Author: Richard Self, r.j.self@derby.ac.uk

JISC e-Learning Activity Area: Learning Resources and Activities

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: Business, Management, Accountancy and Finance

This case study illustrates...an effect on exam results, student satisfaction with e-learning, staff satisfaction with e-learning, a positive effect on recruitment, use of resources

Tangible Benefits

What tangible benefits did this e-learning approach produce?

This section will look at the provided headings in sequence.

Unfortunately under each section it has been very difficult to find any real benefits to students or the institution that have any real significance. I am sure that there are some "political" level achievements and benefits but when we look for real world "bottom line" benefits there are surprisingly few in the context of distance learning through a pure e-learning approach, particularly into the developing world. Yes, the biggest and greatest real benefit is to allow students who would otherwise not be able to study to gain access to the programmes and education. But provided that cohort sizes in a country are of the order of 40 to 45, it becomes cheaper and far more effective to deliver the teaching in-country face-to-face in the concentrated mode that we use.

• significant improvements in student learning
  • In common with most published research, e.g. HEA e-Learning Workshop at Greenwich, 6 June 2007, there are no demonstrable pedagogical or attainment benefits relating to the use of e-support. Indeed, for our Blended mode, the attempt to use a pure "e" approach for the option modules caused a very severe adverse reaction from the students which required us to revert to the normal face-to-face mode of delivery in 2007.
  • The difficulties of administering the distance learners causes significant dissatisfaction amongst some students, due to problems with e-mails, the platform etc.
• significant improvement in student satisfaction with the learning process;
  • See above, all students who have an option strongly favour the face-to-face mode of delivery, with the benefits of being able to hold seminars and discussions, which is not possible online if there are no audio discussion facilities. Type-based seminars are too slow to be worthwhile and are not used by any students on this programme, however incentivised.
• significant improvement in retention rates
  • There are no demonstrable benefits in retention rates on these programmes. Indeed, in common with much published research, see for example A Andersson, e-learning Africa 2007, Nairobi, the retention rates for almost all pure e-learning programmes are not significantly different from the old style correspondence courses and are much worse than face-to-face based modes.
• significant improvement in staff satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for, e-learning;
  • As a general rule, academics are not satisfied with the e-learning process due to the added workloads, particularly the administration aspects and the slowness of typed communication. In addition, the inability to effectively run synchronous online seminars due to the time zone problems of worldwide cohorts and the inability to provide audio conferencing to low-bandwidth connected students leads to dissatisfaction with the loss of the human touch and interaction with students. The students mostly "disappear into their bunkers" and only re-appear to submit their assignments, sometimes.
• significant improvement in staff's ability to deliver e-learning;
  • Over the past 5 years there have been developments in the way of designing the materials for the e-learning modules. This has moved the process from teaching to facilitated learning, in other words, providing a series of simple objectives and introduction, directed reading and searching questions and tasks for the students which ultimately lead to the development of the scaffolding of the assignments, rather like the patchwork approach.
• significant improvement in staff performance more generally;
  • This has not generally happened, delivering e-learning is seen as an imposition and a diversion from the real business of face-to-face teaching and learning, in other words, diversion from the "human" aspect of teaching and learning.
• increased performance towards departmental and/or institutional strategic targets (for example, recruitment, retention, widening participation targets, space usage, computer availability, room allocation) through the use of this e-learning approach
  • The main advantage of the pure distance e-learning programmes is the contribution towards the institutional targets for the provision of flexible learning and minor additional recruitment, equivalent to perhaps 1 to 2% of total student population in headcount terms but in overall student FTE terms is only equivalent to about 0.2% or less.
• any actual savings in terms of costs, time and resources.
  • There are no expected cost savings from using e-learning, it is only capable of delivering additional costs, see chart below. This assessment is supported by the HE Academy e-learning Workshop at Greenwich, 6 June, where all participants recognised that there are no significant cost savings as a result of the "e" provision, only very significant additional costs in all areas.

Did implementation of this e-learning approach have any disadvantages or drawbacks?

In common with most of the e-learning programmes, there are many drawbacks with e-support of programmes:

• at departmental and/or institutional level the following disadvantages are apparent;
  • Extra time required for academics to go that extra step to convert Word documents via Course Genie prior to loading in the platform
  • The need to reload all materials into each module/course instance, at least once per year
  • Lack of IT literacy amongst both Academics and students
  • Significant module and programme management overheads to maintain contact with the students
  • e-tutors get an allowance of 2.5 hours per student, which means that the staff costs of supporting e-students is much higher than face-to-face, see chart below.
  • Additional administration costs due to the low levels of engagement and retention in the pure e-learning programmes
• In addition there are other disadvantages such as:
  • Slowness of typed communication
    • Spoken communication is between 5 and 10 times faster than typing, hence communication with purely online students is very slow and is a significant overhead for the e-tutors.
    • Use of audio communications technologies, such as Skype or MSN Messenger, will not work for students with dial-up connections
  • User access bandwidth.
    • Most sub-Saharan students do not have access to connectivity better than 10 to 20kbs dial-up internet. Those lucky enough to have "broadband" normally only have 128kbs at high cost compared to European cost rates. This severely restricts access to e-journals, as articles are normally 150KBytes and upwards in size. This often leads to download times of 30 minutes to 1 hour or more per article (if successful).
    • Only 45% of UK households have broadband access.
  • Retention Rates and Achievement Levels
    • As with most online programmes, the pure-e-learning programme students have to be managed very tightly, in order to ensure that students complete the programme.
    • In contrast, the retention rate for the Blended version of the programme in Malawi and Botswana has the highest completion rate and achievement levels of any programme in the University of Derby and has done from the very beginning of the programme before any "e" support was provided. In other words the introduction of the "e" component has had no detectable impact on the retention rates in Malawi and Botswana or on achievement levels.

How did this e-learning approach accord with or differ from any relevant departmental and/or institutional strategies?

Both the Blended and pure e-learning modes are fully embedded in the University of Derby institutional strategies.

• The University continues to develop and embed e-learning in all variations of the approach from F2F, via e-provision of some or all materials via the VLE through Blended to pure e-learning for Distance students.
• The following diagram, developed by D Foord, illustrates the full spectrum of e-learning that the University of Derby recognises and is supporting. The Programme discussed in this analysis operates at the resource supported level (in a minor way) and at the right hand extreme of the spectrum. Internet infrastructural issues mean that there is little opportunity to apply any of the aspects in the middle of the spectrum