Learning and Teaching at BCIT

NMC Horizon Report > 2012 Higher Ed Edition just released

2012-02-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

"This ninth edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning."

http://www.nmc.org/publications/horizon-report-2012-higher-ed-edition

Encouraging Distraction? Classroom Experiments with Mobile Media

2012-02-10T06:52:00.000-08:00

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/encouraging-distraction-classroom-experiments-with-mobile-media/38454

Harvard Seeks to Jolt University Teaching

2012-02-07T05:10:00.000-08:00

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"A growing body of evidence from the classroom, coupled with emerging research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is lending insight into how people learn, but teaching on most college campuses has not changed much, several speakers said here at Harvard University at a daylong conference dedicated to teaching and learning...."

http://chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Seeks-to-Jolt/130683

5 Ideas to Support Innovation in Higher Ed | Inside Higher Ed

2012-02-07T05:01:00.000-08:00

From Inside Higher Education:

"What would you say if you were asked to list the 5 principles, ideas, actions, steps, or investments you would make to support and catalyze innovation in learning and scholarship at your institution?

Here are my 5 ideas, and I'm hoping that they will be improved, changed, deleted, re-written, and evolved by our discussion.

1. Embrace that the Smartest Person on Campus is the Campus
2. Develop a Common Language Around Innovation
3. Support the Core While Running Lots of Experiments
4. Practice Collaboration by Difference
5. Invest in a Continued Conversation"

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/5-ideas-support-innovation-higher-ed

Trends that impact learning and education

2012-02-06T06:10:00.000-08:00

This communique from the Horizon Report Retreat highlights 10 megratrends that impact learning and education worldwide, which will be the focus of the next Horizon Report. Albeit some of these may not be a surprise to most educators, I like to compare these trends with my own worldview as it related to learning and teaching.

A glimpse into the future?

2012-02-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

Corning Glassware is used as a display on many of today's smartphones and tablets. One year ago the company produced a short YouTube video called "Day of Glass" on how we might interact with technology in the future. The video went viral and has since received 17M hits.

"A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked." is the sequel to the company's popular first projection. Despite its corporate feel, we get an interesting perspective on how this company envisions the classroom and medical clinic of the future.

One thing is clear: the private sector has the resources to drive innovation and influence our course.

Technology to support teaching and learning: to use or not to use?

2012-01-31T07:10:00.000-08:00

Research conducted by Concordia University over a 40 year period finds technology enhances the educational experience and supports student achievement. Data gathered from 60,000 elementary school, high school, and post-secondary students compared achievement in classrooms that used computer technology versus those that used little or none. The research team found technology works best when students are encouraged to think critically and communicate effectively.

You can read the quantitative research report here. In addressing the research question: “What is the effect of using computer technology in classrooms, as compared to no technology, to support teaching and learning?” the results suggest "that one of technology’s main strengths may lie in supporting students’ efforts to achieve rather than acting as a tool for delivering content. "

How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books

2012-01-22T17:24:00.000-08:00

A more technical analysis of what is wrong with iBooks Author and iBooks 2

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/how-apple-is-sabotaging-an-open-standard-for-digital-books/4378

Do we want textbooks to live in Apple’s walled garden?

2012-01-22T17:17:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of hype around Apple's new ebook publishing app and the new iBooks2 but as this article show, there are good reasons to be cautious.

http://gigaom.com/2012/01/19/do-we-want-textbooks-to-live-in-apples-walled-garden/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OmMalik+(GigaOM:+Tech)

Motivation, Engagement and Competence in the Digital Information Environment

2012-01-18T09:21:00.000-08:00

David White and his colleagues at Oxford University are doing some interesting research that parallels what we have been doing in our Digital Learners in Higher Education project. Like us, they are finding there is much more to how learners are engaging with digital technologies and digital information than age and technology. This interview provides an overview of their findings to date and explains the digital visitors and residents framework that is guiding their research.

Skylight microscope attachment has immediate classroom benefits

2012-01-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

Skylight is a neat microscope attachment device that enables smartphones to display what is normally seen through the lens of the microscope. It is an adjustable plastic gadget that sits over the microscope's objective lens and displays the image using the smartphone's camera.

