3.8.4. Lessons learned - Concepts of MLE Development & e-learning
These lessons have been drawn from researching project documents, and in particular from Jos Boys' report 'Learning Lessons from MLE Development projects - A review of the 7/99 JISC-funded projects', a commissioned JISC report.
Awareness raising and clarification of the concept of an MLE is important.
The concept of an MLE is abstract, open to subjective interpretation and there are not usually common agreed understandings across different stakeholders.
There are often different driving forces behind the development of an MLE. For some stakeholders it is about the development and joining up of a VLE with an emphasis on the pedagogical and elearning aspects and in particular in an aspiration to improve the student learning experience. For others the focus is more service and administratively focussed, with an emphasis on providinge web-based access to university services and information in general and hence less of a focus on teaching and learning.
The nature of existing pedagogical, organisational and technical structures and processes are highly complex, often incompatible and poorly understood.
There is a lack of generally agreed models of the MLE development process.
There is a tendency to conceptualise the problem around the integration of existing systems.
The ways in which processes and systems are described and divided up is not coherent either within particular institutions or between them.
The emerging terminologies around MLE development are not shared or agreed.
There was no apparent clear consensus on the reasons for and benefits of elearning.
It is difficult to assess the benefits and costs of MLE developments.
Institutions do not have consistent procedures and measures for evaluating either conventional teaching modes and methods or elearning.
It is difficult to estimate the true cost of implementing elearning.
