Promotes e-learning in higher education institution
There are many articles on e-learning that talking about what is e-learning, the technology that support e-learning, and some example of e-learning implementation in educational institution. However, not many people discuss the implication and issue on e-learning especially how people interacts with information communication technology as their daily activity. When new technology emerges, lecturer is charged to be able to use it without exception. It is the same condition when a higher education institution tries to implement ICT to support learning, their assumption is all the staff willing to use it. But the the fact that not all people who work as a lecturer/teacher will have open minded with the new comer–technology.
Yet human has become an important element during the e-learning implementation, and technology should makes them comfortable and improves productivity, not the confusing technology that frustrates and slowest their activity. The e-learning technology that been adopted by some educational institutions should accommodate all type of users. The problem occurs when some users are resist to use the new technology to deliver their activity (teaching) because they not used to it, or some staff might be to old to interact with new technology while, the young generation is so enthusiastic. The gap between young and old generation might triggers some problems when they not managed properly. This is the management task to assessing and evaluating their human resources before implement new technology into their learning system.Â
To merges the new system into the existing one is not and easy thing. Lecturers who used to teach with classroom based system and never uses any learning technology will feel clumsy when they are asked to change to the new system. The old teacher who never uses technology also feel the difficulty to move. But the learning system should be changing. To overcome those problems, the management should have a good strategy and always encouraging their staff to accept the changing. There are some steps to promotes e-learning in educational institutional that must be taken when they want to implement e-learning system.By applying good strategy the new learning system will be embedded and become part of daily activity of the institution. The steps will be discussed below:
Technology mapping–in this step, the management should gathering the data from all of their staff especially their technology skill. The data gathering is either through questioner or interview on staff’s technological skills. This is important data to help management to take further action. After the data collected, then classify them into some level (such as expert, moderate, novice) depend on the staff’s technology awareness level.Â
Designing and installation process–after understanding the user, it is time to find the right e-learning technology that suitable for the user and institution goal. For institution with unlimited budget can outsource the e-learning system with reputable vendor, however institution with limited budget may build in house e-learning system with free e-learning software that available, or for the institution that have a good IT team might develop their e-learning system. All of them have advantages and disadvantages.Â
Implementation, promotion, and training–this stage is very important to determines the successful of implementation. Promotion makes all staffs aware the existence of the new e-learning system. Encourages all staffs to use the new system, explain the main purposes why staffs should use the system, develops reward culture for everyone who enthusiast on using new system. However, promotion alone is not enough, the staff also need to be trained, and supported with 24/7 help desk, online tutorial, and other technical support.
Evaluation and monitoring–evaluation and monitoring is needed to discover the problem occurs during implementation. This is good method to finding information from the user about the difficulties and flaws as well as the new solution or other good thing of the system. Monitoring the user is a must, the management will know who uses and not uses the e-learning system, then they can ask them why and find a solution to encourage all staff to use it.
I believe with a good strategy and promotion the implementation of e-learning in higher education institution will be successful. If currently there are not many institution that develop e-learning in Indonesia, hopefully in the next few years there will be a lot of institution that implement professional e-learning to deliver better education.
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