The word 'e-Learning'

In October 1999, during a CBT Systems seminar in Los Angeles, a strange new word was used for the first time in a professional environment – ‘e-Learning’. Associated with such expressions as 'online learning' or 'virtual learning', this word was meant to qualify "a way to learn based on the use of new technologies allowing access to online, interactive and sometimes personalized training through the Internet or other electronic media (intranet, extranet, interactive TV, CD-Rom, etc.), so as to develop competencies while the process of learning is independent from time and place2".

So the word itself is not that old. But what about the elements of e-Learning?

The development of the e-Learning revolution arose from a number of other 'educational revolutions'. Four such revolutions cited by Billings and Moursund (1988) are:

1. the invention of reading & writing;
2. the emergence of the profession of teacher/scholar;
3. the development of moveable type (print technology);
4. the development of electronic technology.

So the basic ideas, methodologies and didactical grounds are not new!

Let's take a closer look of the main experts and milestones who were playing an important role in the history of e-Learning.

Early learning aid

 

A Roman piece from a place near Trier. It dated from 200 A.C. and shows a school where the teacher is sitting in the middle and two students are sitting around him, reading a parchment role. At the right a student is arriving with his tablet on which he could write. This technique (writing slate) was used within European schools till around 1950.

Dr. Marcel Mirande is mentioning in his book 'De onstuitbare opkomst van de leermachine' (The Unstoppable rise of the Learning machine) that the writing slate actually looks like, and maybe is, the equivalent of the modern laptop. He also states that the meaning and importantance of the writing slates was very clear. It has to be used to develop writing skills. Nowadays we are still developing a clear and balanced view on the new learning aids like laptops.

Sir Isaac Pitman - 1840

First modern distance course

Modern distance education has been around at least since Isaac Pitman taught shorthand in Great Britain via correspondence in the 1840s (shorthand is an abbreviated, symbolic writing method that improves speed of writing or brevity as compared to a normal method of writing a language).

Pitman was a qualified teacher and taught at a private school he founded in Wotton-under-Edge.

He decided to start a distance course and was sending assignments to his students by mail and they completed the 'homework' and sent it back to him.

Pressey Testing Machine

Mechanic testing machine

In the early 1920s Sidney Pressey, an educational psychology professor at Ohio State University, developed a machine to provide drill and practice items to students in his introductory courses. Pressey (1926) stated, " the procedure in mastery of drill and informational material were in many instances simple and definite enough to permit handling of much routine teaching by mechanical means."

The teaching machine that Pressey developed resembled a typewriter with a window that showed a question with four answers. The user pressed the key that corresponded with the correct answer. When the user pressed a key, the machine recorded the answer on a counter to the back of the machine and revealed the next question. After the user was finished, the person scoring the test slipped the test sheet back into the device and noted the score on the counter.

Now we see that this functionality is widely used in online systems like Questionmark Perception. Testing and assessment can be perfectly done in an automated way. The Questionmark Perception assessment management system enables educators and trainers to author, schedule, deliver, and report on surveys, quizzes, tests and exams. It can easy the assessment processes and improve the quality of questions and tests.

http://www.leerbeleving.nl/wbts/1/history_of_elearning.html