At the EDUCA Online 2003 conference in Berlin in December , one of the workshop leaders was heard to remark, "Blended learning? Blended learning is just a cop out for those people who are too afraid or unable to teach fully online"

What do you think ? Is blended learning a cop out or the best way to offer flexible learning choices to students ?

Is teaching online different to teaching face to face ?

Do students really want to learn fully online ?

Let's open the debate on blended learning!

This sort of debate seems premature to me when most teachers don't have access to computers for their classes - or often, even one in their classroom.

The powers that be in schools need convincing to provide the wherewith all; it cannot start with the teachers. I would suggest that people on this forum at the moment are not typical of the teacher population in this country in regard to their attitude towards and the access they have to computers in teaching and learning.

I would like to hear more about the experience of the people on this site who actually do manage to deliver blended learning.

What equipment do they - and their students - have? How did they get started? How much time does it take to prepare and deliver this sort of teaching experience? What age students does it work best with? What subject areas seem to find it most useful? What proportion of their teaching is e-teaching and what face to face? What type of e-learning opportunity have they found works best or is most effective in terms of time taken to prepare and learning outcome?

Just a very quick reply from my hotel in Austria, before I set off for a morning´s skiing: Some subjects, e.g. my own discipline (German language) cannot be taught fully online. As I am constantly reminded by my daily experiences here in Austria, face-to-face learning of a language is unquestionably the best way to acquire an acceptable level of language proficiency and to absorb knowledge of local culture, customs, etc. Online language learning can only be a supplement to the "real thing" - a useful add-on but not a substitute. Some years ago, when I was director of a university language centre that was very well equipped with ICT hardware and software, we conducted a survey among teachers and students to determine to what extent they would accept more ICT-based learning instead of face-to-face learning. Almost unanimously, they agreed that they would prefer more face-to-face contact with native speakers and less ICT. Blended learning is not a cop-out; it´s the only approach that makes sense. Do we really want to turn the next generation of kids into screen-gazing zombies?

You are right to remind us that members of this forum are not typical teachers. However, for any development to take place, it is important to have pioneers with vision. Since creating my website in September 1997 I have been disappointed by the speed of progress. It would be wrong to suggest the fault is with teachers. Some quickly embraced the new technology and preached the message. I have been involved in providing INSET on new technology since the early 1980s. Although there has been a certain amount of resistance to computers, the main problem is that teachers have not been provided with enough equipment or technical help to make blended learning a reality. I have observed it taking place at schools such as the International School of Toulouse. Several members of staff are also active on this forum. Hopefully they will post messages explaining how this happens in Toulouse.

Exactly! Many times pc's were set up in schools with the message: There is a computer, use it! Luckily this hasn't happened in my school.

No, at least not in my view. However we need to prepare them to be active citizens. And society 'demands' screen gazing zombies.

I am currently in the middle of what could be described as a "blended learning experiment". My A1 Sociology online resource can be found HERE which is part of my main web site. I currently "teach" 3 formal lessons of A level Sociology and the students work through the site during the week. It might be interesting if I ask for their responses on their own forum.

What I like about it is that they are no longer reliant on me as "provider of information". They come to the lessons with background information and are ready to discuss rather than soak up material. It also gives them a greater deal of control over their own learning and uses a technology with which they are extremely familiar.

At this stage I would say "blended" rather than being a cop out is probably the most sensible response to the new technology

What do you think of the ideas on natural learning? <see debates in education>

I will be asking my students this morning what their views on blended learning are. The results will appear in this poll on their forum

Should be interesting

So far 15 votes and and 'landslide' victory for blended learning. That is great news, now the question is how you organise blended learing effectivel.

It is interesting though that the students on the forum seem to see the teacher's main role in blended learning as a form of 'police' to ensure they do the work.

Surely the role of the teacher in face to face teaching should be/is more involved and skillful than that! Or are we heading for on-line learning and teaching assistants in the classroom instead of teachers? How many teachers here think that would work - with the educator's role being to prepare the on-line learning material and oversee the assessment, perhaps?

