Elearning 2(point)0 applied to the language learning market

rning 2.0 applied to the language learning marketIntroductionUnder eLearning, it is generally understood the educational methods, were computeris used as the instructional medium.It is a planned educational experience,involving both teaching and learning, using mainly IT technologies to reach itsaudience. The European Commision and the Elearning Action Plan (2001) defined it as:The use of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality oflearning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as remoteexchanges and collaboration."From elearning to elearning 2.0The process of adapting traditional methods of distance learning was one of thelogical foundations for eLearning, being the other the programmed computerbased/supported learning. Distance education has since its very start alwaysrepresented an alternative to traditional forms of education and training, andtherefore has had to battle for recognition and consequently early developedprocedures for monstrating quality.The convergence of both traditional and computer based learning methods hasorganically evolved thanks to the parallell evolution of the primitive online worldinto the so called web 2.0. giving birth to the concept of eLearning 2.0. Terms likewiki( a hawaiian word for "fast"), blog, social network, podcast and feed, are bynow familiar to million of internet users. They have become the ones who generate,use, share and remix the content, mutating from their previous passive role to adefinetely hyperactive one. The internet has hanged dramatically in the last years, and so has changed with itthe average user. The democratization of the online world, has provided the culturemedium where users, regardless their interests, have found the way to connect thedots with like minded people around the globe. They have taken the creative rolereserved previously to University proffesors and researchers, who already had thechance to network in such a manner during the past decades. These changes can beregarded as a social revolution, more than a merely tehcnological one.File-sharing, free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses for contentare already viewed not only as necessary but as essentials for the creation ofcurrent and future learning networks.Such a prestigious institutions like the MIT,has launched big efforts in this direction, providing online resources through the"Open Courseware Project" (by the way, using Creative Commons licensing). It is aWeb-based publication of the educational materials from virtually all of the MITfaculty's courses enabling the open sharing of the faculty's teaching materials witheducators, enrolled students, and last but not least self-learners around the world.E-learning offers significant benefits and some unique attributes compared withtraditional course delivery, such as: time and location shifting, flexiblesequencing, widen access and increasing diversity, access to extensive resources,and improved communications and acceleration of feedback . On the other hand,removing completely the social element linked to knowedlege Akquisition, regarded asfundamental, seems to be the biggest danger if eLearning is to be consideredindividually. The human touch, as the social creatures that we are, should alwaysremain a basic factor, as part of the learning experience. The key word here seemsto be "blending". The power is in the mix, getting the best of both worlds, toachieve a required balance between the needs of students to socially interact withother students and teachers, not only through the new web 2.0. technologies but alsoin the old real world.Considering second language learning, many "blending" models have been suggested. Agood approach is the one proposed by Daniela Munca. She considered the specificproblem of how to design taskbased instruction for teaching grammar using Wikis. Shefollowed Chapelle approach, implying that task-based language teaching should bedevoted to opportunities for subconscious acquisition rather than consciouslearning. In this manner, she combines both syntactic and semantic methods toproduce linguistic output out of closely related tasks to the learner's actualcommunicative needs. A practical example of this, was to engage learners in exchangeof comments, using the thread communication" feature present in the wikis. Sinceall posts refering to a grammar unit were posted on the same page, every student inthe class can access the entire work of the whole group, enabling a great enviromentfor collaboration, feedback and similar interactivity.After this stage, she designed "goals" regarding specific outcomes whic diverged tothe input" stage were learners could process the multimedia info provided, usingeach wiki unit as background support to find more resources for deeper processing.The final stage is considered by Daniela Munca as procedure" regarding to whatlearners will actually do with the input of the learning task. She allowed topractice several skills at the same time, reinforcing the output through this newchance to stabilize the recent ly acquired knowledge.As we can see,what happenened is that primitve "delivered" learning (one-directional learning software and similar "chalk and talk" strategies) hasbecome a content-authoring tool, where learning is "created". Instead of readingcontent, it is now being used, more likely to be produced by students