Hi Steve,

When I read the title of your post I preemptively expected it to be all about dropping the e in email and elearning, so it's nice to think that our minds were on the same track. I must admit it seems a little silly to me that we still label everything with the e in front... When I think about my email, it's really just mail, at least in concept, and elearning is still really all about learning at the heart of it.

It's a bit like the term cyberbullying, which, let's face it, is really just bullying. Sometimes we add these labels to things and it only serves to distract away from the real core of the matter. Technology may have reshaped many things in our lives, but in essence they are still the same core experiences in new forms.

Will the term elearning still make sense in another 20 years, or will the kids just scratch their heads and say "it's just learning isn't it?"

Chris

I'm just itching to give my 2 cents here. The term "e-learning" comprises two elements. The "e" is the context, the environment, the mode of delievry in which the other element, the "learning", takes place. In my opinion, focus MUST be on the action of learning. It is the goal, the raison d'être of putting together an environment (in this case, electronic) for the goal to be reached. A direct implication of this is pedagogical --> What teaching/learning models and strategies are best for a rich, significant and durable learning experience to occur in such context? THAT is the question!

I'm not ready to drop the 'e'. For me, the 'e' is representative of not just learning, but how we can now approach learning because we have access to remarkable tools.
For students who grow up fully conversant with technology the 'e' will become unnecessary, but there are many teachers and schools who have not yet made the shift. Even with a classroom rich in technology, I'm still determining how to use it most effectively to enhance learning. I need the 'e' to stay as it helps me distinguish old methods from new. Initiating this conversation does show, however, how rapidly we are moving forward. New norms are being established. That is good news.

I think you've highlighted my problem with the term e-learning above when you speak about e-commerce, e-tickets, e-vets... I feel it's become massively devalued by overuse and unfortunately this overuse tends to be to highlight a digital or electronic replication of a practice in the real world. It makes it sound very 60s sci-fi to me. “Hello, my name is Calum and this is my robot, e-Calum. He does for me exactly what I do and have been doing for years, but he's ELECTRIC!”

I feel many peoples views of e-learning still reflects this. A digital or electronic replication of their real world practice which, in my opinion, isn't the case if you're delivering e-learning effectively. There's also another level to this which REALLY annoys me which is that people try and abbreviate or create wacky acronyms to make what is fundamentally the same old e-learning stand out. I was at a meeting recently regarding a joint venture between 2 educational institutions which will remain nameless, where it was stated the joint venture would not work because one institution was pursuing an agenda of e-learning, while the other was more focusing on ICT enhanced learning. Needless to say I wanted to scream. But I'm getting off topic.

My problem is that I feel the “e” highlights the use of technology over the change in teaching and learning style. I get irate when I see people talking about e-learning holding up their freakin' iPhone and claiming to be be the greatest thing to happen for e-learning, but then they don't actually speak about the learning theory behind it's successful use. In my mind, the use of technology should just be reflective of more general cultural / societal use and not be the driving force. The change in the approach to learning styles should be the defining feature of “e-learning” so perhaps adopting some other language would help ditch the “electronic” tag. I had a conversation with someone recently about how I feel the difference in learning styles of e-learning vs traditional learning sort of reflects the differences between pedagogy vs andragogy. The way I see it, traditional learning is fundamentally teacher led, while e-learning lends itself to being student led. Maybe it's time to ditch the e-learning tag all together and start speaking from a learning strategy point of view about pedagogy and andragogy across the age spectrum (regardless of their ancient Greek translations) where pedagogy is our teacher driven, class room / online SCORM activities and andragogy is our support of students learning in socio-cultural environments such as social networks, social media, forums etc?

There is often a 'confusion' that when you talk to some academics and us the 'e-learning' word they assume you mean 'purely' online programmes and students when actually you mean online activity used by on-campus and face-to-face students. These activities may be online, and may be done in their own time out of timetabled sessions but they should not be discounted. Getting this message though is somewhat easier now we have 'younger' or rather 'fresher' minds coming to the industry but the assumptions are still being wrongly made.

While dropping the 'e' from the name might change the perception of the activity or learning style it does not, or will not, alter the work I/we do - I use technology to enhance learning (not teaching, big difference there, and an even bigger discussion for another day!) and the student experience. The 'e' makes it easier for people to understand the basis for the activity or learning object and that it will have a technological input.

Does that make sense?

All the best, David

Actually I feel that David may be guilty of confusing the issue. E-learning IS that which is delivered online. Using technology resources, including internet ones, within a face-to-face session, such as a lecture or classroom lesson, is the norm (and has been since the 1980s) and does not really represent e-learning.

