The Report of the E-Learning Advisory Group March 2002

The Way Forward – Leadership, Quality and Capability

• effective leadership and governance
• high standards of quality assurance
• sufficient capability in terms of systems, people and infrastructure.

We have noted earlier that e-learning is simply the use of particular electronic tools to support the learning process. All reputable institutions will in future need to offer some of these options to their students, who will often wish to combine an e-learning experience with being part of the campus community. Others will be seeking a learning experience that does not require their attendance in any particular place at any particular time. Clearly the institutional strategies for e-learning will be different depending on their particular mission and the profile of the institution including the characteristics of the students they seek to serve.

Governance and leadership

Many institutions have willingly shared their current e-learning strategies. These indicate that across the sector there is significant differentiation. Massey University’s vision is to use the medium to develop learning communities among students and teachers. To support its vision, Massey is challenging every college to plan the development of e-learning in a phased way and to commit to providing e-learning support for all off-campus programmes in the next three years.

Whitireia’s vision for e-learning is to increase applied vocational education and training opportunities for people in its communities by offering greater flexibility and individual choice in the diversity of delivery. The focus of UCOL’s e-learning strategy is to blend the best of classroom-led and technology-mediated delivery.

The University of Otago’s Strategic Direction 2005 specifically encourages the adoption of innovative and flexible learning methods. The University of Waikato has e-learning as one of its strategic goals and has focused on developing cohesive curricula for teaching on-line so that students have a path to a complete qualification. The Open Polytechnic is pursuing a volume-based strategy which seeks a scaleable option to reach many more students studying in their own homes/workplaces/countries. AUT and Auckland University are also pursuing international development as a critical component of their e-learning strategies. Institutions are clearly developing their e-learning strategies in ways that build on and strengthen their core competencies and comparative advantage. This is what the country needs. The challenge for the TEC will be to foster e-learning and to ensure that institutions are mutually supportive in the emerging e-learning environment. Institutions also need to have an understanding of how their own e-learning strategies fit within national priorities so that chances for collaboration and strategic partnership are enhanced.

The Advisory Group recommends that documentation of an e-learning strategy be part of an institution’s Charter and Profile requirements. (Recommendation 1)

Governing bodies and tertiary leaders also need to understand the economics of the strategies they are pursuing. Anecdotal evidence suggests this is not well understood. It would be helpful if TEC took a lead role in developing this information base as suggested earlier. It could also facilitate workshops for chief executives to address this issue. The Advisory Group has been impressed by the strategy being pursued by the University of Southern Queensland and by their understanding of the implications for the university and the resulting way in which the strategy is being operationalised. This is one example where the Advisory Group believes there would be significant benefit for New Zealand CEOs in learning from USQ as part of a structured workshop.

Most New Zealand tertiary education providers are committed to delivering at least some education online within the next few years. This will introduce governance and quality challenges that they may never have encountered before. These could relate to investment decisions, intellectual property issues, student and teacher access, course selection as well as security and privacy issues.

Authoritative independent advice and guidance is a critical issue, especially for smaller institutions that simply do not have the resources to evaluate options appropriately. Some institutions may be too small to provide comprehensive training for their staff in the range of new skills and knowledge required in an e-learning environment.

The Advisory Group recommends therefore that advice and guidance to institutions on e-learning, strategic and infrastructure issues and options be made available via the tertiary portal. (Recommendation 3)

It would be useful for the consortium contracted by TEC to develop the portal to also have responsibility for creating and maintaining this service which is envisaged as more of a linking function to where expertise resides in the sector than a consultancy function. It may be that the latter is what is advised if the issue requires expertise beyond that available within the sector.

Some of the governance issues are complex and will require careful consideration by TEC Councils. An obvious area is intellectual property and copyright.

Our assessment is that there is very poor understanding of the legal environment surrounding intellectual property, copyright, and moral rights, and this is a potential risk if not appropriately managed. This is also an area where there is much to be gained from having a single independent source of advice for institutions.

