Critical E-Learning Failure: UKeU

The Real Story Behind the Failure of U.K. eUniversity : Link to Article

Lessons to be learned from the failure of the UK e-University - by Paul Bacsich, Middlesex University: Link to Paper (PDF)

After reading the articles for this week's lecture, it would almost seem that the future of E-Learning, and many of the ideas we place into the field of Ed. Tech., are a constant track towards a future of failure. While on a personal note, I don't believe that we're doomed to failure, I believe that we must work to truly change how we as educators instruct our students, for only then can technology become the tool that revolutionizes education in the manner we've desired it to be since the 1920's.

I ran across an interesting article (and later a small paper about the same issue) about the failure of U.K.'s eUniversity. The goal of this eUniversity was something as an undergraduate I found totally intriguing, for the concept of a fully online university seemed truly appealing. I hadn't thought much about the eUniversity until I stumbled across this article, and I'm sad to say, it looks like it failed.

So why did the U.K.'s eUniveristy fail? For many of us who feel that online education still has a bright, if not slow-to-start future, the eUniversity might sound like a grad idea: a national, commercial e-university in which you could take various courses from up to 20 different Universities, offering 40 different programs, and receive your degree from the real college/university campus of choice (assuming you met the stated criteria for its degree program). Without completely ruining the article for you, it came down to many factors, many of which are still the primary issues with our online education not just in the United States, but in our online education offerings at the University of Florida:

• Bad timing for the project start: the "Dot-Com Crash" happened just a few weeks after its project debuted
• The first programs took almost 3 years to get off the ground
• Failed to meet its recruiting target (by Nov 2003, it had only enrolled 900 out of the target goal of 5600)
• Online delivery was presented as an alternative to the traditional campus, instead of the supplement many online programs truly end up being
• Confusion between the "branding" the mainstream U.K. universities offered (which emphasized the three elements of tradition, place, and quality) versus the marketing the UKeU promised: "the best of U.K. higher education with online convenience". - Convenience is NOT favored as a strong part of the image of U.K. higher education abroad.
• Platform Investment:
• CMS available (BlackBoard, WebCT) didn't offer the flexibility needed to integrating into a portal of knowledge and exploration
• Positioned its e-learning as a supplement to the campuses involved
• Not Student Driven - all material was content driven
• Limited the use of "good Pedagogy"
• Millions spent on in-house development of a new platform whose full potential and capabilities may never be known
• Impatience - In development for 3 years with minimal attracted cash support, the company was only able to recruit and enroll students for 1 year. Results were not enough for the few investors that hadn't pulled out, leaving the UKeU doomed to failure.

The UKeU represents what many of us as educators and educational technologists have found out already, entering into the E-Learning environment can not be entered into lightly. It takes much time, planning, resources, creativity, and imagination to make E-Leaning a true, stand-alone success, and not a convenient supplementary learning exercise. After all that we have learned this semester, I feel that we have all learned something that has challenged our pre-dispositions about how easy it is, or should be, to make online education truly work. I know my assumptions have changed, and I constantly find myself re-evaluating my thoughts on how to use Ed Tech. to its fullest potential.