Mike's Cheeky Blog: Is E-learning a good method ?

I'm being cheeky here - two people last week referred to some of my online pieces as 'blogs'. And this isn't quite as 'nerdy' as most of my stuff - it is connected in a way to 'better dignity', because it is about training, and better training should lead to better dignity.

I've been working my way through an online E-learning tool on the SCIE website, about the MCA, and sending comments back to the SCIE's MCA guy. The tool is at:

http://www.scie.org.uk/mca/e-learning/

You need to register with SCIE to access the tool, but registration is free and easy.

After I had been working my way through the SCIE tool for a few days, I happened to stumble across a paper by Professor Bee Wee (BMJ Support Palliat Care 2012;2:292-293 doi:10.1136/bmjspcare-2012-000375) titled 'Can e-learning be used to teach end-of-life care?'.

Bee's paper is subscription, so you can only see the abstract/start of the paper, but Bee started her paper with:

'Caring for people approaching the end of their lives is intensely personal. Experiential teaching is regarded as one of the more reflective and suitable ways of teaching about end-of-life care. Doctors and medical students are used to bedside teaching. Lectures, especially didactic ones, may be comfortingly familiar, but their impact is variable. E-learning has been around for quite some time, but in terms of learning about end-of-life care, it is a relatively 'new kid on the block'.

Many clinicians and educators regard e-learning with scepticism, especially in relation to a subject as personal and sensitive as end-of-life care. This is especially the case if they have been exposed to poorly designed e-learning programmes, or those that appear irrelevant, simplistic or not rooted in the real world of practice. The increasing pressure to complete requirements for statutory and mandatory training through e-learning programmes has increased the aversion that some clinicians have toward this whole way of learning.'

I don't know what Bee went on to write, but here are my thoughts about e-learning - I'm wondering what other people think ?

1) Compared to on-the-job learning, lectures or printed books, e-learning via online courses is cheaper, and able to potentially reach many more people.

2) I'm old, and I usually prefer to read a real thing (book, printed paper) more than online material - but, I find the ability to do things such as word searches within PDF documents, very useful indeed.

3) You can 'hide the answers' during e-learning, more easily than in a printed book - the SCIE online course has got many of those 'give your own answer - then click here to see the right answer' sections in it. And, it has video and audio 'stories'.

4) Whatever the medium, e-learning, book or whatever, you still need to 'ask the right question, before you can answer the right question'. That mistake - not asking enough of the right questions, and spending too much time answering the wrong questions (or only asking the questions which suit you, and avoiding the ones you yourself find challenging) - will make any teaching rather dubious.

5) The best aspect of being directly taught by another person, is that you can ask them to explain things you did not understand - and if they are a good teacher, the person will try to find a different way of explaining the point. This isn't really possible, with anything limited to reading, whether the words are in a book, or on a computer screen.

6) I REALLY LIKE the comments to online pieces, especially when they become a discussion. The BMJ, Nursing Times and here on Dignity in Care, frequently feature discussions about the original piece - those discussions, I find, frequently enlighten me far more than the original article did. The discussions are particularly useful in showing up both different perspectives, and whether or not different people are sharing a reasonably common understanding.

So, I come to my 7) - online courses, need to have discussion forums built in, where the people doing the learning, can discuss things with each other as they go along: I think the presence of a forum to allow discussion, greatly improves the learning process.

If people want me to stop this 'Cheeky Blog' let me know, and I won't do any more of them - if people like it, I might post a few more, when inspiration strikes, although I promise to keep it down to once month or less.