Commonwealth of Learning

Third Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning

Building Learning Communities for our Millennium:
Reaching Wider Audiences through Innovative Approaches

Dunedin, New Zealand
8 July 2004

Summary Presentation

by:

Sir John Daniel
President & CEO, COL

Your Excellencies, Colleagues:

It is my challenging task to summarise this conference. The challenge is both intellectual and practical. It is intellectual because anything that I say now will fail to capture the richness and intensity of the debates that we have had over the last four days, both in plenary sessions and in our concurrent interest groups. Much of that richness was based on discussions of real cases and real situations from your experience that you brought with you to this meeting.

The challenge is also practical because you only finished your discussions an hour ago and there is a limit to what I could extract from your conclusions in that time, even by foregoing lunch.

 

FOUR THEMES LATEST DEVELOPMENTS BEST PRACTICE RESEARCH EMERGING ISSUES

What I shall do is take the four themes of your discussions: latest developments, best practice, emerging issues and research and make remarks under two headings.
 

FOR EACH THEMES SELECTED CONCLUSIONS A COL ISSUE

For each theme I shall first try to capture, in a few bullet points, the conclusions that I have been given by our hard-working convenors. For this I am indebted to our indefatigable conference chairman, Andrew Higgins, who consolidated the material that the convenors gave him.

Second, for each theme I shall dwell at slightly greater length on one issue that is particularly salient for the Commonwealth of Learning. I hope that by doing this I shall make this summary more interesting. The issue that I shall identify may not be the issue that the group would have brought to the fore, but I hope you will agree that they are all important issues.

My final introductory remark is that this summary is not intended to bring premature closure to the debates of the conference. Be assured that the Commonwealth of Learning will take the time to study carefully the conclusions and recommendations that you have made in order that they can guide us as we begin the preparation of our next three-year plan.

 

Conference Title

First, let me comment on the title of this Pan-Commonwealth Forum, which is Building Learning Communities for our Millennium: Reaching Wider Audiences through Innovative Approaches.

Looking back over the conference this title seems to me particularly appropriate.

 

• KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY • INFORMATION SOCIETY • LEARNING SOCIETY • LEARNING COMMUNITY

When I was at UNESCO we talked a lot about the creation of knowledge societies. We used the term knowledge societies because it seemed better than information societies, but it still made me uneasy.

Sometimes the term just seemed meaningless, at others simply pretentious. I preferred to talk about learning societies, because that term implies activity: an activity, learning, that any society can engage in.

Here we have used the term learning community, which is even better. I say that because one of the strong conclusions of this forum is the necessity of engaging with learners at their local level. At the very beginning of the meeting we saw a slide that said, ‘don’t teach me; help me to learn’.

Yesterday, at a most interesting meeting on the use of ODL in lifelong learning for farmers, we heard that success depends on working with each community of farmers so that they can first define what they want to learn. Simply teaching them subject matter decided elsewhere will fall flat. Much of the discussion that I heard in the group on best practice was about how you had worked with particular communities to facilitate their learning.

Our title then talks about reaching wider audiences through innovative approaches. In a world where one billion adults are illiterate and a quarter of a billion children either get no schooling or not enough to leave any trace reaching wider audiences is still job number one in many countries. What came through very strongly at this forum, however, was the insistence on reaching wider audiences with learning of quality. People are eager for education, but they will not make sacrifices in order to learn if what they are offered is of no value.
 

INNOVATION POLICY FRAMEWORKS THE APPROACH — NOT THE TECHNOLOGY ALONE

I also detected that our discourse about innovative approaches is evolving, in at least two ways. First, mere effervescence of innovation is no longer enough. We want sustainable innovation. That means putting in place policy frameworks in support of innovative approaches, a point made eloquently by Her Excellency Anne Therese Ndong-Jatta from The Gambia.

Second – a point well made by Shona Butterfield – it is not enough to put a new technology on the table. What matters is how we use it. Context is all. Many of you pointed out that ‘build it and they will come’ is usually not a successful principle for innovation in education. I shall return to this point with issue that I wish to flag under latest developments.

