ONLINE LEARNING AND ACTIVE PARTICIPATION

Online Learning and Active Participation

Online Learning and Active Participation

Duffy's (1993)idea is that learner-orientated quality development is a necessity rather than an option if quality development is aimed at having an impact on the learning process. (Duffy 1993) Quality development always has to be a connection of processes and procedures with values and normative decisions. (Duffy 1993) Every facilitator, guiding a group of learners, needs a normative decision concept, such as a didactical theory, to have a sound basis for his or her activities. Quality development, which is relevant for educational processes, can therefore be described as the sum of all activities and efforts carried out in order to improve the learning process. (Ehlers 2004)

The emphasis of Ehlers (2004) is that the educational process indicates at this point already that it is not possible to certify such a learning process orientated quality. (Ehlers 2004) It can be perceived only when the actual educational process takes place and is always a co-production between the learner and the learning environment. In recent quality debates, it is an oft-made mistake to assess educational environments isolated from the educational processes and not to take into account the target groups and other stakeholders within the environment. (Duffy 1993) Since quality is not a given, stable characteristic of an educational environment but evolves only from the relation between the learner and the learning environment, quality can be perceived and assessed only in the actual context. Also, there is no means of defining quality criteria, which define quality apart from a concrete educational context. (Duffy 1992)

As a consequence, quality development has to be seen as a process of negotiation in which all stakeholders need to participate. The aim of such a participative model for quality development is to define the values and objectives of the learning process together among the stakeholders. Such an active participation of learners will play an important role in future quality development systems. (Drucker 1969) The learners have an active role in these concepts and need to be aware of their personal proposals and demands. In a form of self-management of their own educational biographies, they have to identify necessary characteristics that learning scenarios have to meet in order to enter into a successful educational process. Such participation processes require better information, transparency and counselling on the part of eLearning providers. (Diesbergen 1998)

It has always been the dream of researchers and developers of e-learning systems to build a system which automatically takes into account all factors relevant to a high quality learning experience. A the same time the reality of today's e-learning proves different. Twigg (2001) puts the finger on it by pointing out: (Bühl 1995)„All too frequently, even innovative institutions fall back on a one-fits-all approach […] forgetting that students are different and have different needs“. It is this field in which the debate of a learner related quality development is set. (Bell 1973)

Why is a learner oriented approach important at all? Schulmeister (2004) reports findings which show that ...