Advances in E-learning-Experiences and Methodologies

E-Learning Value and Student Experiences
or not attending. Word of mouth can result in
one disaffected student telling 10 others of their
experience. This can mean a huge decrease in
student enrolments as students take advantage of
courses from other tertiary institutions.
In the face of increasing costs tertiary institutions
are looking at ways to decrease spending.
Online courses are less constrained by infrastructure
than face-to-face courses and have the
potential to have a lower cost/student ratio. This
can lead to a tertiary institution’s decision to
choose quantity over the perceived value of the
course (Heerema & Rogers, 2001). Institutions
must realise that value should never be compromised
as in market-driven environments students
have the freedom of choice and will move if the
value, in their eyes, deteriorates. It is interesting
in all this discussion on value that McLoughlin
and Luca (2001) consider that technology has yet
to make significant improvements in the value of
education being offered. This possibly reflects
the current emphasis of online courses, which is
to make education more accessible to students
and replicate, rather than improve, what is in the
face-to-face courses.
If the perceived value of e-learning is lowered,
the credibility of the course will ultimately diminish
in the eyes of employers when graduates
cannot meet expected outcomes. This will lead
students elsewhere, as they would want a qualification
that employers recognise. To ensure there
is value in the worldwide online courses, several
universities have joined global alliances such as
the Global University Alliance (2000) and the
World Alliance in Distance Education (2002).
These alliances have focused on ensuring value
in online learning and in providing students with
a wide variety of quality online courses that they
can access from different locations.
Another way in which tertiary institutions and
accrediting organizations have tried to increase
the perceived value is by developing benchmarks
for online courses (Sinclair, 2003a). In the United
Kingdom (UK) the Quality Assurance Agency
(2002) has developed distance learning guidelines
at the request of the distance learning community
in the UK who recognised the importance
of having a code of practice to assure value in
the offered courses (Cavanaugh, 2002). In the
United States, the Institute for Higher Education
Policy (2000) developed a list of 45 benchmarks
and in Canada, the Canadian Association for
Communication Education sponsored a project
to develop quality distance education guidelines
(Barker, 2002; FuturEd, 2002).
Whilst these “solutions” to the issue of value
may be appropriate they have a weakness in
that they may be focused on the needs of the
accrediting organizations and the tertiary institutions
rather than on the needs of students and
academics. The importance of a framework that
looked at the perspectives of different stakeholders
was highlighted in 2002 when the Council for
Higher Education Accreditation (2002) held an
international seminar where two of the three key
speakers discussed the importance of a framework
that ensured there was value in e-learning. These
suggestions related to a proposal that accreditation
of higher education should be part of the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the
World Trade Organization (Council for Higher
Education Accreditation, 2002). This is a concern,
as there is the potential that international
bureaucrats rather than the education sector of
each country would manage standards.
Reflecting this concern, research was done
to develop a framework that incorporated value
from three stakeholders groups’ opinions—academics,
students, and the management within the
New Zealand University used in this case. Online
learning was looked at as a whole and there was
no distinction made between the two models of
e-learning, that is, flexible and enhanced. This
lack of distinction could have affected the results,
especially if students perceived that the flexible
component did not add value to the course. What
could also affect results would be students who
did not consider that the flexible component of