Twenty-first-century e-learning: are the dreams still to come true?
Ian Clive Holtham
There has been a huge growth in the use of technology as part of learning, especially in the last decade. But there is no guarantee that it will actually improve learning itself. Indeed there continue to be examples where the opposite is the case; I recently saw a piece of health and safety training where the technology was so badly implemented that quite honestly reading a booklet and doing some multiple choice tests at the end would have been far more effective.
e-Learning is the application of digital technology to learning. There is a huge literature on the take-up of digital technology, of technology adoption, and much of this is simply ignored when it comes to the design of e-learning. It has been understood since the pioneering work of the Tavistock Institute in the 1940s that the mere physical implementation of technology does not guarantee business success. The Tavistock socio-technical systems model identifies two further interacting dimensions in addition to technology and task (that is, business success). These are structure and people. Unless structure and people are considered alongside technology, it will only be by chance that technology investment leads to business success.