The device has some interesting disruptive potential in the medical sector because many of the visualization devices used by researchers and physicians can cost thousands or tens-of-thousands of dollars. Skylight will sell for about $60.

Besides being able to see the image more readily, one unanticipated benefit noticed in classrooms has been the ability for several students to view the image all at the same time. The image can be sent to a project for all to see and if there is a need for additional analysis, smartphones also have the ability to take photos and record video. This, coupled with the ability to send these files via email or text message, appears to have tremendous potential.

Skylight co-designer, Andrew Miller says, [it] makes microscopes a bit more exciting. "Younger people, who are used to always being with their phones, can interact with old technology in a new way...".

The following video is a bit of a marketing piece, but it demonstrates the simplicity of the device well.

Read more about Skylight's potential impact at Mashable.com.

The Myth of Learning Styles

2011-11-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

Here's an excellent critique of "learning styles". Steve Wheeler writes;
"One of the biggest myths known to teacherdom is learning styles. Time and time again, the belief that students can be placed into specific categories such as activist or theorist, or that they are predominantly inclined toward one modal category of learning (e.g. visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) is inserted into professional conversations as if the theories are fact. And time and again, such beliefs are the justification for placing students into a specific style of learning so that a class can be 'managed' more effectively. Such categorisation of students is an absolute nonsense and the practice of doing so should be challenged strongly. It is lazy pedagogy, and the only reason I see that such beliefs persist, is that it is a convenient untruth which allows some teachers to stay within their comfort zones."
Read the full article.

E-learning is More than Technology

2011-11-21T09:59:00.000-08:00

All too often when we start to use learning technologies we simply add them on to our current teaching approaches. This is costly and often ineffective. One of the keys to the effective use of learning technologies is to integrate them into our teaching. This means rethinking teaching approaches and re-designing courses so that technologies and modes and delivery are used appropriately to complement each other. This is called e-learning.

Here's an example of how one instructor did this by using technology to eliminate the lecture from his classroom. Mike Garver, a marketing professor at Central Michigan University, uses lecture-capture technology to record his lectures. He then edits them into 5-29 minute chunks and asks students to watch them before class. He uses the class time for interactive and collaborative activities:

At the beginning of each class, Garver uses classroom clickers to quiz students on the concepts covered in the previous night’s lectures. For the rest of the class period, Garver typically divides the students into teams and asks them to apply those concepts to specific use cases. “What we can focus on is the upper end of Bloom’s Taxonomy,” he says — that is, hands-on learning."

But this going far enough though? The technology is being used essentially to replicate the lecture, although by editing the lectures the content is made more accessible. But is lecturing, regardless of whether it is live or recorded, the most effective way of delivering content? Also, by requiring students to listen or watch the lectures before class, and then using the class time for other activities, isn't the workload for both the instructor and students increased? Still, this is better than simply recording the lectures live and making them available for later use by students.

Google and Pearson Offer a Free LMS

2011-10-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

They say there's no such thing as a free lunch but what about a free LMS?
"Today Pearson, the publishing and learning technology group, has joined the software giant Google to launch OpenClass, a free LMS that combines standard course-management tools with advanced social networking and community-building, and an open architecture that allows instructors to import whatever material they want, from e-books to YouTube videos. The program will launch through Google Apps for Education, a very popular e-mail, calendar, and document-sharing service that has more than 1,000 higher-education customers, and it will be hosted by Pearson with the intent of freeing institutions from the burden of providing resources to run it. It enters a market that has been dominated by costly institution-anchored services like Blackboard, and open-source but labor-intensive systems like Moodle."
Read more in the The Chronicle of Higher Education

What is the Future of Learning in Canada?

2011-10-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) has published their final report on lifelong learning conditions in Canada. The report contains 71 pages, however the section on Post-Secondary Education is an interesting read, reporting on issues such as funding, quality of educators and troubling trends, which include:

Losing ground in innovation, and research and
development;
Dilemma in male human capital;
Immigrant skills not meeting labour-market needs;
No national PSE strategy;
No national quality-assurance system; and
Fundamental data and information gaps on PSE.

The Way Forward section endorses a national PSE strategy:

"A national post-secondary strategy should possess three essential characteristics: clearly stated objectives, both general and for specific periods of time; measures to assess achievement of objectives; and a systematic goal of cohesion and coherence among all the facets—as is the case in the EU and other developed countries."