 

Latest Developments

You identified and discussed a good number of latest developments, ranging from on-demand assessment to community media centres and then focused on the issues that they raised. Most issues in ODL are interrelated, so dealing with one issue in isolation is like trying to pull out one strand from over-cooked spaghetti.
 

ISSUES SUSTAINABILITY ACCESS EQUITY

New developments always raise the issue of sustainability. They may also pose challenges of access and equity – because not all new ODL approaches or technologies actually widen access or enhance equity.

The development that I wish to single out for comment is the accumulation of experience of e-learning. I refer particularly to a recent report on the state of play in e-learning in the USA.

It is written by Robert Zemsky and William Massy of the University of Pennsylvania and entitled Thwarted Innovation: What Happened to e-learning and Why?

The title gives you the flavour. The report’s theme is that once again, people have put the technological cart before the educational horse.
 

ZEMSKY & MASSY LOTS OF NEW STUDENTS X STUDENTS LOVE IT         X TEACHERS WILL CHANGE X

First, the enthusiasts for e-learning assumed that a new learning technology would attract lots of new students – yet 80% of the students enrolling in online courses in the USA were already on campus. Second, they assumed that students would love e-learning. In fact they don’t. Third they assumed that e-learning would change the way teachers teach. So far at least, it has not.

This is all familiar territory to professionals in open and distance learning, like you and my colleagues at COL, who start with real-world development problems and then see if the approaches and technologies of distance learning can help to solve them. We should be glad that the froth has evaporated from e-learning, which can now join other media and methods in processes that start with the ends rather than the means.

I give you three quotations from the Zemsky and Massy report:

First,

ZEMSKY & MASSY “those who promote, fund and depend on e-learning need to talk less and succeed more. The early adopters need to understand that their success depends as much on the context in which they operate as on the power of the technologies they employ”.

Second,

ZEMSKY & MASSY “the full potential of e-learning and electronically mediated instruction will not be realised until faculty acknowledge that there is a need improve educational quality substantially. What is required is a commitment to organised quality processes that transcend curricular innovation and stress technology as an important tool for improvement”.

And finally,

ZEMSKY & MASSY “we require a fundamental change in a mindset that assumes education’s production functions are largely fixed – that is, a change to one part requires corresponding changes to all the other parts, because the relationship between inputs and outputs is fixed... In the final analysis, what the widespread adoption of e-learning requires is a broad willingness on the part of institutions to search for more flexible combinations of inputs: people, facilities and technologies”.

There it is: e-learning has come down to earth and is grappling with the challenges that the open and distance education community knows so well. We should rejoice, not because the gloss has gone off e-learning, but because we can now discuss its potential contribution to development through open and distance learning in a sensible fashion. Some of those discussions took place here in the last few days.

 

Best Practice

Let me turn now to best practice. This was a particularly rich discussion.

BEST PRACTICE DEPENDS ON: CONTEXT STANDPOINT STARTING POINT

A basic conclusion was that best practice depends on context. Furthermore, where you stand on best practice depends on where you sit. What seems like good practice to student services may not necessarily impress the finance office. However, the people most qualified to judge best practice are usually the learners. The group developed quite a catalogue of horror stories where curricula or technologies had been imposed from outside, without reference to the learning community, and had therefore bombed.

The principle that I highlight is learner centredness, which is simple to enunciate but difficult to apply consistently. I was impressed by the many examples cited by the group where the learner was put at the centre. You noted the importance of understanding the learner in the context of their family and community and observed that by maintaining this link open and distance learning has advantages over travelling to a larger centre for classroom instruction.
 

LEARNER AT THE CENTRE INCLUDES: GOOD MATERIALS MEANINGFUL ASSESSMENT INTERACTION COMMUNICATION

High quality materials, meaningful assessment, communication and interaction are themes which recurred constantly.

Many of them are pulled together in the notion of a culture of care and there were touching examples of how this was made real in a variety of countries and context.

