Humanizing e-learning

Abstract

In a short span of 3 years, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore witnessed a quantum growth in the adoption of e-learning. With the use of professors-friendly e-learning applications, NTU managed to achieve mass buy-in by the professors when the e-learning take-up rate is near 90% of the existing NTU course curriculum. As NTU moves on to celebrate the 3 rd year anniversary of e-learning experience, revolutionary measures were taken to come up with careful design considerations that aim to "humanize" e-learning, i.e. make e-learning interactive and fun with active human collaborations. This includes the proliferation use of video talking head that synchronizes with the lecture presentation, and live audio-video delivery, text chat and document annotations of a lecture delivery. This paper reviews the process NTU adopted in adding human touch to traditional e-learning projects and serves as a good case study for the other institutions that aim to achieve interactive or engaged on-line learning.