I was searching inside for the last two years to find an answer of why I’m very opponent of the drastic trend of e-learning in our faculty; why I always find myself telling that “he3he3he3” once someone begins advising me about working on e-learning development in our faculty; and it was the same “he3he3he3” that I told dr.Waleed when he suggested that I may work with graduation projects to obtain the application of my MSc research point…
A week ago, I’d found out the answer of my unjustified refusal of e-learning, it was all about the unstructured environment we work on in our faculty… let’s explain the idea more; once I begin working on a research point I won’t be able to precisely estimate the deliverables or what shall my conclusions be from the beginning… to be able to see clearly I would need a safe, riskless environment to apply my theorems fully and truly, then the results would be used as a basis for the measurement of all the main concept I’m mainly building my dissertation upon and then this would be a point to derive all the possible versions of the scenario in question… after all; I’d be able to manage any risky, ambiguous circumstances I’m supposed to work through…
But what if I’ve tried to work at first mainly on a risky environment such as this one present in our faculty?? The answer is very simple; catastrophic incomplete results, and I would be deceiving myself if I took them as the measurement basis because they don’t represent the ideal or even a realistic state… ok, but I’m so sure that much that e-learning environment is a defective one, or this one would lead to incomplete results? Ok to answer this question I must apply it first on my research point which is composed of two main concepts (Agile Software Development + Service-Oriented Architecture)…so e-learning would be an unstructured risky environment to apply my research point on because:
1.There are no collaborative workgroups of researchers like those we find on the other international universities all over the world, so I must depend mainly on undergraduates’ graduation projects, the thing that would lead me to face hundreds of risks related to the solution’s quality… add to them the hassle of managing a group of students with all the possibilities of facing shortage in knowledge and experience as well as irresponsibility related hassle…
2.Agile development doesn’t have a wide basis of audience in our faculty [it was called macaroni development before]; so how shall I convince my teachers and colleagues about cooperating with me by even only giving me the suitable atmosphere I need to create with no in vain hassle??
3. SOA needs an infrastructure or some factors to build itself on the top of them… in more precise words; in my graduation project for example, though I know that it was with no other peer, but it hadn’t come up with all its desired objectives; and SOA wasn’t fully applied … i.e. we hadn’t used its full power because there were no reliable projects to integrate with and use its underlying data and I believe that there would have been more if we had applied fully SOA…
So if I used e-learning as the area where I apply my research, I’d come with unreliable, incomplete conclusions which would lead me to be as if I’m applying it or I’m studying it for the first time if I tried to apply it in the business real world… while people would trust me for my certifications telling that I’m one of MSc. holders I’d perform as just a postgraduate student and in this case the cost would be so high compared to the cost of using business to apply my point as the only alternative from the very beginning (I mean those research points which were mainly dedicated to business and those which demand either reliable infrastructure or distributed environment or both)
I’m not totally against e-learning part and parcel but I think that the right place where we can work on e-learning solutions is the research institutions where the environment is ready to develop such solutions and the risks are limited to the lowest level… but if this environment is not available at the moment; then we shall seek the right timing to apply our research points on e-learning in our faculty and never sacrifice our conclusions and measurements in the chase of a mode…