Canadian universities must reform or perish

2011-10-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

Interesting, thought provoking article in the Globe and Mail this week acknowledges the fact the Canada has one of the most educated populations in the World today but questions quality of education framed by the need for teaching excellence.

"We are getting less for more. Teaching is getting short shrift; more students are graduating, but not enough are leaving school with the skills they need for success in the real world."

Canadian Universities must reform or perish

Educational Technology User's Group (eTUG) 2011 Fall Workshop - Call for proposals

2011-09-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

See the Call For Proposals for the 2011 eTUG Fall Workshop: “You Are Here: Supporting mindful journeys in our practice”. The workshop will be held at Kwantlen Polytechnic University's Richmond campus on Friday, November 4, 2011.

The proposal deadline is Monday, October 3, 2011.

What is eTUG?

BC's Educational Technology User's Group (eTUG) is a community of BC post-secondary educational practitioners focused on the ways in which learning and teaching can be enhanced through technology. Our community is diverse and members include:

post-secondary professional staff (e.g. instructional designers, media developers, technical support)
instructors and learners
academic and technology administrators

Our core value is a commitment to nurturing a vibrant, innovative, evolving, and supportive community that thrives with the collegial sharing of ideas, resources, and ongoing professional development through face-to-face workshops and online.

About the 2011 eTUG Fall Workshop

This year we head to Kwantlen Polytechnic University located in the travel hub of Richmond, BC, inspiring the theme: “You Are Here: Supporting Mindful Journeys in our Practice”. We invite you to share your experiences and mindful journeys in teaching, learning and technology, by exploring one or more of the following:

Planning…your journey
Supporting… your journey
Embarking …on your journey

For More Information

Please see http://etug.ca/proposals/ or contact Kyle Hunter (@bcit.ca).

Emerging Practice in a Digital Age

2011-09-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

The British learning technology organization JISC has released an interesting report, Emerging Practice in a Digital Age, that brings together 10 cases studies of emerging practice with digital technologies. The cases studies are organized into three themes:

1. Working in partnership with students
- Supporting student transition through reflective video sharing
- Engaging students as agents of change
- Students as partners in blended learning
2. Developing students' employability potential
- Developing professional practice using simulations
- Moving into virtual worlds
- Springboard TV: enhancing empolyability
- Assessment and Learning in Practice Setting
3. Preparing for the future
- Linking learning to location
- Mobile Oxford: opening access to information
- Creating a culture: a holistic approach to technology-enhanced learning

The case studies "illustrate aspects of emerging practice and show how institutions, practitioners and learners are investigating the potential affordances that new technologies can offer learning and teaching. They emphasise the importance of horizon scanning (being aware of changing circumstances and new possibilities), creating a culture of innovation that embraces change and encompasses all stakeholders, and the need to build effective communication and engagement strategies that incorporate internal and external partners. Each case study provides snapshots of journeys that will continue to develop."

Making Meetings Useful

2011-08-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

Joel Mitchell of the Vancouver Sun writes about a new book on a topic that all of us can relate to: meetings. Does this sound familiar:

"Meetings are taking over our businesses and keeping us from actually getting the work done. Meetings are the reason cartoons like Dilbert and TV shows like The Office exist (and why they are so funny... or sad). Let's face it: meetings not only suck, but they are sucking the life out of organizations.What happened?
Weren't meetings originally created as a way to get things done? Weren't they supposed to be the place where decisions were made or a team could come together and brainstorm? How did we get so bad at meetings? "

The book is Read this Before Our Next Meeting and the Kindle edition is free.

The Writing Commons

2011-06-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

This looks like a very valuable resource for students and others looking for help and support with writing.

