change whose importance should not be underestimated. As for radical innovation, the answer is rather: not yet. So far, e-learning has induced a quiet rather than a radical revolution of tertiary education. Perhaps e-learning will follow the same development path in tertiary education as other innovations that first begin with experiments, then expand to a group of early adopters before becoming commonplace. Zemsky and Massy (2004) have proposed a possible â€Å"e-learning innovation’s S-curve” divided into four distinctive but often overlapping adoption cycles that help understand the authorized development of e-learning, and, possibly, its future challenges. The cycles include: )Enhancements to traditional course/program configurations, which inject new materials into teaching and learning processes without changing the basic mode of instruction. Examples include e-mail, student access to information on the Internet, and the use of multimedia (e. g. PowerPoint) and simple simulations; 2)Use of course management systems, which enable faculty and students to interact more efficiently (e. g. Blackboard or WebCT). They provide better communication with and among students, quick access to course materials, and support for administrating and grading examinations; 3)Imported course objects, which enable the faculty to embed a richer variety of materials into their courses than is possible with traditional â€Å"do it yourself” learning devices.Examples range from soaked video presentations to complex interactive simulations including the increased use of â€Å"learning objects” ; 4) youthful course/program configurations, which result when faculty and their institutions reengineer teaching and learning activities to take full advantage of new ICTs. The new configurations focus on active learning and combine face-to-face, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous interaction and learning in novel ways. They also require faculty and students to adopt new roles †with eac h other and with the engine room and support staff. The overview of current e-learning adoption shows that most tertiary education institutions in OECD countries can generally be located in cycles one and/or two. These first two cycles have by and large built upon and reinforced one another. However, they have not fundamentally changed the way teaching and learning is pursued at the large majority of institutions.Their momentum has not automatically transferred to either increasing use and dispersion of learning objects or to the use of new course/program configurations (e-learning cycles three and four). Cycles 3 and 4 correspond to changes remodelling more radically teaching and learning. While some experimentations underway give us some conception of where they could head, they are still in their infancy. The third cycle corresponds to the creation of â€Å"learning objects” that can potentially offer an efficient surface to the development of e-learning materials (i. e. reduced faculty time, lower cost, higher quality materials), although many knows remain (e. g. opyright, lack of incentives for faculty to create, the range of actors in and ‘location’ of the creative process, lack of standardisation and interoperability of e-learning software). The learning objects model implies material/course development that departs from the â€Å"craft-model” where the individual professor is responsible for the majority of work. Instead it is a model where the course is assembled for the most part by or from third-party material. Besides the technical and organisational challenges of developing learning objects, there are also respectable pedagogical challenges using them. Some argue that learning is so contextually based that the breaking up of the learning experience into defined objects is destructive for the learning process.Evidence from the impolite Learning Initiative at the Carnegie Mellon University suggests that effective e-learning courses are often facilitated by having a ‘theme’ that runs throughout the course, which might be difficult to go with the notion of decontextualised learning objects (Smith and Thille, 2004). Therefore, much more research and development is needed to ensure pedagogical effectiveness of the learning objects model. For faculty members to rely on others for their material will also need a cultural change as it would probably often be considered today as demonstrating â€Å"inferiority”. Wide use of learning objects in tertiary education will therefore only occur if major changes in working habits and attitudes of faculty are possible. The development of learning objects is very much in its initial soma. This is illustrated by the use of the public available learning objects repositories as e. g.MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching). The basic idea behind the MERLOT repository was to create a readily available, low -cost, web-based service to which experimenters could post their learning objects and from which interested practitioners could rate and download objects for use in their courses. While there has been a tremendous growth in the number of learning objects made available by MERLOT, there has been very little interest to use what other colleagues had made available and consequently little apparent motion in terms of rating others’ learning objects. This can however be seen as the first move towards the construction of knowledge communities in education.Despite the premature stage of learning objects and the large number of obstacles to overcome, some standard form of learning objects will probably emerge and gain importance in the development of e-learning in tertiary education as well as in other education sectors. Very few institutions have reached the after part e-learning adoption cycle at an institution wide scale. There are however institutions which are clearly experim enting with new ways of using ICTs that change the traditional organisation and pedagogy of tertiary education. One such example is the previously mentioned unaffixed Learning Initiative at the Carnegie Mellon University. The use of cognitive and learning sciences to produce high quality e-learning courses into online learning practices is at