than by coursedevelopers.The next big question is how to asssure quality in eLearning. To overcome thebarrier of filtering the excess of information and bad content. Ehlers (2004) arguesthat of all the dimensions and aspects of e-learning quality the perspective of thelearner is probably the most important. Education differs from other products inthat learning is not a product that the consumer buys, "...learning rather constitutesa process that they (the learners) have to carry out by themselves."Brief Case Study: palabea.netLet's consider the approach to quality in eLearning, considering a brief case studyof palabea, elearning 2.0 language learning platform.1.Community of Practice: According to Etienne Wenger, in the world of eLearning, acommunity of practice is the closest to a social network It is characterized as ashared domain of interest where members interact and learn together, developing ashared repertoire of resources.With this idea in mind, palabea has incorporated thisconcept into its platform, creating a language learning community of practice, whereusers are able to create the learning content in their desired language thanks to abroad choice of technologies which combines both formal and informal eLearning.2.Cooperation and communication in the course: The online eLearning course can focuson social interaction through discussions, or focus on discourse of controversialtopics and knowledge creation in argumentative and collaborative settings. Palabeaalso offers an offline language exchange" feature where users can find nativespeakers in their hometown, enabling the unique face to face" social experience.3. Technology: palabea's e-learning platform has the possibility of adapting to theusers' settings and provides thanks to the virtual classrooms" feature the possibility of starting where the user finished his last learning period. Theplatform has the possibility of synchronous communication (through a communicationtool enabling textchat and video-chat), as well as asynchronous communication(through e-mail, forums,i-Paper generated documents, comments to podcasts andvideo-lectures). The content may beavailable in different formats and the learnermay be able to download course materials on his/her own computer, avilable foroffline use. It is also possible to link and embed to the virutal classrooms videos,podcasts and all kinds of multimedia content.4. Costs - expectations - value: The cost and effort the learner has to invest inthe course relative to benefits and outcomes are important. Expectations towardsonline learning may be that it is flexible in time and individualized in coursestructure regarding content and support.Non-economic costs relate to the effort ittakes to learn and to concentrate on the course within an individualized learningscenario. Palabea's learning platform is free of cost, but it offers also thepossibility of booking "in situ"courses from well acredited language institutionsworldwide.5.Inform ation transparency: Counselling and advice before entering the course can beand important dimension of quality. It may also be of importance to learners to beable to access information about the course, the tutors and the institution thatprovides the course. Another important dimension for learners is access to detailedinformation about the course. Palabea's network of language schools provides allkinds of detailed informations regarding their courses and offers. Users have alsodirect communication to the language schools, for any concrete questions they mayhave.6. Course structures: This field contains the learner's requirements concerning thestructure of an elearning course. Some learners see presence (face-to-face) periods(blended learning) as important, while other learners prefer pure online learning.7. Didactics: This field contains dimensions such as preference for access tobackground materials related to the e-learning course content, and also the use ofmulti media and several ypes of enrichment media. Other quality dimensions arewhether the course is structured in a goal-oriented way, whether it includes supportin gaining learning literacy (learning to learn) and life-long learning skills,whether tests and exams are integrated in the learning materials and whether thelearning tasks are designed to fit the individual learner's needs. Being totally aware of the importance and the future impact that the use ofcollaborative tools will bring. Prospective educational models will need to containin their designs the existence of learning activities where interaction,collaborative work and self-learning should be basic features. The major futurechallege regarding eLearning is the integration of learning activities into everysituation of our life, synthesizing learning with living, and above all how to useall the available resources to improve the most important skill we posses, theability to communicate.References1. eLearning action plan of the European Commission.(2001)2. MIT Marks OpenCourseWare Milestone.November 2008. MIT Press release3. eLearning 2.0. by Stephen Downes, on eLearnmag, 20084.Daniela Munca, Double Wiki Grammar Teaching, language magazine, August 2008.5.Quality on eLearning from a learner's perspective.Ulf.D.Ehlers. July 20046.Etienne Wenger. Communities of practice, a brief introduction. 20087.Netskills, achieving quality with eLearning8. www.palabea.net

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