Well I did write it and I do talk to them now (sometimes even teach them) and again
Sometimes I even mark their work

I guess it is all done so seamlessly they don't even notice it is happening

Also if you read the student responses carefully I don't think Christine's is accurate interpretation of what my students actually said - only 1 in fact implies the "police role" highlighted by Christine. others talk about the benefits of a variety of methods - personal help over e-mail help etc. etc.

More seriously the scenario Christine outlines in her last clauses clearly would not work. At the very least an intelligent and informed teacher is required to create content, lead discussion, tease debate, challenge viewpoints and explain new material. A "teacher supervisor" in most cases would not be well placed to do much of this.

I think there is also a danger that traditionalists could use such "scare scenarios" to avoid the issues and perhaps even deny change.

I hope you will accept that I am playing Devil's Advocate with my posts, Andy. The thread is a discussion about whether e-learning is a cop out and it occurred to me e-learning could be made one for totally different reasons.

As has been said, others may already see e-learning as that - and our political masters do talk about 'freeing' up teachers so that they can do their marking (and reporting, I assume) with classroom assistants. That is not something I like at all since the physical process of teaching is why I do this job, and do it well. Wouldn't it be awful if enough fools assumed e-learning would 'free' us in like manner?

I personally am very keen indeed in incorporating more e-learning into my teaching and already do a bit of it, but I am not lucky enough to be able to have access to computers for my pupils during lessons, and cannot assume they all have ready access at home. So, whilst I use a computer linked overhead projector in the classroom, I can only build in limited use of e-learning for individual students in the Sixth form students who can get round problems of access easier, in part because they don't need to travel home on the school bus after school so can use school computers then. My lower school pupils have to be satisfied with me using the projector and a few research homeworks because otherwise, using e-learning, I would be excluding many of them.

I do have concerns though that e-learning isn't confused with e-teaching (easy teaching) and that teachers remain pro-active in the process. Having seen how distance learning fro Primary aged students is managed in NZ I know that hands-on from a qualified teacher mostly involves setting work and marking it and telephone contact with the pupils and families with the occasional 'camp'. Teaching assistants do most of the day to day supervising so it is not such a remote possibility that my gloomy prognosis may happen to some extent. I can see a possibility of a few lessons a week being given over to this type of learning to 'free' us up, although not, I admit, the whole timetable. (Where such apparent 'freedom' is gained, I would like to be present and use it as one-to-one with students, for instance.) I think there would be a strong resistance to that from parents as well as us.

It would be up to the teachers who are developing e-learning now to develop it responsibly (and I do not suggest any of the examples shared with us on this forum are not responsible, of course! They are excellent). By that I mean shape its development in such a way that classroom teaching - not just as a check and support but as actual teaching and developing - remains high profile, and in my view, still the major part of the teaching and learning process. If that happens and the partnership between the two types of learning remains a true partnership so that e-teaching and physically present learning are truly blended and inter-dependent, then it is much less likely to be misused or seen as a replcement for traditional teaching.

Just as an additional query - I am wondering how many of the folk on here are able to deliver blended learning to lower school students and in what proportion and with what success?

To my mind, the earlier students are introduced to it, the better.

Not to the same degree by any means. Time to prepare materials, availability of computer suites for teaching groups etc. takes its toll on the best of intentions.

I agree however that the earlier students are introduced to e-learning the quicker they will reap the very clear benefits.

I have certainly noticed that in my own subjects e-learning for younger students tends to focus on individual lesson activities rather than integrated courses and programs of study online. There are some fantastic history sites offering quizzes, games and lesson activities but no one to my knowledge has yet tried to deliver a whole unit or course online as yet.

(Christine, I like the e-teaching idea! )

With good well planned, interactive, challenging and interesting online content I do however believe that teaching will become "easier". Not least because you have more chance of a room full of self motivated in part self supported learners.
Is this a bad thing?

