What are the barriers to eLearning?

I don’t think this question is asked enough. “What are the barriers to eLearning?”

Well, I guess it all depends on your perspective. Are you coming at it as someone wanting to learn, or as someone wanting to teach? Are you a willing participant? These may seem simple, if not silly, question but this is important.

Looking at this from a teaching perspective, there are four types of people I have come across:

1. Willing & Able: Whether they have experience with teaching online or with eLearning is immaterial, they are willing and able to do what is necessary. This includes planning their materials and modifying to suit distance and online learning, work with the Administrators and Learning Technologists to get the most out of the time they have with the students (in my case it’s only 6 weeks, so everything has to be concise and well structured).Someone who is willing and able is going to work hard before, during, and after the Unit to ensure that lessons are learnt for future delivery, and that the students gain the maximum exposure to the ideas and theories .. the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs).
2. Willing and Unable: The understanding and willingness to be good as an eLearning professional is there, but the person is either new to it or is unable to grasp the techniques we use, or simply is not good with computers. Again, this person can be helped because there is a desire to learn themselves and be better than they were before.
3. Unwilling, yet Able: A certain reticence exists with this person to be the instructor, but they have the skills and knowledge to be capable of leading the eLearning course.
4. Unwilling and Unable: If they are unwilling and unable to be ready for eLearning then why are they involved?

I have had more exposure to this side of the equation than the the student side, but so far I think I can be fairly certain that the same criteria can be applied to the student.

The above only touches on the technical capability of the individuals, but we have to remember that eLearning is utilising very modern thinking and very modern tools (Web 2.0; wiki, blog, video lectures / podcast / vodcast, etc). This is not to every one’s liking. We also can’t ignore the impact, for a student, on the cost; in case no one has noticed there is a ‘credit crunch’ (or recession as we used to call it) going on at the moment, and this will have a serious impact on the ability of the student to pay their way for a three year online / eLearning degree.

So, I hear you shout, what are the barriers to eLearning? The list is long and (often) very complicated, but as a Learning Technologist I am able to ‘work my magic’ (as some put it) to make sure the pedagogic and technical elements do not get in the way.