S1.5.2

=Information on the types and content of student requests for e-learning technical support guides the assessment and management of e-learning initiative risks. =

Evidence
Kowszun & Struijve (2005) report on guidance for risk assessment in e-learning projects. Using research from IT projects and pilot e-learning studies they discuss the main project risks in e-learning. These include general IT risks such as insufficient human resources, unrealistic schedules and budget, unrealistic expectations, incomplete requirements, and late delivery of software among several others specific to e-learning. They provide an extensive table of sources of guidance for each risk identified and conclude with a literature review of recent and current literature on risk management.

There is an ongoing need to monitor the use of e-learning and ICTs for course delivery because there is as yet no consensus about what constitutes quality e-learning (Usoro & Abid 2008). These authors state that, ‘effective quality strategies, initiatives and tools are very important for convincing lecturers and other stakeholders to adopt e-learning’ (p. 80). Kidney et al. (2007) believe that, ‘a quality online course would be the direct result of a course creation process that included quality assurance strategies’ (p. 18).

To improve e-learning outcomes it is important to learn from past mistakes, according to Ehrmann (2002), who argues that tracking progress is not only necessary to stay on course but also to identify solvable problems that can attract fresh resources (p. 55).

Validation of e-learning processes and resources is a significant stage in the full cycle of organisational learning that describes success in terms of ‘student performance, student satisfaction, staff experience, and cost effectiveness, as judged in relation to the original intentions’ (Salmon, 2000, p. 236). Salmon discusses validating as one of six activities in the iterative process of creating an effective learning organisation infrastructure that enables ‘the system to learn about itself’ (p. 237).

Kidney et al. (2007) believe that, ‘a quality online course would be the direct result of a course creation process that included quality assurance strategies’ (p. 18). This is exactly what is described by Abdous (2009) in a pilot programme.