e-learning as a term and phenomenon came into use towards the end of the 1990’s with the establishment of the internet and the connectivity it bought with it, including interactivity and reasonably reliable audio and video streaming. This created a viable platform on which new modes of learning could be built. In addition to the technical developments, the climate within higher education saw a growing interest in alternative approaches to learning and teaching which created a propitious environment in which the pedagogy of learning with technology could be granted credibility and status. The ‘new’ approaches to enhancing learning through technology had at base been my bread and butter for a large number of years, so it was exciting to see what had once been treated by ‘traditional’ institutions with some scepticism gaining recognition.
As head of two university units directly involved in developing learning resources based on new technologies I was in a key position to be directly involved in what might now be termed ‘the e-learning revolution’. So I can justly claim to be highly e-learning aware with my skills based in educational media production morphing quite naturally into the wider field of e-learning.
An aspect of my role at Sheffield was to be the University’s representative on the Heads of e-learning Forum (HeLF), a group that represented the heads of e-learning at 40 or so UK universities with a strategic rather than technical take on the issues. I was (and still am) a member of the Association for Learning Technology, so through these and other professional groupings I regularly attended and contributed to conferences, workshops and other sessions in which e-learning was at the core.
See also
Accessibility of e-learning
e-learning Benchmarking