eLearning 2.0: what does the future hold?

Answer: I don't know.

But lots of people are talking about it. Tony Karrer recently asked me to take a peak at his blog located at http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/ and he's been talking about e-Learning 2.0 quite a bit!

For example, he states that e-Learning 2.0 is trending towards: “small pieces of content, delivered closer to time / place of work, and likely delivered in pieces over time as part of a larger program.” I think he is "bang on" in my view. This statement makes me remember back to what the manufacturing sector experienced in the 1980s where much of the sector transformed to a Just-In-Time (JIT) inventory model in order to maximize efficiency. In the future, I see training establishments now moving to more a more effective, e-Learning 2.0, model where staff are delivered training only at the moment they need it for their job performance (i.e. JIT!), that the training be in small pieces that are not intermingled with other less-relevant content, that they receive the training while on the job, via their own workstation, that there be permanent access to the training resources to act as a job aid and that this job aid be centrally updated for all employees in the future should any processes/policies change/improve. To me the job aid aspect of training is very crucial and I think the ease with which electronic materials can be updated centrally lends itself very well to this.

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Two new EduBlogs to the blogroll

These two come from Saskatchewan:

Rob Wall's Stigmergicweb

Donna DesRoches's Illuminated Dragon

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Do instructional designers in the trenches really need to know about things like Web 2.0 right now?

Jay Cross suggested some web competencies that generalist instructional designers should have. A couple of them surprise me because they are very specific technology issues. For example, he lists "Web 2.0" as one issue. Personaly, I am not convinced a generalist instructioanl designer has to worry about Web 2.0 at this time. I think that generalist instructional designers should try to focus on general issues around instructional design and project management, and that they should strive to work within multidisciplinary teams where the computer technologists on the team are well versed on the more specific technology-ladden concepts. I've written about this before. If you'd like to check out Jay's list of competencies, here's the link. Many of them are quite good!

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iTunes U

Are you an educator that sees value in recording or taping your lectures or demonstrations and making them available to your students? Be it video or audio, you can now do it easily with Apple’s new service: iTunes U. It’s a no cost hosted service that allows educators to post their recorded media files and make them available over the Internet to their students. Students can listen or view the material directly on their computers, or if they have iPods, they can seamlessly download your media to their iPod using the Apple iTunes software. Note that only those lucky students with video iPod can view your video content on their portable device. From their iPod they can listen and/or view your material 24/7 anywhere they go! Now that scores big points for accessibility.

Some people reading this may note that any good LMS such as WebCT, D2L, or Sakai, can also host audio and video files, so what’s the advantage of using iTunes U if your educational institution has an LMS? The advantage is that the bandwidth requirement is displaced from your school’s LMS server to Apple’s server. That can make a big difference in server performance with large audio and video files. You can alleviate some of the bandwidth pressures on your local institution’s LMS server by displacing the bandwidth requirement to Apple’s server. Obviously, if your school doesn’t have an LMS, iTunes U looks very attractive indeed!

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Why Skype is getting lots of Hype

It was my Dad's birthday this week; he's 62 years old. He and I don't live in the same city and we see each other only a hand full of times each year. I spoke to him to wish him happy birthday and he's doing well. I called him from my home, I have no land telephone line and my cell phone was dead. So instead, I used Skype. It's a piece of software that allows free voice transmission over the Internet and it’s from the makers of the infamous KaZaa! But don’t let that dissuade you from trying it. It's incredibly easy to use... anyone with a high-speed Internet connection and a headset can use it. The clarity is phenomenal and far outweighs the audio transmission possible over other popular instant messaging services such as MSN or ICQ.

So what does this topic have to do with e-education? Well, I think Skype can be used as a no-cost method of increasing student-to-student interaction at a distance so that they can work collaboratively as a team. For those students who enjoy a bit of synchronous interaction with their team members that extends above and beyond conventional text-based chat, this could work very well. In fact, a teleconference with multiple participants can be undertaken with the newest versions of Skype. Because it's so easy to use, has no cost associated with it, and has excellent audio quality, Skype is getting lots of hype! Try it. You might just like the impact it has on your long distance bill as well.

