D5.1.3

=Decisions to add new e-learning infrastructure elements are guided by the ability of the new technology to integrate with the pre-existing infrastructure. =

Evidence
Jochems et al., (2004) promote integrated e-learning as an effective complete system and identify three interrelated dimensions in the e-learning domain – functional, organizational, technical. The first two mainly concern pedagogical and administrative issues, however, the technical dimension deals with a large number of infrastructural matters. To address these Jochems et al. stress the urgent need for interoperable reference architectures, but note that the plethora of incomplete architectures, protocols and standards presently make this problematic. They conclude that in their framework ‘the most complex issues deal with the coherence, connectivity, and emergence of the different fragments of the model’, and they propose a ‘learning networks’ perspective ‘that is, self-organized, emergent, distributed systems created to facilitate learning and lifelong learning… [that] promise to change the way we learn in the future quite fundamentally’ (p. 75).