EDUCAUSE | E-Learning

E07 Podcast: Stanford Online: Evolution of Stanford University's Online Learning Platform

gbayne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:34:13 -0500

This thirty-nine minute podcast features a presentation from the 2007 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. The session, "Stanford Online: Evolution of Stanford University's Online Learning Platform," concerns Stanford University's next-generation course delivery interface, which features dramatically enhanced video assets combined with an innovative bookmarking tool. This tool enables the creation of personal notated bookmarks synchronized with streaming media content, innovative one-click navigation, sharing functionality for collaborative learning, and direct dialog with teaching staff.

Session presenters include:

Michael Rouan, Director, Stanford Online, Stanford University
Hoop Somuah, Software Design Engineer, Microsoft Corporation
Session convener: Elizabeth A. Unger, Vice Provost & Dean Emeritus, Kansas State University

E07 Podcast: A Strategy for Deploying Web 2.0 Technologies

gbayne — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:20:32 -0500

This forty-three minute podcast features a session from the 2007 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. The presentation, "Riding the 2.0 Wave (Successfully): A Strategy for Deploying Web 2.0 Technologies," explains Marist College's award-winning work with Web 2.0 applications. This work has led to the development of an e-learning 2.0 strategy for the pedagogically based deployment of these technologies. This session includes methodologies for controlling costs, enhancing learning, and ensuring alignment with strategic goals. PowerPoint slides are also available for this session.

Session presenters include:

Joshua D. Baron, Director, Academic Technology and eLearning, Marist College
William T. Thirsk, VP of Information Technology/CIO, Marist College

Post-ED-MEDIA 08: The Personal Inquiry Project

catherine — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:01:16 -0500

Back from ED-MEDIA, I wanted to flag up this really interesting ESRC project that I heard about at the conference. It is being conducted by an interdisciplinary team from the OU and Mike Sharples’s LSRI group in Nottingham (standard disclaimer: I’ve previously worked with the OU’s Grainne Conole, who is a key team member, on various CARET/OU projects :-) ). The Personal Inquiry (or "PI") project is designing new educational methods of scripted inquiry learning, and aims to evaluate their effectiveness through a process of scientific enquiry. The curriculum focus is UK Key Stage 3: “Myself, My Environment, My Community”, with emphasis on engaging young learners in investigating their world. Lots more details available on their website.

The PI project is aiming to push the boundaries of participatory design. It is working with groups of children, mostly 11-14 year olds, and involving them in the investigation of issues that affect their lives across a range of settings and contexts: both formal/informal. In this way, the children get to participate in “real-life research”, using a range of new technologies (including the new ASUS PCs) and helping to evaluate an inquiry based learning model developed by the team. The project has taken seriously questions of participatory design and the children are active participants, not simply a “resource” for the project team. I was reminded of a fantastic participatory study conducted for the international children’s charity SOS Kindersdorf, and involving the UEA’s Rob Walker, which invited groups of children in Colombia, India, Nicaragua, and Thailand to consider the question, “What is the meaning of non-violence?”, by photographing their environment.

The team conducted an initial literature review on inquiry based learning, whose standard model follows three linear stages of “predict/test/explain”. They then distilled and synthesised this evidence base to produce a new model, building on the work of Pierre Dillenbourg at CRAFT, and others. Their general approach has been to compile toolkits with specific learning scripts related to the topic, which are intended to guide the learner in making conceptual links across different activities, technologies (e.g. data probes, GIS, blogs) and contexts (school, home, field trips, etc).

Listening to Gráinne’s presentation, I reflected that the idea of involving school-age students in authentic learning and introducing them to working with “rich” data is, in many senses, an extension of the “natural history” approaches of the 18th and 19th centuries. We seem to be coming full circle in our approaches to research and teaching: from the “generalist” and interdisciplinary (or multidisciplinary) approaches that characterised nascent approaches to scientific enquiry from the Enlightenment, to the highly specialised and often technically- or methodologically-driven approaches that have characterised science in industrial modernity, and now back to the interdisciplinary focus. The complex and chaotic problems that today’s generation of children will face in future—the environment, social/demographic change, international security—will surely demand such “multidimensional” approaches.

LAMS's 'Trojan Mouse Strategy': Ed-Media 2008 Conference update: Thursday

catherine — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:55:18 -0500

Report on ’Sharing Learning Designs: Lessons from the LAMS Community’, presented by James Dalziel, Macquarie University, Australia

I'll begin by noting that James’s presentation was not designed for an audience of ‘specialists’ or LAMS practitioners - many attendees were totally new to LAMS, or else use ED-MEDIA as their annual opportunity to glean news on the latest updates. James began by introducing LAMS, explaining that it is a toolset for adding structure / scaffolding to the learning process, and in particular, building a framework for educational activities "that a simple list of course resources on a [web] page [or LMS site] doesn’t have".

The main news on the LAMS development front is that a major new version of LAMS was released just a couple of weeks ago. It features greater branching (including group branching), more 'student-selectable' activities (a big plus, in my view), and better VLE integration (including Moodle and Sakai). Someone designing a learning activity in LAMS can use data from previous tools/activities to drive branching. Previously, this would focus on ‘high leverage’ data such as test scores, but this feature has become more sophisticated: and could now include, e.g., the number of forum postings a student has submitted. Everything in LAMS is still available as open-source software. The LAMS community remains a major resource and focus for development - James uses the phrase 'open source education', in relation to the community. He highlighted that LAMS users are truly an international group, and that LAMS is now translated into 25 languages. See: http://demo.lamscommunity.org

James’s presentation then took a more critical and reflective turn. The vision for LAMS is that it should 'change teaching as we know it', but he acknowledged that it is still 'early days'. The issue of the value of specific, ‘content-heavy’ learning sequences, as opposed to generic sequences, is very much a live one. In theory, designers and instructors gain the greatest value from generic sequences, but the lesson from practice is that educators "get fired [up] by discipline content". There is still not a lot of what might be termed “direct reuse” out there. James described this issue as "a significant debate that we need to explore, probably over the next decade." There are still issues around sharing: educators are reluctant to share things that aren’t “perfect”, and some may see community ratings through the lens of peer review—and find them a poor substitute for established academic practice. James questioned whether this might be a generational/IT experience issue, or a cultural frame of reference issue. I think he’s absolutely spot on there—surely it’s both.

I think many of the challenges for LAMS are far from new, and as I listened to James’s presentation I realised that many of them are all too familiar from a related sphere of work, digital repositories and learning objects. Creating the right e-learning tools/support ‘mix’; teacher motivation and rewards; lack of evidence for educational benefits; IP concerns around sharing. We’ve heard all of these before and, undoubtedly, they are still major barriers. But there are others, perhaps even more deeply entwined with educational practices and processes.

Educators in large institutions, such as universities, generally have to go through formal course approval processes that, in many cases, do not support learner-centred design processes. Many aspects of these institutional processes are entirely external to LAMS, yet they can seriously limit its impact. That’s one problem. Here’s another: can LAMS ever really aspire to introduce time-poor educators to pedagogic practices that are unfamiliar/alien to their discipline? And is this really what it should aspire to? Finally, I’m still not entirely convinced about highly formalised approaches to learning design. So much of LAMS is focused on making educational knowledge and practice explicit, when it is usually implicit—‘tacit’, to use Polanyi’s term. Judging from today’s presentation, the ideology or philosophy of 'learner centred' education remains the dominant educational paradigm for the LAMS community, yet this points to an enduring tension with LAMS's overall approach to learning design; which is highly 'instructional', structured, and LMS-friendly.

The next avenue for LAMS is to explore higher-level design processes and pedagogic planning (moving onto similar terrain to Oxford’s Phoebe project and the London Knowledge Lab pedagogical planner project, which Diana Laurillard is involved with). In a nice analogy, James describes this as the “Trojan mouse strategy'”. Pedagogic planning is certainly a hot area right now, and the UK will shortly see a slew of related projects starting up, with support from the recent two JISC calls on curriculum design. In LAMS, this planning tool will exist as a new layer on top of LAMS that will provide good practice templates, advice on choosing and editing, and simplifed authoring (NB: under development—currently “Vapourware” - but the LAMS team is building it, and it will exist “soon”). Keep an eye on the LAMS community for further developments.

