The Challenge of E-Learning

Creating this blog has been a challenge for me. Although I consider myself 'computer literate' I am feeling very insecure sharing my personal progress through this paper, and as I have never created a blog before I also feel technically incompetent. As a consequence I have put off posting anything until the last possible moment, and just hope that I can still meet requirements for this part of the course.


I have been surprised that both transactional distance 'a psychological and communication space to be crossed, a space of potential misunderstanding between the inputs of instructor and those of the learner'. (M Moore 1980) and 'social presence' have affected the way I interact with the course. I do not feel connected to the class in the same way I would if I were attending physical class. And I did not realise just how important this was for me!

This revelation has surprised me as I had believed that I could study effectively in an e-learning environment without making any accommodation for the media. But there is no classmate to ask quietly when I am not sure - it all seems very public and quite daunting at times. After years of telling students not to put 'everything' on social networking sites, because it could go anywhere and potentially be accessed forever, I am now trying to overcome my own mistrust of the technological environment.

I have also been grappling with the lack of routinely attending class. I started off by accessing the Moodle site nearly every hour - I am sure it wasn't quite that often but it felt like it. Gradually I worked out how to subscribe to the forums, so comments now arrive in my email inbox, but I still have to look at them immediately! I have now scheduled blocks of study, around family, work and leisure commitments, and that seems to be working a little better, even though I still feel that if I don't look at the course site or the forum feeds I may miss something very important.

I can see from the comments of the my classmates that I am not alone in feeling like this. There are many queries in the forum feeds that could be answered quickly as verbal queries to either classmates or the lecturer - if we were attending class. Yet e-learning has allowed students from outside Auckland those with other constraints to complete the course. And I can see that increasingly education is going to be delivered via a technologically mediated environment.

Many of the NZ govt education documents I have been reading support e-learning as a cost effective way of delivering high quality education, especially to sectors of society where access is an issue. I wonder how many of these ardent advocates have been e-learners themselves? As a new e-learner I believe that this experience, while quite uncomfortable at times, is invaluable. I have long been an advocate of technology in learning, and as a teacher have incorporated technology into my teaching. However I have not had much experience from the student perspective, having received nearly all of my previous education on a face-to-face basis. I can see that the challenges of e-learning are real, and learning how to learn in this environment is my challenge.