Bringing e-learning to life—student engagement and empowerment

Digital technologies have the potential to support spontaneous, self-organizing learning activities when students are engaged, want to learn and empowered to drive their own learning. We have a learning design that integrates a problem-based learning philosophy and approach with appropriate e-learning platforms and communication tools, which interface with tutorial discussions and supporting learning materials and resources. This paper outlines the elements of our approach and some initial evaluation of its effectiveness.