**2. E-Learning in higher education**

Most university activities consist of assignments tailored to ask and to demonstrate what the learner has learned giving him opportunities to pose probing questions that his/her performance will answer [3]. A lot of studies compare face-to-face interaction and e-learning and reported that the latter has several benefits for learning in general. In e-learning, no need for turn-taking competition [4], it provides equal participation and allows shy or less motivated learners to interact with others freely and with more trusted performance [5]. Moreover, it controls their learning process. However, the degree of previous knowledge they have is an important factor, as the more they have knowledge, the better they can cope with their responsibility and appropriately do their job [6, 7]. A core point in e-learning environment is interactivity, which is very difficult to be gained in the traditional learning environment as indicated by some scholars [8–11]. Among the several benefits of e-learning, it is usually less expensive to deliver, it is self-paced (usually, can be taken when they are necessary), and it is faster (learners can skip material they already know). It provides consistent content updated easily and quickly. It may lead to an increased retention and a stronger grasp on the subject due to flexible and easy use of media. In addition, it is easily managed for large groups of students. Providing immediate feedback, encouraging interaction with other e-learners and e-instructors is of great benefit of e-learning. Moreover, since they can customize the learning material to their own needs, students have more control over the learning process and have the possibility to better understand the material, leading to a faster learning curve. The question now is how faculties can achieve all the previous benefits and others. The desired outcomes need wellorganized steps.

### **3. The ideal online EFL learning and teaching discourse**

As the term indicates, the ideal means the best that one can gain. There are many sides that should be considered in an appropriate e-learning implementation; namely technical, pedagogical, and social ones. The delivery is a set of quality benchmarks distributed along four parameters. These four parameters are:

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109508 Perspective Chapter: Evaluation of E-Learning Challenging Discourse – Prospects and Problems…*


 Output will never be the appropriate desired one unless the input is enough to get it. However, both have an equal role in reasonable success of an e-course. They form a complete matrix as outlined in **Figure 1** [ 12 ]. An e-course cannot be effective if not well implemented or managed as any deficiency in one of its components is clearly reflected on the other parts. This means that e-courses are not just content and instructors dealing with learners, but there are other supportive sides.

 Thus, the challenge of e-learning in corporations is to facilitate learning in such a manner that technology, pedagogy, and organization are related and create a coherent, manageable, and logical system for learning activities [ 13 ].

 It is important to bear in mind that technology involves basic components; infrastructure, methodology, and content as well as forming part of various working and learning activities. The organizational dimension applies to creating space and time for learning, setting goals, selecting participants, keeping track of their knowledge needs and preconditions, issuing evaluations as well. Whereas, the pedagogical dimension relates to teaching categories and their interrelations. What this paper implies is the balance among interacting, organizational, technological, and pedagogical components of a course as a whole system rather than separate spheres. Designing learning needs a complete understanding of what is inside the learners' mind and what will happen during learning. What steps they should pass on to reach the settled goals of learning. A designer should have a clear vision of what will happen when giving and idea or even text on a screen to their learning path. He also should predict the time they are ready to move on to the next step of learning and draw this well. A well-established background about the idea is critically needed for both sides of participants in the course—students and instructors. Staff being unaware of the

 **Figure 1.**  *Components of e-learning Implementation (Source: ([ 12 ], p. 9)).* 

implementation processes and steps sequencing may cause inappropriate application of the course. The idea of interaction for EFL learners is a core point, upon which all strategies of learning and teaching are built. Involving students in an EFL environment is critically needed to acquire the language skills as university students spent years learning about the language not applying it. They should have an environment that enables them to use real communication skills. Instructors may ignore recording students' responses or avoid it for technical reasons or lack of information about recent applications; hence, preventing them from a critical practice to check pronunciation accuracy and efficiency as will be shown in the discussion part.

### **4. Technical dimension**

Any learning system should consider the context it is built upon, and for any online learning endeavor, discipline, department, faculty, institution, or company will have a mandate, a mission, specific goals, and values that must be considered when planning and designing an ideal system. Considerations of student demographics and other social and cultural factors would, of course, affect the timing and method of learning and teaching. With the best information and intentions, the results and experience rarely meet expectations, and thus, the ability to adapt and refine the online learning system is crucial. Most of problems in application arise from connections for using complicated developing applications. The application is not just browsing or clicking on links but also facilitating access by building courses with soft tools available to everyone and easier to use if modification needed. Most of the authoring tools used are open-source ones, which means depending on tutorials more than original application, which in turn limit the tools utilized in building the courses and hence may be the design not sufficient to display all learners' needs to perfect language skills. Skype application may be very useful in applying language conferences that learners may like, but at the same time it needs connection speed to continue listening that is considered the first skill that led to another skill mastery. Second life also may be a good tool to be used; however, inserting tools without knowing how to appropriately utilize it is not recommended. In an EFL course, each tool should be inserted to respond to learners' needs in using the language naturally. Thus, usability and accessibility are both critically considered when developing e-EFL courses. Technical development of the course should respond to learners' minds and needs in cumulative knowledge about language in order not to interrupt the mind flow of learning during language practice. A technical drop may cause blocking for a learner's mind about a specific point such as practicing vowels, which are considered also a nightmare for a lot of nonnative or even Egyptian learners. Another point that is interface design is a very important one. A lot of interfaces may prevent or cause negative attitude about the whole course due to links of windows or advertisements that may cause disturbance to learners.