Here's an excerpt from the Writing Commons mission statement:
"Writing Commons aspires to be a community for writers, a creative learning space for students in courses that require college-level writing, a creative, interactive space for teachers to share resources and pedagogy. "

First, we provide resources students need to improve their writing. Currently, Writing Commons offers free access to an award-winning, college textbook, which was published by a major publisher in 2003 and received the Distinguished Book Award in 2004 from Computers and Composition, an academic journal.
Second, in the spirit of the cultural commons, we invite our readers, particularly college faculty and students, to help us develop this text, so that it meets the needs of students in diverse writing courses. Beyond expanding Writing Commons so it could be the required text for technical and professional writing courses, fiction courses, creative nonfiction courses--and so on--we hope to inspire our colleagues to introduce new media elements, from videos, podcasts, to interactive components. Please see our Call for Writers for details on how you can get involved!
Third, because we believe students learn chiefly by writing and by sharing reviews of one another's texts, we provide a writing space for students to develop profile pages, chat with classmates, and share pictures and notes: Community!

Thanks to Tannis Morgan for drawing my attention to this.

Kno Positions Itself As iPad Textbook Supplier

2011-06-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

Kno officially launches today touting a library of over 70,000 textbooks at 30-50% off hard copy prices. Textbooks are specifically formatted for the iPad. It's just a matter of time before the competitors emerge but the integration of social, note taking abilities and rental options makes this one to watch.

Launch Commercial - http://vimeo.com/22242451

Website - http://store.kno.com/features

Originally conceived as a standalone Android based tablet it seems like Kno decided to get out of the hardware game a move over to the Apple camp.
Article link

Google Scholar

2011-05-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

Have a paper to write? A course to develop? Want to investigate possible plagiarism in course content? Let Google Scholar and its Advanced Scholar Search feature help guide you to the info you seek.

Find articles containing exact words or phrases, written by specific authors or between certain dates. With options to filter by subject area, patents, and/or legal opinions it helps cut through a lot of the noise when searching for specifics.

Advanced Scholar Search
http://scholar.google.ca/advanced_scholar_search

About Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/about.html

Developing Online Courses: An Exciting Milestone!

2011-05-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

Since the development and launch of the Developing Online Courses blog site (January, 2010) there have been over 5,000 individual site visits!

This resource is a valuable tool for those instructors involved in online course development for the first time, as well as veterans who are looking for templates and checklists to make the task more manageable.

A Social Media Privacy Guide for Post Secondary Institutions

2011-05-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

Vancouver Island University with support from BC Campus has developed a privacy guide for use by faculty members of British Columbia public post-secondary institutions.

Privacy Guide for Faculty Using 3rd Party Web Technology (Social Media) in Public Post-Secondary Courses

"It sets out the main privacy principles and requirements of BC's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act; explores the risks to privacy of using 3rd party web technology (social media) in post-secondary courses; offers guidance on how to mitigate the privacy risks inherent to social media; and provides sample privacy tools for protecting personal information online."

Google Unveils Chromebook

2011-05-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

Google's newly unveiled Chromebook could be a huge blow to the traditional operating system while dramatically reducing costs and effort required to upgrade, maintain and secure user machines.

That is if you trust the cloud. Recent breaches at Sony's PlayStation network amongst others have shown us that security is a huge concern especially when dealing with sensitive information such as Student records.

Still devices like this could be a great access point for students and the price is sure to be a selling point.

http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-kind-of-computer-chromebook.html

http://www.google.com/chromebook/business-education.html#

Check out other goings on at Google's annual I/O conference here.

Key trends: Mobile, online and blended learning and e-books

2011-04-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Here's another report on trends in educational technology. The New 3E's of Education: Enabled, Engaged and Empowered is from the US K-12 sector but it provides a glimpse of the kind of students who will be entering postsecondary. It also confirms some of the findings of the Horizon Report about key trends in postsecondary educational technology.

The report argues there are three trends that educational planners need to take into account when framing educational policy: mobile learning, online and blended learning, and e-textbooks which lead to the need for the three E's of Education:
    •    Enabling access to resources and experts beyond the local environment,
    •    Engaging students to develop problem solving, creativity and critical thinking skills, and
    •    Empowering learners to take responsibility for their learning.

According the survey, students own cell phones, mobile phones, MP3 players, e-textbooks and use social networking sites on a regular basis, 'Students are already very effectively implementing this [vision] of socially-based, un-tethered and digitally-rich learning on their own, in and out of school, with or without the assistance and support of their teachers and schools' (p. 3).

