Weblogging the eLearning Producer Conference.

The eLearning Producer Conference and Expo 2003 will be held November 12-14, 2003 in San Francisco. Online registration at http://www.elearningguild.com closes November 7.

I will be at the Conference again this year. With luck, I will weblog from the conference. I say "with luck" because when I travel, my computer of choice is my trusty Psion 5MX (you laugh, but it weighs about 5 ounces and does everything I need to do on the road). In order to post from the road, the weblog will be hosted on Blogspot, at http://egconf2003.blogspot.com

My intent is to begin the weblog on November 11. I am still trying to figure out whether an XML feed is possible from Blogger, and if so, how.

11:58:37 PM    

More WebCT press releases.

Part of the continuing synchronous tool wars. Courtesy of the amazing Scott Leslie. (The links are courtesy of Scott, not the wars, of course.)

WebCT Powerlinks to open source portfolios, HorizonLive synchronous tools.

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/
google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&
newsId=20031106005458&newsLang=en
and also
http://www.horizonlive.com/aboutus/news/
press_release_view.php?id=35

Two recent press releases from WebCT that help to illustrate the strategy the major CMS players are adopting to extend their products. In WebCT's case the strategy is called "Powerlinks," which I take to be roughly analogous to Blackboard's "BuildingBlocks" initiative...

12:39:40 PM    

B.C. Educational Technology Users' Group archive.

Please note - this is not my stuff, but I am stashing this link for future reference.

Archive of ETUG BLogtalk Typepad site.

http://www.edtechpost.ca/blogtalk_archive/

Prompted by Alan's generous references in his latest Blogshop to last month's B.C. Educational Technology User's Group online 'blogtalk' and his links to materials there that will soon disappear when I disable the Typepad account, I've posted an archived version of the site here.

Until someone tells me to take it down, this is probably the better spot to link to if you want to refer to any of that material. Note this is not all *my* material - I'm just hosting the archives, but if you link to any of the materials please make an effort to find out who the original author of the piece you are linking to was and credit them directly.

12:36:47 PM    

More from Scott Leslie.

Interact - Online Learning and Collaboration Platform.

http://cce-interact.sourceforge.net/

I had heard about the LearnLoop project quite a while back, but apparently some folks down in New Zealand have picked it up and created this open source system based on it. Very simple, but in many cases could suffice to share basic course information, links, documents and facilitate some student interaction. WIll add it to the list. - SWL

2:54:41 PM    

Scott Leslie's Sourceforge Subscriptions.

Don't try to figure out what this means. Click on the links and the purpose and content will become immediately apparent to you. Pretty clever way to keep up and another illustration of the power of RSS.

My Sourceforge Project Feed Subscriptions/RSS for product and company news.

http://www.bloglines.com/public/EdTechPost

For what it's worth, here are the feeds (displayed in the amazing Bloglines public interface) from the course management/authoring tools/eportfolio projects that I follow on Sourceforge...

2:52:09 PM    

Review of LMS use in Europe.

Experiences with Learning Management Systems in 113 European Institutions.

http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/6_4/13.pdf

The latest issues from the IEEE journal Educational Technology & Society contains this important article, a "meta-analysis of six regional analyses conducted within the framework of the European Web-edu project." The report presents a fairly comprehensive picture of CMS/LMS uptake across Europe...

2:46:22 PM    

Learning Repositories List Updated.

Draft list of Learning Repositories from the Academic ADL Co-Lab.

http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/
DraftRepositoriesList.pdf

There didn't seem to be that many 'new' ones here, but it seems fairly comprehensive and well researched. - SWL

2:41:42 PM    

The Pachyderm 2.0 Project.

The Pachyderm 2.0 Project is a partnership led by the NMC and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), in which software development teams and digital library experts from five NMC universities are working with five major museums to create a new, open source authoring environment for creators of learning objects. The new tool will be based on Pachyderm, the multimedia online authoring and publishing tool developed by SFMOMA to author its successful series, Making Sense of Modern Art.

Developed by SFMOMA to make the publication of modular and updateable rich media an easy task, Pachyderm has allowed non-programmers to create a variety of engaging resources that draw from the digital collections of SFMOMA. The result has been detailed interactive learning programs such as Ansel Adams at 100, and Eva Hesse. To date, literally millions of online and in-museum users have used the interactive learning programs authored using Pachyderm at SFMOMA.

For the latest news and developments from the Pachyderm Project, with the chance to make comments on a variety of aspects of the effort, see the Pachyblog.

[via cogdogblog]

This is one of those projects to add to my "got to know more about this" list. Alan (cogdog) says, "The place to get a taste of this potential is to look at the web sites created by SFMOMA curators (non-techies) such as Ansel Adams at 100-- just one of about 8 different ones that draw digital assets from the SFMOMA database and connect them via a series of templates, and presented as a smooth Flash presentations online, computer kiosk, or via CD-ROM."

10:29:04 AM    

Dogma as a two-edged sword.

