By Vernon Daley, Staff Reporter
Winston Kerr looks over the content of one of his on-line courses offered by the University of the West Indies. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
A QUIET revolution has swept across the face of education, changing the way millions of people learn.
Every lecture, every handout, every quiz. All on-line.
This imperceptible force, which experts have called 'E-Learning' (Electronic Learning), has dug out a whole new route for those who thirst for education, especially at the tertiary level. Many persons have managed to get their degrees and other professional qualifications, not by trekking to an institution to sit in a lecture theatre but by merely logging on to the Internet.
E-Learning is not just another form of distance education. It's education's Second Coming. Anyone can now hop onto the super information highway and expand his mind by delving into a limitless pool of knowledge.
Far from being left behind, Jamaican students are riding the waves of revolutionary change. Many have sampled this new form of learning and now find themselves apostles in pronouncing its advantages.
"It is interesting," says Winston Kerr, one of a growing number of people who have embraced E-Learning as a viable alternative to traditional classroom education.
Winston, 46, is a teacher by profession who works as a material and procurement specialist with the Joint Board of Teacher Education Enterprise, based at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona. He has taken two on-line courses as part of the M.Ed. in Teacher Education, which he is currently pursuing through the Institute of Education at the UWI.
CONVENIENCE
For Winston, the best thing about the courses was their convenience. He says he loved the freedom to be able to go onto the Internet whenever he wanted and be able to keep up with the discussions that were going on among students who were participating in the course.
"You could just log on and do what you wanted at anytime," he says. "It's very convenient. Anytime, night or day, you could just join in and make your contributions."
Head of the Institute of Education, Professor Hyacinth Evans, never tires when it comes to singing the praise of E-Learning. Professor Evans, who teaches a number of on-line courses in the M.Ed. programme, sees the Internet as a wonderful tool for opening up learning to a wide range of people reaching them wherever they are.
With the country's tertiary institutions limited by physical space, the Professor is adamant that the Government will have to aggressively move to promote on-line learning on a widespread basis if it is to meet its target of exposing 15 per cent of the tertiary-age cohort, to higher learning.
ENROLLED
"We have to go to on-line learning urgently if we want to meet that 15 per cent," she says, noting that only about seven per cent of the cohort is now enrolled in tertiary institutions.
On-line learning, she says, is not only convenient to students but to teachers as well. Going to class, she confesses, can be tiring and it is a joy to be able to guide students by typing away at a computer at your own leisure.
E-Learning exploded in the 1990s, coinciding with more people gaining access to the Internet. Though actual figures are hard to come by, experts say that the on-line student population is expanding by 30 per cent a year, with more than 75 per cent of traditional colleges and universities getting into the market.
In the fall of 2002, nearly 40,000 students across Illinois in the US enrolled in courses on-line. Roughly 10,000 more caught on in the spring of 2003, bringing Internet course enrolment to over 50,000.
Though it's convenient, teaching an on-line course is not a walk in the park, says well-known public relations practitioner, Berl Francis. Ms. Francis, who teaches an on-line course as part of the Master's degree in Communications at Webster University in St. Louis Missouri, says delivering a course on-line requires creativity and great communications skills.
"A lot of communication is about body language and you can tell if someone is grasping by how they are looking. But when you are on the computer there is no way to tell how well people are really grasping," says Ms. Francis, who has also taught traditional classroom courses.
This severe handicap is, however, not a stonewall. It can be overcome.
DIALOGUE
One way of doing this, she says, is by ensuring that students are constantly engaged in dialogue, through Internet chat rooms and discussion boards. While not perfect, it helps to bring students together and make them more comfortable.
But many students still find the loss of social interaction one of the most difficult problems to deal with in E-Learning.
Ava Tomlinson, 28, says this was one of the main challenges that she had to confront in doing her Postgraduate diploma in Cultural Resource Management at the University of Victoria in Canada.
She advises persons thinking of doing a course by E-Learning to think very carefully whether they can go without that kind of interaction.
"In on-line learning you have no body pushing you," she says. "You have to be focused and disciplined."
Winston also confesses to have missed the interaction with other students, especially when he was having difficulty putting a face to the name of those who were in his class.
"I missed face-to-face interaction. I missed it. I missed it," he laments.
CHALLENGES
Despite the challenges, persons who have made their sojourn into E-Learning are without regrets. The convenience of logging on to the Internet, in their own time, to pursue their studies, is a powerful attraction.
While many students will be heading out to university this fall to sit and face their lecturers, still many others will be heading to their computers to log on to virtual campuses. E-Learning has now planted its roots as a real option for those who want to advance their education taking learning to people, wherever they are.
