E-Learning: Can We Get There From Here
Rik Hall - who created the WWWDEV mailing list back in 1995, offers a bit of a retrospective. What distracted me was a link to Assiniboine Community College's new website, still a little under construction, but nonetheless filled with many of the same people I knew when I worked there between 1995 and 1999. More...

Flagship UKeU E-learning Project Faces Major Restructuring
CETIS notes, "Following disappointing student numbers and serious difficulty in raising private finance, the UK e-Universities has been asked by government funders to come up with a restructuring plan before April. The emphasis should shift from commercial provision of courses to supporting e-learning development in the state universities." Predicting that the commercial courses model wasn't going to work would have been easy. More...

Supporting the Online Learner
Good overview of the many support systems required for online learners in a traditional institutional setting, including learner readiness assessment, career expectations and counselling, administrative and technological support, study skills and program advice, library, assistance for the disabled, an ombuds service, participation in student and university governance, and satisfaction monitoring. More...

Teaching in an Online Learning Context
Over the last ten years or so Terry Anderson has contributed a great deal to our understanding of the mechanics of online learning. He has always, in my view, fostered the transfer of traditional teaching to the online environment, drawing this out (especially in his work with Walter Archer) as a process of creating 'presence' online. More...

Value Chain Analysis: A Strategic Approach to Online Learning
This chapter draws a great deal from Paul Stacey's earlier work in value chains and e-learning, drawing out some of the business and marketing perspective and forming a solid picture of the industry. More...

Toward a Theory of Online Learning
Drawing from contemporary and authoritative sources, Anderson looks at four major theoretical perspectives: learner (or learning) centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, community centered learning. More...

Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning
A necessary introduction to Theory and Practice of Online Learning, the bulk of this paper (after a nod to the benefits of online learning) is devoted to two major theories of learning underlining contemporary practice: cognitivist theories, and constructivist theories. More...

Theory and Practice of Online Learning
Just released and already getting wide play is this open access volume of essays released by Athabsca University. Theorists looking for cutting edge research will be disappointed, but that is neither the intent nor the outcome of this volume. More...

Is This the Best Way to Develop, Deliver and Manage Online Training?
Mitch passed along the URL to this great article that describes one company's experience sourcing and adapting an open source LMS to deliver customized online learning supported with pre-authored DVD content. More...

Towards a Unified e-learning Strategy
Seb Schmoller links to three responses to the British government's discussion paper on a unified e-learning strategy (from the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA), Association of Colleges (AoC), and Association for Learning Technology (ALT), and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which comments, "JISC believes that the e-learning agenda must be led by student needs, not technological invention, and should be used to enhance the student experience." The responses are generally favorable, with authors expressing more caution about the impact and certainty of e-learning. More...