Chapter 5: Implementing eLearning Strategies in HE

Introduction
You have reached the webpage for discussion of Chapter 5 of the DCU eLearning Strategy Staff Consultation Document. Below is a summary of Chapter 5 and a link to complete chapter (in pdf format). You are invited to make any comment or give any feedback you have on this chapter below by clicking on post a comment below.

Summary

The purpose of Chapter 5 was to explore what can be learnt from the eLearning experience of other universities (and the eLearning strategies they have devised) which could be useful to DCU in devising its eLearning strategy. A key point to emerge is that, while comprehensive statistics are difficult to access, there is considerable evidence that the number of students on fully online programmes is growing at a considerable rate (especially in the United States).

The majority of UK universities have adopted eLearning strategies. An analysis of a sample of strategies reveals that:

• Most universities have adopted a ‘bottom-up’ rather than ‘top-down’ implementation policy
• The eLearning strategies of nearly all the selected universities foreground the potential of eLearning to enhance teaching and learning
• eLearning is seen as a method to foster a wide variety of learning outcomes
• Nearly all the strategies envisage potential benefits of implementing e-assessment and ePortfolios
• Blended eLearning delivery is implicit as a major way to develop eLearning in most of the strategies and is explicit in some of the strategies
• Most of the strategies see many potential benefits from fully online programmes but caution that decisions to develop such programmes must be based on careful market analysis
• Staff training is seen as essential to successful eLearning but flexible mechanisms to support eLearning at the level of schools/departments and individual academics are seen as even more important
• Internal organisational structures to support eLearning need to be flexible and permeable
• As eLearning can assist in the achievement of a very wide range of strategic objectives, aligning the eLearning strategy with a few key strategic objectives would seem to be a pragmatic way to proceed
• eLearning research is essential to maintain currency
• The dominant organisational model to support fully online programmes is control from the providing school/department
• If engaged in large-scale fully online eLearning, part-time etutors are essential. There are a number of arguments for putting them on a more formal contractual footing
• There is some potential for exploring alliances with specialist eLearning companies.

While the use of eLearning for off-campus distance learning programmes in UK universities is still limited, many Australian universities have adopted a dual mode system where academics combine teaching on-campus and off-campus students to the point where this mode of operating and teaching has become part of normal practice.


Chapter 5 (in pdf format)