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5000+ Hits!

It's a new record! The last 1,000 hits only took 10 weeks to achieve! It took 15 weeks to move from 2,000 to 3,000 hits and 14 weeks to move from 3,000 to 4,000 hits. Nice!

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Instructional Design Practitioners - what should they do to stay successful?

I am a practitioner in the field of Instructional Design. Currently the field is fast changing and Instructional Designers are focussing on melding their systematic methods of course design with project management theory in an increasingly online format. As budgets become progressively tighter and expectations for course design in the online modality become increasingly higher, new and innovative approaches that combine multidisciplinary educational teams strongly rooted in a practical project management framework will emerge in the future. With this being said, what should Instructional Designers do today to stay successful in the Course Development business in the future? They should seek out opportunities to work in multidisciplinary teams, continuously challenge themselves to think outside the box and always engage in life-long learning to be prepared to adapt to the future needs in the field. In addition, possibly obtaining formal project management experience would be something to consider strongly. Armed with these skills and attitudes, Instructional Designers will be able to contribute positively to the development of online courses well in the future.

What do you think? Leave a comment by clicking below.

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Corporate Training and e-Learning Blog - New Blog to the Blogroll

Corporate Training and e-Learning Blog by Jenna Sweeny President of CramerSweeney Instructional Design has been added to the Blogroll on the right hand side of this page..

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Today's Generation Y is tomorrow's Adult Learner

After reading this quick description of Generation Y, the first thing I think about is that Generation Y is the Adult Learner of the near future. This Adult Learner will be (and has been) marketed to by companies in very slick high-budget multi-media fashion (via the Internet, TV, Movies, print advertising, etc.). Their expectation for a good product is consequently very high and they have many choices to make!

Here's an example, I went to go see the movie The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe last Tuesday and I took a Generation Y member with me. When we discussed the movie afterwards, she said the story was good but the special effects could be better. Her exact quote was "it was no Lord of the Rings for special effects." This got me thinking that her expectations about special effects in fantasy-type movies are very high (I mean very!) due to her experience with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that was released between 2001 and 2003. Had The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe come out before the Lord of the Rings Trilogy it would have been hailed, but now it is slightly inferior in special effects despite spending approximately $150M on the movie according to this website (which is a higher budget than each of the Lord of the Rings Movies... chalk it up to inflation perhaps?)

My point is that as educators we must consider the expectations of our target market (the forthcoming Generation Y people) when designing and developing courses and curriculum. They have experience and expectations that if we can strategically address then we can successfully compete for their satisfaction and their tuition dollars. They have traditionally had so many choices to make as a consumer that they can be discerning. Lets make sure they choose our institutitions because we're attractive, innovative, exciting and enjoyable. Gone are the days of the professor that reads our of the textbook. That's not going to fly anymore.

What do you think? Post a comment below.

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Pause a second and think about blogging for educators

I think bogging can be a very useful practice for a practitioner because it gives an opportunity to chronicle and reflect upon your work. It's the reflection aspect that really helps us learn in my view. I think in the field of education we need to do more of this. My partner is a clinical social worker. She sees clients every day and after seeing them she write case notes into her files. These case notes are personal notes of hers as to issues surrounding the client's therapy. Invariably she is also chronicalling the strategies and approaches she is undertaking in the treatment of her clients. During this documentation process it gives her the opportunity to reflect upon her chosen approach, to look back at previous entries in the file, and to (re)consider if the chosen strategy is demonstrably effective or needs to be modified in some way. The aspect of reflection upon previous notes is the key here. So I use this blog to chronicle my activities as an Instructional Designer and Professor, and I often look back upon it for ideas, and also to get a sense of where I have been. I've been keeping this blog for almost a year and half and hopefully its value to my practice of reflection will increase as time passes.