I tend to think of blended learning as mostly class activities with e-learning activities integrated into that and your replies are making me adjust my viewpoint a little. I have to say that I am wary of mainly on-line courses - too much like distance learning, which is subtly different to blended learning to my mind. I still want a higher proportion of class and teacher-based teaching. At least, certainly in the lower school. The jury is out as to the proportion I would like with Sixth Form.

I do accept that a higher proportion of the learning experience can be - and perhaps ought to be - e-learning for older students (because they are more intellectually mature than younger students).

However, I cannot see that e-learning schemes of that nature would work so well for students in the lower school who would need a much more hands-on and constant drip-feed type of feedback in order to shape their learning and application of new skills meaningfully.

I also feel that on-line quizzes etc, whilst excellent and helpful, are not really blended; they seem more like add-ons. Valuable and enhancing, but they would still not be missed if they were not used.

I would like to actually integrate e-learning activities into schemes so that all teachers had to deliver them to deliver the scheme and curriculum objective.

I believe that e-learning should not just be seen as almost a 'different' way of teaching, or even as enhancing activities (as they still are by most teachers for reasons outlines elsewhere) ; they should be real learning experiences that are as inseparable from our teaching as any other of the methods we use.

Like most of us, when I teach a new skill/ topic to a class, I use a variety of learning activities targeted at different learning styles and different aspects or skills. Like layers of an onion they build into a whole learning experience. Take one layer away and the other layers become less effective, or in some cases, meaningless. They are interrelated and interdependent activities. I would like to see e-learning activities integrated into the teaching and learning process with lower school students in exactly the same way, so that the join was seamless and it took its place as part of a whole, integrated process for the student.

Another aspect I have thought about is that if e-learning should ever become more commonplace in schools, there may also be some way in which more integrated learning across subjects could be promoted, with different subjects agreeing integrated cross-curricular e-learning experiences or approaches or skills that would help students in the lower school transfer their learning experiences from one subject to another (something they sadly rarely do at the moment).

I tend to agree with this
The early secondary years should be about gradually empowering students to access a hypertext curriculum. I think however that with good writing we may be surprised at how quickly the students develop the necessary skills and confidence .

Coming back to what I wrote earlier about e-learning and foreign language learning, blended learning is essential in subject areas that are both skill-based and knowledge-based. Skill-based subjects can only be taught efficiently in a face-to-face situation. I recently contributed to a report entitled "The Impact of Information and Communications Technologies on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and on the Role of Teachers of Foreign Languages". This is a comprehensive report commissioned by the EC Directorate General of Education and Culture, which can be downloaded in PDF or Word format from the ICC website: http://www.icc-europe.com - click on "Report on ICT in FLL".

In the Executive Summary we wrote:
"One important fact that has emerged from this study is that Foreign Languages as a subject area is 'different' from most other subject areas in the curriculum, namely that it is skill-based as well as knowledge-based, and in this respect it has more in common with Music than, say, History or Geography. This has implications both for the types of hardware and software that are used in FLT & FLL, but also for FLT pedagogy and methodology."

The issue of e-learning and foreign languages has been thoroughly aired in EUROCALL conferences over the last 10 years (http://www.eurocall-languages.org) and in recent published works:

Felix U. (2001) Beyond Babel: language learning online, Melbourne, Language Australia. Reviewed at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/felixreview.htm

2002: My article entitled "ICT and modern foreign languages: learning opportunities and training needs", published in Scottish Languages Review 8, June 2003, Scottish CILT: http://www.scilt.stir.ac.uk/SLR/index.htm

Felix U. (2003) (ed.) Language learning online: towards best practice, Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.

There is a substantial body of diagnostic language tests relating to the Council of Europe's six-point scale at http://www.dialang.org
Significantly. the tests only cover three out of the four discrete skills: Reading, Writing, Listening. Speaking is conspicuously absent and Writing is restricted to basic gap-filling activities not essay-writing, for example.

We've often faced this problem of defining what we're doing where I work in Sweden. At once stage the Swedish Net University was fairly fundamentalist in its definition: if you met the students at all face-to-face (f2f), you weren't doing IT-based distance education.

