e-Learning Skills

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The use of technology to support and develop learning is growing rapidly across all areas of education from nursery schools to higher education.

E-learning covers a wide range of methods and applications and involves the learners in developing and extending their existing learning skills into new directions. For example, in traditional education a successful student needs to be able to listen to presentations, lectures and discussions and be able to identify the key issues. E-learning, on the other hand, involves very little listening since the written word has replaced the spoken one. An e-learning student needs to read and analyse from a wide range of sources including many small informal e-mail messages.

The present system gives you a wide experience of judging information presented as books, leaflets and other printed materials. You can rapidly tell if the material is intended as a textbook, as marketing to change your views or simply for fun. Online content offers enormous possibilities in that you have, through the screen, access to the equivalent of many conventional libraries. However, anyone can set up a website and publish material – how can you judge if it is valid, accurate and high quality? It can simply be the personal views of author, politically biased to support a specific viewpoint, intended to sell you products or old content that is no longer up to date.

The internet search example below illustrates how to judge the quality, accuracy and validity of online information. You can have a go at your own internet search using the examples provided.

Internet search

Modern search engines will help you rapidly locate a vast amount of information about almost any subject. Using Google, I searched for web pages concerning the Space Race. The search found 58,100,000 pages of information, a huge amount. The first nine hits appear to be:

• The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum site
• A site calling itself a museum but not identifying which one or if it

was linked to a major institution

• A site focused on the USA space programmes
• A page that appears to be advertising a space film
• A site aimed at encouraging an interest in space travel through

providing news

• The NASA website
• A page advertising a bicycle race
• A wiki
• Another search engines directories of pages linked to the space race topic

The first impressions indicate:

1. Two sites that are produced by organisations with relevant links to the space race (i.e. Smithsonian museum and NASA) and who are likely to offer accurate information, although both are USA organisations and may favour a national view of the space race.
2. Two sites that are probably not going to assist with locating information to help with an essay or another type of assignment (e.g. film and bicycle race).
3. Five sites that may be useful but you need to decide if they are going to offer high quality, accurate and valid information.

There are indicators that you should look at when judging a website. They are:

1. Who produced the information? Is it a personal site where you are reading an individual opinion or from a reputable organisation with expertise in the subject?

Look at the home page or for links called About, Copyright, Privacy statement or similar. These will help you identify the ownership of the site and judge if it is likely to be a source of quality information.

2. When was the page updated? Some information is dynamic, and when you see sites are updated, it is reassuring to know that there is an indication that the page has been regularly maintained.

3. Is the page information linked to other sites or provided with references that you can check?

Links to other sources are often a useful way of identifying the validity of content.

4. What is the source of any numerical information?

Statistical or other numerical information should tell you how it was collected or calculated.

None of these indicators on their own may be enough to convince you the information is suitable but a combination of them can achieve that purpose.

Lets consider two of our possible five useful sites. They are:

A - Possible museum site
B - Site encouraging interest in space travel

Site A – not easy to locate an owner but it appears to be part of a physical museum in the USA although it’s not clear who owns the museum or if it is linked to government, a university or other body. Material is all historical and no information is provided as to when the site was changed or maintained. Links appear to be entirely internal.

Site B – Clear explanation of the site ownership, information posted to the site yesterday so regularly maintained and many links to sources of information.

Indicators show that Site B may be a useful source of accurate, valid and quality information on space flight.

Examples

Consider the results for searches on:

1. Duke of Wellington – to help with an essay about his personality.

2. Moscow – to locate information about the changes in society since the end of communism.

3. Mobile phones – to consider the future direction of the technology.

4. River Mersey – geography of the river.

5. European Union – for an essay about the benefits of membership.

The aim of e-Learning Skills is to help you develop your learning skills to become a more effective student in a technological environment.

This content has been written by Alan Clarke, author of e-Learning Skills.