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eLD February 2 2005

02/10/05


	Wed., Feb. 02, 2005

IN THIS ISSUE

True eLearning (as opposed to the sparse and re-purposed content delivered through many of today’s online courses) is a complex and expensive instructional design and content delivery process that relies on building learning objects often with time-consuming visual and multimedia files. Most university faculties do not have the requisite expertise to design, build, and deliver courses this way, and instructional support teams are often overextended. A number of institutions have discovered that their faculties and students are better served if, instead of trying to completely re-create a new learning experience for remote learners, they simply replicate the proven, instructor-led style of lectures of traditional, classroom-based courses and make them available online.

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News & Product Updates

RIT Selects Desire2Learn

Desire2Learn Inc., provider of enterprise learning systems, has announced that the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has selected the Desire2Learn Learning Platform to serve its 20,000 users. RIT will replace its existing learning management system with the Desire2Learn Learning Platform, a suite of teaching and learning tools for course development, delivery, and management. All of RIT’s existing courses will be converted to the Desire2Learn Learning Platform as part of the implementation. The agreement also includes the Desire2Learn Learning Object Repository (LOR), an integrated standards-based learning object repository enabling the storing, sharing, and tracking of learning objects, seamlessly integrating with the Desire2Learn Learning Platform.

New “Web Media Collective” for Sharing Multimedia at OS

Ohio State University has added a rich media content management system to its Web infrastructure, enabling professors to pull digital images from various university collections into the classroom. The school is using a platform from Scene7 Inc. as the technology behind what it calls its “Web Media Collective.” The system is designed to help solve the problem of how to help individual faculty as well as curriculum teams share media assets for teaching and research.

Texas A&M Selects Camtasia for Screen Recording

Texas A&M University has settled on a standard for screen recording software, so that its faculty can have a common tool for preparing online course content from a screen creation. The university will use Camtasia Studio, from TechSmith Corp., which is known for its onscreen capture and recording software. With the new software, faculty and researchers are able to create and share live lectures, distance-learning videos, as well as in-class presentations and tutorials. The latest version of software includes an add-in for recording, editing, and sharing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

“Liquid Information” Could Pour into a More Powerful Web

A British researcher wants to turn the entire Web into editable documents with every word a potential hyperlink. (Wired News)

Academics in the UK Are Learning About Blogs

Susses University is one of many places where IT departments are heeding academics' call to let them play with this new technology.

Going Native—Franklin and Marshall Implements Ingeniux Content Management System for Apple OS X and Xserve Server

Franklin and Marshall (F&M) is a leading liberal arts college located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with an enrollment of approximately 1,800 full-time equivalent students. F&M (www.fandm.edu ) has a rich history originating with its founding in 1787 by five of the signers of the Declaration on the Independence--including Benjamin Franklin. Appropriately, a spirit of independence and innovation is still reflected in all aspects of the colleges, including its choice for an all-Apple computing environment that includes Apple Xserve servers and the Macintosh computers used by students, staff, and faculty.

UMassOnline’s Degree and Certificate Programs

UMassOnline has recently added six programs to its electronic course offerings, bringing to 45 the number of online degree and certificate programs in its portfolio. With the addition of online continuing medical education (CME) courses from UMass Medical School, UMassOnline now represents every campus in the university system, officials said. The new online programs include continuing medical education courses, as well as certificate programs in hospitality, domestic violence prevention, and forensic criminology.

From the Reader Response Forum
Support for Open Source Solutions?

My impression is that UNIX talent is required. Can anyone speak to the level of support necessary to implement an OPEN SOURCE solution. -- Posted by Ralph Fasano, Rhode Island School of Design

Response: Hi Ralph, it depends on the OS system. Unix talent is definitly not needed to implement Moodle, it runs fine on Windows, even has a Windows installer.While much of the talk on the Moodle forums involves folks who are coding new modules for Moodle which requires extra levels of talent, simply running a standard Moodle install is no more difficult than running a standard WebCT, Blackboard, etc. install.You can even get a fully hosted supported system where all you do is run courses, via Moodle.com, for much less than hosted solutions for the other CMSs. -- Posted by michaelp

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