Fortunately, reality came knocking on the door. In my (fairly limited) experience, most of the 'fundamentalists' are characterised by rarely, if ever, having actually run an on-line course.

Our problem was to make sense of the confusing array of practices and technology which we had before us. What follows is our best shot so far.

Our starting point was this quotation:

“For the moment, let us accept that the amount
of bandwidth is a measure of the amount of information
that can be transmitted at a given time by a channel …

“The irony of the current situation is that the classroom is a broadband environment and can be used to transmit as much information as the senses can absorb. Yet we mainly use it for learning with words which require little bandwidth.”

Tiffin, J & Rajasingham L, In Search of the Virtual Class, London, Routledge, 1995

So we started playing around with the idea that 'bandwidth' could be a common denominator for assessing what kinds of learning environments we wanted to create and what kinds of inputs you could put in them.

If you imagine that f2f involves maximum bandwidth, then ISDN-based video conferencing requires a little less, e-mail a little less, whilst the minimum is probably the amount used by the printer to print out the paper originals of your study guides, etc.

Thus we're able to make a connection from our work in the classroom, through the various web and media links, right to the paper copies we use. The questions then are of the type "How do we distribute our resources between the various types of bandwidth we're using?" and "Are we using this particular bandwidth in the best way?"

If you put the circles representing the different bandwidths together, you get something which we call "The Cone of Teacher/Tutor Input". In other words, if we teachers are going to make an input, this is where it's going to happen.

The students' learning, however, is the cylinder, formed by extending the maximum amount of bandwidth all the way through the course. The challenge to us as teachers is to provide inputs via narrow bandwidths (which are also cheaper) to create learning experiences for students which make use of as much of the rest of the bandwidth which is available.

To give you one example: someone I know was once running a course in local history in a part of Sweden called Hälsingland. One early summer's evening, as he was being driven home from a course meeting, he took a digital photo of a local beauty spot out of the car window. When he got home, he posted the blurry photo on the web server, with the question "Is this the soul of Hälsingland?" Within 24 hours every single student on the course had responded with stories, anecdotes, reminiscences, etc, and had started responding to each other's responses. This is what I call a good use of bandwidth: the teacher used relatively little, but the students' learning experiences used up a lot.

So, for me, the question "to blend or not to blend" betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of the activity we're all engaged in. The question is "what are we trying to do?" If we know that, then we can make an informed judgement about how we're going to use the bandwidth available to get there.

Absolutely!

The question IS 'what are we trying to do?'

But what is the answer?

The answer for me is simple: "Blend!"

Actually, the term "blended learning" irritates me. It's just a new addition to the plethora of new terms with which we are constantly confronted that seek to dress up an old idea in new clothing. In Modern Languages we have always made use of so-called blended learning, drawing on a variety of resources: human, audio technology, video technology, overhead projector slides, books, blackboards etc. ICT is just another tool in the teacher's armoury. I have been working in ICT since 1976 and it has long since ceased to be exciting for me. E-learning has a few useful features that I can take or leave.

Furthermore, concrete evidence regarding the impact of ICT in education is difficult to obtain, although a report on a research study conducted by BECTA, ImpaCT2, has produced some significant data: http://www.becta.org.uk/research/impact2
The ImpaCT2 study seems to indicate that schools using ICT in the classroom get better results than those that do not, and there is a correlation between the use of ICT and good examination results in some subject areas, but it depends how you read the data and there is a huge cost factor to be taken nto account. Case still not proven.

Angela McFarlane, Professor of Education and Director of Learning Technology, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, writes:

Times Educational Supplement, ICT in Education Online, 26 April 2002, p. 17.

I agree, Graham, 'blended learning' is not a term I like at all. I'm glad this has turned into such a healthy debate, because it really is about asking 'what are we trying to do?' and 'what do we want to achieve?"

To me it's about choice - student choice. Now, as ChristineS pointed out it would be very hard for students in the lower grades [primary school ] to make these sorts of choices but the students in secondary school , a higher education and vocational education the ability to choose how, when, and where they learn is one of the basic tenets of today's education .

In our vocational education system in Australia there are many second chance learners to find it very difficult to attend classes . Giving them the choice of learning online , by videoconference , by correspondence or from other electronic media for at least part of a course do some more access to this type of study that they want to undertake .

This is the best feature of blended learning . Let's keep the debate going it's a great one !

My students, in the natural learning concept , are already "blending" . It is the most logic way to go I think. For them it is not a matter different education, it is just everyday school. They choose themselves when they want to use a computer ,when to make a film etc etc etc

I've just put a post in the E-learning debate, where I describe the 'blended learning' course I'm working on right now.

I take an Orwellian view of all these terms! In my career we've gone through DE, DL, O/DL, OL, CL … and now we're on to BL! However, the actual activity has only changed as new technology and financial conditions have changed … and those changes have tended to be cosmetic, rather than conceptual.

If we can't quite work out what we mean by this term 'blended learning', perhaps that's an indication that we don't actually know what it is. And if we don't know what it is, how can we know whether we're doing it 'right' or not?

I come down on the side of the argument that says that there's no such thing as a specific, discrete set of IT-based teaching skills. In my view, if you're a good teacher f2f, you'll be a good IT-based teacher too.

David I absolutely agree. In some sectors of education herein lies the problem. Many teachers in Higher Education and Vocational Education and Training have had little or no teacher training and their teaching and learning background is very small.
One of the professional development issues that Australia and the UK share is how to prepare teachers for teaching with ICT in HE and VET. We need to start right back at the basics of teaching and learning practice before we even think about blending f2f with ICT enhanced teaching.

At least in Primary and Secondary schooling you have a base of teacher training to work with. We are starting right at the beginning.

Anyway - how do you describe 'good teaching'? What makes a good teacher today? When I was at school the sign of a good teacher was a quiet classroom and everyone knowing their times table!!!

Any takers on this question?
What makes a 'good teacher'?
What makes a 'good' teacher in an online or ICT enhanced classroom?

John Mayo posted this on another thread in the Forum.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=205

It is based on research with students.

http://www.gillmacmillan.ie/ECom/Library3....c7?OpenDocument

Students' perceptions of 'good' teachers

'Good' teachers
Get angry sometimes, when there is a reason
Listen to all sides
Stick to the rules
Treat all the children fairly
Say sorry when they have done something wrong
Give interesting lessons
Always have things for the pupils to do
Always mark classwork and homework
Ask the children what they think
Are on time for lessons
Stop children behaving badly
Deal with bad behaviour quietly (do not shout)
Are the same way every day
Try to make children understand

It can be a cop out. I think we've all seen examples of truly awful content which has been ill conceived, rushed or simply pays lip service to blended learning. Graham is right of course, we don't want to use computers at the expense of everything else and I think there are times when we should actually ban pupils from using computers for certain tasks.
The best kind of blended learning is not when the teacher is simply replaced by a machine, but when computers can consolidate the kind of face to face interaction that we human beings need.
I've created a series of Flash lessons for music harmony. Pupils work with me while I go through the points on a whiteboard (not an interactive one!) then they can go through the lessons again at home or in the school library.

My own feeling is that computers are simply the latest tool or technique we have in the eternal striving to let our pupils/students free, so that they can learn.

We know that knowledge is something that each creates within themselves. The challenge for teachers is always to create the environment where learners have personal 'tools', access to information, physical surrounding, etc in order to create knowledge.

In my view, in so far as computers allow this to happen, they have a useful educational function. My explanation for why this type of opinion is so unpopular with purveyors of computer equipment and programmes is that it re-establishes a vital role for the teacher. She can't be sidelined or replaced by a machine, since the creation of these 'safe and empowering learning environments' is something that seems to be a quintessentially human activity - well, at least at the present level of technical development!

(BTW in the absence of an impersonal pronoun in English to use instead of 'he' and 'she', I have chosen to use 'she'.)

