John Silva Blog

What is “e-learning”?

At its most basic, e-learning is simply any form of education that is technology based, specifically using Internet technologies. In some respects, e-learning is the latest, most modern form of correspondence courses. However there is one fundamental difference is that e-learning allows a wide range of collaboration, interaction, and communication tools for the teaching and learning process.

Communication is simply the process of transmitting information from one person to another.

Collaboration is the process where two or more people are able to work together on a specific task or activity with a shared goal.

Interaction is a combination of both communication and collaboration.

For example; I can work on a web site on the history of beer with a group of people. We can each take a different portion of the project and work independently yet create a complete web site together. Now, if we were to work closely with each other, comment on and make changes each other’s work, and communicate with each other about objectives and the overall goal, then we have interaction in the context of e-learning. Interaction can be between students, student and teacher, or all together.

The communication in e-learning can take two main forms. Synchronous communication is when two or more people are communicating in real time such as in a chat room or video/audio conference. Asynchronous communication however is not in real time as frequently takes the form of message boards or e-mail.

E-learning is the educational process in an online environment with technology assisted communication, collaboration, and interaction.