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Mobilising the e-vangelists
An interview with Diana Laurillard, Head of DfES e-Learning Strategy Unit
By Clare Richards |
Diana Laurillard
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In her opening address to the conference Diana Laurillard stressed that the education and training sectors are at a turning point in the development of e-learning. "We've learned a lot. We've got a tremendous infrastructure here and there. Let's now recognise that e-learning is here to stay. How do we now set about mainstreaming it?" she asked.
A big question. In fact her speech posed more questions than it offered answers. But that is to be expected: the e-Learning Strategy Unit is in the middle of a consultation process and they want to gather opinion and stimulate debate. |
Diana Laurillard's ambitions go beyond simply adding 'e' to learning - she envisages e-learning as an integral part of a creative and flexible 21st century education system, producing a workforce equipped to deal with the challenges of a rapidly changing world and where all learners reach their potential. It's a grand and worthy vision, inclusive and optimistic, no doubt fostered by her years of work at the Open University. She is unequivocal about the need for the education system to fully embrace and engage with ICT: "Unless we have an education system that can be continually creative and responsive to the environment around it - and that includes the technological environment - we will not have an education system fit for the 21st century. It's too fast moving. We cannot be mired in our traditions," she warned.
The issues of intellectual property rights and financial costs and rewards were highlighted as areas needing urgent debate: "Do we try and reward every teacher monetarily for the e-learning that they generate? Or do we say this is the free exchange of knowledge, this is what the education system does and is? We haven't had to worry about the intellectual property rights of a teacher creating their own teaching materials before - but when it becomes a digital object, it's a saleable commodity. Are we going to commodify teaching in this way?" she asked.
She also urged teachers and trainers to take responsibility for doing their own research into the uses of e-learning and to collaborate and share their experiences with colleagues. "Can we really leave it to commercial suppliers and research groups? Isn't it something that every teaching and learning professional must be engaged in themselves? That, after all, is where the practice of e-learning is happening," she said.
After her speech, I asked Diana what she perceived to be the biggest barrier to e-learning. "If I had to pick one it would be the lack of leadership and the difficulty for leaders who haven't grown up with technology and don't have a feel for what it can do. That's why the strategy is designed to support them in engaging with and embracing e-learning," she said.
And does she think that e-learning will really be mainstream in ten years time? "I'm an optimist so I'd like to think so, but I remember 30 years ago saying it's going to take us a generation to get e-learning going. Here I am 30 years later saying it's going to take another generation."
"Within ten years we should have got to the position where the systems are better geared to work with the grain of what e-learning can offer. It shouldn't be such a battle to try and innovate and do the things you want to do. Whether it's achieving the ambitions that I stated for a 21st century education system, I don't know if we can do it that fast. A lot of that depends on the will, insight and imagination of individuals throughout the education system. Will we achieve it? I don't know - I mean we could - it's possible." Her voice doesn't trail off at the end, it perks up - she has not lost sight of her goals and is ever hopeful of achieving them, even if it takes rather longer than she once thought.
In her capacity as e-vangelist-in-chief, I asked Diana to describe the best examples that she's seen recently. "I saw Kar2ouche running in a city learning centre with a primary school class. They were creating a storyboard around the subject of bullying at school. These are 10 year-olds doing very sophisticated things, not only technologically, but thinking about issues around bullying, how people express themselves and how situations develop," she explains. "I also saw an online discussion environment used in a boys' school: the pupils were debating difficult notions online in a way that they never would in the classroom," she says.
But isn't it worrying that they find it difficult to discuss things face to face? "Yes," she says, emphatically. "But that's the way they get there. Having debated in the safe, familiar environment of the chat room, they discover that they do have things to say and other people respond and they get passionately engaged in it. Then the teacher can move from that to a classroom context."
So debating in chat rooms isn't an end in itself then? "No no no! We can't produce a generation of nerds who can only talk to computers - that won't do!", she says. At which point, I feel relieved and I'm reminded of the part of her speech that encouraged me the most: "it's the human organisation systems around the technology that are really important."
Links
Have your say: participate in the government's e-learning strategy consultation (closing date January 2004) at www.dfes.gov.uk/elearningstrategy
www.teachernet.gov.uk - the government's online resource to support the teaching profession with forums, lesson plans and a very good list of useful sites
www.byteachers.org.uk - 18,000 free resources for teachers, written and road-tested by practicing teachers
November 2003
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