Master of Arts (Instructional Design & Technology)

The purpose of this research project is to explore how viable it is to supplement teaching in a Singapore school with e-learning courses and to find out what the main issues and opportunities are which can provide the foundation for changing and improving such courses.

As increasing number of schools in Singapore begin jumping onto the bandwagon of incorporating e-learning tools and approaches as part of their instructional programme, the objective of this research is to determine how to go about designing and implementing e-learning in the school. This has also to be done taking into account the school’s culture, the aptitudes of the students as well as the teachers’ abilities.

For this project, the e-learning courses are defined as learning resource modules designed for self-paced, self-directed learning. These are supplementary courses that the students must take during the school holidays within a specified time frame. When the students return to school after the holidays, they are required to sit for a test. The test result will give a rough gauge of their self-learning. In the classroom lessons, the teachers will not be re-teaching the concepts in the e-learning courses but will instead clarify and pose more challenging problems for the students to attempt.

In short, the e-learning courses implemented are very much similar to the commercial distance learning courses held via the Internet. However, the main difference is that the e-learning courses will supplement and not replace face-to-face classroom sessions.

This project was carried out with the action research framework and held over a period of seven months from March to October 2001. The students involved in this research were from Secondary Two (GEP, Gifted Education Programme), Secondary Three (Express) and Secondary Four (Express and GEP) students, i.e. they involved 14, 15 and 16 years-olds respectively. E-learning courses were carried out during the one-week March vacation for the Secondary Three students, one week in June for the Secondary Two students and one week in October as part of the revision for the Secondary Four graduating students. The analysis and findings from this project will provide an insight to the issues and opportunities involved in the successful implementation of future e-learning courses.