Instructional Design Event

2011-04-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

The University of British Columbia is hosting an Instructional Design Event on May 13.
"The goal of this half-day event is to bring together individuals who are working as instructional designers within a variety of fields/educational sector groups (e.g., K-12, public sector, private, post-secondary) for the purposes of:
- sharing ideas/challenges/best practices in instructional design
- networking purposes
- accessing (or delivering) future professional development opportunities on instructional design"

Just Instructional Design

Mobile Computing Event

2011-04-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

EDUCAUSE is putting on what it calls "a focused learning opportunity" dealing with mobile computing:

"Perhaps no area of higher education IT is evolving more rapidly. Colleges and universities are making important decisions about mobile computing and how it can be incorporated into effective technology programs—today and tomorrow.

To bring the community together on this topic, EDUCAUSE will convene a Mobile Computing 5-Day Sprint. This pilot experience will allow you to engage in activities and discussions on the many ways mobile technologies are altering higher education.

Mobile Computing: A Five Day Sprint

Learning to Teach Online

2011-04-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

The University of New South Wales in Australia has produced an interesting set of video and PDF resources that address key elements of teaching online. Eight topics are covered in 5-6 minute videos:
1. Why is online teaching important
2. Conducting effective online discussions
3. Managing your time when teaching online
4. Learning management systems or the open web?
5. Integrating online resources into your teaching
6. Planning your online class
7. Considerations for choosing technology for teaching
8. Engaging and motivating students

As well, there are 11 case studies on a variety of technologies and teaching approaches.

Learning to Teach Online

Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

2011-03-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

"You've just got a glimpse at the future of education." This quote from Bill Gates following a standing ovation at a recent TED conference. The speaker Salman Khan speaks on a range of topics surrounding the Khan Academy software and the schools utilizing his training videos.

http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

I highly recommend you watch the entire video but for those pressed for time here's a few high points:

The role of video in education (2:00 - 3:30)
Flipping the classroom (6:00 - 7:30)
The self-paced software (8:00 - 12:30)

The I-Pad 2

2011-03-02T11:35:00.000-08:00

Apple certainly knows how to design devices that combine functionality and esthetics. The new I-Pad 2 adds some features that everybody said were missing from the original I-Pad (cameras, video mirroring), it's thinner and lighter and has an ingenious magnetic cover. However, Apple is still maintaining a tight control over content and deliberately sacrificing usability in the pursuit of profit by linking the device so tightly to I-Tunes. And still no Flash support.

Watch the flashy Apple I-Pad 2 video.

The Paperless Rationale for Technology

2011-03-02T11:14:00.000-08:00

I have some concerns about the "going paperless" rationale for using more technology in the classroom. While there may be environmental benefits (there are questions about this if students simply print out the documents), I worry that the technology will simply be used to replicate old models of teaching. This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides some practical tips for going paperless but confirms my fears that this rationale doesn't promote effective use of educational technology.

Bloom's Taxonomy - Revised

2011-02-16T12:17:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting and practical revision of the well-known Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives from Iowa State University Centre for Excellence in Learning & Teaching. This version combines the knowledge (factual, conceptual, procedural, metacognitive) and cognitive process (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create) dimensions in a matrix.

Using Interactive Objects throughout the Learning Process

2011-02-03T12:04:00.000-08:00

It is common practice to use interactive objects as a way to revisit material that has already been taught. For example, a drag-and-drop activity to label the parts of the human heart is a useful way to reinforce students’ knowledge of that area. While this is an important use of interactivity, the same object can be of greater value when used throughout the learning process.

Interactive Objects as Teaching Aids
Instructors often give lectures using standard, illustrated PowerPoint presentations but students sometimes find it difficult to stay focused on the subject matter. Interactive objects play an important role during instruction because they allow the instructor to interact with an image or demonstrate a concept in a non-linear fashion. In doing so, they help maintain their students’ focus and improve learning. Interactive objects are particularly helpful when the content is difficult to describe with static images alone.

The LTC was asked to create an interactive object to explain how to diagnose symptoms of pressure-regulator malfunction. Various regulators were installed on a wall in the shop but it was difficult to get a large number of students to view it at one time. The instructor approached the LTC with the idea of replicating the objects and their relationships via an interactive graphic that could demonstrate various scenarios on a screen in front of large numbers of students in a classroom setting.

Interactive Objects as Learning Activities
In many courses, students must cover a great deal of reading material in order to understand the content. Interactive objects can help to break the monotony and reinforce learning objectives by making the learning process more active and facilitate a deeper understanding of a concept.

In the case of Regulator Diagnosis, the instructional tool was further extended to include additional scenarios and a quiz feature that allowed the students to interact with the model of the system and evaluate their own diagnoses. This was especially valuable for online students who were not able to view the shop demonstration.

Interactive Objects as Evaluation Tools
Interactive objects also prove useful for testing competency. When they are used in the evaluation phase of a course, they can create a much more engaging user experience as opposed to using solely text based questions and answers. Rather than writing a description of a scenario or an event, students can interact with the graphic then choose the answer that best describes the situation.

For Regulator Diagnosis, the same learning object the LTC created for classroom instruction can be used as part of a test in Desire2Learn. The answers are still based in the quiz system and the instructor can decide whether they want multiple choice or short answers.

In the end, the goal is to engage the student and improve learning. Interactive objects provide a way to illustrate complex concepts, test for comprehension and, in some cases, even entertain. When used as a teaching tool, a learning activity, and in evaluation, interactive objects can add significant value to the courses for which they are developed.

For more information about the ways the Learning and Teaching Centre at BCIT uses multimedia in course development visit our web page at http://www.bcit.ca/ltc/materials/multimedia.shtml.

Educational Technology Showcase

2011-01-27T10:08:00.000-08:00

On January 5th the BCIT School of Health and the Learning & Teaching Centre put on an educational technology showcase to demonstrate the teaching innovation that is happening in the school. If you missed it, here's a short video that nicely captures the energy of the event and provides an excellent sample of some of the innovative used of educational technology.

School of Health/Learning & Teaching Centre Educational Technology Showcase

Learning through Situated Simulations: Exploring Mobile Augmented Reality

2011-01-18T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a research bulletin from the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research on learning through situated simulations.

"This ECAR research bulletin illustrates and reports on a series of experiments with situated simulations that have been tested with students in real environments in Norway, Athens, and Rome over the past couple of years. To improve your enjoyment of this bulletin, the author recommends clicking on the short video demonstrations to better understand and “see” how situated simulations work. The goal of the researchers has been to understand the extent to which mobile technologies and augmented reality used for situated simulations can improve situated learning. Situated simulations can use verbal resources in combination with 3D graphics to create a multi-modal dynamic representation that augments the real place with relevant information needed for different educational purposes. The big question is how these simulations should be composed and organized in order to improve learning. The experiments reported here are early attempts to build knowledge and experience in this exiting field."

Student Guide to Learning with Ed Tech

2011-01-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

Found in BCIT Library's suscription to Books24x7, Learning with Online and Mobile Technologies: A Student Survival Guide refreshingly makes the assumption that today's students are still diverse in their tech-savviness. Ignoring the NetGen hype, the authors soberly describe educational technolgies in use today and recommend strategies to students in how to be successful using them as well as how to take charge of them to benefit their own learning.

Here's a sample:

Quick Tips: Socialising and Peer Support (Web Chat, Social Networking, Micro-Blogs)
For online chat, organise a suitable time to meet the group online;
write in short sections of text;
establish turn taking rules before you start;
identify a Chair if necessary;
on social networking sites, join relevant student support groups;
make sure you have set appropriate privacy options to control who can view your personal details;
when micro-blogging, consider how the messages you send and the responses you receive from others might benefit your learning.

iPad use and adoption in schools

2011-01-05T16:01:00.000-08:00

New York Times article has examples of which apps are being used, controversy over whether school funds allocated for iPad purchases are being spent wisely, etc.:
"Dr. Curtis recently used a $1.99 application, ColorSplash, which removes or adds color to pictures, to demonstrate the importance of color in a Caravaggio painting in his seminar on Baroque art. “Traditionally, so much of art history is slides on a screen,” he said. “When they were able to manipulate the image themselves, it came alive."”

Also suggests that eye contact with instructor/class is less disrupted with tablet computer use than by student laptop use.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/education/05tablets.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

Open Access Scholarly Publishing: Practical Analysis

2010-12-16T15:14:00.000-08:00

Director of Harvard University Library, Robert Darnton, writes an excellent article in the New York Review of Books, The Library: Three Jeremiads, on the realities of academic publishing, the busine$$ of scholarly journals, the impact on libraries and the promise of open-access journals.

