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But the promise remains and many analysts believe the e-learning industry is poised to take off in a big way as the technology improves along with the methods of delivery.
E-learning, says John Kenworthy, the Asia-Pacific director of Henley Management Education Ptc Ltd, is particularly appropriate for working people since they can stay on the job and immediately apply what they learn to real-life situations.— TERRY FREDRICKSON |
Certainly, there is a market, especially among people who are already employed, and who feel the need to develop their skills and increase their knowledge. E-learning gives them the opportunity to stay in their jobs and enrol in academic programmes which offer content directly related to their careers.
Cost is an additional incentive since distance learning degrees are usually considerably less expensive than those obtained the traditional way.
One of the oldest and best established academic institutions offering degrees through distance learning is the United Kingdom-based Henley Management College. Established in 1945, Henley quickly built up an international reputation by training young executives from countries throughout the vast British Empire.
The first Henley distance learning MBA programme – the first distance learning programme anywhere in the world, in fact – was offered in 1984. Today, there are 23 Henley centres, the nearest to Thailand being the Asia Pacific office located in Singapore. Recently the Director of the Singapore programme, John Kenworthy, visited Bangkok and the learning post took the opportunity to talk to him about the Henley MBA and about e-learning in general.
Blended learning
learning post: Basically, what is your target audience?
John Kenworthy: We’re very much aimed at corporates, particularly the larger organisations. They like the approach because they’re getting the immediate benefit. The students remain working within the organisation. Assignments are practical, real-life problems and, at the same time, they don’t take any time off work. Also, most of our students stay with the same employer when they finish.
lp: Is work experience a pre-requisite for the programme?
JK: Our students have to be 27 years old. They have to have at least three years work experience because they’re going to apply learning to business. They’ve got to be able to draw on previous experience as well as apply it to the future.
lp: You speak of the Henley approach to e-learning as "blended learning". Can you explain what that means?
JK: Blended learning is the melding of different delivery methods, such as books, CD-Rom, interactive discussions on the Internet, classroom-based face-to-face workshops, teaching lectures and putting all of those into a mix for your target audience where each individual can choose which is the most appropriate method.
lp: Suppose I meet the qualifications and I sign up. What happens then?
JK: First, there’s a one-day programme to start it. You come down to Singapore, probably the night before and stay over. You can get back on the late flight if necessary. We get very good rates at local hotels and we encourage people to come to the first three separate Saturday workshops.
The first day is about introducing everybody to the entire program to get this "route map" in their minds. Also to make effective use of e-learning. Half the day is spent not just on how to click and use — we work on the assumption that everyone can do that – but instead, it’s things like effective use of CD-Roms or PDF files. How you can have notes on screen if you want.
We’ll have looked at their own individual learning styles. We’ll make recommendations for them on a one by one basis, or on a group basis, as to how they can develop what they will need throughout the MBA – whether they’ve got to be more action oriented, more reflective, more theoretical, or more pragmatic in nature.
lp: How do you promote student interaction in a distance learning programme?
JK: Normally, we will create groups of five, six or seven individuals, depending on the mix of the whole intake. We look to get functional specialists. There may be an accountant, a marketer and so on. That way each group can say, I don’t know accountancy, let’s ask the accountant. They can learn more from each other than from their lecturers.
We also look at their learning styles. We create a mixture within the group that has a fairly natural coordinator – somebody that will typically be a good person to draw the group together, particularly in the early stages of the programme.
We have workshops, physical face-to-face workshops every six to eight weeks. We move our students around, so that they get the benefit of some international exposure.
lp: Are the workshops compulsory?
Periodic workshops where students come face-to-face with their classmates and tutors are also an essential part of the MBA programme.— Photo courtesy of HENLEY |
JK: Our workshops, apart from the first ones, are non-compulsory – you don’t have to attend them. You can dial in through your computer and view it through video conferences. It’s not as effective, but it’s possible. We also videotape the workshops. But again, that’s not ideal. We encourage them to attend wherever those workshops may be.
lp: What about on-line interaction?