David Richardson writes:



I absolutely agree. In my subject area, namely Modern Foreign Languages, we have been using various forms of techology ever since I first entered teaching in the 1960s. The language lab was hailed as the panacea, but it failed to make much of an impact on learning outcomes - not because the technology was at fault; it simply was not implemented effectively. Going back even further, we can see examples of all kinds of promises having been made about the latest technology: radio, cinema, the tape recorder, video etc. The boom period in ICT began in the early 1980s with the advent of the microcomputer, which opened up an exciting new range of learning opportunities for students of languages. The computer was hailed by enthusiasts as the panacea, but in the meantime many language teachers have become disappointed with what ICT (more recently in the guise of the Web) can offer. Oppenheimer sums it up:

"In 1922 Thomas Edison predicted that 'the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and [...] in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.' Twenty-three years later, in 1945, William Levenson, the director of the Cleveland public schools' radio station, claimed that 'the time may come when a portable radio receiver will be as common in the classroom as is the blackboard.' Forty years after that the noted psychologist B.F. Skinner, referring to the first days of his 'teaching machines,' in the late 1950s and early 1960s, wrote, 'I was soon saying that, with the help of teaching machines and programmed instruction, students could learn twice as much in the same time and with the same effort as in a standard classroom.'"
Oppenheimer T. (1997) "The Computer Delusion", The Atlantic Monthly 280, 1 (July 1997): 45-62: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jul/computer.htm

I've often thought that language teachers who once used language labs are particularly immune to the blandishments of IT gurus! In Kuwait, for example, we had a 104 booth language lab, with around 10 technicians working full time keeping around 80% of them working (on any given day). It looked very impressive to the casual visitor … but the educational value of them was very limited.

The problem was that the content had so little attention paid to it, compared with the technology. Of course, we teachers *could* write and record better material … but in comparison to all the other things we could do to make our teaching better, the language lab always lost out.

I ran into the same syndrome a couple of years ago here in Sweden at a demonstration of the latest computerised business English course. The programming was really something, with artificial intelligence being used to generate 'random' conversations. The problem was with the inputs. I got a strong impression of a bunch of underpaid EFL teachers getting their revenge. For example, take the scenario of a businessman coming through customs.

Customs Officer: Could you come over here please, sir.
Businessman: Are you talking to me?

All the EFL teachers in the room burst out laughing and starting producing their favourite Robert de Niro impression (I don't see anyone else here. You must be talking to me!).

The poor salesman had never heard of Monty Python's Hungarian phrasebook!

I share the viewpoint of Rob Jones Essentially the learning process "face to face" or "person to person (s)" that is "human being to human being" cannot be undervaluated if we still believe that the emotions and the dialogue are worth.

To answer to John about " Good Teachers": Of the several points he suggests,I certainly choose:
Give Interesting Lessons
Ask the children (students) what they think
Are on time for lessons
Try (the best) to make children(students) understand
Try no to shout.

David Richardson writes:


Dead right! Once bitten… I must say, however, that in my experience as a language teacher at Ealing College we used labs successfully from the 1960s right up until I retired in the 1990s. It was all down to good content and using the lab appropriately, e.g. for training in simultaneous interpreting rather than just as a drill-and-practice machine. The serious work was done in face-to-face classes, and the lab was used for reinforcement under teacher supervision and for self-access – which is more or less how we used the computer labs that arrived in the 1980s.



I love that sketch! I worked on a project in Hungary from 1991 to 1996. We showed a video of the phrasebook sketch to Hungarian students and they could see the funny side of it too. I learned some interesting Hungarian phrases from them too! We also used the dead parrot sketch, e.g. getting the students to note down how many different ways there are of saying “dead” in English: "late", "kicked the bucket", "deceased", "shuffled off this mortal coil", etc...

Why all the sudden interest in blending learning - surely most of us have been doing this for more years than we can to consider

Providing opportunities for learning through flexible means is what we are really talking about - whatever the means.

Let's demystify the whole thing about elearning and take it away from technology-push merchants who believe they have the answer.

