Lessons Learned, Trends and Issues, and Conclusions

Lessons Learned One of this study’s principal goals was to identify and describe the key elements that make up a successful e-learning initiative. This list includes not only institutions’ strategies, tactics, and practices but also the lessons they have distilled from experience. The following sections discuss the most important and broadly relevant lessons learned in the course of the study. We present the findings, organized into three broad areas— institutional issues, faculty and department issues, and student issues—as a mix of statements and attributed quotations. Institutional Issues Provide academic administration support. “One of the biggest challenges of e-learning has related to our culture—the fact that we’re old and tradition bound. We’ve learned that unless we secure adequate academic administration support for e-learning initiatives, everything else is a battle.” (St. Philip’s College) Establish realistic online course standards. “When online courses are evaluated for fitness, it’s clearly important to maintain high standards. The big question—and one that’s potentially troubling—is how high to set the bar. If you raise the bar too high, then you run the risk of driving away instructors because it’s harder than regular courses. What’s the incentive? There’ll be instructors who say, ‘You’re telling me that I have to work more and I have a higher standard? Why do it?’ If we want faculty to do this on a large scale, we need to put in standards that are not so high that they’re prohibitive.” (University of Southern California) 10 Lessons Learned, Trends and Issues, and Conclusions