What's wrong with elearning...

... no, seriously, what's wrong?

I mean, when was the last time you went to a conference, workshop, some meeting with fellow professionals, and the agenda included presentations with titles like, 'We tried this new thing in elearning and it was rubbish', or, 'This great new product which we all use is actually so flawed it's almost unuseable'.

As a scientist I've been to a few conferences in my time where fellow professionals have had the opportunity to tell a group of peers about the fantastic research they have done. Indeed, I've had the same opportunity myself. What has always worried me is how little we communicate about what hasn't worked. So much effort must be duplicated by the fact that we have the same flawed ideas as our peers across the world and pursue them into the same cul-de-sac as several, maybe hundreds of other researchers. If only we knew what others had done that didn't work!

Now I find myself in a 'new' profession, and we seem to be steering ourselves into the same darkness, sharing with our peers only what has succeeded, and perhaps replicating the unsuccessful again and again across our community. What a waste of energy, if only we could tell someone we failed...

I did once, at a conference. Having evaluated an off-the-shelf elearning product, and expecting to be able to go to conference with a presentation about how wonderful it was and how successful our pilot had been, it turned out to be pants, (professional jargon:)). As my abstract had been accepted I was not sure what to do. Withdraw the paper? Nah, I attended, presented and received some degree of thanks from several attendees who had been considering investing some time in evaluating the same product. I hope their energies were better spent on looking at something else, but I'll never know whether the alternatives they investigated were also 'pants'.

My point? Well here's a challenge. Can we as a professional community bare our scars and wounds received in our investigations of elearning resources and practice? Lets have conferences and publications where we discuss what failed and save others from going into blind alleys and intractable swamps. Perhaps the energy saved could lead us into the promised land, wherever that may be...