Last updated: 10 March 2010
SOCIAL MEDIA & LEARNING
From e-learning to social learning

The roots of e-learning go back to the early uses of technology to support learning, in particular the use of training films, TV and videotapes.

In the 1980s, with the advent of personal computers, we saw the introduction of interactive, multimedia computer-based training (CBT) delivered on CDs or laser disks.

But it was in the early 1990s, with the birth of the World Wide Web, that online learning began and the Web was first used to deliver learning globally. 

Most of the early online learning activity occurred in universities where access to the Internet was more prevalent. However, by the late 1990s companies had begun to see the value of online learning as a means of delivering training at low cost.

At the peak of the dot com boom around 2000, there was enormous interest in everything "e". We saw the lift-off of "e-commerce" and "e-business", and the term "e-learning" was also coined at this time.  John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems predicted in 2001: "E-Learning is the next killer app: it will make email look like a rounding error"

The great benefits of e-learning, promoted at that time, were that you no longer needed to spend long periods travelling to a location to attend a course; you could now have access to learning when you wanted it, at the time you wanted it – day or night, at home or work. It also meant that you could take the learning at your own pace; there was nobody to tell you when you had to do it.

Corporate e-learning became big business: we saw the production of off-the-shelf libraries of generic courses, companies offering bespoke development of multimedia online courses, and the emergence of corporate learning management systems to manage learners.

However, despite all the fanfare, people soon began to become disillusioned with e-learning.

For managers:

• it didn't seem to be delivering on its promises, people were not completing courses
• large scale investments in learning management systems weren't paying off
• content development was taking too long and was too costly

For employees:

• e-learning was often considered inferior to traditional classroom-based learning. For many there needed to be a teacher present to add value to the whole process; just working through long online course content wasn't enough, however well designed or developed

• employees felt they were getting a raw deal. They weren't that enthusiastic about sitting at their computers ploughing their way through hours of online course materials - they soon get fed up. They wanted to be with other people: a teacher, fellow students. So they tended to drop out of online courses.

We consequently saw a number of new trends

1. Blended Learning: This was originally defined as mixing face-to-face (f2f) learning with online elements to create a blend of the two. Much has been written about how to create blended solutions, but there is no magic formula. The right blend will depend on a number of factors that includes the learning problem being addressed, the learners' profile, the budget and so on. Another term for "blended learning" is "hybrid learning" and this term is commonly found in formal education. But the term has now moved on to mean delivering learning using a variety of different media, formats and approaches.  
2. Live e-learning: In situations where face-to-face learning was not possible, that is where students were distributed in various parts of the country or world, systems and tools began to be used to allow remote learners to come together online at the same time with a tutor who led a learning session. Live e-learning is also known as synchronous learning or "real time learning" - to differentiate it from asynchronous or self-paced learning.
3. Rapid e-learning: To create learning content more quickly and economically, new tools were developed (in many cases based around PowerPoint) that would allow SMEs and others in the organisation to creat their own content

For many people, then, this is the state of e-learning today:

• asynchronous online courses or blended solutions with a mix of face-to-face and online elements
• learning management systems that manage students' learning (also variously known as course management systems, virtual learning environments and managed learning environments)
• web conferencing systems, which support the delivery of scheduled online sessions

However with the emergence of new, social technologies (aka Web 2.0) technologies we are now seeing a new phase of E-Learning, known as E-Learning 2.0, which supports a more social and collaborative approach to learning, so it is also known as Social Learning. 

Social Learning

E-Learning 1.0 was all about delivering content, primarily in the form of online courses, produced by experts - teachers or subject matter experts. E-Learning 2.0 or Social Learning is all about individuals (co-)creating content in a variety of formats and sharing information and knowledge using tools like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and social networks both within an educational or training context to support a new collaborative approach to learning as well as to support their own personal and group learning and working activities.

Many people are already using social media for learning,  The Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 list is dominated by social media tools.

But what do we actually mean by "learning"?