Quotes and pointed statements from the book Online Education and Learning Management Systems

Correct references to the quotes should be: Paulsen, M. F. 2003. Online Education and Learning Management Systems. Global E-learning in a Scandinavian Perspective. Bekkestua: NKI Forlaget.

Online Education is a melting pot for educators: …online education may facilitate collaboration and stimulate discussion between people, cultures, institutions, and subject areas. It is like a melting pot for educators. Young professionals who now enter the field of online education should use these opportunities to learn from, and build on, all the experience and controversies that come from this melting pot. (Citation from interview with the author about the book)

Export of education:…in Australia, the official strategy is to develop education to become the second largest export industry. In the Nordic countries, however, the export of education does not seem to be an issue for public discussion. (Page 18)

Misapprehensions about online courses: One of the most obvious misapprehensions about online courses is that they should take place in front of a PC. Most online students spend much more time studying textbooks and preparing assignments than surfing the Internet. Even though both text and video can be presented online, paper is often a better medium for text and television is better for presenting video. Still, there is a tendency among online educators to substitute excellent textbooks with mediocre Web material and superb videocassettes with a tiny, degenerated PC-version of the video. (Citation from interview with the author about the book)

Online students are lurkers: An online teacher once complained jokingly that he had too many lurkers in his discussion forums and that too few online students dared to expose themselves. (Citation from unknown online teacher)

A book for researchers, students, teachers, managers and politicians: This book comprises a rich variety of material, perspectives, insights and assessments. Valid information can be found there for researchers, for students in the field, for teachers, for managers and for politicians who are looking for reliable knowledge. It is very clear in its structure and arguments. In strategic and policy terms it discusses issues at the forefront of current debate… (Wagner, Page 14)

Online learning in higher education: …a Sloan Consortium study of online learning in American higher education shows that 97.6% of all public higher education institutions in the USA offer online learning degree programmes and courses, either as fully online programmes or as hybrid (blended) formats . But even if most European and Scandinavian universities are dragging their feet, online learning will eventually be pushed onto the classical campuses by their student constituencies and the hard-hearted forces of the higher education market. (Nipper, Page 225)

Student dreams and teacher nightmares: Online education offers students excellent opportunities for individual communication with their tutors. They can be contacted via e-mail 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Few learning environments provide such opportunities for individual access to teachers. It is obvious that online students appreciate always having a personal tutor available. It is the students’ dream, but it could soon become a nightmare for the tutors.

Sustainable e-learning: Sustainable online education is characterized by its ability to persist when extraordinary internal or external funding stops. Unfortunately, it seems to be a rare phenomenon. In most cases online education is sustainable when it generates an economic surplus or reduces costs. (Page 25)

Flexible education and learning: Today’s students often have full-time jobs and families to take care of and many are reluctant to participate if it means relinquishing high-quality family life and job achievements. They need flexible education: education that allows them to combine job, family, and education in a manageable way. (Page 43)

Online students have better grades: Both studies show that online students have better average grades and a lower percentage of failing grades. This does not necessarily show that online courses were better than traditional part-time courses, but it shows that online learning seems to work very well for students who have chosen to study online. (Page 56)

Online teacher workload: In correspondence courses, teachers are accustomed to mail carriers who deliver mail once a day. Online teachers, however, may receive e-mail 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This online immediacy results in student demand for swifter responses and, hence, a heavier workload for teachers. (Page 74)

E-learning bells: In traditional education and training allocation of resources is controlled by the “ringing of the bell”. (Page 73)

Virtual professors and parenthood: You are going to work harder in teaching a course online, at least the first time.... Being a “virtual” professor is a little bit like parenthood. You are “on duty” all the time, and there seems to be no end to the demands on your time and energy. (Page 74)

Pedagogical constraints: …it is important to understand that LMS systems may be built on very different pedagogical methods and theories and that these underlying constraints may influence and limit the systems pedagogical use. (Page 31)

Educational Straitjackets: “Straitjackets!” a friend of mine hissed with malice in his voice, when I discussed [LMS systems] with him the other day. (Page 228)

Student management system: …the Student Management System is the central, most important system for large-scale online education. For historical, legal, and financial reasons, the SMS system is the most important system for an educational institution. Hence, all other systems that offer online education services should rely on the SMS system as the master system with which they exchange data. (Page 28)