So what is special about blending? Isn't it the blender?

Karl Donert writes


Of course! But if you describe an old idea with a new term, people will think that you have actually invented something new - except those of us who are not so easily fooled

Interesting to consider that elearning frees time - based on research we have been doing - many teachers suggest that they would be interested in developing elearning and it was something they would be keen to be involved in - but so few are prepared to move beyond their comfort zone to experience it, let alone do it.

Surely the point has to be that elearning hprovides something different and we have to make this clear to those who make decisions. The biggest problem is that we end up on an elearning/blended learning bandwagon - where those concerned don't realise the real opportunity that there is to bring learning to the learner.... and to make it really high in quality. To provide real learning support to the learners. So we need to focus on the support and pedagogies involved - too much is spent on technological 'solutions' - just wait and see the bigger and netter BETT show

The teachers perspective of "well I teach and they listen - sorry learn " is a major barrier... so we need a changed mindset if we are going to make any progress with this. Who is important here - the teacher or the learner?

So, I ask how can we change the teacher's mindset?

Well what about insisting teachers experience elearning themselves to reflect on the value.
We need to make is relevant and certificated and part of developing a profession which remains in need of re-professioalisation!

What else? Any ideas?

I feel that the way to get teachers interested in e-learning is much the same as the way you get them interested in any pedagogical development - through peer example and slow, patient work.

I'm a great supporter of teacher conservatism - dedicated teachers are interested in creating environments where their students can learn, and this process is difficult and extremely complicated. It's also idiosyncratic, since the interaction between people is one of the most important factors in it, and combinations of people change all the time. When, then, someone from outside this highly complex environment comes along with 'revolutionary new' solutions, which, incidentally, involve breaking a few eggs first … with the promise of a virtual omelette a long way down the line … it's perfectly understandable (to me, anyway) that teachers aren't interested.

When it comes to e-learning, I feel that we've been concentrating on the wrong letters in the abbreviation ICT. We stress 'information' and 'technology', but we almost ignore 'communication'. I joined a team of around 10 teachers here in Kalmar about four years ago. At that time, I was the only person using ICT in teaching (apart from surfing the Internet to find information for lectures). Now we all are.

The way we got to where we are was by looking at computers as ways of improving communication between teachers, students and outside experts. Sometimes this means bringing in Internet tutors from around the world (which takes the load off campus-based teachers, whilst giving an incredible amount of added value to the students). Sometimes it means bringing in experts in various fields via Internet (because we can't afford the air fares - and, anyway, it would be a waste of resources doing that). Sometimes it means setting up partnerships between groups of students who have mutual interests, even if they're studying different courses (co-researching essay questions, for example).

The bottom line has always been that you do e-learning because a) it's fun; and it's easier than not doing it.

One consequence of this approach is to develop skills in seeing the supposed benefits, rather than just the features of the latest piece of technology that's being peddled. The pedlars, incidentally, have almost never thought of their product as having benefits - just features. If you do it this way, you quickly realise that it's very unlikely that one product or one method will provide what everyone's looking for. On a very banal level, for example, chemists need primary colour and non-ASCII characters; biologists need very sophisticated colour; physicists need computing power; and language teachers need audio and video. I haven't seen a technical solution yet which treats each of these as equally important … so you need more than one technical system.

I'm a great believer in the 'apprentice' system for developing e-learning courses, rather than the 'send them on a course' system. The reason things developed here was firstly because there was a need. Then we had the technology … and finally, there were individuals you could have a cup of coffee with who seemed to be doing it, without developing scabs or collapsing through over-work.

As I've mentioned in another post today, managers hate this kind of development because they don't control it. What we need, for example, is an absence of management, once the basic environment has been created (both in terms of technology and working practices). We also need a system of remuneration which allows us to 'spend' our assets on apparently unproductive things, like group building, at the beginning of the process, so that we can reap the benefits at the end. The problem for the managers is that they have to just take our word for it that there will be some benefits somewhere down the line!