Susan Smith Nash writes on Xplana ("Course Development Wars: A Content Expert's Cry for Help") about her experience doing a "work for hire" project. She is not happy about the way it turned out, and blames the ID model, the Education Department, and the graduate student who was the project manager.

This is so typical of the problems we get into in development. On the one hand there is blind dogmatic insistence on doing the ID model step by step (without ever understanding the model or its function). On the other hand there is blind dogmatic insistence on sticking with what the content expert has come up with: "quite subtle and ingenious."

Instructional Systems Design (my term for "ID") is a systematic way to make sure that the structure of a product intended to facilitate learning is sound. ISD is supposed to ensure accountability. It should support learning, it doesn't create it. The ISD product is only an armature upon which the finished product is built.

Reading Susan's article, several things are clear to me. First, the Education Department was producing an application intended to support near transfer and implemented a project management structure designed with behaviorist outcomes in mind. A leads to B and the result is measured by C. Some people think of this as "low road." Susan was thinking "far transfer" and produced a design to support that. F and R, mediated by G, lead to a result K that won't be measured but that the learner can apply (or not) either to learn more or to obtain a personal goal later in life. Susan would probably think of this as the "high road" approach. Neither of these views is right or wrong, but in this case they were terribly mismatched.

Second, it isn't the ISD model's fault, it isn't Kendra's (the graduate student project manager) fault, and it isn't Susan's fault. (Although Kendra and Susan both bear responsibility for the unhappy result, and I'd bet both of them would disagree with me about that.) Kendra and the Dean were working to produce an Industrial-age training product. Frankly, it's about money and getting funding, pure and simple. Susan was pursuing a means to bring students to a higher level of intellectual accomplishment. She wasn't thinking about money, especially. The irony is that, properly applied, ISD can support either outcome. The designer and the subject matter/content expert can take the low road or the high road, they can go for near transfer or for far transfer, and ISD is the vehicle that can get them both there safely --- but the designer and the expert must both be going to the same place via the same route. Otherwise they wind up fighting about who gets to drive the damn bus.

Third, the real lesson here is not about the technology or the model. It is about the vital importance of relationships and communication. This is so trite to say, but so true. And it bites us in the butt so often.

In the original ISD, and in its best implementations, the largest amount of time is spent at the beginning of the project. The function of the "needs assessment" is to identify and resolve the desired outcomes among all parties before the team ever gets into methods, means, and crafting of "deliverables." Too often, "needs assessment" is twisted beyond recognition by people who think they "know" what the problem is and what solution is called for, and who try to bulldoze their solution over everyone else. Stories like Susan's are the result.

In graduate school thirty-plus years ago, one of the professors in the Psychology department (who also happened to be a Greek Orthodox priest) used to make a little diagram. He said, let Sigma (and he would draw the Greek character) stand for "Systemia" (system), and Alpha (again drawing the Greek character) stand for "Anthropos" (human beings). When you add them together, you get "SA", which is the abbreviation for the Greek word for "Sickness." It's a lesson that has stayed with me because it is true in many areas of life, but nowhere more true than in using ISD.

Predictably, others have a different view of Susan's experience. I can't say I disagree, but I do think it's a shame to blame the tool for the workman's inability to use it.

Further thoughts and elaboration (added after the first part of this post).

Susan's article is more about poor project management and uncommunicated expectations than it is about Instructional Design and Subject Matter Experts. What she describes was surely a disaster all the way around, but don't blame ID or even the Education Department. This was totally avoidable.

How did it happen that the project manager never discussed the model and the requirement for behavioral objectives with the SME until after the SME turned in her deliverables? That was a truly cosmic dumb new-project-manager-suddenly-in-deep-doo-doo mistake.

How did it happen that the SME didn't catch on immediately to the fact that what was being written was not "her course" but a work-for-hire, meaning that there were specifications to be met? A writer on contract cannot afford to have any ego tied up in the deliverables. If that's unacceptable, don't do work-for-hire.

I've been designing, delivering, and managing training and education since 1968, and I've been both a hired gun and an employer as well as being tapped to be an SME in my own areas of expertise. Never once has the ID model been a problem, whether the design was to be behaviorist in nature, collaborative, or constructivist. ID, intelligently applied, will support any educational outcome. All that ID does is to provide a framework for the project and a basis for accountability. It does not create knowledge and it does not dictate objectives, methods, or means. Problems in development nearly always come as a result of poor communication, incompetent project management, or unclear expectations/specs.

10:03:28 AM    

FAQ: Weblogs for Educators.

Introduction to blogs

Another summary/introduction to blogs page -- this one for educators.

8:34:15 AM    

Office to SCORM conversion -- AND -- SCORM Certification Levels

HunterStone THESIS - another Office to SCORM convertor.

http://www.hunterstone.com/eduProds.aspx

Another in the growing list of Office-to-SCORM-package conversion products. This one is, in fact, certified as 'SCORM conformant,'
as testified to on the ADL site. Which led to another handy discovery, a concise (as concise as you are going to get from the American military) description of the various SCORM certification levels and what they actually mean. - SWL

10:23:36 PM