Effective e-Learning Implementation

A major disruption occurred over the last few weeks within the educational sector calling for rapid response and effective planning around managing and delivering educational services at various levels.

Here I provide some general guidelines and personal recommendations for implementing an effective eLearning program.

In these testing times its imperative that all businesses adopt an emotionally intelligent approach to survive and sustain.

Specifically considering educational institutions within Pakistan, the sector to which I belong, the most obvious and inevitable option is to launch online / distance learning initiatives to minimize student academic loss.

While eLearning projects have been implemented in varying extents at various institutions in the past, the emergent scenario requires greater focus, specialization and scalability for getting the desired outcomes.

Its indeed a timely blessing that various free collaboration platforms are available that could be utilized for organizing online classes and lectures.

Educational Institutions can easily facilitate their instructors and tutors to setup their individual courses. However its necessary to develop an institutional level policy regarding the adopted platform that recommends the use of existing digital assets and online resources, considers social and cultural dynamics, pedagogy and assessment modes for the purposes of standardization and simplification.

Also important while developing the eLearning strategy is the issue of adequate internet access by students within Pakistan, most of whom may only have access to limited telco offered data packages.

Although there exists significant variation in the digital maturity across organizations but developing a specific eLearning strategy could eliminate common bottlenecks and enable a smooth transition.

Course assets likes Lecture Notes, Presentation Slides and Assignments can be curated and managed effectively within the platforms suggested below while teachers can provide supplementary course support either through podcasting, video streaming via popular social and collaboration platforms (Skype, Google Hangouts) or by setting up a dedicated Youtube channel for posting their recorded lectures for convenient student viewing.

Below are some of the popular and free options that could be adopted for eLearning implementation:

• Google Classoom (classroom.google.com)
• Edmodo (edmodo.com)
• Canvas by Instructure (https://canvas.instructure.co/register_from_website)
• Microsoft Teams (teams.microsoft.com)

Irrespective of the choice of platform, educational institutes must always consider their core competencies, practice emotional intelligence and remain flexible in their approach while developing an effective eLearning program that is well suited to their students.