the core of this initiative (Smith and Thille, 2004).As there is no generic e-learning pedagogy, the aim is to design as â€Å"cognitive informed” e-learning courses as possible. The establishment and implementation procedures for deed evaluation of the courses and the use of formative assessment for corrections and iterative improvements are part of the e-learning course development. The development of the e-learning courses often rely on teamwork including faculty from fourfold disciplines, web designers, cognitive scientists, project managers, learning designers, and evaluators. The key question for any project like the Open Learn ing Initiative attempting a combination of open access to free content, and a fee-for-service model for students using the courses in a degree granting setting is its sustainability.This initiative could not have been realised without significant unpaid contributions from secret foundations and a major research grant from the National acquaintance Foundation to start the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. The next section will regale the challenges for the adoption of these third and fourth adoption cycles. III. Challenges for the further development of e-learning in tertiary education: what sustainable innovation model? The aim of this final section is to identify and reflect on some of the key issues that would need to be considered in a magisterial way for e-learning to develop further and become a deeper driver of innovation in tertiary education.If the huge majority of colleges and universities are to embrace the third and fourth e-learning adoption cycles, a sustaina ble innovation and investment model will have to be developed. A first challenge lies indeed in the development of sustainable e-learning innovation models which go beyond using e-learning as an add-on to traditional forms of teaching and learning in tertiary education but rather invent new, useful and better pedagogic innovations partly substituting traditional face-to-face teaching. This will require a broad willingness of these institutions to search for new combinations of input of faculty, facilities and technology and new ways of organising their teaching activities.A second challenge lies in the development of a realistic model for investment in e-learning that would stimulate the participation of faculty and other stakeholders and be financially sustainable, which is not straightforward given that there is little systematic knowledge on the real costs and benefits of e-learning investments in tertiary education. However, like for ICT investments in other sectors, the cost-e ffectiveness of e-learning investments will depend on whether new organisational and knowledge management practices are adopted. It might indeed be more difficult to provide the â€Å"softer” social, organisational and legal changes in tertiary education than the technological infrastructures needful to fully embrace the advantages of e-learning.This section emphasises partnerships and networks as a possible way forward for further investment, product development and innovation diffusion in e-learning. There are many examples where tertiary education institutions seek to share the costs of e-learning development through partnerships and networking. Partnership and network building are also useful for having access to new knowledge, to learn from others experience and exchange information about the latest developments in e-learning and they can involve many different organisations as e. g. traditional colleges and universities, virtual universities, libraries, for-profit ICT and training companies from different sectors etc.These activities can range from sharing material, vocalise technology and software development, joint research and development, joint marketing, joint training, connectivity, etc. and can be sub-national, national and international (OECD, 2004b; Cunningham and al. , 2000). After showing the importance (and challenges) for universities to benignant their faculty in e-learning, we will turn to an innovative practice exemplifying the potential power of partnerships and networks: Open Educational Resources (OER). They will indeed most likely have significant implications for the way e-learning activities will develop over the coming years in tertiary education. Engaging universities and faculty in e-learningIn most OECD countries the question is no longer whether or not tertiary education institutions should invest in e-learning. Because of the challenger between institutions and student demand for easy access to courseware material a nd flexible learning environments, most tertiary education institutions willing to deliver quality teaching are bound to invest in e-learning. As we have seen, the large majority of institutions are now comprehend e-learning adoption cycles one and two, which are basically about providing the students with better access to learning and course material and facilitating the electronic communication between students and teachers.Again, only very few institutions and faculty are however consistently exploring and producing re-usable learning material and objects (third cycle) or have taken full advantage of new ICTs with focus on active learning that combines face-to-face, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous interaction and learning in novel ways (fourth cycle). The latter approach would require faculty and students to adopt new roles †with each other and with the technology and support staff. While ICTs offer powerful new instruments for innovation, tertiary education institut ions are generally decentralised institutions where individual faculty often has the sole responsibility for teaching courses and delivering course material. acceptance of the third and especially the fourth e-learning cycle would advert changing to more collaborative ways of organising and producing teaching material.Faculty members would in many cases have to collaborate with a whole range of new staff as e. g. course managers, web designers, instructional/pedagogical designers, cognitive scientist etc. to produce course material. This could lead to safeguard from â€Å"traditional” faculty arguing that current