What is "eLearning"?

"Summertime, and the livin' is easy. Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high. Your daddy's rich, and your momma's good lookin'". If George Gershwin's right, you won't want a heavy eLearning newsletter this week. So I thought we might ask the most basic of questions: what actually is eLearning?

What about these possibilities?

• Using some specialist software to hone a maths skill, or practice a particular bit of English grammar.

• Software and data stored on a CD ROM that trots out screensful of information. Assessment tests are woven into the pathway to check progress and to ensure that you are on top of one skill or bit of understanding before moving on to the next.

• Using a word-processor to write an assignment, or a spreadsheet or database to tackle a project.

• Working on the Internet or an intranet, within a virtual learning environment, studying learning material, interacting with others and with the tutor in discussions and chat.

• A teacher using an interactive whiteboard for a lesson.

• Using a digital camera to produce a visual record for a report or assignment.

• A lecture, with sound, video and a PowerPoint presentation streamed over the Internet to people across the world.

Interestingly, just about all of these fall into someone's definition of eLearning. This makes it a somewhat slippery concept, not always helped by guardians of the culture such as the DfES. £100m per annum of "eLearning credits" is used by schools to buy a very wide variety of resources, all under the umbrella tag "eLearning".

A couple of authoritative statements from a paper by the organisation eLearnity are helpful. They first quote Elliot Masie, a leading eLearning guru in the USA: On-line learning is not about taking a course and putting it on the desktop. It is about a new blend of resources, interactivity, performance support and structured learning activities.

eLearnity goes on to give its own preferred statement: eLearning needs to be thought of as the combination of learning services and technology to provide high value integrated learning; anytime, anyplace.

But before we huff and puff about too vague or too broad definitions, perhaps we need to remember the difficulty of jargon in any discipline. For example, does every user of the term "theological reflection" mean the same thing? Or what about "spirituality"? Just as we take care to check out exactly what another person means when they use one of these terms, we need to do the same with "eLearning."

The next newsletter will be in mid-September, giving me space to move house and to have a bit of Summertime in France. See you then.

Yours in Christ,

Peter Nicholls