E-learning 2.0

E-Learning 2.0
By Stephen Downes October 17, 2005
This article published as E-Learning 2.0 in October 16, 2005. [Link] Type: C Publications in Trade Journals [List all Publications]

I have presented on the topic of E-Learning 2.0 a number of times in the last few months, but this is the first article covering the topic from beginning to end. Published in today's eLearn Magazine, the articleis, I think, a way to comprehend what lies ahead in the field of e-learning.
E-learning as we know it has been around for ten years or so. During that time, it has emerged from being a radical idea—the effectiveness of which was yet to be proven—to something that is widely regarded as mainstream. It's the core to numerous business plans and a service offered by most colleges and universities. Andnow, e-learning is evolving with the World Wide Web as a whole and it's changing to a degree significant enough to warrant a new name: E-learning 2.0. Where We Are Now Before talking about where e-learning is going, it is worth spending a few words to describe here we are now. When we think of learning content today, we probably think of a learning object. Originating in the world ofcomputer-based delivery (CBT) systems, learning objects were depicted as being like lego blocks or atoms, little bits of content that could be put together or organized. Standards bodies have refined the concept of learning objects into a rigorous form and have provided specifications on how to sequence and organize these bits of content into courses and package them for delivery as though they were books ortraining manuals. Today, e-learning mainly takes the form of online courses. From the resources distributed by MIT's OpenCourseware project to the design of learning materials in Rice's Connexions project to the offerings found from

colleges and universities everywhere, the course is the basic unit of organization. As a consequence, the dominant learning technology employed today is a type ofsystem that organizes and delivers online courses—the learning management system (LMS). This piece of software has become almost ubiquitous in the learning environment; companies such as WebCT, Blackboard, and Desire2Learn have installed products at thousands of universities and colleges and are used by tens of thousands of instructors and students. The learning management system takes learningcontent and organizes it in a standard way, as a course divided into modules and lessons, supported with quizzes, tests and discussions, and in many systems today, integrated into the college or university's student information system. In general, where we are now in the online world is where we were before the beginning of e-learning [1]. Traditional theories of distance learning, of (for example)transactional distance, as described by Michael G. Moore, have been adapted for the online world. Content is organized according to this traditional model and delivered either completely online or in conjunction with more traditional seminars, to cohorts of students, led by an instructor, following a specified curriculum to be completed at a predetermined pace. Trends As we approach the halfwaymark of the new millennium's first decade, the nature of the Internet, and just as importantly, the people using the Internet, has begun to change. These changes are sweeping across entire industries as a whole and are not unique to education; indeed, in many ways education has lagged behind some of these trends and is just beginning to feel their wake. One trend that has captured the attention ofnumerous pundits is the changing nature of Internet users themselves. Sometimes called "digital natives" and sometimes called "n-gen," these new users approach work, learning and play in new ways [2]. They absorb information quickly, in images and video as well as text, from multiple sources simultaneously. They operate at "twitch speed," expecting instant responses and feedback. They prefer...