Eric's ramblings, experiences and random thoughts about e-Learning, distance education and Educational Technology.Friday, August 26, 2005
YotoPhoto
A new searchable database of free stock photos is now available at yotophoto.com. This is very useful!
New Blogs added to the blogroll
Today I'm adding five new blogs to the blogroll:
1. E-learning Circuits - An e-Learning Blog maintained by a team of individuals. Due to the collaborative nature of this blog, it is quite active and updated frequently. There is always something intersting to read.
2. e-Learn Space - George Siemens, an instructor at Red River College (RRC) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada presents some juicy tidbits on his elearning experience.
3. e-learnopedia - A blog maintained by the Academic ADL Co-Lab that features regularly updated links to useful e-learning and distance learning puplications and resources.
4. Auricle - A collaborative blog with "short articles, reflections, observations, or references on what we've found interesting, useful, challenging, and sometimes frustrating in the e-learning world." By the e-learning team at the University of bath in England.
5. JBlawg - Jason Rothstein view of e-learning. He's a Chicago-based consultant, project manager, and content developer for web and e-learning projects.
1. E-learning Circuits - An e-Learning Blog maintained by a team of individuals. Due to the collaborative nature of this blog, it is quite active and updated frequently. There is always something intersting to read.
2. e-Learn Space - George Siemens, an instructor at Red River College (RRC) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada presents some juicy tidbits on his elearning experience.
3. e-learnopedia - A blog maintained by the Academic ADL Co-Lab that features regularly updated links to useful e-learning and distance learning puplications and resources.
4. Auricle - A collaborative blog with "short articles, reflections, observations, or references on what we've found interesting, useful, challenging, and sometimes frustrating in the e-learning world." By the e-learning team at the University of bath in England.
5. JBlawg - Jason Rothstein view of e-learning. He's a Chicago-based consultant, project manager, and content developer for web and e-learning projects.
Friday, August 05, 2005
Weblog Ethics
I've been involved in blogs for a while now. First with Radio Userland and now with Blogspot and frankly, I like it a lot. it's a place to write down your thoughts; a kind of archive. It's very useful for me because as I get older I feel my memory slipping so archiving my thoughts in a blog means I don't accidentally do things twice (HAHA).
For weblog writers, it's important to be aware that we belong to a larger community and with this membership comes some degree of responsibility. Rebecca Blood has a wonderful posting on the Six major themes in Weblog Ethics.
1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
This first one is a no brainer. You don't want to be spreading rumours as facts. There's a perception, and rightfully so in the past, that a great deal of information on the Internet is faulty in some way; however, by following this first tenet you can make a contribution towards continuing to reverse this trend.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
This is critical. What's the difference between a book and the Internet? The links! So link, cross-link and chain-link. It's all good!
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
This ties back in to the first item. If you can do your part to publicly correct any misinformation you see that is relevant to your blog posting then by all means take the opportunity to do the right thing.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
This is one I would have never thought of but it makes sense. The second item in this list talks about linking which is all good until links break or information is displaced. So no deleting stuff! That way the original linking page will continue to link to the relevant information forever thereby strengthening the utility and the credibility of an ever-expanding Internet.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
This fifth item is probably the most interesting one. There's a lot of money making schemes on the net and some people have very creative ways to influence others. Similarly, blogging can be used to influence others. Sell software, products, movies even! So in cases like this if you still want to write about your business endeavours then the ethical thing to do is to disclose your conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.
Rebecca caps off her ethics for weblogs by including a sixth item that ties in beautifully with the others. In order to keep your information credible ensure the information you are citing is credible as well. You're only as strong as the weakest link!
What do you think? Is there a place for ethics in blog writing? Click "comment" and let us know.
For weblog writers, it's important to be aware that we belong to a larger community and with this membership comes some degree of responsibility. Rebecca Blood has a wonderful posting on the Six major themes in Weblog Ethics.
1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
This first one is a no brainer. You don't want to be spreading rumours as facts. There's a perception, and rightfully so in the past, that a great deal of information on the Internet is faulty in some way; however, by following this first tenet you can make a contribution towards continuing to reverse this trend.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
This is critical. What's the difference between a book and the Internet? The links! So link, cross-link and chain-link. It's all good!
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
This ties back in to the first item. If you can do your part to publicly correct any misinformation you see that is relevant to your blog posting then by all means take the opportunity to do the right thing.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
This is one I would have never thought of but it makes sense. The second item in this list talks about linking which is all good until links break or information is displaced. So no deleting stuff! That way the original linking page will continue to link to the relevant information forever thereby strengthening the utility and the credibility of an ever-expanding Internet.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
This fifth item is probably the most interesting one. There's a lot of money making schemes on the net and some people have very creative ways to influence others. Similarly, blogging can be used to influence others. Sell software, products, movies even! So in cases like this if you still want to write about your business endeavours then the ethical thing to do is to disclose your conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.
Rebecca caps off her ethics for weblogs by including a sixth item that ties in beautifully with the others. In order to keep your information credible ensure the information you are citing is credible as well. You're only as strong as the weakest link!
What do you think? Is there a place for ethics in blog writing? Click "comment" and let us know.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
3000+ hits!
Special thanks to all the visitors who together pushed the hit counter on this website over 3000 hits today! Yeah! That's about 1,000 hits in the last 100 days; 10 hits per day. Very cool. Keep the hits coming! Remember that you can comment on any of these blog postings by hitting the "comment" word below.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Benchmarks for Courseware Authoring Programmes
I was recently asked "In your opinion, should researchers compare courseware authoring programs to traditional education techniques?"
This is a slippery question! I believe that in the early stages of any technology, or innovation, human beings naturally compare it to existing technologies because that is the most convenient reference point. However, as a technology matures and people obtain more and more experience with how it works, the benchmark used to evaluate the technology starts to change. No longer do we compare it to the old fashion technology, we more typically compare its utility and functionality to earlier generations of the same product. By doing this comparison to an earlier generation of the same product we begin to develop criteria for evaluating a technology which are unique to the technology itself instead of being related to the traditional method of doing things prior to the innovation in question.
For example, when personal computers first came out, people evaluated them by saying things like “computers allow you to use Word-processing programmes so that when you type your manuscripts you can move words around and spell-check sentences; a marked enhancement over the typewriter!” In this case, people are comparing the new technological innovation (computers) with the traditional technology (typewriters). However, today when Intel announced its most recent production-ready microprocessor, the Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition, no one reviewing this microprocessor writes words like “this microprocessor gives computers a marked improvement over typewriters!” (Well, at least I hope no one does! *grin*) Instead they use expression that compare this chip to existing technologies in the same family, like a previously released Intel’s chip such as the Pentium 4 Processor. For example, today they might say something like “Boy the clock speed on the new Intel Pentium Processor Extreme is faster than the first Pentium 4’s that were released by Intel.” However, they would have never exclaimed similar words in 1983: “Boy the clock speed on my new IBM PC 8088 is way faster than my IBM Typewriter!” The point I am trying to make here is that the benchmark for how to describe a computer’s performance has clearly changed as the technology has matured, over 20 years.
In keeping with this idea, I believe it is natural for educators to evaluate courseware while using traditional education techniques as a benchmark until such time as the technology matures. In my opinion, we are on the cusp of the courseware maturation phase. The best practices in courseware design are not yet set in stone but we are seeing them gel slowly with the passing of each courseware development project. I believe in the near future the literature will show more and more exploration by the field into defining models for the evaluation of courseware materials. Once practitioners gain experience using these unique evaluation models, the practice of using traditional education techniques as a benchmark when evaluating courseware will become archaic, just like the typewriter (*grin*).
What do you think? Click the "comments" word below to leave a comment.
This is a slippery question! I believe that in the early stages of any technology, or innovation, human beings naturally compare it to existing technologies because that is the most convenient reference point. However, as a technology matures and people obtain more and more experience with how it works, the benchmark used to evaluate the technology starts to change. No longer do we compare it to the old fashion technology, we more typically compare its utility and functionality to earlier generations of the same product. By doing this comparison to an earlier generation of the same product we begin to develop criteria for evaluating a technology which are unique to the technology itself instead of being related to the traditional method of doing things prior to the innovation in question.
For example, when personal computers first came out, people evaluated them by saying things like “computers allow you to use Word-processing programmes so that when you type your manuscripts you can move words around and spell-check sentences; a marked enhancement over the typewriter!” In this case, people are comparing the new technological innovation (computers) with the traditional technology (typewriters). However, today when Intel announced its most recent production-ready microprocessor, the Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition, no one reviewing this microprocessor writes words like “this microprocessor gives computers a marked improvement over typewriters!” (Well, at least I hope no one does! *grin*) Instead they use expression that compare this chip to existing technologies in the same family, like a previously released Intel’s chip such as the Pentium 4 Processor. For example, today they might say something like “Boy the clock speed on the new Intel Pentium Processor Extreme is faster than the first Pentium 4’s that were released by Intel.” However, they would have never exclaimed similar words in 1983: “Boy the clock speed on my new IBM PC 8088 is way faster than my IBM Typewriter!” The point I am trying to make here is that the benchmark for how to describe a computer’s performance has clearly changed as the technology has matured, over 20 years.
In keeping with this idea, I believe it is natural for educators to evaluate courseware while using traditional education techniques as a benchmark until such time as the technology matures. In my opinion, we are on the cusp of the courseware maturation phase. The best practices in courseware design are not yet set in stone but we are seeing them gel slowly with the passing of each courseware development project. I believe in the near future the literature will show more and more exploration by the field into defining models for the evaluation of courseware materials. Once practitioners gain experience using these unique evaluation models, the practice of using traditional education techniques as a benchmark when evaluating courseware will become archaic, just like the typewriter (*grin*).
What do you think? Click the "comments" word below to leave a comment.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Factors when designing good intructional strategies
I was recently asked the question "In your opinion, what factors need to be considered when designing good instructional strategies in a courseware program?"
Four things came off the top of my head that need to be considered when designing good instructional strategies for courseware.
Four things came off the top of my head that need to be considered when designing good instructional strategies for courseware.
- Never lose sight of your target market. It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen it happen. Here’s one example, a short self-paced open-access voluntary training course was designed for the Canadian Forces their spouses and civilian members of the Canadian Dept. of National Defence. Subject matter experts, designers and developers jumped right in and created some wonderful HTML-based courseware. However, they lost sight of their target market a little bit because they intended to deploy this HTML on the Internet but created it in such a way that it does not meet the Common Look and Feel Guidelines of the Treasury Board of Canada, so now it cannot be posted on any publicly available Government of Canada server. They now have a significant hurdle to overcome. How will their target market access this web material? So a tiny bit of lack of upfront planning with respect to the target market has now put them in a position where they may have to deploy the training using alternative means instead of on a publicly available Government of Canada web server.
- Ensure learning activities can be completed in a manageable time. At my university students are given a benchmark of 9 hours per week of work for an undergraduate course. When designing courseware learning activities the tendency by some instructors is to take the normal classroom assignments and learning activities and just augment them with additional web-based activities. This can result in courses with very heavy workloads (i.e. well above 9 hours per week). So, I try to keep the time in mind when I am designing courseware-enabled courses.
- Use stable courseware/technology with supporting documentation for novices. Two years ago I fell into this trap where I designed a first year computer course that needed to have an associated bit of technology: a Java programme compiler. The professor recommended one. It was free. I was happy. However, in the inaugural offering of the course, the technology proved very hard to master by novice students. The instructor spent a lot of time on the phone helping students install and work the compiler in the first few weeks. What the instructor had neglected to tell me, and what I had neglected to consider, was that he was successfully using this compiler on-site in classroom-based computer labs where he was continuously available to help students with software issues. As a dedicated tutor he effectively served as a support mechanism to classroom students. In the distance course that we were now delivering we had not planned for this "dedicated tutor" function. So the questions, which arose from students around the intricacies of the Java-compiler, where now being fielded at a distance by the instructor and it consumed his time and resulted in some frustrated students. In the second offering of the course, we beefed up the documentation around how to install the compiler and how to use it. So it went much better the second time around.
- Focus on Interactivity. Whether it’s student-to-student, student-to-instructor or student-to-content, consider trying to infuse as much interactivity as possible into a course. Some courseware-enabled courses that we offer at my University that were designed 5+ years ago lack interactivity on all fronts. They are basically electronic “page turners”. Students hate it. Their expectations are much higher today for courseware than they were in the past, so plan carefully for a significant level of interactivity in your course.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Ed. Tech. Professional Associations
Ed. Tech. Professional Associations
If you're looking for a handy updated list of Professional Associations in the field of Educational Technology, Jason Rhode has done a good job at creating this one.
If you're looking for a handy updated list of Professional Associations in the field of Educational Technology, Jason Rhode has done a good job at creating this one.
Friday, June 03, 2005
Macromedia Flash
Here's a summary of my view of the strengths and weaknesses of Macromedia Flash. Macromedia Flash is a powerful piece of software that allows designers to create animations and interactive interfaces.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Strengths:
- Can integrate sound into the animations. Example, http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.swf
- Can integrate video into Flash animations. Example, http://www.funpic.hu/swf/numanuma.html
- Can integrate background music along a long timeline animation. Example, http://www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon244.swf
- Can integrate user interactivity into animations. Example 1, try to click and send the penguin for a ride! http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf Example 2, take out your stress on the bubble wrap! http://www.nonstop.lv/files/bubblewrap.swf
- Can build very complex animations. Example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onelife/fun/health/excess/index.shtml
This Excess All Areas flash animation is a very good example. The target audience is likely young teenagers and therefore, I found this object made very effective use of integrated video and sound. The mouse rollovers were nice and the action escalated as I progressed through the object, and that naturally pulled me through the navigation of all parts of the object. This is excellent. I also liked the splash screen which gave good explanations of the icons and the functions available to the user throughout the navigation. One tiny thing that was missing was a universally accessible Quit button. - The output Flash files (*.swf files) are generally small in size and if vector based animations are used exclusively; the file is very small and suitable for web-use even with dial-up users.
- The Flash Player is a free browser plug-in.
Weaknesses:
- The Macromedia Flash Authoring Software isn't free. It costs money. Visit http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/?promoid=BINT for more information. They do have Educational pricing structures however.
- It takes awhile to learn Flash. It uses a combination of object-oriented design with ActionScripting to offer a wide range of possibilities. Many experienced Flash developers claim that anything can be done with Flash because it is so flexible but it’s this same flexibility that makes it a complex product to master. I've taken about 20 weeks of part-time instruction on the software and it was well worth the investment. Without structured instruction, I do not think I would have been able to learn as much as I did.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Technology if necessary, but not necessarily technology!
In 1942 during WWII, the Prime Minister of Canada, Mackenzie King, launched a plebiscite to Canadians asking them if they wanted to support mandatory military service overseas: conscription. He led the campaign using the now famous motto: "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription."
A colleague of mine (Thanks Louise!) showed me that a derivative of this quote rings true today in the DE context. When I think about technology in higher education settings and about LMSs in particular, the software and product choices number in the dozens!!! Which do you choose??? Well, how about this motto: "technology if necessary, but not necessarily technology." What I mean by this is that Curriculum Developers cannot just adopt the policy of "choosing" an LCMS and then being boxed into applying the features of that product to the courses they are designing. That's a shortsighted practice: using the technology just because the technology is there to be used.
Instead Curriculum Developers should first thoroughly assess the type of course that is in question and subsequently choose the right mixture of tools that meets the course needs. For example, if I have a course which is largely pitched at the junior level with learning objectives at the Level 1 (Knowledge) and Level 2 (Comprehension) levels, it doesn't make sense for me to build into such a course synchronous video-enabled group work activity. It's over-kill!!! The technical/physical constraints and the required competencies required of students to interact in such a rich collaborative environment do not match the cognitive level of the learning objectives: Level 1 and Level 2. Those interactive and collaborative activities are better suited to higher level cognitive objectives. So just because my University might have an LCMS with all kinds of bells and whistles does not mean I *should* or *must* integrate these bells and whistles into my course.
Educational soundness of the course is attained when you line up the cognitive difficulty levels of the Learning Objectives, the Learning Activities and the Assessments. If you misalign these things you can really throw the learning for a loop! For example, if the Learning Objective is "State Newton's Three Laws" (Level 1: Knowledge) and I design a Learning Activity like "Do some synchronous group work using video conferencing to debate the validity Newton's Three Laws" (Level 5&6: Synthesize & Evaluate), and then I test learners with a question on a final exam like "Apply Newton's three Laws to solve these real life problems" (Level 3: Application), no one in this fictitious, and wildly torturous, class would pass this exam question. Wouldn't you agree? (*OUCH*)
So I always try to focus my work on analyzing the learners and their learning path within the course and I try to align everything on the same level. Only after that do I move to selecting the appropriate tool in an LCMS, or otherwise, to *support* my learning activity.
Technology is clearly secondary in my process: "technology if necessary, but not necessarily technology."
What do you think? Post a comment.
A colleague of mine (Thanks Louise!) showed me that a derivative of this quote rings true today in the DE context. When I think about technology in higher education settings and about LMSs in particular, the software and product choices number in the dozens!!! Which do you choose??? Well, how about this motto: "technology if necessary, but not necessarily technology." What I mean by this is that Curriculum Developers cannot just adopt the policy of "choosing" an LCMS and then being boxed into applying the features of that product to the courses they are designing. That's a shortsighted practice: using the technology just because the technology is there to be used.
Instead Curriculum Developers should first thoroughly assess the type of course that is in question and subsequently choose the right mixture of tools that meets the course needs. For example, if I have a course which is largely pitched at the junior level with learning objectives at the Level 1 (Knowledge) and Level 2 (Comprehension) levels, it doesn't make sense for me to build into such a course synchronous video-enabled group work activity. It's over-kill!!! The technical/physical constraints and the required competencies required of students to interact in such a rich collaborative environment do not match the cognitive level of the learning objectives: Level 1 and Level 2. Those interactive and collaborative activities are better suited to higher level cognitive objectives. So just because my University might have an LCMS with all kinds of bells and whistles does not mean I *should* or *must* integrate these bells and whistles into my course.
Educational soundness of the course is attained when you line up the cognitive difficulty levels of the Learning Objectives, the Learning Activities and the Assessments. If you misalign these things you can really throw the learning for a loop! For example, if the Learning Objective is "State Newton's Three Laws" (Level 1: Knowledge) and I design a Learning Activity like "Do some synchronous group work using video conferencing to debate the validity Newton's Three Laws" (Level 5&6: Synthesize & Evaluate), and then I test learners with a question on a final exam like "Apply Newton's three Laws to solve these real life problems" (Level 3: Application), no one in this fictitious, and wildly torturous, class would pass this exam question. Wouldn't you agree? (*OUCH*)
So I always try to focus my work on analyzing the learners and their learning path within the course and I try to align everything on the same level. Only after that do I move to selecting the appropriate tool in an LCMS, or otherwise, to *support* my learning activity.
Technology is clearly secondary in my process: "technology if necessary, but not necessarily technology."
What do you think? Post a comment.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Understanding colour contrast in web pages
Take a look at this practical article about creating effective colour contrast by Dr. Aries Arditi of the Arlene R. Gordon Rsearch Institute. It definitely has some good guidelines.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Is Open Source LCMS really the way to go?
On the surface, don't open source LCMSs sound like a great idea? They have three major advantages that make them very attractive, especially for budget conscious smaller schools that are considering deploying LCMS software for the first time:
Advantage #1: The code is FREE!
Advantage #2: The code is FREE!
Advantage #3: The code is FREE!
However, despite these three undeniably amazing advantages (*grin*), remember that the technical labor required to deploy, customize and manage the LCMS must be located within the school and is costly. In my view, you need about twice as much in-house technical and development support to an Open Source LCMS than you need for a commercially available LCMS. While theoretically, Moodle is customizable to meet any specific needs of the school, the customization process is conducted in-house by individuals on the school's payroll and that costs money! In a recent round table meeting of five Universities that I attended in Ottawa on the subject of LCMSs, all five Universities had decided to continue pursuing commercially available LCMSs instead of Open Source products like Moodle or SAKAI because they had judged it to be more cost effective in the medium and long term. Placing experienced technical development personnel on the payroll is not cheap, and investing similar amounts of money into the licensing of a commercially available LCMS was judged to be a safer and more stable choice.
Interesting. If you have an opinion on this, leave a comment.
Advantage #1: The code is FREE!
Advantage #2: The code is FREE!
Advantage #3: The code is FREE!
However, despite these three undeniably amazing advantages (*grin*), remember that the technical labor required to deploy, customize and manage the LCMS must be located within the school and is costly. In my view, you need about twice as much in-house technical and development support to an Open Source LCMS than you need for a commercially available LCMS. While theoretically, Moodle is customizable to meet any specific needs of the school, the customization process is conducted in-house by individuals on the school's payroll and that costs money! In a recent round table meeting of five Universities that I attended in Ottawa on the subject of LCMSs, all five Universities had decided to continue pursuing commercially available LCMSs instead of Open Source products like Moodle or SAKAI because they had judged it to be more cost effective in the medium and long term. Placing experienced technical development personnel on the payroll is not cheap, and investing similar amounts of money into the licensing of a commercially available LCMS was judged to be a safer and more stable choice.
Interesting. If you have an opinion on this, leave a comment.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
2000+ hits!
The hit counter on this site rolled over the 2000 mark today. Yeah! Thanks to everyone who reads these postings. Feel free to comment on any of them at anytime by clicking the "comment" word at the bottom of each posting.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Images Canada
A large database of images that are Canadian-based. A large number of them can be used in an educational setting with a simple credit line acknowledging the source.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Student-to-Student interaction in Online Science Courses
Asynchronous student-to-student interaction for science courses at the higher education level can be classified into the six types (Modified from Iverson, M. (2005). E-Learning Games: Interactive Learning Strategies for Digital Delivery. Pearson: Upper Saddle River.) Some examples of activities for the six types are listed below.
1. Course Openers
1. Course Openers
- Introductions/Bio
- Ice Breakers
- Case Study analysis in small groups
- Problem Based learning in small groups
- Peer review of assignment work
- Several times during the course, each student posts an online resource on the topic to a discussion board.
- Pair Annotated Bibliography (Student 1 finds a suitable article on the web and Student 2 writes a short summary of the article.)
- A pair, or small group, of students write a research proposal
- A pair, or small group, prepare a PowerPoint presentation
- Instructor assigns discussion questions that students must research individually. A component of the grade is attributed to follow up postings.
- Students post a summary of the most important things they learned in the course
Friday, April 01, 2005
Study: Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness
The Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness released their Internet Supported Learning study that examines factors influencing success achievement in Internet-Supported Learning in Higher Education. Take a look at the Executive Summary. It's a quick read and boils down the very interesting findings.
Each of the eight summary findings are excellent; however, two in particular interest me:
Summary Finding Three
"Successful institutions measure themselves in a variety of ways depending on what is important to them; quality is at least or more important than growth."
So, course quality before quantity is the important idea here!
Summary Finding Five
"The “secret sauce” of achieving success in Internet-supported learning varies from institution to institution, however, a “programmatic approach” with a commitment to fully online programs seems to be most critical"
So, institutions should discontinue the practice of developing an online course just because a certain professor or SME with expertise happens to be available at the time. Instead, they should focus on programme based course development so that students have a clear path to obtaining academic credentials entirely online.
Each of the eight summary findings are excellent; however, two in particular interest me:
Summary Finding Three
"Successful institutions measure themselves in a variety of ways depending on what is important to them; quality is at least or more important than growth."
So, course quality before quantity is the important idea here!
Summary Finding Five
"The “secret sauce” of achieving success in Internet-supported learning varies from institution to institution, however, a “programmatic approach” with a commitment to fully online programs seems to be most critical"
So, institutions should discontinue the practice of developing an online course just because a certain professor or SME with expertise happens to be available at the time. Instead, they should focus on programme based course development so that students have a clear path to obtaining academic credentials entirely online.
My experience with Synchronous Communication in Distance Education
I have never designed or delivered a course that required of students synchronous interaction at a distance. It's a philosophical point really. I believe that a large majority of students choose distance education courses for the flexibility in scheduling their work and by placing scheduled synchronous activities into the course, their satisfaction can be decreased.
That being said, I have personally participated in a great many synchronous activities as both an instructor (when they were optional activities) and as an audience member in a presentation. My personal feeling is that I absolutely love synchronous activities when I am an audience member at a presentation. I find it a great joy that I can interact with people around the world from my little office. I try to attend as many as possible. In case you are ever interested in trying some of these free synchronous seminars yourself, here's a short list of a few groups who regularly host them (in many cases, you can also find archives of previous presentations their for your viewing pleasure):
In fact, a great talk is shaping up from next Friday (April 8th, 2005) at the CIDER sessions entitled: Content analysis of online discussions . So if you want to talk about issues surrounding the evaluation of online discussions activities in a DE format, this is a must attend presentation!
I have used synchronous chat as an optional activity in a few of my courses. I've used it most frequently as a type of "Online Office Hours" where I just chill in the chat room for an hour waiting for people to come and ask me questions or just visit with me. It works well. Typically, I get three to five people who drop by to say hello, ask a question or just be social. I don't discourage them from using the Online Office Hours as a social outlet in the DE course. I think some social learners need this ingredient in their learning environments in order to bring them success. So pretty much anything goes in the Online Office Hours. I have also organized one-hour optional chat activities on a specific class topic. I've done it twice. Both times were well attended.... five people once and seven the second time. It's a fast and frantic chat and my experience is that very little learning occurs because you're too busy typing and thinking up the next thing you're going to say (quickly I might add because the messages are scrolling by like mad and the topic you might be wanting to contribute to can be long gone if you don't type it fast enough!). There's a bit too much performance anxiety in this environment for my liking. I would find it difficult to examine a chat transcript and grade it afterwards with good conscience. I would be constantly asking myself if a student's lack of performance was due to performance anxiety with the media or what?
So, there are a few of my ideas and experiences around synchronous interaction. I like it, but not as a requirement for students and I don't like using it as a graded activity either.
That being said, I have personally participated in a great many synchronous activities as both an instructor (when they were optional activities) and as an audience member in a presentation. My personal feeling is that I absolutely love synchronous activities when I am an audience member at a presentation. I find it a great joy that I can interact with people around the world from my little office. I try to attend as many as possible. In case you are ever interested in trying some of these free synchronous seminars yourself, here's a short list of a few groups who regularly host them (in many cases, you can also find archives of previous presentations their for your viewing pleasure):
- Innovate Live: http://www.uliveandlearn.com/innovate/
- WebCT Online Seminars: http://www.webct.com/seminar
- CIDER Sessions http://cider.athabascau.ca/events/cidersessions2005
In fact, a great talk is shaping up from next Friday (April 8th, 2005) at the CIDER sessions entitled: Content analysis of online discussions . So if you want to talk about issues surrounding the evaluation of online discussions activities in a DE format, this is a must attend presentation!
I have used synchronous chat as an optional activity in a few of my courses. I've used it most frequently as a type of "Online Office Hours" where I just chill in the chat room for an hour waiting for people to come and ask me questions or just visit with me. It works well. Typically, I get three to five people who drop by to say hello, ask a question or just be social. I don't discourage them from using the Online Office Hours as a social outlet in the DE course. I think some social learners need this ingredient in their learning environments in order to bring them success. So pretty much anything goes in the Online Office Hours. I have also organized one-hour optional chat activities on a specific class topic. I've done it twice. Both times were well attended.... five people once and seven the second time. It's a fast and frantic chat and my experience is that very little learning occurs because you're too busy typing and thinking up the next thing you're going to say (quickly I might add because the messages are scrolling by like mad and the topic you might be wanting to contribute to can be long gone if you don't type it fast enough!). There's a bit too much performance anxiety in this environment for my liking. I would find it difficult to examine a chat transcript and grade it afterwards with good conscience. I would be constantly asking myself if a student's lack of performance was due to performance anxiety with the media or what?
So, there are a few of my ideas and experiences around synchronous interaction. I like it, but not as a requirement for students and I don't like using it as a graded activity either.
Ideas on asynchronous pull technologies in course design
When I design courses I focus on pull-technologies. Technologies where students must investigate or seek out information. I choose to do it this way because most of the time I design courses for other Instructors, and I cannot gauge their personal commitment to push-technologies that they must initiate. It is too risky for me to design a course loaded with push-technology, only to have the instructor be a neophyte in the student-to-instructor interaction domain and the students will suffer greatly as a result. So, I have never designed a learning activity around email. I have designed a great many learning activities around asynchronous use of the discussion forum, interactive programming as well as asynchronous use of web-based presentation documents; however, because I have only worked for schools who are supported by an LCMS, I have never had to resort to using asynchronous newsgroups. I will outline a few examples of the activities that I have designed:
So the permutations and combinations of asynchronous learning activities and resource presentations are almost endless. Some work better than others. Simple designs work best and up-front grading rubrics guide the DE students in a clear fashion.
Many books exist on the subject as well. Two of my favorite books in my library with lots of ideas like this are listed below. The first is more for classroom-based learning activities but with a little creativity you can parallel many of the ideas to a DE format, the second is a short book that's loaded with goodies perfectly suited to technologically enhanced DE courses.
Taylor, K., Marienau, C. and Fiddler, M. (2000). Developing Adult Learners: Strategies for Teachers and Trainers. San-Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Iverson, K. (2005). E-Learning Games: Interactive Learning Strategies for Digital Delivery. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
- Classical discussion forum activities like the one we have here at UoP with DQ's and corresponding requirements for replies
- Discussion forum activities where one student is elected moderator for the week, and must post a critical review to an important required reading. Other classmates are graded on a required number of intelligent postings for the week's discussion.
- Case study activities in the discussion forum where a dozen case studies are presented by the instructor, students must choose five of them over a three week period and post a message to the discussion forum with their analysis of each. There is also a requirement for students to comment on the analyses of others and foster discussion during the week.
- Web-page creation activities where students had to create a web-page with a Java-applet embedded, they are then required to post the web-page to the student homepage area of the course (so that the entire class can view it). The other students are required to highlight the best features and the worst features of their classmates webpages (all the while being polite of course!)
- Entire course creation activities, and then students are required to visit all the other student's course sites and pick the one they liked best and then support their choice with reasons why the course can be characterized as "good".
- Activities such as students are required to view a selected set of short video clips on the web, and then they must formulate a critique in the discussion forum of one of the video-clips for other students to comment upon.
- As for presentation documents, I have designed a great many. Situations where PowerPoint slides have been available to complement PDF files containing lesson material, or HTML files etc. I have also selected video-clips and other media (audio and graphic) for students to view as part of the course notes. Web-based content is an integral part of every course I design.
So the permutations and combinations of asynchronous learning activities and resource presentations are almost endless. Some work better than others. Simple designs work best and up-front grading rubrics guide the DE students in a clear fashion.
Many books exist on the subject as well. Two of my favorite books in my library with lots of ideas like this are listed below. The first is more for classroom-based learning activities but with a little creativity you can parallel many of the ideas to a DE format, the second is a short book that's loaded with goodies perfectly suited to technologically enhanced DE courses.
Taylor, K., Marienau, C. and Fiddler, M. (2000). Developing Adult Learners: Strategies for Teachers and Trainers. San-Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Iverson, K. (2005). E-Learning Games: Interactive Learning Strategies for Digital Delivery. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
SITE 2005 Pre-Conferenced Workshops
I attended two workshops today at the SITE conference today. The first was a very practical workshop from Patrick Iglehart of St. Edwards University in Austin Texas that described the role of a Media Services department at a University and challenged the group to think of ways of integrating media into learning activities in courses. A few of the interesting ideas were:
1) digital storyboards in creative writing where students take digital pictures and then write a group story around the photo.
2) in a teacher education setting at the prior to the start of the school year, challenging teachers to find images on the internet, or to create their own that evoked a feeling that a student might have on the first day of class. Here’s an example. This way it would bring back to the forefront of the minds of both new, and seasoned, teachers the issues and feelings that students have on the first day of class. Exploring the power of an image to evoke feeling.
3) Critically analyzing video in a marketing class. Those beautiful Superbowl commercials can be examined with a critical eye and marketing themes can be extracted from them. Another neat extension of this was to also examine websites for the product showcased in the video. Question of congruency between marketing strategies in the video and the website could be addressed. Are the strategies similar or different? Complimentary or conflicting? Neat questions. More resopurces can be found at this link.
The second workshop was on ePortfolios. I must admit I have never explored the concept much so I was green going into this 3 hour session. But I learned a lot from the speakers, Drs. Helen Barrett and Joanne Carney, about the different kinds of ePortfolios: learning, employment, and assessment etc. It was also stressed in the process that reflection is the key item to a good ePortfolio exercise. It was argued that without reflection, the Portfolio is only a website, presentation, electronic resume, or scrapbook. The purpose is the difference: website=information while Portfolio=persuasion. They talked about blogs and wikis that could be used as part of ePortfolios. I really like this. I’m trying to design a learning activity for my Fundamentals of Teaching Adults course that might incorporate online journaling with a sharing and analysis/reflection component so this discussion was useful to me personally.
So the content should include evidence, reflection and validation. The purpose should be clear: assessment, employment or learning etc. The process should include tools, sequencing, rules, evaluation and collaboration. An overarching goal of this is also to try to get learners to own the material so they continue it throughout a programme of after a programme. Ownership was important because it intrinsically motivated the learner to produce better products. Be sure to check our Helen’s resources website where she has her “My Adventure with ePortfolios” link. She test drives 17+ products to create the same ePortfolio. Neat.
Another interesting side bar to Helen’s talk was the concept of Digital Storytelling or Narrative Inquiry (…whichever you prefer). Still photos with voice overs and music; the goal is to impart a feeling with these short pieces of work. This was a really neat way to unleash a student’s creativity. I think I might try to do one of these myself someday. I’ll have to find some cheap software to try. MovieMaker II, PhotoStory, Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinacle Studio were suggested for the PC platform.
1) digital storyboards in creative writing where students take digital pictures and then write a group story around the photo.
2) in a teacher education setting at the prior to the start of the school year, challenging teachers to find images on the internet, or to create their own that evoked a feeling that a student might have on the first day of class. Here’s an example. This way it would bring back to the forefront of the minds of both new, and seasoned, teachers the issues and feelings that students have on the first day of class. Exploring the power of an image to evoke feeling.
3) Critically analyzing video in a marketing class. Those beautiful Superbowl commercials can be examined with a critical eye and marketing themes can be extracted from them. Another neat extension of this was to also examine websites for the product showcased in the video. Question of congruency between marketing strategies in the video and the website could be addressed. Are the strategies similar or different? Complimentary or conflicting? Neat questions. More resopurces can be found at this link.
The second workshop was on ePortfolios. I must admit I have never explored the concept much so I was green going into this 3 hour session. But I learned a lot from the speakers, Drs. Helen Barrett and Joanne Carney, about the different kinds of ePortfolios: learning, employment, and assessment etc. It was also stressed in the process that reflection is the key item to a good ePortfolio exercise. It was argued that without reflection, the Portfolio is only a website, presentation, electronic resume, or scrapbook. The purpose is the difference: website=information while Portfolio=persuasion. They talked about blogs and wikis that could be used as part of ePortfolios. I really like this. I’m trying to design a learning activity for my Fundamentals of Teaching Adults course that might incorporate online journaling with a sharing and analysis/reflection component so this discussion was useful to me personally.
So the content should include evidence, reflection and validation. The purpose should be clear: assessment, employment or learning etc. The process should include tools, sequencing, rules, evaluation and collaboration. An overarching goal of this is also to try to get learners to own the material so they continue it throughout a programme of after a programme. Ownership was important because it intrinsically motivated the learner to produce better products. Be sure to check our Helen’s resources website where she has her “My Adventure with ePortfolios” link. She test drives 17+ products to create the same ePortfolio. Neat.
Another interesting side bar to Helen’s talk was the concept of Digital Storytelling or Narrative Inquiry (…whichever you prefer). Still photos with voice overs and music; the goal is to impart a feeling with these short pieces of work. This was a really neat way to unleash a student’s creativity. I think I might try to do one of these myself someday. I’ll have to find some cheap software to try. MovieMaker II, PhotoStory, Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinacle Studio were suggested for the PC platform.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Bloggers beware!
(This cartoon is posted here with permission of the artist. Contact john@kovalic.com for more info.)
CDA Distance Education Workshop
I attended the CDA Distance Education Workshop this week. It was an excellent activity that had a good balance of presentations and authentic-task activities. The workshop leaders and presenters were Judy Roberts and Terry Anderson. Their presentations were delightful. It’s the first time I have seen either of them present and I was pleased that they lived up to their reputations (*grin*).
Here are a few points from their presentations that I feel are worth reiterating in the context of my personal experience.
Judy made an excellent introductory point that terminology is very variable in distance education and instructional technology to the point where researchers have specific challenges when designing literature research strategies. As a trained biochemist, if I want to know something about “Hepatocyte Growth Factor” and “cell-cell signaling,” it’s pretty easy to find out almost everything I need to know from a simple MedLine search on those two key phrases; however, the same is not the case for a phrase like “Learning Management System” or “Distance Education.” Different people have different definitions of these terms, and several synonyms also exist, therefore, special considerations must be made to exploring the literature in a more comprehensive way.
An interesting insight to me was the comment about converging media onto computers. In the old days, circa. 1990s (*grin*), it was rare that the majority of end-users had powerful enough computer technology to run two-way video, two-way audio and other multi-media on their machines. Distance educators sometimes distributed videos on VHS tapes, or audio on audiocassette tapes, and held telephone conferences with students instead. However, now that we’ve reached the middle of the first decade of the second millennium, with the advent of more powerful microcomputers and high-speed Internet networks, this multi-media conversion is occurring in fortunate segments of the industrialized world. Now there is only one tool needed to process all this two-way multi-media: the computer.
There’s a business study out there (no reference given) that says that approximately 50% of participants do something else while on an audio teleconference (i.e. check email, surf the Internet, etc.) I believe there is a big difference between that statistic and the amount of people in a F2F talk that do something else while the presenter is speaking. What are the implications for learning in those two scenarios? Do people learn less on audio-conferences than in F2F situations? Has anyone seen any research on that?
The challenge in distance education and instructional technology is that it is sometimes difficult to achieve economies of scale when delivering courses due to the rapidity of the changes in textbook editions and software versions. There is nothing new here, but it’s nice to see it continuing to be acknowledged.
Terry spoke about Student Agents like the I-Help System from the University of Saskatchewan. It’s open source. I must look into that someday. The idea of teacher agents that might help with marking, tutoring, guiding, coordinating, scheduling, managing course content and tracking developments in the academic field is very appealing!
Very few colleges and universities have a well-articulated and congruent set of these three things: 1) Mission Statement, 2) Teaching and Learning Plan, and 3) Technology Plan. Judy argues that having this material in place brings a great advantage to the institution.
ROI in the course development process is a popular topic. Budget an ROI over time but don’t forget to include the course revisions in the business plan.
Wagner’s (1994) definition of interaction 1994 should not be forgotten: “reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two actions. Interactions occur when these objects and events mutually influence one another.” Note that interaction is suggested to be an important modulator of motivation, perseverance and learning in a student. Many workshop participants were interested in interactivity online. Is a comprehensive taxonomy of web-enabled activities associated with levels of cognitive interaction available? I will have to look for one sometime! The design of web-enabled learning activities for high-level cognitive objectives is a challenge! What are the best practices? Consider also that from a technology perspective, a page-turner in correspondence can still be a page-turner in web-enabled learning. The level of interactivity is critical!