There is a further current issue. A major problem lies in sending out print material electronically and making it available for copying via digital technology. At present the Copyright Act does not cover the digital realm.

The Advisory Group recommends:

• That the Government ensure that the review of the Copyright Act 1994 meets the needs of students and educational institutions in a digital environment. (Recommendation 7)
• That the Government establish processes to ensure that intellectual property issues and particularly the management of intellectual property rights are understood and appropriately addressed within the tertiary sector. (Recommendation 8)

Institutions and government will need to ensure that students studying electronically have the same access to materials as contact students do. This means that substantial sections of a work or resource must be able to be copied or cached for study and research purposes. Similarly, learners need to be able to copy material from servers and websites in the course of their studies. A range of options need to be explored to guarantee effective student access.

Overall a balance needs to be struck between protecting the rights of the developer of materials and the public good resulting from widespread access to learning materials. The Copyright Act is currently under review and the outcome of any change in legislation will have significant impact for e-learning.

The issue of intellectual property is important for Maori. Decisions may need to be made concerning the electronic availability of knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs and taonga unique to Maori. Ownership and use of te reo and taonga may need to be agreed upon.

Assuring quality

In order to attract public funding, all tertiary programmes and qualifications must be accredited by one of these bodies and they are also subject to regular review. Currently, in both the University and NZQA environment these quality assurance appraisals are performed against a single set of standards and expectations that apply regardless of delivery medium or mode.

Quality assurance agencies around the world are now moving to develop appropriate guidelines for e-learning, and there is debate about how to apply specific benchmarks to e-learning. It could be argued that virtual education is such a new phenomenon that all stakeholders require greater assurance of its quality than can be provided through the existing quality assurance system. With a growing international market for education, there is also the need to ensure that quality assurance standards have international credibility.

On the other hand, it could be argued that quality standards should be related to core educational processes and outcomes, rather than the mode of delivery. Given the trend to more mixing or blending of modes, this approach seems most appropriate, and the Advisory Group recommends accordingly.

The Advisory Group finds that the current approach of the accreditation and quality assurance agencies in New Zealand has the potential to work well with online programmes. The standards do relate to core educational processes and outcomes. The onus is on the institution to provide appropriate evidence for how the standards are met. The major issue is to develop an understanding amongst accreditation and audit panels about the different kinds of evidence that are acceptable.

For example, a traditional requirement has been that institutions demonstrate they have a library with adequate spaces for students, appropriate book stock, and journal subscriptions. Addressing quality in an e-learning environment is in many instances raising questions that refocus the quality standards for all modes of learning. In this instance the primary question that should be able to be answered, irrespective of mode, is “Do students have timely access to the information that is relevant for them to succeed in their course?” This may be provided through Internet access to databases; it may also be found that in the traditional situation, despite the fact that there are books in the library, the students cannot gain access to them in a timely fashion, because there is an insufficient quantity.

The Advisory Group was struck by the potential for the focus on quality for e-learning to raise the stakes in relation to the quality of any learning. That presents an opportunity to address quality issues in a nonthreatening way by framing them in a paradigm where everyone is being required to learn new ways of working.

The need for agreed standards

New Zealand needs an e-learning environment where learners can easily search, identify and retrieve content no matter where they are. This means that learners must be able to access learning objects developed by one institution even if they are using different platforms at other institutions.

Achieving universal agreement on how learning objects should be created, stored, retrieved, assembled and delivered is fundamental for creating an e-learning environment which transcends technology and meets the needs of learners.

The bringing together of all these elements and players will require careful co-ordination and effective leadership. The Advisory Group sees that a Consortium for e-learning could play a leading role in this regard.

We must do all we can to ensure the learners are able to seamlessly navigate New Zealand’s e-learning environment and receive information of interest to them in ways that are tailored to their needs. Consistency of standards will be an essential in the development of such a system.