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England's e-university venture ended in failure, but Scotland's is going from strength to strength, says Andy Moore EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | Top scholar, Tuesday October 19, 2004

Should be doing my travel claims but this is more interesting. In a pretty ordinary e-learning journalism piece on the success (blah-blah) of Scotland's e-university, Neil Johnson, a biology teacher at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen, described as "an advocate of the programme" says: "Scholar suits all learning styles as it enables students to learn from different materials in a self-directed way."

Nothing strange about that quote - could find it in a hundred adverts for e-learning systems and materials. But what does it mean?

Lets look at the learning styles thing first. I do not hold that different people have different set learning styles. I think we all have different learning styles for different subjects, at different times and places, for different purposes in different contexts. heck - my learning style certainly changes after a few cups of strong coffee in the morning. Or - another personal example - I need to learn something very fast about Logical Frameworks for Evaluation - I will definitely use a different learning style than if I had more time to do a considered and proper job. I would call the style I am using quick and dirty.