Learning communities that involve learner-to-student interaction are a cost-effective way to promote learning. They’re cheaper than learner-to-instructor and learner-to-content interaction.
Herrington, Oliver and Reeve’s (2003). Authentic activities have real world relevance that can motivate adult learners. They are ill-defined complex tasks that require students to agree on tasks and construct their learning over a sustained period of time. They can offer students the opportunity to reflect, and can result in polished end products that may be useful for sharing outside the classroom environment.
Judy described a useful illustration of the justification of instructional design. Instructional designers find the optimal intersection between capacities of learners, teachers, content and technology, all within the current administrative framework. Neat!
From a learner perspective, how much support should be given prior to the class beginning? Writing skills, technology skills, study skills? How do you prepare the online learner? Are their best practices? Does every institution has to home grow their own support resources or are links to existing material from other institutions sufficient?
Three simple models of web-enabled course development: 1) the “lone ranger” model (i.e. one person does it all), 2) the SME-IT two person model, and 3) the many person project based approach. Which is best? It depends on resources.
Judy notes that the four principles of effective teleconferencing that were developed in the 1970s translate very well to online-based learning: 1) Humanizing (before, online, offline), 2) participating (individual and group), 3) presenting (variety, repetition, reinforcement), and 4) feedback (formative and summative).
So, the above are the “take home” messages that I noted from the workshop. I’ve documented them here in order to remind myself of their importance.
Here are a few points from their presentations that I feel are worth reiterating in the context of my personal experience.
Judy made an excellent introductory point that terminology is very variable in distance education and instructional technology to the point where researchers have specific challenges when designing literature research strategies. As a trained biochemist, if I want to know something about “Hepatocyte Growth Factor” and “cell-cell signaling,” it’s pretty easy to find out almost everything I need to know from a simple MedLine search on those two key phrases; however, the same is not the case for a phrase like “Learning Management System” or “Distance Education.” Different people have different definitions of these terms, and several synonyms also exist, therefore, special considerations must be made to exploring the literature in a more comprehensive way.
An interesting insight to me was the comment about converging media onto computers. In the old days, circa. 1990s (*grin*), it was rare that the majority of end-users had powerful enough computer technology to run two-way video, two-way audio and other multi-media on their machines. Distance educators sometimes distributed videos on VHS tapes, or audio on audiocassette tapes, and held telephone conferences with students instead. However, now that we’ve reached the middle of the first decade of the second millennium, with the advent of more powerful microcomputers and high-speed Internet networks, this multi-media conversion is occurring in fortunate segments of the industrialized world. Now there is only one tool needed to process all this two-way multi-media: the computer.
There’s a business study out there (no reference given) that says that approximately 50% of participants do something else while on an audio teleconference (i.e. check email, surf the Internet, etc.) I believe there is a big difference between that statistic and the amount of people in a F2F talk that do something else while the presenter is speaking. What are the implications for learning in those two scenarios? Do people learn less on audio-conferences than in F2F situations? Has anyone seen any research on that?
The challenge in distance education and instructional technology is that it is sometimes difficult to achieve economies of scale when delivering courses due to the rapidity of the changes in textbook editions and software versions. There is nothing new here, but it’s nice to see it continuing to be acknowledged.
Terry spoke about Student Agents like the I-Help System from the University of Saskatchewan. It’s open source. I must look into that someday. The idea of teacher agents that might help with marking, tutoring, guiding, coordinating, scheduling, managing course content and tracking developments in the academic field is very appealing!
Very few colleges and universities have a well-articulated and congruent set of these three things: 1) Mission Statement, 2) Teaching and Learning Plan, and 3) Technology Plan. Judy argues that having this material in place brings a great advantage to the institution.
ROI in the course development process is a popular topic. Budget an ROI over time but don’t forget to include the course revisions in the business plan.
Wagner’s (1994) definition of interaction 1994 should not be forgotten: “reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two actions. Interactions occur when these objects and events mutually influence one another.” Note that interaction is suggested to be an important modulator of motivation, perseverance and learning in a student. Many workshop participants were interested in interactivity online. Is a comprehensive taxonomy of web-enabled activities associated with levels of cognitive interaction available? I will have to look for one sometime! The design of web-enabled learning activities for high-level cognitive objectives is a challenge! What are the best practices? Consider also that from a technology perspective, a page-turner in correspondence can still be a page-turner in web-enabled learning. The level of interactivity is critical!
Learning communities that involve learner-to-student interaction are a cost-effective way to promote learning. They’re cheaper than learner-to-instructor and learner-to-content interaction.
Herrington, Oliver and Reeve’s (2003). Authentic activities have real world relevance that can motivate adult learners. They are ill-defined complex tasks that require students to agree on tasks and construct their learning over a sustained period of time. They can offer students the opportunity to reflect, and can result in polished end products that may be useful for sharing outside the classroom environment.
Judy described a useful illustration of the justification of instructional design. Instructional designers find the optimal intersection between capacities of learners, teachers, content and technology, all within the current administrative framework. Neat!
From a learner perspective, how much support should be given prior to the class beginning? Writing skills, technology skills, study skills? How do you prepare the online learner? Are their best practices? Does every institution has to home grow their own support resources or are links to existing material from other institutions sufficient?
Three simple models of web-enabled course development: 1) the “lone ranger” model (i.e. one person does it all), 2) the SME-IT two person model, and 3) the many person project based approach. Which is best? It depends on resources.
Judy notes that the four principles of effective teleconferencing that were developed in the 1970s translate very well to online-based learning: 1) Humanizing (before, online, offline), 2) participating (individual and group), 3) presenting (variety, repetition, reinforcement), and 4) feedback (formative and summative).
So, the above are the “take home” messages that I noted from the workshop. I’ve documented them here in order to remind myself of their importance.
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