Browsing by Subject "raja- ja merivartiokoulun työntekijät"

Aims of the study: The main objective of the study was to understand how the Border and Coast Guard Academy perceives the criteria of good e-learning, e-learning planning and e-learning challenges. The main hypothesis of the study is that e-learning has changed the learning methods of educational organizations and teachers are nowadays required to be familiar with new ways of planning their education, so that e-learning would enhance the learning capability of students. In the previous literature e-learning in education has been extensively studied, but this study explores the planning of e-learning and the planning process from the point of view of the educational organizations and teachers. So far this aspect has not been broadly studied. The main questions of the study were: 1. How does The Border and Coast Guard Academy's employees define the planning of e-learning processes? 2. What challenges related to the planning process does the employees of The Border and Coast Guard Academy identify? 3. What are the criteria for valuable e-learning? Method: The research is qualitative in nature and follows a phenomenographic and thematic analysis methodologies. Ten employees' of The Border and Coast Guard Academy were interviewed during spring 2014 in Espoo and Imatra with a thematic interview. The interview transcriptions form the empirical data of the study. In the study the employees' conceptions on planning and challenges of e-learning were themed and in the analysis different perceptions were sorted. These impressions were then organized according to scope and sophistication. Results and conclusions: The Border and Coast Guard Academy generally plan their e-learning courses individually and the planning process does not follow any pre-determined phases or instructional design models. The employees identified that rules regarding planning of e-learning is needed and teamwork during the planning process would be highly valuable. The attitude towards e-learning has changed and teamwork to increase collaboration was identified as issues for development. The challenges of e-learning planning is the lack of the knowledge on how to plan efficiently, pedagogical and technological issues, the lack of clear guidelines for the organization and other organizational challenges e.g. internal communications. The employees of The Border and Coast Guard Academy identified ten important criteria for e-learning. The criteria that were described are: activating students, help the students learning, support and counsel students, more efficient allocation of resources and time, the freedom of time and place, the utilization of learned information, gathering feedback, making sure the learning is current and supporting the sense of community and interaction. The study showed that the planning process requires clearly defined guidelines by The Border and Coast Guard Academy and that the know-how and collaboration in the organization need to be strengthened. When preparing the guidelines and implementing the pedagogic possibilities of designing web-based teaching the above mentioned ten important criteria for e-learning can be utilized.