I’ve never been a fan of government, but I recognize that their role in a modern society is fairly important. I’m not trying to debate the usefulness of government, but I suspect that trying to put together a comprehensive look at e-learning is akin to putting a comprehensive look at the internet. By the time you’re done, you’re hopelessly out of date, much like books about the internet. Have you looked a phone book style directory of websites lately? No? Even though some have been published (albeit in the late 90’s), we have Google for that.
So it comes as no surprise to me that the a report on the state of e-learning that came out in May 2009 is out of date. As Tony Bates states in a June 10th critique, it misses some leading Canadian commentary – but again is that surprising? If the source data doesn’t mention it, chances are they’re going to miss things like, oh, blogs or distributed sources. I guess I might be a cynic, and would write the whole thing off, except the government pays my paycheque, as it does for many of the people involved in higher education e-learning.