Lessons to be learned from failure of UKeU

Sun Microsystems and Hefce weigh up future of elearning platform

Mark Samuels, Computing 20 Jan 2005

Sun Microsystems is in discussions with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) to see how the UKeU platform might be used in the future.

Flagship elearning organisation UKeU closed last year after spending £50m and attracting just 900 students.

Last week, executives of Sun Microsystems were questioned by MPs as part of the Education and Skills Committee's continuing investigation into the failure of UKeU.

Sun invested £5.5m in UKeU in 2001 and was selected as the project's learning platform provider in 2002.

Leslie Stretch, UK managing director of Sun, said told MPs that the company is currently involved in 'commercially confidential' discussions with Hefce about how the platform might be deployed in a free, community-source basis, to benefit UK education.

He said Sun is keen to make the benefits of the platform, whose intellectual property (IP) is owned by Sun, Hefce and UK universities, available to institutions in higher education, further education and UK schools.

A memo given to MPs at the meeting said UKeU executives renegotiated Sun's platform delivery contract in July 2002, increasing development costs from £9.65m to about £11.7m.

Stretch said the platform delivered to UKeU in June 2004, prior to the organisation's closure, was an effective platform.

'We had a working system and there was no limit to the potential number of users,' said Stretch.

However, there were just 140 students using the UKeU learning platform in June 2004.

At the closure of UKeU, invoices to Sun remained unpaid. Stretch recognised the whole governance associated with UK elearning needs to be reviewed.

Former chairman of the UKeU holding company Sir Brian Fender, who also gave evidence to last week's meeting, said demanding business plans were too difficult to fulfil.

'There was probably too much hype. There was some feeling that digital technologies would move faster than they have,' said Fender.

Executives running UKeU, however, were not alone. Computing has spent the last 18 months investigating the state of elearning.

And in addition to UKeU, the newspaper revealed issues for concern at NHSU and Ufi (see below).

'I am becoming increasingly discouraged with the number of public sector-funded elearning initiatives that are failing far short of targets at massive expense to the tax-payer,' said Steve Molyneux, elearning expert and director of the LearningLab.

It's time then for a reappraisal of public sector learning in the UK.

A good starting point, says Molyneux, would be, recommendations from a government-sponsored Task Force that was set up to explore the future strategy for post-16 elearning.

In 2002, Estelle Morris, the then secretary of state for education and skills, commissioned the Task Force to consider how improvements could be made to the UK's online learning strategy.

The Task Force brought together a learned group of professionals and its members included Bob Fryer, the recently appointed national director for widening participation in learning for the NHS, and Janice Shiner, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES's) director-general of lifelong learning.

In his foreword to their final report, Task Force Chairman Steve Morrison, chief executive of elearning specialist Granada, said the invitation was timely.

'In spite of the considerable investment in technology, the use of elearning remains patchy,' he said.

Three years on - and many millions of pounds later - the status of UK public sector online learning is potentially worse.

'All the recommendations were there - but no one appears to have read it,' said Molyneux. 'Maybe Government should review the outcomes of the post-16 elearning report.'

The report stated that lack of ICT skills was as great a barrier to employability as achievement in literacy and numeracy.

Ensuring universal access to ICT as a basic skill, said the Task Force, should be treated urgently by policy makers and funders.

'We recommend that by 2010 everyone should have access to ICT as a basic skill as an entitlement. The ICT entitlement should include an elearning skills component,' said the Task Force.

But progress remains slow. The recent National Employers Skills Survey (NESS) showed that 30 per cent of English businesses with expertise gaps are looking to improve IT skills.

The Task Force also reported that there was little point spending millions of pounds developing elearning infrastructures without providing high quality learning materials.

But public sector organisations continue to spend vast amounts of cash developing elearning platforms - often at the expense of top quality content.

'I will always be a strong advocate for elearning, but am wary of those initiatives that try to replace, rather than supplement, the face-to-face learning option,' said Moylneux.

'Good elearning supports the learner in whatever mode of study they feel more comfortable with. There are many excellent examples across the country of schools, colleges and universities that are delivering successful elearning to support their learners.'