Review by: Seufert, Sabine (2004-09-29)

The article analyses factors why elearning projects very often fail and how one can make sure that they succeed. The author reviewed more than one hundred articles, papers and presentations that addressed various aspects of factors leading to success or failure of elearning-projects or educational technology innovation in a broader sense.

At first the author gives a detailed definition of elearning since the term was quite differently defined in the literature he reviewed. He emphasizes two components of elearning:

• elearning as an individual or collaborative activity
• elearning as online study (synchronous communication) vs. offline study (asynchronous communication mode)

The combination leads then to four different categories of elearning.

The next chapter is addressing the question in general why elearning-projects fail. He makes clear that finding the right answer is a complex endeavour due to the variety of elearning scenarios, tools and technologies and their complexity. Chapter Three is the largest and most substantial part of the article. The author gives an overview of his research review outcome. He divides the literature analysing factors to elearning success and failure into four major categories:

1. Technology: emphasize the “E” of elearningThe emphasis is on the technology and only later on the pedagogy. That leads to same errors that have led to the failure of so many earlier technology-based educational innovations: first select the technology, then the content and only then give attention to the practicalities of actually making it work
2. Needs: stress the organizational or personal needs (performance improvement)The responsibility is given to the departmental, project manager rather than to the educational technologist
3. Management: focus on Management issuesList of causes has a very strong project management flavour, e. g., lack of ongoing support from management, failure to perform meaningful reviews to ensure an environment of continuous process improvement, etc.
4. Learning: emphasize the “L”:The illusion of elearning, projects fail because
   • developers don’t seem to be aware of how people learn, they use flawed models of instruction: presentation models, programmed instruction/tutorials
   • a flawed model of cost-effectiveness is used: ROI in the technology and in courseware development rather than on valid measures of effectiveness developed from analysis of organizational and individual performance goals, corporations are more interested in throughput and low unit cost
   • a flawed approach to the understanding of technology in education: the strategic planning process is often driven by technology, not by corporate objectives
   • a distorted valuing of technological solutions for the planning of education: standards such as SCORM and IMS is a distraction as these are not standards that treat learning outcomes but instead deal with tagging, coding and indexing learning objects to facilitate reuse of digitized training materials without focus on the effectiveness of the learning objects
   • effective elearning experiences for complex competencies are rarely scalable

The main conclusions of the study can be summarized as follow: An integrated “Systems” Approach is needed in order to address all the four foci containing interrelated aspects of elearning.

The appendix contains a summary of key project success/failure factors according to the three project life phases: Initial (Project) Design, Instructional Design and Development and Dissemination/Implementation.

Overall, the article gives a comprehensive overview of current research results and lessons learned from praxis. The definition of elearning shows the variety of possible learning scenarios and that elearning can be defined by multiple dimensions. However, the distinction between online and offline study for individual self-study doesn’t make sense to me. He excluded technologies such as CSCW (computer supported collaborative working) since their original purpose is not devoted to learning. But the line between formal and informal learning is blurring as he emphasized the importance of learning on the job at the end of his paper. Therefore, the strict distinction might not be appropriate anymore. The systematic review of factors leading to success or failure of elearning-projects and the structured organisation in four major categories are well substantiated and an important resource for practitioners of elearning-projects.