Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB)

Implementation strategies for e-learning environments: Application-oriented and effective across a broad front

Despite the current economic downturn, Internet technology is growing at such a fast pace that with the help of the Internet substantial segments of the economy will be able to work worldwide in just a few years' time. The scale here can be best illustrated with the help of a few examples:

Today, global export trade in agricultural products, mineral resources and manufactured products totals some $14 billion a day. By contrast, daily foreign exchange dealings which modern information technology has enabled total approximately $1,200 billion a day (see Schauer, Internet für alle - Chance oder Zumutung, Ulm, 2002, p. 10). The opportunity to participate in the global exchange of goods, the mobility of individuals and the mobility of foreign currencies is directly dependent on the level of access to and use of Internet-based information. Another example illustrates the quantum leap in innovation seen in the IT field: If automobile performance had developed as rapidly as computers have, it would be possible to drive a car one million kilometres in one hour on just one tank of gas today. The car could then be thrown away because buying a new one would be cheaper than paying for parking (Schauer, ibid., p. 11).

In this connection, the fact that content, didactics and technology have moved more closely to one another in recent years has enabled the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) as a new and extremely efficient means of providing training when the requisite three "Cs" - capacity, connectivity and content - are available.

The German government's Innovation and Jobs in the Information Society of the 21st Century programme has helped lay the foundation for using new media in general schools, universities, the initial and continuing vocational training field and various levels of government, all on an application-oriented basis. Project consortia comprised of universities, initial and continuing education and training providers, industry, the skilled trades and small and medium-sized enterprises have developed goal-directed implementation strategies for a wide range of research and development projects, strategies aimed at using the Internet - as a medium for initial and continuing education and training activities - to help boost Germany's competitive strength as a location for trade, industry and education. In this connection, the Federal Institute for Vocational Training oversaw the implementation of five pilot projects in "Using Global Knowledge for Initial and Continuing Education and Training and for Innovation Processes" field as the Innovation in the Initial and Continuing Training Sector project sponsor on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

		The L³ Lifelong Learning - Continuing Education and Training as a Basic Need pilot project developed, among other things, the foundation for comprehensive e-learning services for the initial and continuing vocational education and training sector. A project consortium comprised of companies, universities and training providers successfully developed and tested the technological, organizational and social infrastructure needed for offering e-learning services. Lead manager for this project was SAG AG (information at: : http://www.l-3.info/)
		The SENEKA pilot project is aimed at setting up and testing adaptable service networks for initial and continuing training processes, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Through the SENEKA project, a range of information, education and service products that are tailored to user needs, are economical in cost and can be activated within a short time will be established in this segment for the responsible players. Lead manager is RWTH Aachen University (information at http://www.seneka.de/).
		The Networked Chemistry Studies Programme pilot project developed an electronic platform that links the theory and practice that underpin the study of chemistry and makes all available knowledge from the field of chemistry available with the help of multimedia instruction modules for the initial and continuing education and training sector. The lead manager for the project is FIZ Chemie Berlin GmbH (information in German at: http://www.vernetztes-studium.de/).
		The development and offering of online courses of study is the objective of the Virtual University of Applied Sciences project. The first actual courses of study being offered by the Virtual University of Applied Sciences are a Media Informatics bachelor's and master's degree programme, an Industrial Engineering diplom programme and an Industrial Engineering post-graduate programme. The lead manager for the project is the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences (information in German at:  http://www.oncampus.de/).
		Drawing on electronic media used in the medical field, the MedicDAT pilot project is helping to merge and interlink the content of all types of information that is available in electronic form. This project brings together and links content from hospital communication systems, computer applications used in medical practices, knowledge-based systems, medical databases, literature services and other electronic information media together, without regard to the producer. The lead manager for the project is the Regensburg Medical Centre (information at: http://www.medicdat.de/).

In addition to the sizeable corresponding budgets in the individual EU member states, the USA, Canada and Japan, the European Union is also strongly committed to fostering new media throughout all of its member states through its eLearning Action Plan (Commission of the European Communities, 2001). The European Union's strategy paper "eLearning Action Plan - Designing tomorrow's education" outlines a programme (for the period 2001 through 2004) for establishing new media in EU member states in a way that would have a widespread impact and be geared to quality and actual application. This paper was drafted in the wake of the EU summit in Lisbon in March 2000. It contains programmatic statements on safeguarding jobs and on initial and continuing education and training within the context of the discussion on lifelong learning which in turn places entirely new, individual demands on apprentices, trainees and employees to ensure their employability in the wake of the increasingly dominant use of new I&C technologies in operational, business and production processes, in trade, the service sector and in the initial and continuing education and training field.

The paper directs special attention to cooperation between so-called public-private partnerships and the inclusion of the social partners:

"... The final aim of the eLearning initiative is to strengthen cooperation and dialogue and improve links between measures and initiatives at all levels - local, regional, national and European - and between all the players in the field: universities, schools, training centres, decision-makers and administrators responsible for selecting equipment, software, content or services (including the social partners). Partnerships between the public and private sectors will continue to be established, in order to encourage exchanges of experience, technology transfers and an improvement in the way in which business' skill needs are taken into account in conjunction with the measures advocated by the European Employment Strategy" (ibid., p. 5).

Given the size of the European training market - a volume of some € 750 billion (which also makes it approximately the same size as the US market) - small percentages can translate into enormous turnover volumes. New media presently account for approximately one percent of the initial and continuing education and training sector. This could quickly rise to double-digit figures. The individual sub-segments speak a clear language here - learning services and instruction material / learning material alone will each represent some 40 percent of this market, while networks and communication will account for ten percent, and the two segments learning platforms and components, and computers and peripheral equipment will each hold approximately five percent (DIN-Institut e.V., Berlin, 2001).