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Educational Technology Talk Show

Want to hear some interesting banter on Educational Technology? EdTechTalk is a blog that hosts a series of archived MP3 files of interesting EdTech discussions. You can even participate live in future events! Very cool! I enjoyed listening to a couple of these discussions in the background while I'm doing something else on the computer.

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Incorrect information in the field!

Some of you might already know about the existence of some incorrect information in the field of education, educational technology and instructional design.

Have you ever seen a statement similar to "Students remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they hear and see, 70% of what the say and write and 90% of what they do"? It is most commonly associated with Dale's Cone of Experience (Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example 4, Example 5, Example 6, Example 7, Example 8, Example 9 and Example 10) but did you know it's a completely unfounded statement? Dale's Cone of Experience is legitimate but the associated statement with percentages is not the result of any study published in any refereed journal in the field. So it's essentially bogus!

This article from the Work Learning Research group does a great job at summarizing this particular tidbit of incorrect information. It's a real lesson learned for educators like us; go to the primary sources and make sure what you're quoting is in fact true!

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Technological Changes in E-Education in the Last Two Years

From an E-Education perspective, the last two years have yielded significant technological change on three major fronts: hardware, software and network connectivity. Distance educators and administrators should take note of these changes and trends when planning new programme and course development activities in order to continue to compete successfully in this fast-changing field.

First, on the hardware front the most important technological changes relating to e-education have been the proliferations of both Flash memory drives and Apple iPods. Large capacity Flash memory drives have now become very inexpensive and most college students find themselves using this hardware to transport files easily from on location to another; thereby increasing the portability of their work (Lightbody, 2005). A high degree of portability and the ability to access their distance education anywhere at anytime have now become the expectations of the distance learner. Like Flash memory drives, Apple iPods are now becoming more and more popular. An educational spin-off of the iPod is the concept of podcasting. Where anyone can record themselves using audio files and publish their sound files to the Internet for people to download and play either on their iPod or on there computer. From a distance education perspective, podcasting allows for instructors and students to share audio, including lectures, much easier than in the past (Read, 2005). Also, some visionaries are now regularly publishing podcasts as a way to share, explore and build knowledge in the field of e-learning (For an example, see Susan Smith-Nash’s e-Learning Queen blog).

Second, on the software front the most important technological changes relating to e-education have been the proliferation of web-logs (a.k.a. blogs) as well as the rise of free beta versions of new Google services. Weblogs have exploded in popularity in the last two years. The Internet now contains thousands of blogs and a significant amount of them belong to the education category or have educational applications. They have been used in an educational setting to provide a way of sharing student work, of chronicling experiences, of journaling thoughts and feelings, and of disseminating knowledge (Dyrli, 2005; Krause, 2005; Richardson, 2005). Educators are also using blogs to communicate and share with their colleagues. So called Edubloggers form an active collection of writers on the Internet and share their practical knowledge of technology in education. In the last two years, Google has begun to transform itself into a formidable service provider that will benefit e-education initiatives. With the creation of free beta versions of its Google Scholar portal (a service which allows users to search some peer-reviewed material; I've writen about it before here), Google Booksearch portal (a service which allows users to search full text of public domain books) and most recently its Google Base service (a service which allows users to add any kind of content to the Google database), it has become increasingly useful to e-educators and students alike (Young, 2005). From a distance students can now use these Google resources to supplement their institutions library services and they can also publish new content to Google for their classmates to use.

Third, as wireless technology becomes faster and cheaper most laptop manufacturers are now including wireless cards in the standard configuration of their products and students are taking advantage of this technology to learn (Carlson, 2005; Gossey, 2005). The result is that more distance education students have laptops which they can connect to wireless networks to increase portability of their work space. Students can now connect their laptop to the Internet at various points throughout their homes as well as other semi-public places such as some workplaces, libraries and even laundromats! The increased portability will facilitate Internet access for students and will continue to help them learn anywhere at any time.