That aside, it seems to me that the use of the 'e' is often indicative of a transition. It indicates some new method which complements existing methods but which may at a later stage either be absorbed into the existing method or take over from it. At which point I guess we can raise the issue of whether we still use the 'e' or just accept the use of the original term.

I agree with Chris that the "e"as in e-commerce or e-learning suggest that the e alternative is optional or an add on.

Euan Semple suggests that E should be for Employee as in social media enables E2C insted of B2B or B2C.

A much more important use of a wonderful letter :-)

Hi Steve

Isnt learning just learning irrespective of the method it is delivered by? I would drop the e in a flash...

E = Expensive learning

Also - "Es" seemed relevant as something new ones but these days it seems redundant.

This is all just learning now

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/15/sxsw-2011-internet-

Dropping the 'e' makes no sense, it just becomes e-larning

Personal E (engagement, enjoyment, enthusiasm, energy, environment, entitlement, emotion, entreprise, encouragement, entertainment...) = Learning.

Personal learning environment, personal learning network are terms which personally have meaning for me today because they encompass my reality - books, boxes, pens, paper, people, connections, networks etc erc

E-learning has as much relevance for me today as 8 track stereo and 'Enry Cooper. But there again I can only speak for me. :-)

Right now we are talking about two different worlds: physical vs. virtual one. Keeping the 'e' makes sense in that context. I am sure in the near future both worlds will be blended. Then, there will be no need to keep the 'e' anymore.

This reminds me of the 21st century learning debate. When do we stop referring to 21st century learning as being distinct form current learning, given the fact we're a good decade into the 21st century?

E-learning, as a word, will probably keep the morpheme "e" so long as it represents a different concept, i.e so long as the meaning of e-learning is perceived to be different to plain learning. This remains the case in wider society.

What I suspect you are getting to is that for many of us both the distinction between concepts is increasingly blurred and that the time has come to reassess the terminology.

The problem here is that it is notoriously difficult to effect deliberate change on language and only tends to occur when there is widespread change in usage.

Will e-learning ever drop the e? Perhaps, but I don't think we're quite there yet...

I think Boxoftricks is the closest to my view...but (s)he is not quite there...:-)

There is a huge assumption that by dropping the "e" means that we are ALL returning to the tenets of just LEARNING. The challenge here is that the ALL that is referenced does not address the world's population - it just addresses those who have access and are thus, I guess, have progressed greatly due to the use of innovative technological solutions.

Dropping the "e" at least to me, means that we all know it, have experienced it and we all want to progress. Not just some, who may be just tired and want to move one...:/

Considering the phrase "Book learning" hasn't completely vanished, I think e-learning probably has a long life left yet ;)

Where e-learning is different to "learning" (no e) then it makes sense to keep it as it does for e-mail and e-commerce. For example, e- makes possible many things (rapid asychronous exchanges, automatically generated individual learning pathways etc) which are impractical/impossible without the e- and hence it is a different thing.

The fashion for adding an e- prefix rather than creating a new word will probably pass eventually. Perhaps a return to commissioning new Latin/Greek combinations will return (eg Television rather than e-plays/e-news/e-lectures)?

Don't drop the E. just the hyphen

http://mashable.com/2011/03/18/ap-stylebook-email/

Interesting discussion and my view is mostly covered by the original post and the comments. I like, though, to suggest that what we are discussing is not learning - but teaching. Whatever activity we initiate is our effort to generate learning from teaching. But as said by many of you: E-teaching/learning/whatever indicates an add-on which is ufortunate. It is also indicative of something changing, and those who are affraid of change somehow have a need to control it by naming it by its 'oddness' - the big e-thing.
The 'e' suggest technology, but technology is the name we give to something that we aren't quite used to. The pencil is a technology but by the time we have gotten used to the pencil it slipes in the background and stops being a technology. It is simply a pencil.

I thought you would like to know the opinion of my group of prospective teachers. They read the post and ran a poll on Twitter. Results:
16 out of 17 said "keep the e".
Just 1 said "drop it in the future".
Regards (José Luis García. Spain)

I think its too soon to drop the 'e' right now. While blended learning methods are catching on in school districts across the nation, the industry has a long way to go until it is viewed as on the same plain as traditional learning, rather than just a supplement.

Kelly Larkin
Manager- Applied Educational Systems
http://www.aeseducation.com

It just makes life easier for people - if I ask someone to complete an e-learning course they know that they need to go on-line. If I just asked them to do a course I suspect they'd be on the phone to our admin team trying to book on a class based course.