Thus, there has generally been no lack of expressions of political will or initiatives for ensuring Internet access on a broad basis as a medium for modernizing initial and continuing education and training and, as a result, for boosting the economy's competitive strength in the global marketplace (e-inclusion). However the path to achieving this ambitious goal is turning out to be more difficult, time-consuming and, most significantly, costly than anticipated by any prediction - including the cautious ones. Model projects in this field require staying power and highly developed management skills for steering and controlling the technological, organizational, social and inter-cultural components associated with so-called e-learning solutions.

In the long run, development work that has a broad, lasting effect and implementation strategies for establishing Internet-based learning environments require international cooperation to ensure the compatibility of key elements of learning architectures (production and management of content, services). The advantages of such agreements and standards are obvious: Once they have been produced, instruction units can be used over and over again; they can also be quickly updated or combined to produce new applications. Agreements and standards of this type give both customers and producers of so-called e-learning content a clear means of orientation with regard to quality, comparability and reliability.

Ultimately, this is the way that the Internet's claim to being a global library for generating information and knowledge can become reality. "As we experience a boom in online education, learning technology standards are critical to our industry's success because they will help us to answer following questions: How will we mix and match content from multiple sources? How do we develop interchangeable content that can be reused, assembled, and disassembled quickly and easily? How do we ensure that we are not trapped by a vendor's proprietary learning technology? How do we ensure that our learning technology investments are wise and risk adverse?" (Hodgins, W., Conner, M.: Everything you ever wanted to know about learning standards but were afraid to ask, Line Zine, 2001, p. 1).

With the help of the L³ Lifelong Learning - Continuing Education and Training as a Basic Need pilot project (which has since been completed), it has been possible to, for example, develop the fundamental conditions necessary for introducing e-learning environments on a lasting basis and obtain an idea of the size of the infrastructure these environments require. Besides the various components (technology, content, didactics, standards, learning centre) which e-learning environments absolutely need to be able to establish functioning instruction and learning operations, a highly professional, interdisciplinary service unit is also a must for ensuring the trouble-free deployment of such environments. The amount of consideration that investment plans give to the operating expenses this entails and to management personnel for running the environment is still not enough to institutionalize new media as an education and training offering. For this reason, the title of the project report "E Learning Services im Spannungsfeld von Pädagogik, Ökonomie und Technologie" (E-learning services in the triangle of conflicting priorities between education, economics and technology) puts its finger on the highly complex interaction between technology, content and support structure.

Literature:

• Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Federal Ministry of Education and Research): Informationsgesellschaft Deutschland - Fortschrittsbericht zum Aktionsprogramm der Bundesregierung "Innovation und Arbeitsplätze in der Informationsgesellschaft des 21. Jahrhunderts", Berlin, Bonn, 2003 
• Commission of the European Communities: The eLearning Action Plan - Designing tomorrow's education, Brussels, 2001,
• DIN-Institut e.V.: IT-unterstützte Ausbildung - ein rasant wachsender Markt -, Berlin, 2001  
• Ehlers, U., Gerteis, W., Holmer, T., Jung, H.: E Learning Services im Spannungsfeld von Pädagogik, Ökonomie und Technologie - L³ Lebenslanges Lernen im Bildungsnetzwerk der Zukunft, WBV verlag, Bielefeld, 2003 
• Hodgins, W., Conner, M.: Everything you ever wanted to know about learning standards but were afraid to ask, Line Zine, p. 1, 2001, Vienna, USA 
• Schauer, Th.: Internet für Alle - Chance oder Zumutung?, Forschungsinstitut für anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung an der Universität Ulm (FAW), Ulm, 2002, p. 10-27

Further BIBB publications on the subject of e-learning:

• Ulf-Daniel Ehlers, Wolfgang Gerteis, Torsten Holmer, Helmut W. Jung
  E-Learning-Services Im Spannungsfeld von Pädagogik, Ökonomie und Technologie
  L³ - Lebenslanges Lernen im Bildungsnetzwerk der Zukunft 2003, 546 pages, W. Bertelsmann Verlag GmbH & Co KG
• Jürgen Kutscha (ed.)
  E-Learning - Die Anwender bestimmen die Qualität [Abstract in german]
  Analysen und Konzepte für die Integration von E-Learning in Geschäftsprozesse kleiner
  und mittelständischer Handelsbetriebe am Beispiel E-Commerce
  Year of publication: 2003
• Dr. Gert Zinke
  Lernen in der Arbeit mit Online-Communities - Chance für E-Learning in kleinen
  und mittelständischen Unternehmen [Table of contents]
  In: Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis (BWP), 32. Jg. (2003), No. 1
• Ute Laur-Ernst
  IuK-Technologie - Portal zur Wissensgesellschaft (mit CD-ROM) [Abstract in german]
  Documentation from the special conference held at the Wissenschaftszentrum, Bonn, from November 19 -21, 2001
  Year of publication: 2002
• Federal Institute for Vocational Training (ed.)
  Impuls - No. 3
  eLearning in Europa - Chancen und Grenzen [Abstract in german]
  2. Jahrestag der Innovationsprojekte des Leonardo da Vinci-Programms in Bad Breisig  (2nd anniversary of the innovation projects under the Leonardo da Vinci programme in Bad Breisig)
  Year of publication: 2002
• Gunnar Pfeil, Manfred Hoppe, Klaus Hahne
  Neue Medien - Perspektiven für das Lernen und Lehren in der beruflichen
  Bildung [Abstract in german]
  272 pages, W. Bertelsmann Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
  Year of publication: 2001

Author: Michael Härtel, BIBB, Section 3.2: Training technology, training personnel, learner-trainer cooperation