JK: Increasingly, we’re using systems such as PlaceWare, which creates an area where people get together on-line as in an auditorium. You can see where people are "sit" in the auditorium and a lecturer or a lead tutor kicks off discussion. You can also break people out into rooms within the virtual environment.
There are a number of new technologies that we’re experimenting with, especially web-based video conferencing. But we have to go with the lowest-common denominator, so for example, some countries like Vietnam or Myanmar cannot access the system full-time, so they’re being excluded from that type of environment.
The academic programme
lp: How does the academic programme work?
JK: For each subject, we have a number of e-tasks. The first module has five. But that’s very much to get people used to going backwards and forwards.
Normally there are three or four particular tasks. It gets them to read the material. The electronic tutor will have told them in order to be able to perform this task you should study sections one, two, three and four, read this chapter in this book, have a look at this particular case on-line as well.
So to answer that task on their own, they will need to have done some studying or have used a lot of their own background – it’s formalising their knowledge. Those tasks, they build on each other not just in terms of the subject matter, but also their general personal development.
lp: Suppose I’m on task number three and I’m confused. What can I do?
JK: You can do a number of things depending on your comfort level. You post a note to your tutor saying you’re confused. You will be asked to be more and more specific. The tutor is there very much to facilitate how you find out the answer for yourself. Your fellow students may also answer. There are also 6,000 Henley students on-line who may answer. They may just give you the answer. Students can phone. They can write to us. They can come and see us.
lp: How fast can I expect an answer back?
JK: Within 24 hours. It depends where the tutor is physically based. The tutor for this next session is going to be a UK-based tutor. They are obviously six or seven hours behind here.
lp: Who are the tutors?
JK: The faculty that we use are all over the world. There are UK tutors both in terms of on-line tutors and we also fly them out to Singapore and out to the region. They always do a tour to run workshops.
We also have our local tutors. I call them local because they’re based with the Singapore or the Hong Kong offices. But they can and do live in KL, they live in Bangkok. I have a tutor – a telecoms MBA tutor – based in Bangkok. His job is full time with the ITU (International Telecoms Union) in Bangkok. He comes down to Singapore normally to run our workshops on telecoms.
So we use the most appropriate faculty that we have and we deliberately use part-time faculty. One reason is not to have this big overhead of faculty, but also we need this real-life aspect because we’re asking all of our students to apply theory and concepts to real life. We’re not asking them ever to regurgitate. We don’t really care whether they can quote a theory.
lp: What is the cost of the programme and how long does it take to complete?
JK: Our programme costs 30,000 Singapore dollars – about US$20,000 for the programme. The programme will normally take two and a half years. The cost is fully inclusive except for travel – all of the support workshops, all of the material, all of the on-line access. So it is lower than a full-time programme, much lower. Not only are the tuition costs lower, you don’t have the accommodation costs, you don’t have visa problems.
Some of the on-line resources available to Henley MBA students include class materials— Photo courtesy of HENLEY |
The homepage of the well-stocked e-library— Photo courtesy of HENLEY |
The future
lp: How do you see distance learning developing in the future?
JK: The first things that are going to start happening are things like the tablet PC which are going to start to revolutionise distance education. Suddenly we’ve got something that could replace paper. That will develop into easier communication.
Then there will be things like web-based video conferencing. It will become more participative and easier to access. My own personal belief is that we’ll see more and more use of simulations within programmes. And I believe that we’ll see things like virtual reality where you can access either through your desktop computer or perhaps by putting on one of those headsets with just a pair of glasses, you will be in a virtual classroom. And that’s probably where I think we’ll begin to get in ten years.
The reason it will take that time is cost of the equipment has got to come down. The processing power has got to increase very significantly. To be reachable by the vast majority of the world the cost of access and bandwidth has got to come down. But I can certainly foresee in ten years’ time, people will be putting on a pair of specs and going into their own virtual classroom, joining in discussions. It happens now, it’s just expensive.
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |