Content area
Full Text
Innovation and E-learning: E-business for an Educational Enterprise Ian Roffe University of Wales Press Cardiff 2004 ISBN 0-7083-1757-X (hbk) 12 chapters plus Glossary 334 pp.
E-learning is a subject that has been attracting a great deal of interest recently and so the publication of this book by Ian Roffe, Professor of Learning and Innovation in the Centre for Enterprise at the University of Wales, is very timely. I opened the book, hoping to find much to inform my practice. As both an educational manager in the field of e-learning and a contributor to the literature of the field I am continually being challenged by the need to keep up with new developments. Having the opportunity to review a book that has so recently come off the presses therefore, held interest for me from several points of view. Yet although the book provides a very extensive coverage of the subject, I found reading it mildly frustrating. The problem was not that the book did not seem to have much to offer, but that what it offered did not match my initial expectations of what it would contain.
Targeting its readership is a problem for this book and the first indication that that could be the case is given by the title. It is not clear from the title whether this is a book about e-business or about e-learning. Nor is it clear whether the innovation referred to in the title is innovation in the application of e-learning or innovation that e-learning is used to support. The words in the title seem to have been chosen more to enhance the chances of the title being picked by someone "Googling" to find a book on "e-learning" + "e-business" + "innovation" + "enterprise" than to tell prospective readers what to expect inside. The main thrust of the...