Ed-Media 2008 Conference update: Tuesday

catherine — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:57:05 -0500

Greetings from Vienna, where I'm attending this year's Ed-Media meeting. The conference is being held in possibly the ugliest building in this beautiful city of Vienna - but the surroundings are fabulous, the weather warm, and there is a good buzz among the throng of delegates. There have been various administrative hurdles to overcome (I've overheard several conversations muttering about lengthy queues, especially at registration this morning) - in particular, our Pathfinder Cluster symposium on embedding e-learning, which was supposed to be a two-hour event, was unfortunately carved up into two separate sessions with a coffee break in between. We eventually managed to rearrange this, thankfully, so at least all the presentations from the five participating institutions (Brunel, London South Bank, Reading, Cambridge, and the Open University) are all grouped together.

Twitter has been overloaded whenever I've tried to log on, so I haven't been able to send any conference tweets, but the wireless access seems to be working pretty smoothly in the venue, so I'll try again later. I'm looking forward to attending this evening's reception, to be held in imposing surrounds of the Town Hall.

ED-MEDIA 08

catherine — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:42:59 -0500

I'm looking forward to attending the ED-MEDIA conference next week in Vienna, Austria. Together with my colleagues from University of Reading, London South Bank University, and Brunel University, we'll be delivering a symposium on the challenges and success stories from our experience engaging with the Higher Education Academy's 'Pathfinder' programme. Give me a shout out if you're planning to attend.

'Pathfinder' was an ambitious national initiative, that aimed to achieve a step-change in e-learning in UK HE. With that in mind, our symposium, led by the OU's Grainne Conole (who is also writing for the Ed-Media blog), will focus on the institutional embedding of e-learning.

Drexel University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Symposium: Scholar 2 Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communicati

jaybhatt — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:54:28 -0500

The Drexel University Libraries, with support from IEEE, will present The 5th Annual Scholarly Communication Symposium titled: Scholar2Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication. Join us for a half-day symposium featuring a speaker presentation by Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor, Chemistry and E-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, followed by panel and roundtable discussions. An optional Dutch-treat networking lunch concludes the day.

Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Time: 8:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Bossone

For more information:
Drexel University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Symposium: Scholar 2 Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication
http://www.library.drexel.edu/scholarlycommunication/

To register:
Registration Form
http://www.library.drexel.edu/scholarlycommunication/registration2008.html

Our Wiki:
Scholar2scholar
http://scholar2scholar.wikispaces.com/

You will need to create your account in Wikispaces (if you do not have one) by clicking on 'Join' in the top right corner. Use your username and password you created to join our scholar2scholar wikispaces.
(Note: Please try to use something resembling your real names as usernames)

Do not forget to explore our evolving section - Further reading on Web 2.0
http://scholar2scholar.wikispaces.com/Further+Reading+on+Web+2.0+and+Scholarship

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Ulrich Rauch, Director of Arts Instructional Support & IT at The University of British Columbia

gbayne — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:21:27 -0600

In this 21 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Ulrich Rauch, Director of Arts Instructional Support & Information Technology at The University of British Columbia. He has recently been involved in a project called Ancient Spaces at UBC, which uses gaming and virtual world technology to recreate locations from antiquity. He also participated in a session at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference entitled, "Indigenous Cultures: From Observing to Experiencing, from Videography to 3D VR Immersion".

Ulrich Rauch organizes the implementation of educational technologies for instructors, students and staff in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia. As the director of a technical and an instructional support unit, and as trained sociologist, Ulrich combines his experience as an instructor with his perspective on learning technologies to research and apply e-learning strategies in support of collaborative learning.

Podcast: An Interview with Barbara J. Hoskins, Clemson University

gbayne — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:39:23 -0500

This podcast features a 9 minute interview with Barbara J. Hoskins, Assistant Dean for the College of Health, Education & Human Development at Clemson University. In this conversation, recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Southeast Regional Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Dean Hoskins discusses the session she presented at the conference entitled, "Effective Online Program Models from Faculty and Student Perspectives".

From the session description:

With online learning, we have moved beyond the early adopter phase and find ourselves seeking effective models and best practices to ensure we are delivering a quality educational opportunity. This presentation will identify nationally accepted criteria for effective online programs and evaluate the success of delivery models from all viewpoints.

ELI White Paper on Authentic Learning

ecoghlan — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:50:03 -0500

The Internet and a variety of emerging communication, visualization, and simulation technologies now make it possible to offer students authentic learning experiences ranging from experimentation to real-world problem solving. Explore authentic learning, what it is, how technology can support it, what makes it effective, and why it is important in Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview, by Marilyn M. Lombardi, ELI scholar-in-residence and director of the RENCI Center and senior IT strategist at Duke University. This piece is part of the ELI white paper series.