I sensed that during your discussions a huge number of ideas for improving practice were exchanged and that many of you will by trying new approaches when you get home. You also wish to see better mechanisms for sharing best practice between conferences like this.  

 

Research

The group on research was particularly well organised and effective in the virtual conference that preceded our meeting here and that spirit continued in your discussions. You focused particularly on the research that is needed to help ODL contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
 

RESEARCH PROCESSES: RESEARCH TRAINING DISSEMINATION OWNERSHIP MODELS FOR QUALITY

After distinguishing clearly between research processes and research topics you first made a priority of four research processes: research training; dissemination and communication of results; ownership of the research process; and models for good quality research.
 

RESEARCH THEMES: ODL EFFECTIVENESS BARRIERS TO ODL DOES ODL REACH TARGETS

As priority topics or themes you identified: the effectiveness of ODL methods (namely which methods for which outcomes); the barriers to ODL and how to overcome them; and the question of whether ODL actually reaches the people who are targeted.

The issue that I want to single out is implicit but very important. It is the need to instil a research culture into institutions working with ODL. We must do that because ODL is based on changing the relationships between inputs and outputs, changing the relationships between people, facilities and technology. Only research and evaluation will allow us to get the balances right.

Remember that such a research culture is new, even in universities, because they actually devote almost no effort to researching the traditional teaching function. COL is ready to help in any way we can in the promotion and dissemination of research. Only by creating a research culture throughout ODL will we ensure the sustainability and increasing effectiveness of our efforts.

More and more governments are now developing policies on ODL and they want these policies to be based on evidence. Research and evaluation is an important basis for that evidence.

 

Emerging Issues

Group four looked at emerging issues and had to grapple with the tough issue of looking into the future and making the desired future happen. Because ODL is used so widely and in so many contexts there is almost no phenomenon in the modern world that does not have an impact on our work, whether it be globalisation, technological development, the redefinition of what is public and what is private, threats of disease and natural disasters and so on.

The emerging issue that I wish to highlight is the trend to harness open and distance learning to the challenge of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. ODL has had notable success in higher education and, indeed, it has become clear during this meeting the successful open universities of the developing world have a crucial role in driving essential education at other levels. I think, for example of the role of universities that have expertise in agriculture in helping farmers and smallholders to get the knowledge they need to counter the crisis in farming and improve their livelihoods.

There are similar challenges for ODL in helping communities to learn how to improve the health of mothers and children and avoid scourges like AIDS and malaria.

Furthermore, as countries begin to achieve universal primary education they will be faced by a tidal wave of children seeking secondary education. Open schools must be part of the solution.
 

ACHIEVING THE MDGs: WILL REQUIRE MILLIONS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD TO LEARN ON A MASSIVE SCALE

The point is that achieving each of the Millennium Development Goals requires ordinary people all over the world to learn on a massive scale. Traditional approaches to education and training cannot cope with the challenge so we must bring the power of open and distance learning to the problem. In many ways this is an even greater challenge than creating open universities, although the reputation that ODL has gained through the success of many open universities will be a useful base on which to build.

 

SUMMARY

There then are a very inadequate summary of your discussions and four issues that I find particularly important. I am sure that our time in Dunedin has helped us all recharge our batteries and renew our conviction in ODL as we face these new challenges.

For its part the Commonwealth of Learning will take this agenda forward. My colleagues and I are most grateful for the many contacts that we have made with partners from all over the Commonwealth.

As the incoming president I have been particularly pleased to see the esteem in which all members of our small team of specialists are held. My main problem is that they are in such demand to come and work in your countries that I shall have to find some way of cloning them.

There will be time for fuller expressions of appreciation a little later, but I cannot end without again expressing our thanks to New Zealand, to Dunedin and the conference staff, to DEANZ and to our tireless master of ceremonies, Andrew Higgins.

 

Reference

R.Zemsky & W.Massy (2004) Thwarted Innovation: What Happened to e-learning and Why? A Final Report for The Weatherstation Project of The Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania. 61 pp.

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