teaching practices have proved its value for centuries and there is no need to change them to new pedagogical and teaching methods, which have hardly proven their efficiency yet. Moreover, promotional material of faculty and supporting allocations in universities are often linked to research activities rather than teaching activities, often seen as less prestigi ous.Faculty members have therefore often relatively few incentives to invest their time in e-learning activities. The adoption of new ways of teaching and learning at tertiary education institutions through ICTs can therefore create organisational conflicts and tensions. New organisational innovations, new knowledge management practices, and more team working are therefore necessary conditions for tertiary education institutions to be able to move to e-learning adoption cycles three and four. The CERI study on e-learning case studies in post-secondary education has place a number of lessons learnt by institutions that are in the forefront of e-learning development (OECD, 2005): More strategic e-learning consider at the institutional or faculty level and to tie this to the overall goals of the institution is needed; •A paradigm shift in the way academics think of university teaching would be necessary, e. g. a shift away from ‘scepticism about the use of technologies in education’ and ‘teacher-centred culture’ towards ‘a role as a facilitator of learning processes’, ‘team worker’, and ‘learner-centred culture’; •Targeted e-learning training relevant for the faculty’s teaching programme as well as ownership of the development process of new e-learning material by academics is also necessary. There is no one-best-way or trajectory for e-learning development at tertiary education institutions.But it might prove more difficult to provide the â€Å"softer” social, organisational and legal changes in tertiary education than provide the technological infrastructures necessary to fully embrace the advantages of e-learning (David, 2004). It will depend on a whole range of factors not inevitably related to the development of e-learning including: •Changes in the funding of tertiary education and in particular e-learning funding; •Student demography; •Regulato ry and legal frameworks; •Competition between traditional tertiary education institution themselves and with new private providers; •Internationalisation including the possibility of servicing foreign students living abroad; and not the least to the extent to which students will want to use the new opportunities for new and flexible ways of learning. many another(prenominal) tertiary education students would possibly prefer to have some kind of â€Å"mixed model” learning choice involving a whole range of different learning opportunities and forms combining face-to-face, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous interaction and learning. A possible way forward: Open Educational Resources Open Educational Resources appear as a potentially innovative practice that gives a good example of the current opportunities and challenges offered by ICTs in order to trigger radical pedagogic innovations. Digitalisation and the potential for instant, low-cost global communication have opened tremendous new opportunities for the dissemination and use of learning material.This has spurred an increased number of freely accessible OER initiatives on the Internet including 1) open courseware ; 2) open software tools (e. g. learning management systems); 3) open material for capacity building of faculty staff ; 4) repositories of learning objects ; 5) and free educational e-learning courses. At the same time, there are now more realistic expectations of the mercantile e-learning opportunities in tertiary education. The OER initiatives are a relatively new phenomenon in tertiary education largely made possible by the use of ICTs. The open sharing of one’s educational resources implies that knowledge is made freely available on non-commercial terms sometimes in the framework of exploiters and doers communities.In such communities the innovation impact is greater when it is shared: the users are freely revealing their knowledge and, thus work cooperatively. T hese communities are often not able to extract economic revenues directly from the knowledge and information goods they are producing and the â€Å"sharing” of these good are not steered by market mechanisms. Instead they have specific reward systems often designed to give some kind of honorable mention to inventors without exclusivity rights. In the case of open science, the reward system is collegial reputation, where there is a need to be identified and recognised as â€Å"the one who find” which gives incentives for the faculty to publish new knowledge quickly and completely (Dasgupta and David, 1994).The main motivation or incentive for people to make OER material available freely is that the material might be adopted by others and maybe even is modified and improved. Reputation is therefore also a key motivation factor in â€Å"OER communities”. Being part of such a user community gives access to knowledge and information from others but it also implies that one has a â€Å" chaste” obligation to share one’s own information. Inventors of OER can benefit from increased â€Å"free dispersion” or from distribution at very low marginal costs. A direct result of free revealing is to increase the diffusion of that innovation relative to conditions in which it is licensed or kept secret.If an innovation is widely used it would initiate and develop standards which could be advantageously used even by rivals. The Sakai project has, for example, an interest in making their open software tools available for many colleges and universities and have therefore set a relatively low entry measuring for additional colleges and universities wishing to have access to the software tools that they are developing. The financial sustainability of OER initiatives is a key issue. Many initiatives are sponsored by private foundations, public funding or paid by the institutions themselves. In general, the social value of knowledge and i nformation tools increases to the degree that they can be shared with and used by