Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Elearning Framework
Tony Karrer attempts to give the history of
elearning a bit of structure breaking its
development into several phases: elearning 1.0;
elearning 1.3; and elearning 2.0. Overall his
structure is to be seen as an evolution where
elements of 1.0 could be used in 1.3 and so on –
each phase is not mutually exclusive. Karrer
chooses to use 1.3 as opposed to 1.5 because he
believes the evolution from 1.0 to the next level
was a smaller leap than from 1.3 to 2.0. He has
provided a table differentiating each phase:
Social Learning
Expanding further he introduces the concept of
“Social Learning”. “Perhaps the simplest way to
explain this concept is to note that social learning
is based on the premise that our understanding
of content is socially constructed through
conversations about that content and through
grounded interactions, especially with others,
around problems or actions. The focus is not so
much on what we are learning but on how we are
learning.” (Seely Brown & Adler 2008)
Caveat Emptor
Not everyone is so enamoured with the latest
trends in eLearning. For David Jennings, he sees
eLearning 2.0 as a simple rebranding exercise in
an attempt for the industry to distance itself from
past failures. There is some merit in this. “It is
remarkable how many people who presumably
make money in the e-learning sector spend time
dismissing the shortcomings of the domain…I
think it's a combination of the fallout from the
stack-'em-high-sell-'em-cheap era of e-learning
modules, combined with a lingering obsession
with novelty.” (Jennings 2005).
Using the example of Wikipedia: “The underlying
belief about wikis is that "all of us are smarter
than a few of us." This is comforting illusion in
theory, but is just plain wrong in practice. The
mediocre don't always understand enough to
judge an expert's pronouncements. Groups of
people often tend toward groupthink or mob
psychosis.” (Thalheimer 2005). Outside the realm
of the Internet and Social Networking “group-
think” has negative connotations. A real world
example was during the investigation into the
Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters
groupthink within NASA was noted as a
contributory problem in the culture of that
organisation.