The ramification of these advances in the last two years is important to consider. As hardware, software and network technologies continue to bring new levels of portability, functionality and resource access to students at a distance, the popularity of web-enabled distance education programmes will continue to grow. Designers who design their courses to leverage new tools, services and Internet functionalities in order to better connect students with resources and with each other at a distance will be the e-education leaders. This interconnectedness is the value in distance education today; student-to-student interaction, information accessibility and content sharing are now the expectation of students at a distance. Forward thinking educators will continue to provide students with new e-education models that take advantage of the positive aspects in the fast-changing technological landscape in order to maintain and grow their market share. A century old quotation from Will Rogers still remains pertinent today: “Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.”

Do you think there have been other major changes in E-Education technology in the last two years that I've missed? If so, please leave a comment with your ideas.

References

Carlson, S. (2005). Colleges Increase Use of Technology in Teaching, Survey Finds. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(9), 42-42.

Dyrli, O.E. (2005). School blogs. District Administration, 41(10), 69-69.

Gossey, D. (2005). Wireless for All of Us. Edutech Report, 21(10), 4-5.

Krause, S.D. (2005). Blogs as a tool for teaching. Chronicle of Higher Education, 51(42), 33-35.

Lightbody, K. (2005). USB flash drives: Easy data transfer in education. Retrieved 02 December 2, 2005, from http://members.ozemail.com.au/~leemshs/flash.htm

Read, B. (2005). Lectures on the go. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(10), 39-42.

Richardson, W. (2005). Blog revolution. Technology & Learning, 26(3), 48-48.

Young, J.R. (2005). 100 Colleges Sign Up With Google to Speed Access to Library Resources. Chronicle of Higher Education, 51(37), 30-30.

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Open Courseware is Growing!

Together with colleagues of mine, we recently built a list of Open Courseware sites. I have mentioned some of them on this blog before (i.e. MIT and Sofia). Here's a much longer list. Definitely worth a look.

• MIT's (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Open Courseware Project


• China's Open Courseware (most of it in Chinese)


• Japan's Open Courseware


• Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI)


• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHBSPH)


• Tuft's University


• Utah State University


• Foothill College Sofia Project

If you have any other Open Courseware websites to add to this list, please let me know.

Thank you!

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Effective e-Learning Presentation: NewsU

Probably the most common application of Macromedia Flash is to create banners on websites. These Flash banners have been delighting and annoying us for several years now. We all know there are other effective ways to use Flash animations. I recently came across a lovely little Flash presentation from a training company called NewsU. They create and offer e-learning courses for journalists.

This presentation is really nice because it shows people like us that work in the e-learning community how a little bit of creativity can result in a very effective presentation with a little bit of Flash technology. My guess is that the creation of this presentation was relatively cheap too. The presentation is humorous at time, very creative, fun and compelling in the way that it sells its product. It also outlines several important features of effective e-learning courses (i.e. addressing your target market specifically, having engaging products, using puzzles, games, quizzes, problem-solving activities and giving students feedback, etc.) and it also identifies several common pitfalls of e-learning course (i.e. like avoiding the text-heavy online "page turner" or creating synchronous lectures that simply mimic the classroom environment.)

Turn on your speakers, sequester yourself for five minutes and have listen to this great pitch about e-Learning courses at NewsU.

What do you think are the most effective parts of this Flash presentation?

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4,000+ hits!

The hits on this blog keep-a-rolling at a pretty consistent rate. It took 15 weeks to move from 2,000 to 3,000 hits and 14 weeks to move from 3,000 to 4,000 hits. Will anyone predict if it will take 13 weeks to get to 5,000 hits? (*grin*)

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Simulations and Problem-based Learning in Online Courses

I attended a really great two-day workshop last week in St-Jean, Quebec. It had the theme of defining the roles of the Training and Development Officer and the Educational Services workers within the framework of the Canadian Defence Academy. The topics on the second day were particularly interesting to me, specifically, the topics and workshop on e-Learning Innovation. Three proactive themes were distilled that were thought of as being alternatives to weaknesses in the current instructional design models: rapid prototyping, simulations and the creation of performance supports.

