Report for an Educational Organization
Technology and its applications are changing at a rapid pace. In recent times, users have been creating and developing content and applications and sharing them through social networks. Hence, there are numerous changes due to evolution of technology in educational sector as well (Tavangarian, 2004).
Educational institutions are adopting e-learning techniques and hence making the concept of distance learning a reality. E-learning programmes have been designed for educational institutions in order to encourage them to adopt different technologies and make their learning process effectively (Tavangarian, 2004).
Since educational organizations are facing numerous challenges due to their inability to adopt advance e-learning techniques so it is crucial for them to develop their understanding and capacity to use these technologies and address different challanges.
This report is intended to describe the high quality and sustainable e-Learning environment in an educational institution. The report identifies the vision for e-Learning within the educational institution; and explains how this vision differs from current practices.
The report provides a detailed analysis of the key issues that must be addressed and the roles and responsibilities of leaders and managers in addressing those issues. The analysis determines the strengths and weaknesses in relation to theoretical perspectives and examples of good practices.
About Educational Organization
The educational organization selected for this report is a public secondary school owned and funded by the state government. The day-to-day administration of the educational organization is controlled by the principal, who is the head of management.
In the educational organization, there are over 20 non teaching staff, 38 teaching staff and with over 374 students. The school is yet to fully integrate e-learning in the educational system. The current practices of teaching include traditional methods instead of ICT in teaching and learning.
The e-learning techniques adopted in the educational organization are in the form of prepared lectures on a CD-ROM that can be played when the need arises. Since number of students in the school is high so these e-learning techniques are not interactive.
When the lecture is being given in real-time, all students don’t get to attend class. Besides that, the intranet facilities adopted in the school are not well maintained because of its high cost of running especially in the absence of adequate power supply.
Hence, students often take personal initiatives and visit public internet cafes. But due to loads of students having same interests, the students are not able to use internet properly. Apart from that, the bandwidth shared on various systems at the cafes is very low.
Therefore, a multimedia interactive lecture will not be obtainable because of low bandwidth. Overall, the population of student is enormous and the facilities are inadequate. Although many other educational institutions have adopted various e-learning techniques but focus is still given on internet and overlooking other components.
Vision for e-Learning
By definition, e-learning is defined as electronic learning or learning which is done using a computer (Kotler, 2008). In early days, schools and educational organizations focused on teaching students adopting traditional methods such as blackboard teaching etc.
However, as time is advancing educational institutions are also adopting advanced e-learning techniques and using computers to teach students practically instead of theoretically (Kotler, 2008). Earlier, researchers didn’t like the inclusion of computer in learning process as they feared that it would remove human element from learning process.
But as technology is progressing, educational organizations are including the use of Smartphone’s and tablets in learning (Kotler, 2008). The concept of e-learning has made distance learning a reality for students. Nowadays, students can study at universities around the world sitting at home.
Considering the importance of e-learning techniques for education nowadays, it is crucial to include e-learning practices into the vision of the school or educational organization (Kotler, 2008). For the public educational organization discussed above, the vision of the school includes:
- How ICT enables improvement in teaching and learning in order to raise student achievement.
- ICT must be integrated in all levels of school.
- It should reflect the needs of school community.
- It should be an inseparable part of on-going cycle of action, reflection and review.
Overall, the vision of the public educational organization chosen for this report is to create an educational organization where learners, teachers, school managers, researchers and stakeholders of the school use technology to boost the learning experience by enhancing flexibility and creativity and by encouraging complete and diverse personal, high quality, interactive teaching and research.
This vision makes it clear that the use of e-learning techniques will enhance the skills of students and will enable them to learn practically instead of theoretically (Kurbel, 2008).
Currently, the educational organization uses e-learning techniques adopted in form of prepared lectures on a CD-ROM that can be played as at when the need arises.
However, it is backed with a major drawback. Due to high number of students in educational organization, students don’t get to work on independent computers. Hence, the method is not able to improve the learning techniques adopted in the school.
On the contrary, high quality and sustainable e-learning can create a creative and flexible environment in an educational institution (Kurbel, 2008). Use of e-learning techniques in this school helps the institution to keep pace with information and knowledge.
By using technology effectively, students and teachers can collaborate better. Students can access e-learning portals wide-ranging learning material relevant to their subjects. Besides this, multimedia portals and applications enable students to manage their projects and contact their tutor for any query (Kurbel, 2008).
Using e-learning techniques enable students to create customized curricula for students depending upon their learning skills and capabilities. With this, students get an opportunity to gather wide ranging data from internet. Tutors can assess their students better and provide feedback (Kurbel, 2008).