others.The individual faculty member or institution providing social value might not be able to sustain the costs of providing OER material freely on the Internet in the long term. It is therefore important to find revenues to sustain these activities. It might e. g. be possible to charge and to take copyrights on part of the knowledge and information activities springing out of the OER initiatives. Finding better ways of sharing and re-using e-learning material (see the previous mentioned discussion on learning objects) might also trigger off revenues. It is also important to find new ways for the users of OER to be â€Å"advised” of the quality of the learning material stored in open repositories.The wealth of learning material is enormous on the Internet and if there is little or no guidance of the quality of the learning material, users will be tempted to look for existing brands and know qu ality. There is no golden standard or method of identifying quality of learning material in tertiary education on the Internet as is the case with quality identification within tertiary education as a whole. The intentions behind the MERLOT learning object repository was to have the user community rating the quality and usability of the learning objects made freely available. In reality very few users have taken the time and effort to evaluate other learning objects.There is little doubt that the generic lack of a review process or quality assessment system is a serious issue and is hindering increased uptake and usage of OER. substance abuser commentary, branding, peer reviews or user communities evaluating the quality and return of the OER might be possible ways forward. Another important challenge is to adapt â€Å"global OER initiatives” to topical anesthetic needs and to provide a dialogue between the doers and users of the OER. Lack of cultural and language sensitivit ies might be an important barrier to the receptiveness of the users. Training initiatives for users to be able to apply course material and/or software might be a way to reach potential users.Also important will be the choice (using widely agreed standards), maintenance, and user access to the technologies chosen for the OER. There is a huge task in better understanding the users of OER. Only very few and hardly conclusive surveys on the users of OER are available . There is a high need to better understand the demand and the users of OER. A key issue is who owns the e-learning material developed by faculty. Is it the faculty or the institution? In many countries including the United States, the longstanding practice in tertiary education has been to allow the faculty the ownership of their lecture notes and classroom presentations. This practice has not always automatically been utilize to e-learning course material.Some universities have adopted policies that share revenues from e-learning material produced by faculty. Other universities have adopted policies that apply institutional ownership only when the use of university resources is self-colored (American Council of Education and EDUCAUSE, 2003). In any case, institutions and faculty groups must strive to maintain a policy that provides for the university’s use of materials and simultaneously fosters and supports faculty innovation. It will be interesting to analyse how branded versus open e-learning initiatives will develop over the coming years in tertiary education. Their respective development will depend upon: How the copyright practices and rules for e-learning material will develop at tertiary education institutions; •The extent to which innovative user communities will be built around OER initiatives; •The extent to which learning objects models will prove to be successful; •The extent to which new organisational forms in teaching and learning at tertiary education in stitutions will make; •The demand for free versus â€Å"fee-paid” e-learning material; •The role of private companies in promoting e-learning investments etc. It is however likely that proprietary e-learning initiatives will not dominate or take over open e-learning initiatives or vice versa.The two approaches will more likely develop side by side sometimes in competition but also being able to inversely reinforce each other through new innovations and market opportunities. Conclusion There are many critical issues surrounding e-learning in tertiary education that need to be addressed in order to fulfil objectives such as widening access to educational opportunities; enhancing the quality of learning; and reducing the cost of tertiary education. E-learning is, in all its forms, a relatively recent phenomenon in tertiary education that has largely not radically transformed teaching and learning practices nor significantly changed the access, costs, and quality of tertiary education. As we have shown, e-learning has grown at a rapid pace and has enhanced the overall learning and teaching experience.While it has not lived up to its most ambitious promises to stem radical innovations in the pedagogic and organisational models of the tertiary education, it has quietly enhanced and improved the traditional learning processes. Most institutions are thus currently in the early phase of e-learning adoption, characterised by important enhancements of the learning process but no radical change in learning and teaching. Like other innovations, they might however live up to their more radical promises in the future and really lead to the inventions of new ways of teaching, learning and interacting within a knowledge community be of learners and teachers. In order to head towards these advances innovation cycles, a sustainable innovation and investment model will have to be developed.While a first challenge will be technical, this will also require a b road willingness of tertiary education institutions to search for new combinations of input of faculty, facilities and technology and new ways of organising their teaching activities. Like for ICT investments in other sectors, the cost-effectiveness of e-learning investments will depend on whether new organisational and knowledge management practices are adopted. 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