eLearning

When I first started teaching in 1983 (when I was a lowly Associate Instructor at Indiana University starting my Ph.D.), I never dreamed that instruction would (or could) occur anywhere other than the traditional classroom. The first IBM PC had only been out a couple of years, mainframes were still the rage, and only a select few students (and profs) even knew how to use either.

But that all changed in 1997 when I was given the opportunity to teach in the new WT Online program. I was the second professor on campus, and the first in the College of Business, to be given this opportunity.

Of course, back then, I wasn't so sure that it was actually an "opportunity." I had no idea what the letters H-T-M-L stood for, much less how to program anything. We had very little technical support in those days, so I had to learn everything from scratch.

And I had to scratch everything in sight to be able to learn how to develop basic web pages AND also figure out how to put a traditional classroom course into a neat and tidy little computer screen.

As I look back on it, this was the best thing that ever happened to me professionally. It sparked an interest in web design that to this date has continued to grow. As of Fall 2001, I have taught online eleven times. The screenshots below illustrate the homepages for my MKT5540 and MKT 340 courses:

I have also developed an online course in e-commerce for the old Hungry Minds site, and have spent more than two years tutoring HTML and e-commerce courses for DigitalThink, an online eLearning firm that works with a number of Fortune 500 companies.

In five years, I have become completely sold on eLearning. While it will never replace the traditional classroom, it will certainly open the doors for many people to either pursue or continue their education when they may have otherwise been unable to.

Companies like EDS are also sold on eLearning. They encourage their employees to take as many online courses as they can, all in an effort to broaden their skillbase. Employees can do coursework before or after work, or during lunch hours, and never have to actually leave work to take the courses. Everyone benefits: employees pad their resume, and EDS benefits from better-trained employees.

Of course, this points to one of the main benefits of eLearning: convenience. If the course is designed properly, students can learn as much online as they can in a traditional classroom. And I have the statistics to prove it. In three separate semester I have measured and compared the test scores from on-campus and online sections of MKT 340. These identical-in-every-way courses were virtually identical in their outcomes, meaning that there was no statistically significant difference in the means of their test scores.

Not bad for something still very new to the world.

But the biggest battle for professors and students alike is seeing outside the proverbial box. Profesors must discover how to take their three-dimensional classroom and transform it into a compelling two-dimensional display on a screen; students must learn how to stay motivated and be self-starting in the absence of face-to-face contact.

In October 2001, I presented a lecture on eLearning to the faculty of WTAMU. You can download this presentation by clicking here.