Review by: Schönwald, Ingrid (2008-02-05)

Do you remember the euphoric mood at the end of the nineties, when e-learning came up and reports on new e-learning initiatives promised the start of a kind of "gold rush" in education, where the pioneers tried to claim their territories? Since then, ten years have past and some high expectations have been dissapointed. This report emerged from the Leonardo da Vinci project "Megatrends in e-learning provision" and provides an analysis of ten case studies of e-learning initiatives, which did not reach targeted goals.

The choice of case study includes institutions from the UK, Norway, USA and Hungary. The selection is not intended to be representative of the situation in these countries, but can be ascribed to the professional network of the authors, Prestigious projects such as the "Alliance for Lifelong Learning" initiative sponsored by Stanford, Princeton, Yale and Oxford are included as well as comparatively small initiatives such as the Bedriftsuniversitetet in Norway. The initiatives under study started between 1997 and 2002 and ended between 2001 and 2007, and include three types: consortia, political, and institutional initiatives. About 150 million € was spent for these ten initiatives. The ten case studies are presented in a coherent structured way: first the historical context of the respective initiative is analysed, technical issues are presented, the characteristics of the courses is illustrated, the economic situation of the initiatives is outlined and finally the reasons for the failure of the initiatives is analysed. The case studies present an interesting insight into the different initiatives; however the quality and depth of the analysis varies.

The closing chapter includes an analysis of the characteristics and trends of the ten initiatives. The reasons of failure of the ten initiatives under study are compared. From this analysis the authors draw five recommendations:

• Hard-nosed market research is essential for the success of any e-learning initiative
• e-learning initiatives should plan carefully for and control carefully their revenue and expenses. Seeding funding dries up quickly
• Choice of courses and its accreditation is crucial
• It is important that those planning e-learning initiatives should define precisely the relationships of their initiative to existing providers and define precisely the institutional model they will adopt
• E-learning initiatives should plan carefully to manage both their educational and business activities

Analysing costly initiatives which ended up without success is a challenging and delicate research project. Data collection is difficult as key individuals refuse interviews, important documentation is not made available and websites are quietly closed down. Against this background the ambition and efforts of the authors have to be appreciated. The result is an interesting analysis of expectations and experiences in the e-learning market, which provide useful insights for today's players on the e-learning market. The study would have been profited from a more concise description of the research methodology, especially regarding the analysis of data.

The report can be downloaded free of charge from the project's web-site at: www.nettskolen.com/in_english/megatrends