e-learning's different, but it works

It is natural that new-fangled techniques like the use of the internet for distance learning should be compared with the traditional learning method, the classroom and face-to-face interaction.

Can one really overcome distance or replicate the "vibrations" that a good teacher generates with her or his students? Looking into the eyes of his class, a good guru evaluates the learning that's been absorbed.

No video conference or on-line chatroom can match that. True. But surprisingly, intensive distance methods via the internet provide other things that teacher learning matches only imperfectly. Let us consider the oft-overlooked potential of the new methods.

Let me say at the outset that e-learning is not one single model. There are large-scale versions as utilised by open universities, using real time video-conferencing with satellite centres, or reaching large audiences more simply through radio broadcasts.

More elaborate versions provide flexibility to suit the time convenience of students. Sometimes these are cast in "self-learning" modes (with questions built into the text, with automatic assessment). More sophisticated versions combine text with multimedia, on CDs or on-line, the latter with or without instructor intervention.

Broadly, the progression in distance learning using computers is based on the intensity of the instructor's interaction with students. As this interaction increases, the size of the class comes down and, in parallel, the cost in manpower and resources rises.

For three years I have taught post-graduate courses that combine diplomacy and internet applications, in a distance learning programme run out of Malta and Geneva.

This article is based on our continual experimentation in this non-profit entity that functions under an agreement between Malta and Switzerland.

I was at a workshop in London, attended by representatives of 15 countries, hosted by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Canada's Department of International Affairs (the latter is a leader in e-learning; the former is yet to enter the waters).

In essence, we found that the unexpectedly rich attributes of e-learning, flowing from its internet connectivity, are often underestimated.

First, text-based lectures lend themselves to complex student participation that is more interactive than in a classroom.

One options used is "hypertext", where students highlight some words or a section of a sentence of the lecture text, which opens a box that permits writing in a comment, and/or give a hyperlink to a website that the student finds relevant.

That action modifies the lecture text, in that the highlighted words appear in bright yellow (signaling that comment to others); if one places the cursor on that yellow portion, a text-box automatically opens, giving the title of that comment, and the name of its author.

The faculty, or other students, can then add further observations (or additional hyperlinks), and the initial text box is then modified to show the names of the others who have commented. Thus a lecture that has been chewed over by the class ends up awash with such yellow signals.

If the class or the faculty want to see all comments in their totality (without opening each text-box), a "discussion tree" is also available via a button, detailing each comment and the linked sub-comments.

An additional feature: if the class-member wishes (via an "options" that can be selected), an email is received automatically with the text of each comment or weblink.

Secondly, an alternative is a lecture "discussion board", essentially a "blog" - an open-ended dialogue forum for asynchronous exchanges among the class and its instructor.

Typically, a lecture is open 5 to 7 days for discussion, during which the class offers comments and the instructor responds.

Of course, all the comments are "public," visible to the entire class, but an option for private teacher-student comment is also available.

Thus each generation of students and lecturers creates new layers of meaning and examples, enriching the initial text. Moreover, unlike comments on paper e-comments are accessible anytime, anywhere.

Thirdly, the class next assembles in cyberspace, in an online session that takes place at a time fixed in GMT, so that participants living in different time zones make themselves available, via a normal internet connection (broadband is not essential), to meet the instructor, debating points arising from a particular lecture.

The format is a closed chat room, with all the limitations that a text-only chat entails "� the difficulty of sustaining a single discussion thread, participants jumping in with tangential comment and, sometimes, a lack of discipline as well.

Some internet-based learning systems deliberately avoid the online chat. Our experience has been that while the instructor must juggle with two or three lines of discussion (and needs fast typing speed as well!), the online sessions create a sense of community within the class.

We saw this especially during a "short course" on bilateral diplomacy that was run over two-and-half months last year, where the students never met in person.

Fourthly, the internet gives the virtual classroom access to a wide range of supplementary materials, more varied than what most live classrooms may find feasible.

A "resources" button on the homepage takes one to a collection of folders, with the texts of relevant documents (extracts from books, other papers, and web-links to journals and other relevant websites, most papers in the "pdf" format, within the constraints of copyright regulations).

Other variations are possible. For instance, the Canadians use a neat trick of using free night-time in their 24-hour communication network with diplomatic missions abroad, to download daily to the embassy computer servers all the updated teaching materials from Ottawa, so that when embassy officials attend the virtual classroom, they only access the embassy network, avoiding even the usual internet delay. They also extensively use multimedia teaching materials.

To conclude, e-learning of the intensive kind, while not recreating the personal chemistry of t-learning, gives remarkable depth of its own. The two are not alternatives, but methods to be used in parallel, with wide application beyond diplomatic studies.

Any professional activity that needs skills updating for personnel dispersed in geography, where relatively small numbers need customised quality coaching, can use such e-learning.

Kishan S Rana is a Senior Fellow at DiploFoundation (www.diplomacy.edu). He can be contacted at
kishan@diplomacy.edu.