Consider simulations for a moment. When most people think of simulation they think of something rivaling a video game and that’s ok because those are indeed simulations. If you’re an instructional designer and someone comes up to you and says… “why aren’t you using simulations in your online courses?” You might cringe in fear of the work involved as well as the cost involved of designing and developing a detailed and immersive simulation. (That’s my reaction anyway HAHA!) But there are other ways to develop simulations. Problem-based Learning (PBL) comes to mind. It’s a way to emphasize the constructivist approach to learning and to promote higher-order learning in a scenario-based framework (i.e. address learning objectives into the levels 4 through 6 of Bloom’s Taxonomy for cognitive skills.)

A great article was published recently in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Education (IRRODL) that presents a case study for using PBL in an online biotechnology course. If you’re interested in using PBL as a type of simulation in your online courses make sure you read this article. It does a great job at outlining the detailed rational needed when designing this activity. It’s not an easy job to create; it’s tougher to create a PBL learning activity than it is to create a multiple choice exam, but you don’t need high-powered graphics, animations, or predictive and interactive software to provide a simulation to your students in this case. All you need is the student’s imagination and a real world problem for them to work on.

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Google Print is off the the races

Google Print has been launched at http://print.google.com. It's a search engine that allows you to view the entirety of public domain books as well as the Table of Contents of copyright protected works. For example, I was able to view the entire text of:

Before and After Socrates
by Francis M Cornford - Philosophy - 1932 - 144 pages

Note that a free Google Account is required in order to view the full-text of public domain books on the Google Print website. The utility of Google Print may be limited at this point due to the fact that only public domain books are available full-text but I wonder if in the future we will see Google negotiating rights to reproduce some of the copyrighted material. Hmmm. Maybe Google will charge a fee for this service to the end user? Hmm. Time will tell. Check it out and let me know what you think.

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Research in Distance Education in Canada

Research is active in the field of distance education in Canada; especially when topics relate to the use of technology mediate distance education. An interesting paper published in the July 2005 issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Education by researchers at the University of Concordia in Montreal, Canada, exemplifies this (Lobel, Neubauer and Swedburg, 2005). They conducted a thorough matched study between two sections of the same university course: AHSC/230 – Interpersonal Communication and Relationships. One section was in a traditional face-to-face format (F2F) while the other section was offered by distance education mediate by a synchronous non-turn taking virtual classroom called LBD eClassroom (limited to text and static image interaction, no audio or video). In hopes to examine if the delivery mode affected the qualitative or quantitative forms of student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction, they fixed as many variables as possible between the two sections. During one term in 2001, the same professor, facilitators, course materials, instructional strategies and assessments were used in both sections of the course. The only difference was the delivery mode: synchronous F2F versus synchronous at a distance.

Three particular findings proved very interesting. The first relates to differences in group dynamics among the sections. The course had components of large group work and of small group work. In the first class of the semester, students are assigned to one of four small working groups and are oriented in general to the course structure. Such a task was relatively simple in the F2F section and analysis of the personal learning journals of students in the first week of class showed that their session was “highly personal from the outset, with feelings of collegiality and camaraderie that appeared to deepened [sic] over time.” Conversely, the online section reported drastically different feelings largely due to the fact that they were faced with a technical learning curve in the first session that impeded their ability to communicate effectively. The analysis of their weekly learning journals showed that “most students reported being uneasy, feeling chaos, and sensing frustration – feelings which over time were replaced by a slow-growing sense of closeness.” This finding can serve as a rational for the inclusion of a pre-course synchronous orientation session in the course (i.e. a getting started activity offered the week prior to the start of the course to address all the technical difficulties in a safe atmosphere). Once the technical learning curve is surmounted by each student the barrier to communication disappears and students are free to interact with each other in a positive way. It is often said that the tone of a course is set in the first meeting of the class; therefore, taking steps to remove known barriers affecting student-to-student interaction on the first day of class can contribute towards the success of a course.