Online education economy: The analysis revealed few, if any, examples of institutions with substantial income from student fees. Likewise, there seem to be few institutions that can claim that provision of Web-based courses has been an economic success, if they disregard external research and development grants. (Page 139)

Spread of e-learning: Evidence of the worldwide spread of e-learning in recent years is easy to obtain. In April 2003, no fewer than 66,000 fully online courses and 1,200 complete online programs were listed on the TeleCampus portal…(Page 152)

LMS loyalty: The institutions do not seem to be especially loyal to, or dependent on, one LMS system. The majority of the institutions had changed system, planned to change system, or operated secondary systems. (Page 167)

Danish educational culture: …the organisational and pedagogical concepts underpinning most modern LMS systems fit badly with Danish educational culture and with the way Danish educational institutions traditionally organise learner support and learner management. (Page 228)

Instructional imperialism: In the US, online educators tend to perceive the Internet as their home market. In the Nordic countries, educators regard it as an opportunity to study online courses from the United States. If these countries do not change their attitudes, they may soon experience a disturbing form of, American instructional imperialism. The Nordic countries are in several ways ahead of the US with regard to online education. Still, it is quite possible that American online tutors will dominate online education in the Nordic countries, just as American textbooks already dominate Nordic higher education. (Page 18)

Online learning is a service industry: …the concept of online learning as a service industry may well be the most important lesson that Nordic providers of online education could take from their Canadian counterparts. (Page 332)

Learning through living words: [Third Generation Distance Learning] was firmly rooted in a longstanding Danish tradition for learning through ‘the living word’ (as opposed to the printed word). (Page 219)

E-learning and collaborative learning: The development of a collaborative learning program is much faster and many factors less expensive than the development of a CBT course. (Page 221)

The Achilles’ heel of Collaborative Learning: The Achilles’ heel of Collaborative Learning is that it scales so badly. And the ability to scale in a controlled and manageable way is a substantial and timely requirement in Danish online learning right now...(Page 222)

Management of learning: … the very concept of systems which manage learning is something strange to Danish educational thinking. Systems should be used to support learning. The management of learning activities and learning players is best left with people. (Page 226)

E-learning compliancy: Is your lecture today SCORM compliant, Professor? (Page 227)

Educational collisions: …the universities will need seamless and powerful integration of their online learning environments and their student management systems. [We] will see two worlds collide in this process: The world of the teaching staff and the world of the university administrations. (Page 226)

The Large-scale megatrend: The current mega trend shows clearly that online education is shifting from small-scale experiments to large-scale operations. (Page 317)

E-learning bandwidth: The analysis shows that there is an obvious request for additional bandwidth and better multimedia abilities. (Page 301)

E-learning evolution: All are evolutionary developments that were visible 15 years ago and not really hard to predict. The only really revolutionary development in online education during this period was the introduction of the Web. This technological development, which nobody foresaw, emerged as the development with the largest impact on online education. (Page 314)

Text and e-learning: Even though we have experienced tremendous developments in online education during the last 15 years, it is interesting to observe that written communication, perhaps the most important part of online teaching and learning, has not changed much. Most communication still consists of plain text, and the time it takes to turn on the computer, receive e-mail and compose messages has not been reduced. (Page 315)

Speech synthesis in online education: The recent development in speech synthesis has made it so understandable and user-friendly that more learners may benefit from it. These include blind students, dyslectic students, and students who for example spend much time in a car. It is conceivable that in the future it would be just as easy and inexpensive to “speech” a text as it is to print it. (Page 321)

Virtual mobility of online students: …campus-based students are increasingly voting with their mouse and taking significant parts of their undergraduate degrees online from other institutions. (Page 331)

Online education as mainstream education: Online education becomes mainstream education in Scandinavia. Before year 2000, typical universities piloted a few online courses with some pioneering students. Today, many higher education institutions are implementing online education services to all their students. Even primary schools offer online services to many teachers, students, and parents. This illustrates that the current mega trend in online education is the transition from small-scale experiments to large-scale operations. Still, few institutions can claim that the provision of Web-based courses has been an economic success. So, to obtain a sound economy for large-scale operation, some sort of industrialization of online education must be considered.