E-learning Research Research Articles

What constitutes good research in e-learning—are there lessons we can draw from the Research Assessment Exercise?

The next Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is nearly upon us and as such I thought it would be useful to reflect on what the RAE offers us in terms of positioning our own research discipline and how it might help us to answer the question ‘what constitutes good e-learning research?’DOI: 10.1080/09687760701673576

Ethical Issues in Qualitative E-Learning Research

In the mid 1980s education researchers began exploring the use of the Internet within teaching and learning practices, now commonly referred to as e-learning. At the same time, many e-learning researchers were discovering that the application of existing ethical guidelines for qualitative research was resulting in confusion and uncertainty among both researchers and ethics review board members. Two decades later we continue to be plagued by these same ethical issues. On reflection on our research practices and examination of the literature on ethical issues relating to qualitative Internet- and Web-based research, the authors conclude that there are three main areas of confusion and uncertainty among researchers in the field of e-learning: (a) participant consent, (b) public versus private ownership, and (c) confidentiality and anonymity.

A Response and Commentary to: A Review of e-Learning in Canada

Philip Abrami and his colleagues at Concordia University have done an admirable job of over viewing the complex state of research and related perceptions of e-learning in Canada in the early years of the 21 st Century. The work of these scholars at quite effectively aggregating and synthesizing is commendable given the emergent, regionally disparate, complex and most critically, under researched domain that they have reviewed. Unfortunately, what stands out most readily for me (and echoed by the authors) is the poverty of data, sound research, and systematic analysis of the considerable social, economic and educational impact that has accompanied the rapid integration of e-learning technologies into both formal and informal learning institutions and organizations. This dearth of data is especially ironical and perplexing given the positive views of almost all respondents (from educators to policy makers, from students to the general public) identified in the review. Canadians seem to very clearly see e-learning as a critically important component of life and learning. However that interest has not evolved into an active e-learning research and development and knowledge dissemination program

Standardized course generation process using Dynamic Fuzzy Petri Nets

Due to the explosion of e-Learning, there are too many useful learning materials to design a more efficient course. Therefore, to facilitate efficient course design and management for lecturers, automatic course generation is an important issue in e-Learning research and development. A complete standardized course, however, usually needs some auxiliary materials which are determined by the students’ behavior. This makes the course design process more complex and more challenging. In this investigation, a complete course generation platform was developed. The platform was made up of MEAT (Mobile E-learning Authoring Tool), LRMS (Learning Resource Management System), ANTS (Agent-based Navigational Training System), and a material arrangement agent. The material arrangement agent adopts DFPN (Dynamic Fuzzy Petri Nets) and the proposed extended model to introduce a process called SCGP (Standardized Course Generation Process). By means of this automatic process, standardized courses not only correspond to the SCORM standard but also arrange adaptive auxiliary materials dynamically. The generated multimedia course is interoperable, reusable, and standardized. Furthermore, the automatic process enables lecturers to efficiently generate courses.

An empirical investigation on learners' acceptance of e-learning for public unemployment vocational training

Public vocational training is one of the major tasks for the modern government to solve the unemployment problem. The e-learning technology has been seen as a potential solution. However, we cannot confirm whether learners would like to accept e-learning systems. Unfortunately, most of the e-learning research focuses on the platform development. Without the real user acceptance, the implementation of the new technology will be difficult. This study focuses on the user acceptance investigation for the e-learning technology in public unemployment vocational training. The Technology Acceptance Model is adopted for this empirical study. The result shows that most of the public vocational training learners will accept the e-learning technology and the content usefulness is a major factor to impact the learner adoption decision. It suggests that the government e-learning project should focus on the content designed with a standard format (such as SCORM), but not put most budget on the e-learning platform infrastructure.

Bits or Baubles: The Opportunities for Broadband to Add Value to Education and Learning

It is recognised that issues persist concerning the digital divide, and the importance of gender and cultural differences in Internet use. The uptake and use of broadband (and the Internet in general) is not simply related to education, age, or income. Because the innovative and entrepreneurial uses tend to be individual, there has been little dissemination of new ideas and good practice. From considerable research in e-learning and e-business we recognise that a much greater attention to the design of online activities is required at the outset. Solutions that simply try to copy offline practices to the online environment are fated to be less successful. There is a lack of strategic coordination in planning for the adoption and application of broadband in almost every sector (schools, higher education, health, public and voluntary

A Knowledge Management Roadmap for E-Learning

The technological pace and the advent of the knowledge society will set in the next years the new context for e-learning evolution: The convergence of learning and daily life of citizens worldwide will be evident in new services and transparent technologies. Pervasive or ubiquitous learning will be a critical cornerstone and an ultimate achievement of the e-learning research community. Additionally, worldwide efforts will define the social responsibility character of e-learning. In this short visioning paper, we try to address two critical questions: How will knowledge management and relevant technologies affect e-learning in the forthcoming six years? and What are the critical research questions for the new period of e-learning evolution? Many of these aspects could initiate interesting PhD research.

E-Learning research: emerging issues?

e-Learning research is an expanding and diversifying field of study. Specialist research units and departments proliferate. Postgraduate courses recruit well in the UK and overseas, with an increasing focus on critical and research-based aspects of the field, as well as the more obvious professional development requirements. Following this year’s launch of a National e-Learning Research Centre, it is timely to debate what the field of study should be prioritising for the future. This discussion piece suggests that the focus should fall on questions that are both clear and tractable for researchers, and likely to have a real impact on learners and practitioners. Suggested questions are based on early findings from a series of JISC-funded projects on e-learning and pedagogy.DOI: 10.1080/0968776042000339817

Naturalistic Inquiry in E-Learning Research

In this article, the author explains how and why one particular qualitative research approach, the naturalistic inquiry paradigm, was implemented in an e-learning research study that investigated the use of the World Wide Web technology in higher education. A framework is presented that situates the research study within the qualitative research literature. The author then justifies how the study was compliant with naturalistic inquiry and concludes by presenting a model for judging the quality of such research. The purpose of this article is to provide an example of how naturalistic inquiry can be implemented in e-learning research that can serve as a guide for researchers undertaking this form of qualitative inquiry. As such, the focus of the article is to illustrate how methodological issues pertaining to naturalistic inquiry were addressed and justified to represent a rigorous research approach rather than presenting the results of the research study.

Evaluating E-Learning: A Case Study

As e-learning proliferates in the business and academic communities, there is an ongoing need to evaluate its effectiveness. This paper investigates the experiences and perceptions of students who completed self-paced, independent study online courses as a project within a traditional, instructorled graduate course. This project was conducted over two semesters utilizing both technical and non-technical learning units. While the project produced some positive outcomes, participants' reactions provide important insight about the challenges, limitations, and benefits of e-learning. Among the intriguing findings is that technical e-learning units were evaluated less favorably by users than non-technical units. The results raise implications for online learning unit design and future e-learning research.