The second finding which they describe involves a quantitative measure of interactivity. Detailed analyses of matched classroom sessions showed that the overall percentage of participation differed. Generally they reported that all students in the online class participated in some form during the session (i.e. 100% participation). Conversely, this was not the case in the F2F class. The percentage of students participating ranged from a high of 82%, during discussion-based classroom activities, to a low of 10%, in lecture-based classroom activities. Clearly there is a marked difference in how students behaved under these two course delivery methods. The implications of this finding can be profound to the instructor cadre. If one wants to foster an environment with a high degree of participation from each student then the synchronous online classroom may be better at doing so than traditional F2F classrooms especially in the absence of formal incentives that might artificially induce student participation, such as grades.

The third finding that they present in their research study related to discussion time. In a F2F classroom where group discussion is taking place, the predominant form of student-to-student interaction is a turn-taking form of communication. For example, one person speaks while the others listen and then the next speaker speaks. In a non-turn taking online classroom however, student-to-student interaction can take place simultaneously in different threads. For example, a student can be participating in several text-based discussion topics simultaneously. To support this notion, the researchers determined that in the same 30-minute real-time interactive phase, online students communicated enough written information between themselves to account for a total effective time of communication of 76 minutes (i.e. based on a conversion factor that 15 written words is equivalent to six seconds of speech). This observed hyper-communication effect has the potential to create interactions with are richer, deeper and more vibrant than similarly structured F2F sessions. Distance course developers will be interested in this finding and they can leverage this observation to effectively dilate time giving them more opportunity to meet learning objectives reaching into the highest cognitive levels.

These three major findings could prove very significant to the future of distance learning. In the past, significant energies have been invested investigating the idea that there is either no significant difference between online and F2F education, or that distance education is inferior (van Schaik, Barker, Beckstrand, 2003; Warren & Holloman, 2005; Wyatt, 2005). However, one could hypothesize that if the findings in this research article were distilled into best practices for synchronous online learning and then applied and effectively leveraged within an appropriate course design, that the resulting course might potentially foster a more effective learning environment for students. Further research into how students quantitatively and qualitatively interact online will undoubtedly provide the next generation of online learners with enhanced educational opportunities.


References

Lobel, M., Neubauer, M. and Swedburg, R. (2005). Selected Topics from A Matched Study between a Face-to-face Section and a Real-Time Online Section of a University Course. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Retrieved October 22, 2005, from http://www.irrodl.org/content/v6.2/lobel.html

van Schaik, P., Barker, P., and Beckstrand, S. (2003). A Comparison of On-Campus and Online Course Delivery Methods in Southern Nevada. Innovations in Education & Teaching International, 40(1), p 5-16.

Warren, L. L. and Holloman, H. L. (2005). On-line Instruction: Are the Outcomes the Same? Journal of Instructional Psychology, 32(2), p 148-151.

Wyatt, G. (2005). Satisfaction, Academic Rigor and Interaction: Perceptions Of Online Instruction. Education, 125(3), p 460-468.

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WebCT + BlackBoard = Holy Crow!

Today WebCT and Blackboard announced a merger and the new company promisses a new product that contains the best of both platforms. My two word reply is: Holy Crow! If Desire2Learn was a publicly traded company I would be rushing to invest in it right about now!!! In my dealings with the training and product development staff they seem to be a company that is far more customer focussed than WebCT or Blackboard and in the end it is the customer that rules. I'm predicting that the new combined WebCT/Blackboard product will be a rigid behemoth that will take days to upgrade current licensees and that in the final analysis many customers will take this opportunity to make the switch to another LMS. (Not to open source products as some people predict. In-house development and maintenance of open source LMSs is too daunting for most.) I will make the bold prediction that Desire2Learn will surpass WebCT/Blackboard as the leading LMS producer within the next two to three years! This will be a very interesting item to watch.

What do you think? Click comment below.

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