Project Management

E-learning business case

Group 11: Alexander Golubev Sergey Evstifeev Pavel Sokolov

October 4th, 2011

1. Identify important components in an e-learning structure.

There are many components in the e-learning structure. They can be either parts of the process or abstract values that e-learning process should offer. Most important parts of the process are as follows: Knowledge owners (professors, guests from the industry, fellow students); Students (those, who are actually learning); Technical platform (usually up to the technical staff of particular school); Design of the e-learning structure (crucial for feasibility of the process); Shared information itself. The following important abstract values can be pointed out: Usability (amount of time student/teacher spend on the subjects not related to the particular studying objectives); Engagement (the way the learning process is organized, how easy and how fast the knowledge is transferred); Accessibility (the way student/teacher can access the information system, e.g. by using mobile platforms. It also includes the possibilities to communicate with each other); Extendability (it should be possible to use the same e-learning process for different learning subjects, i.e. courses)

2. Discuss different aspects of an e-learning project to be successful or not (success facts or facts will lead to failure).
Success facts:

1. Course Design: designing student-oriented courses that make it possible to achieve the goal. A course should contain discussions, multimedia, encouraging content, time-limited assignments, deep evaluation and variety of tasks related to the educational goal. 2. Learner Support: supporting students extensively in different ways respecting their diversity. 3. Interaction: simple and understandable communication between students and teachers, and among students. Online communication, group interaction, adequate feedback from teachers, managing the community.

4. Active Learning: students should participate actively in a variety of tasks and assignment within the e-learning project and try to apply gained knowledge to different areas. 5. Community: establishing communities of practice where students would be able to exchange knowledge and best practices under teachers supervision. 6. Reflection: both students and teachers should announce their opinions and thoughts about learning process thus making it better. Teachers should reflect on previous 5 aspects, while students should reflect on their commitment to the course and course activities along with interaction with others. Failure facts: 1. Insufficient Technical Skills: 2. Unavailability of T

3. Write about: a. One topic within e-learning you agree with.

Alexander Golubev:
The role of the teacher is changing significantly when the shift from the traditional learning to the e-learning is performed. The role of the helper rather than the role of the instructor should be played by the teacher. I do agree with that. The information space is big enough now and accessible by anyone in the modern world. So, the students dont need the information itself but they need someone to filter that information stream and point out the significant things.

Pavel Sokolov:
I would say that the biggest advantage of e-learning is remote studying e.g. being able to watch lectures videos via Internet. It makes easier for students to actively participate the course when they are not able to attend it physically. With the aid of Virtual Learning Environment, like Moodle which is located at ilearn.dsv.su.se or play.dsv.su.se now it is possible to watch and listen to teacher while sitting at home, download lectures notes and other stuff. It is a big deal to time optimization for students. So I would say that the topic I agree with is continuous development and enhancements of Learning Management Systems.

Sergey Evstifeev:

b. One topic within e-learning you dont agree with.

Alexander Golubev:
I dont really believe in the mobile learning. I do agree that the learning process should be simplified and save time for the both sides, teacher and student. That is exactly what makes e-learning ideas so popular nowadays. Time is the most valuable resource. But I still believe that there are some limits on how the time spent on the learning can be cut. Learning to be successful requires the concentration of the student at least. The mobile application can help with the administrative stuff but it cannot become the only one bridge between the student and the school.

Pavel Sokolov:
It seems that pure online examination is not that good as it is supposed to be. Bringing final examination to online will cause problems with bandwidth, adequate feedback if there are some misunderstandings regarding the exams content. And, moreover, it is not possible in some cases to check real knowledge of students because they can use any aid they want and the overall process can go under the control. Of course, online examination is very useful and powerful when we speak about assignments, partial exams, quizzes during the course, but when it comes to final exam, one can be addicted to usual way of doing. For online examination several things need to be done, like huge bandwidth, considered content of the exam regarding the use of aids, and so on. I dont believe that online examination will become popular in the nearest future because it does not check real knowledge of a student due to number of reasons.

Sergey Evstifeev:

c. One topic within e-learning that is new to you which you will be award in mind in the future and work more on
Alexander Golubev:
There was quite new to me and it never actually bump into my mind that the unification of the teaching/learning might be a big obstacle for e-learning initiative. I mean that everybody has different learning styles, and this problem is solved in the traditional learning by introducing different types of learning activities, e. g. reading of the course book, lectures, seminars, labs, etc... I am not telling that it is impossible to transfer all these activities to the e-learning format but different learning styles is definitely thing to consider while designing the e-learning structure. It should be suitable for visual learners, auditory learners, even for tactile learners, that might be especially difficult to implement.

Pavel Sokolov:
During my studies, I have never thought about legal issues in the area of e-learning. I always shared stuff that I found online, like lectures, homework, etc., and never thought that it might be illegal to download and to share electronic version of the course book or some other students work. Thats why the question about legality of sharing or borrowing has taken my attention when listening to lecture. Although I assume the existence of authors right for books, but I have never thought that legal issues can be applied to other things like presentations, forum posts, contributions by other students of other courses.

Sergey Evstifeev: