Possibilities and barriers for e-learning in primary school in Denmark

TY - GEN

T1 - Possibilities and barriers for e-learning in primary school in Denmark

AU - Alstrup, Stephen

AU - Rootzen, Helle

N1 - Conference code: 15

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - How much are we using e-learning in primary school in Denmark? What are the barriers? What are the benefits? Why do we not use e-learning even more? These questions have been the focus for a one year national investigation conducted by ATV, The Danish Academy of Technical Sciences. The investigation included interviews with Danish researchers, persons from the ministry, teachers, students, and e-learning companies. The overall purpose was to make recommendations on how to accelerate the digital transformation of the Danish primary and high schools education system. In this paper, we combine some of the preliminary findings from the interviews with answers to a small questionnaire sent out to 19 Danish e-learning companies. We also add our own observations and visions for how e-learning could be used and which potentials we see for the near future. One major observation is that generally the attitudes to e-learning is positive: Denmark has political goals about access to machines, infrastructure, and internet at every school. There is dedicated substantial funding for schools buying e-learning material, and local successful e-learning companies such as Area9, EduLab, and Clio Online with international footprint and covering 90% of all schools in Denmark. Despite the many positive factors, which contribute to accelerating the use of e-learning, we also found others, which slow down the transformation: Lack of evidence of the benefits from e-learning tools, doubt about whether it is possible to gather evidence in learning, and higher demands for evidence for e-learning tools than for other educational tools. There is also a missing trust and missing communication among stakeholders. We also observed a lack of vision on how digitalization can go beyond "PDFing" a book, and, finally, we met a fear that using Big Data for personalization of the teaching/learning process will be used to stereotype education, or will only be used to save costs.

AB - How much are we using e-learning in primary school in Denmark? What are the barriers? What are the benefits? Why do we not use e-learning even more? These questions have been the focus for a one year national investigation conducted by ATV, The Danish Academy of Technical Sciences. The investigation included interviews with Danish researchers, persons from the ministry, teachers, students, and e-learning companies. The overall purpose was to make recommendations on how to accelerate the digital transformation of the Danish primary and high schools education system. In this paper, we combine some of the preliminary findings from the interviews with answers to a small questionnaire sent out to 19 Danish e-learning companies. We also add our own observations and visions for how e-learning could be used and which potentials we see for the near future. One major observation is that generally the attitudes to e-learning is positive: Denmark has political goals about access to machines, infrastructure, and internet at every school. There is dedicated substantial funding for schools buying e-learning material, and local successful e-learning companies such as Area9, EduLab, and Clio Online with international footprint and covering 90% of all schools in Denmark. Despite the many positive factors, which contribute to accelerating the use of e-learning, we also found others, which slow down the transformation: Lack of evidence of the benefits from e-learning tools, doubt about whether it is possible to gather evidence in learning, and higher demands for evidence for e-learning tools than for other educational tools. There is also a missing trust and missing communication among stakeholders. We also observed a lack of vision on how digitalization can go beyond "PDFing" a book, and, finally, we met a fear that using Big Data for personalization of the teaching/learning process will be used to stereotype education, or will only be used to save costs.

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-1-911218-18-0

SP - 18

EP - 24

BT - Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on e-Learning

A2 - Novotná, Jarmila

A2 - Jancarík, Antonin

PB - Academic Conferences and Publishing International

T2 - 15th European Conference on e-Learning

Y2 - 27 October 2016 through 28 October 2016

ER -