E-Learning is another way of teaching and learning. In its broadest definition, e-Learning includes instruction delivered via all electronic media including the Internet, intranets, extranets, satellite broadcasts, audio/video tape, interactive TV, a...
E-Learning is another way of teaching and learning. In its broadest definition, e-Learning includes instruction delivered via all electronic media including the Internet, intranets, extranets, satellite broadcasts, audio/video tape, interactive TV, and CD-ROM. E-learning is a net worked phenomenon allowing for instant revisions and distribution, and goes beyond training and instruction to the delivery of information and tools to improve performance. The benefits of e-learning are many, including cost-effectiveness, enhanced responsiveness to change, consistency, timely content, flexible accessibility, and providing customer value. The proponents of e-learning stress the importance of using communities of interest to support and enhance the learning process. They also emphasizes that people learn more effectively when they interact and are involved with other people participating in similar endeavors. Although the role of e-learning in higher education has significantly increased, the resistance to new technology by professors and lecturers in university and colleges worldwide remains high. The first part of this research focuses on introducing and discussing a variety of Instructional Design Strategy fore-Learning as well as learning theory, which might help us in planning and designing e-learning contents. Instructional design is a systematic approach to planning and producing effective instructional materials. Distinguishing the underlying philosophy of learning (in terms of: What factors influence learning? What is the role of memory? How does transfer occur? What types of learning are best explained by the theory?) can help instructors and designers select the contents design model most congruent with their education philosophies.
Second, we attempt to present e-learning contents guideline and Quality Checklist to ensure that the purpose and rationale for using e-learning has been carefully considered and that relevant support requirements can be put in place. This Quick Checklist for e-learning contains many practical items that instructors can use as review criteria to check if e-learning modules, courses and programs provide the level of services that learners(or consumers) should expect. Items in the checklist encompass critical dimensions of e-learning environment, including; pedagogical, technological, interface design, evaluation, resource support, ethical. Students who are currently taking or interested in taking e-learning courses can use this quick checklist to check whether their e-learning courses/programs provide high-quality instruction with good support services. Third part of research is concerned with identifying the determinants of attitude and planned behavior of instructors and students toward e-learning class in universities. A survey methodology was used to investigate a proposed model of influence, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the results. The overall results indicate that attitude of instructors toward e-learning systems is mostly influenced by the Perceived Ease of Use as well as the level of Perceived Usefulness, where both factors are influenced by years of experiences in using cyber system and the technical support level.
As in other TAM related research, it can be concluded that the Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness contribute to the future use of e-learning system. Additional study, based on the survey results from graduate students, shows that the flow influences the satisfaction level, and that interactivity between students and professors has some impact on the flow, but the interactivity among students did not appear to be significant to the level of satisfaction. It was also found that, contrary to our expectation, only the user convenience influences the level of interactivity. Additional analysis reveals that men's perception of user convenience was the more significantly direct and more salient than women's in determining the level of interactions between the students and contents. Although multimedia quality was not considered an important direct determinant of interaction level in total, It was significant for men compared with women. This finding suggests that pedagogical principles, including principles of developing and packaging content, could be employed in the development and evaluation of e-learning content, to attract male e-learning users.
Fourth, we developed web-site of community type, in order to support instructors and share our knowledge and experiences from our e-learning design and deliveries. This web-site was designed to connect university instructor with their peers and with university education supervisors, using a forum for peer-mediated learning and to promote effective problem-solving among instructors. Collaborative consultation may facilitate instructors' understanding of and attitude toward e-learning, and promote teaching excellence in digital world. The on-line support community is an excellent avenue for promoting collaborative problem-solving among new comers through peer-mediated learning.
Finally, we introduce new contents authoring tool, which we named as "e-Professor", and share the experiences from using this tool for actual classes. An authoring tool is a software that is used to produce content for publishing on the Web. E-professor is designed mainly for the faculty members with average level of ICT skills, so that anyone with 2-3 hours of training can develop the e-learning contents for classes. E-Professor's modules include Editing Tools specifically designed to produce Web content; tools that offer the option of saving material in a Webformat; Tools that transform documents into Web formats(e.g.,filters to transform desktop publishing formats to HTML); Tools that produce audio production; Tools for automatically developing review problems and questions. E-Professor can help instructors to help simply convert documents for Web use without attempting to tie the documents into a coherent presentation. That way, instructors with less experiences in e-learning can convert existing course materials to HTML and then incorporate them into his/her overall course design. E-Professor can also generate a template for instructors who are less comfortable with the design and layout aspects of Website authoring. A template is a basic HTML file with the codes for page and typographic layout already in place. If after time the template does not suit the needs of instructors and they have a greater understanding of Web authoring, they can modify the template or create a new one. Templates also benefit the user by enforcing consistency. Putting e-learning content into a template ensures that all the pages of one's site will have a standard look and feel. Using e-professor can influence the ease of use in developing class contents, which in turn, improves perceptions of usefulness of e-learning system. We are planning to apply e-Professor to create e-learning contents for 7 classes in 2006, and use them for blended-learning. These experiences might help us find and improve some potential problems from using e-Professor in actual class setting, and give us some useful guidelines for effective e-learning design and delivery.