Further benefits of adopting e-learning techniques in education organization include providing a diverse environment in order to engage students in interactive activities. With this, students can access helpful resources available online and use them in their studies effectively.
As per above discussion, adoption of high quality and sustainable e-learning techniques helps to create a flexible learning environment for students (Kurbel, 2008).
How this vision differs from current practices?
Currently, public educational organizations use traditional learning practices. These traditional learning practices include classroom learning using textbooks and workbooks. Experts claim that traditional classroom study is teacher-student directed in which a teacher gives lectures and students are required to listen to him and prepare notes (EC, 2000).
However, this public educational organization also uses e-learning activities to an extent. The e-learning techniques adopted in the educational organization are in form of prepared lectures on a CD-ROM that can be played as at when the need arises.
Since a number of students in the school is high so these e-learning techniques are not interactive. When the lecture is being given real time, all students don’t get to attend class. Besides that, the intranet facilities adopted in the school are not well maintained because of its high cost of running especially in the absence of adequate power supply.
Hence, students often take personal initiatives and visit public internet cafes. But due to loads of students having same interests, the students are not able to use internet properly. Apart from that, the bandwidth shared on various systems at the cafes is very low.
Therefore, a multimedia interactive lecture will not be obtainable because of low bandwidth. Overall, the population of student is enormous and the facilities are inadequate. The current learning practices undertaken at this educational organization are completely in contrast to the vision discussed above.
The vision for the school puts emphasis on adopting various e-learning techniques to build an environment where learners, teachers, school managers, researchers and stakeholders of the school use technology to boost the learning experience by enhancing flexibility and creativity.
Key issues
With the technology spreading its tentacles and spanning over several spheres of education, it is significant to imbibe the technical knowledge in my organization i.e. a public secondary school being funded by the state government (EC, 2000).
The issues begin with the basic infrastructural needs which are not being adequately fulfilled in the organization. Projectors are not available in sufficient numbers and if available, they are rarely used because of non-availability of quality screens.
Moreover, the power supply is erratic which makes it discouraging to use the E-learning equipment (EC, 2000). Once the basic infrastructure and machinery is arranged, it is important to deploy manpower for its upkeep and functioning.
This starts from procuring the devices, operating them, bug-fixing them and being updated with its updates and versions. Now we have 38 teaching personnel and 20 non-teaching staff working here, but the technical know-how is not available to all of them.
Not everyone is given the training to run the devices which makes them avoid the use of the same for applying the E-learning devices. The number of computers is highly insufficient in the organization (EC, 2000). With fewer children being directly exposed to what is going on the screen, it shifts away their attention and hampers the learning process.
The psychological factors also play a major role in this for both the parties. The teachers are sometimes less enthusiastic and adopts a passive approach thinking that this E-learning is a cumbersome process, especially when they lack adequate resources and training (Bates, 2003).
The children, as a result, become skeptical about the use of E-learning thinking it as a transient process and not gaining much out of it. The ways are not interactive and they reach a stage of idleness after some time which negates interest of the students in the topic.
The shift from traditional to technology laced learning is demanding and not only requires some initial inputs but also has continuous rigorous demands which are a major hurdle for E-learning process in organizations like ours (Bates, 2003).
The willpower to learn needs to be kept alive because many factors; be it social or financial pulls the students out of school and the entire goal of E learning falls apart. The lack of coordination and preparation for using E learning is also a major issue in its implementation (Bates, 2003).
Conclusion
In nutshell, it can be said that e-learning techniques can provide educational organizations with better learning options and inculcates practical knowledge of concepts in students (Kurbel, 2001). Since employers these days look for candidates who are practically sound so e-learning capabilities can help them be creative.
Besides this, inclusion of technology in the learning helps students, learners, researchers, teachers and stakeholders of the institution (Kurbel, 2001). Although the school used for this report faces so many challenges but it can adopt e-learning techniques to help students learn and grasp concepts better.
As per the report, the vision of the school should be to create an environment where everyone related to institutions gets an opportunity to enhance his/her learning capabilities. This vision is considerably different from current practices adopted by the school.
Currently, the school doesn’t put much emphasis on including ICT in learning processes and only focuses on internet facilities. These facilities also don’t provide much benefit to school due to various challenges including lack of infrastructure such as computers, lack of knowledge and training etc.
This report has described high quality and sustainable e-Learning environment in an educational institution. The report has also identified the vision for e-Learning within the educational institution; and explains how this vision differs from current practices.
The report has also provided a detailed analysis of the key issues that must be addressed and the roles and responsibilities of leaders and managers in addressing those issues.
The analysis has finally determined the strengths and weaknesses in relation to theoretical perspectives and examples of good practices.
To get assignment help, please contact our live chat adviser