A tool, not a trend in schooling
An e-learning platform is software that organises teaching: it stores materials, delivers lessons, records progress and often handles communication between learners and instructors. That is a narrower subject than the broader movement of courses and qualifications into online formats, which raises its own questions about enrolment and completion and is covered under online education.
Keeping the two apart is useful. A school can adopt a platform and still teach mostly in person, while a course can be delivered online without any special platform at all. Adoption figures for platforms measure the spread of software, not necessarily the spread of a particular way of learning.
What a platform typically contains
Although products differ, most e-learning platforms combine a handful of building blocks:
- Content management. A place to upload and organise videos, readings, slides and exercises, often arranged into modules or units.
- Assessment tools. Quizzes, assignments, and sometimes automatic marking for certain question types.
- Tracking. Records of who accessed what, when, and with what result.
- Communication. Discussion boards, messaging or live sessions, which connect to the idea of online communities.
- Administration. Enrolment, access permissions, grading records and reporting for teachers or managers.
- Integration. Links to other school, employer or payment systems.
Some platforms are designed for schools and universities, others for workplace training, and others for individuals buying courses. The same word, platform, can therefore describe tools with very different purposes and users.
Design choices that shape learning
Design decisions affect what is easy for teachers and learners to do. A platform that makes it simple to upload videos may encourage lecture-style teaching, while one built around quizzes may favour frequent small checks. Features such as reminders, progress bars and badges are intended to sustain motivation, though how well they work is likely to vary among learners and contexts.
Accessibility is another consideration. Captions, compatibility with screen readers, low-bandwidth modes and mobile support all decide who can actually use a platform. A tool that works well on a fast connection and a large screen may be frustrating on a phone with a patchy signal.
Good platforms also have to suit the people who run them. Teachers need manageable workloads, and a system that requires a great deal of set-up time may be used only in part.
How adoption is counted
Adoption figures for learning platforms tend to come from vendors, institutions or surveys of organisations. Common measures include the number of institutions or companies using a product, the number of registered users, and the number of courses hosted. Each has caveats.
- An institution can be counted as an adopter after signing a contract, even if only a few staff use the system.
- Registered users may include students who never log in.
- Licences may be bought for a whole organisation, which inflates user counts relative to real use.
- Surveys of organisations depend on who responds and on how they define use. Responding organisations may be more digitally engaged than those that do not take part, an example of the sampling problems that affect many trend reports.
Because most adoption numbers come from sellers of the software or from sector surveys, they are often better at showing market presence than depth of use.
How platforms are evaluated
Evaluation can happen at several levels, and they answer different questions.
Usage. Logs can show how often learners log in, which materials they open and how long they stay. These are easy to gather but only indicate activity. A learner may leave a video running without watching, or learn offline from downloaded material.
Satisfaction. Surveys can capture how learners and teachers feel about ease of use and support. These are useful for finding problems but reflect opinions.
Learning outcomes. Comparing results before and after, or between groups using different approaches, can say more about learning, though it is difficult to attribute change to the platform. Learner background, teacher skill and course content all play a part, and many of these act as confounding variables.
Cost and workload. Institutions often weigh price, training time, technical support and reliability. A platform that is slightly less capable but much easier to maintain may be the better choice for some organisations.
Data protection. Platforms often hold personal information and records about learners, and how that information is stored and shared is a legitimate part of any evaluation, particularly where children are involved.
What the analytics can and cannot show
Dashboards are a major selling point, yet they are limited by what the system can observe. They record clicks and scores, not understanding. A high activity score might reflect a well-designed course or one that requires a great deal of clicking. Predictive features that flag learners as “at risk” depend on the data available and on assumptions made by the designers, and they can be wrong in both directions.
There is also a risk of optimising for what is measurable. If a platform rewards time spent or number of items completed, learners and teachers may adapt to those targets, and the number can drift away from the goal it was meant to represent.
Pandemic-style surges and what follows
Adoption of platforms can rise sharply when circumstances force a rapid change in how teaching is delivered. Such surges tell us that tools were adopted quickly, but not necessarily that they were chosen freely, used as intended or kept afterwards. Afterwards, some organisations continue with the tools, some scale back, and some combine them with in-person teaching. A later fall in usage does not necessarily mean failure; it may mean the emergency has passed.
Questions to ask
- Is “adoption” about institutions, teachers or learners?
- Does the figure reflect active use or only access?
- Who supplied the data, and could they benefit from a high number?
- What evidence is there about learning, as opposed to logins and completions?
- Which kinds of learners and organisations are missing from the survey?
A platform may be widely installed and carefully designed and still be used in quite different ways in different places. The numbers on adoption are a useful starting point, but the quality of the teaching behind them is usually the more important question.