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Wed. Sept. 15, 2004
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IN THIS ISSUE
VIEWPOINT
NEWS & PRODUCT UPDATES
CASE STUDY
TECH NOTES
READER RESPONSE
Sponsors
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How’s Your eLearning?
By Badrul H. Khan
About two years back, I asked a friend if his institution was doing any eLearning.
He said, “Oh, yes, we have an LMS and we are doing all sorts of eLearning stuff.”
I said, “Having an LMS d'es not necessarily mean that you are creating meaningful
eLearning.” He asked, “Meaningful eLearning—what do you mean?”
I explained that an eLearning system should be meaningful not only to learners,
but also to all stakeholder groups, including instructors, support services
staff, and the institution. For example, an eLearning system is meaningful to
learners when it is easily accessible, well designed, learner-centered, affordable,
efficient, flexible, and has a facilitated learning environment. When learners
display a high level of participation and success in meeting a course’s goals
and objectives, this can make eLearning meaningful to instructors. In turn,
when learners enjoy all available support services provided in the course without
any interruptions, it makes support services staff happy as they strive to provide
easy-to-use, reliable services. Finally, an eLearning system is meaningful to
institutions when it has a sound return-on-investment (ROI), a moderate to high
level of learner satisfaction with both the quality of instruction and all support
services, and a low drop-out rate.
My friend said, “Ok, but what d'es it take to create meaningful and
successful eLearning?” I answered that each stakeholder group has
its own set of issues and concerns about eLearning. And they are
critical! We must pay attention to these issues if we want to be
successful in implementing eLearning. If you cluster these issues,
they fall into eight eLearning categories: institutional, pedagogical,
technological, interface design, evaluation, management, resource
support, and ethical.
Read more
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MIT iCampus Outreach Program Offering Tools
MIT’s iCampus program has initiated a new dissemination effort to encourage
and support adoption of iCampus-developed educational technologies. Those ready
for the first phase of dissemination include Robot World, Magic Paper, TEAL,
XTutor, iMOAT, and iLabs. The tools have been developed as part of a 5-year,
$25 million collaboration between MIT and Microsoft to develop sustainable technology-enabled
teaching models, tools, and Web services.
Read more
Penn State’s Gary Miller Honored
Gary Miller, Penn State University’s associate VP for outreach and founding
executive director of Penn State World Campus received the Charles A. and Mildred
B. Wedemeyer Award for Outstanding Practitioner in Distance Education, presented
annually at the University of Wisconsin’s Conference on Distance Teaching and
Learning.
Read more
WebCT Certified Trainer Program Turns Out 230 Experts
WebCT announced that it has passed the 230 mark in the certification of trainers
to help faculty make effective use of its course management and academic enterprise
system tools. Three levels of certification include Associate Level Trainer,
Senior Level Trainer, and Vista Trainer and consist of a mix of online and face-to-face
sessions.
Read more
In Defense of Duke's iPod Initiative
Duke's Center for Instructional Technology is going to measure and publish
on the learning-related uses of iPods among students. (MacNewsWorld)
Read more
OSP 2.0 Demo Released
The September release of the OSP 2.0 demo is available on the Open Source
Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) Web site. The demonstration version is under development
and unsupported but available for those interested to try the software as a
demo.
Read more
New Digital Resource Laboratory Opens at Auburn
Seventeen topnotch machines, three attendant technicians, and all you need
for making and editing video and audio for radio, television, and film, will
be available soon to Auburn students and staff. (The Auburn Plainsman Online)
Read more
Strategic Relationship with MERLOT Boosts Blackboard Developer Network
MERLOT has joined the Blackboard Developer Network and will use Building Blocks
to develop integration between Merlot's resources and Blackboard systems. (Yahoo!
Finance)
Read more
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University of Wisconsin-Madison’s My WebSpace
Increasingly, colleges and universities are finding that students, faculty,
and staff need to easily share documents such as homework, notes, papers, theses,
dissertations, and graphics. While file servers can and do provide storage space,
wide usage of such storage has often been limited to individuals comfortable
with technologies such as FTP. Similarly, sharing and collaboration can be difficult
if technical expertise is required for sharing and collaboration.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Division of Information Technology
(DoIT) envisioned a Web-accessible solution to address the
campus’s file sharing needs. The result is My WebSpace, which
has been deployed across the campus this year.
Read
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WIDS Instructional Design System
The Worldwide Instructional Design System (WIDS) is a non-profit organization
(a division of the Wisconsin Technical College System Foundation) that offers
instructional design software, training, and consulting services. WIDS provides
advanced tools and support to help clients design effective learner-centered
curriculum.
WIDS software helps users create courses and programs for a variety of delivery
methods and can guide you in planning an entire course. The system helps instructors
ensure no critical elements are missing from curriculum and that learning activities
are designed to engage learners. The software prompts users to include learning
activities--a learning activity library, which is built into WIDS, stores learning
activities that are appropriate for face-to-face and online settings. The software
also allows for analysis of curriculum, such as how outcomes are addressed and
assessed across programs and courses.
The WIDS tool set includes a learning design model, curriculum-development
software, and training. The faculty training component is geared to improve
overall instructional design and increase design consistency across courses.
Read more
Open Source Summit in December
The r-smart group and Sedona Conferences and Conversations are hosting the
first Open Source Summit in Ph'enix on December 1-3. Among
the keynoters will be John Seely Brown, former XeroxPARC Director
and noted author; Steven Weber, author of The Success of Open
Source; and Paul Elsner, noted educator and Chancellor Emeritus
of Maricopa Community College. The program includes strategic
and academic tracks, and several community source initiatives
of interest to those working in the eLearning space will be
represented, including Sakai, OSPI, Fedora, LionShare, and
others.
Read
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From the Reader Response Forum
Are LMS Anti-Web?
Posted by: cameronloudon - Austrailia
Recently I have been following the blog
of Dr Peter Sefton who described MIT's
Anti-web Learning Management System, Caddie as anti-web. He returned to
this theme in a later entry called 'Links considered too difficult for online
education software' (http://ptsefton.com/blog/2004/08/06/implementingims).
What interests me most is that this observation could be applied to
all the major players in the LMS space. Why do we need an LMS to be
a file system repository for PDF and Word documents? Is that the
best that can be offered to students?
Read more
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