E-learning has failed to live up to expectations because teachers and administrators often believe a well-designed, user-friendly website is sufficient, an educational consultant with IBM said this week.
Sean Rush, general manager of IBM's multimillion dollar education sector, said educators had to consider the theories of learning and teaching at work behind the screen and move beyond the current model, which mostly involves the delivery of information.
'There are some viable models but it's not as simple as people think,' he said.
According to Rush, there was a danger students' understanding of technology was developing faster than their teachers', and educators had to ensure e-learning kept pace with the impact technology was having on the way children were learning.
'Students these days use technology intuitively and we are now seeing new learning models emerge, but teachers tend to teach the way they were taught,' he said, adding that teacher training might not be keeping pace with the dynamic changes taking places in the classroom because of technology.
Mr Rush, in Hong Kong this week to attend a board meeting with the University of Hong Kong (HKU) - with which IBM has a strategic partnership to collaborate in e-learning and e-business research - said that for e-learning to work effectively, educators had to rethink how learning took place.