While the article is shaped by his belief in the promise of open-access, he discusses the very real hard realities of the sustainability of such models as well as providing an excellent critique of the problems today with academic journals and the struggles of academic libraries to survive. He goes beyond proselytizing to the converted and discusses the practicalities of such models. Also provides a handy summary of the ongoing Google settlement and what it means in everyday terms to all of us.

Should the Google Book Search agreement not be upheld by the court, its unraveling would come at an extraordinary moment in the development of an information society. We have now reached a period of fluidity, uncertainty, and opportunity. Things have come undone, and they can be put together in new ways, subordinating private profit to the public good and providing everyone with access to a commonwealth of culture.

Gates Measures of Effective Teaching project report

2010-12-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project tests new approaches to recognizing effective teaching through observation, testing learning, and student perceptions - here is the first project report as a PDF:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/20101211education.pdf?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a23

Here is an accompanying NYTimes article quote: Students learn most in "Classrooms where a majority of students said they agreed with the statement(s), “Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time,”... “In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes,” and, “My teacher has several good ways to explain each topic that we cover in this class.”

Interesting, even though focused on American public schools.

The NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/education/11education.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a23

Four pillars of play: Key to innovative design, workplace creativity

2010-12-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

Michelle Kearns recently drew our attention to an interesting article published by Frog Design about the importance of unstructured play. Although the article focuses on how the "four foundational pillars of play - open environments, flexible tools, modifiable rules, and superpowers" - help children be designers rather than simply "players", there are a number of analogous lessons that can be learned and adopted for the workplace. A particularly relevant passage describes how play impacts design and creativity:

Part of being open is being flexible. Technology has given us a whole new set of tools, though they’re being used in ways not necessarily planned for. Phone cameras, for example, have created an army of roaming reporters who upload news as it happens. The fact that people can find different ways of using technology—and that the technology is flexible enough to allow for this exploration—is the key for innovation and invention.

Because creativity is foundational for problem solving, the take-home message for me is to remember how important it is to continue to play—even as an adult—because it will foster innovative design and workplace creativity.

Transforming teaching and learning

2010-12-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

Pierre Zundel, president of the University of Sudbury and Patrick Deane, president of McMaster University, advocate for a re-conceptualization of the established teaching and learning model to better respond to student needs and institutional challenges in deliverying quality undergraduate education:

"What is required is a radical re-conceptualizing of the teaching and learning process, where the goal becomes “helping students learn” rather than “teaching.” We need to lift ourselves above the instructor-instructed dialectic, and above that equally factitious binary of teaching and research. Were we to see the terms in each dialectic as complementary rather than oppositional, then we could imagine a wider, possibly inﬁnite, range of models for learning."

Furthermore, they analyse the potential of the changing role of teachers as catalysts in the learning process:

" “Course preparation” changes from an exercise in content selection and sequencing to a pedagogical design problem in which the ultimate objective is explicitly described. We can be much more creative and can choose among many more variables. The traditional lecture course is no longer the only model we consider. The professor is not the only person responsible for helping the student learn. Others can be involved, including the students themselves, their peers, community members, community organizations, societies and institutions. We, the teachers, become more concerned with what the students are actually doing. We begin to think more broadly about the kinds of situations in which students learn."

Read more about this in It's time to transform undergraduate education in University Affairs.

Why the I-Pad Will Take Over the World

2010-11-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

Edmund Conway in the Daily Telegraph argues that, despite its limitations, the I-Pad will dominate the mobile computing industry. It will do this, he argues, not because it is better than a netbook or a laptop but because it is a disruptive innovation:

"Disruption, for those of you who, like me until recently, aren’t familiar with business theory, is one of the ways companies upend their bigger and older competitors in business these days. The gist is as follows: when a business comes along with an innovative product that challenges an existing one, it is often cheaper, of lower quality and is often deemed “not good enough” by potential customers.

Think of mp3s – their sound quality is far inferior to CDs, but customers realised pretty soon that they were both cheaper, more convenient and of a just about satisfactory quality. When personal computers first arrived, those who built powerful mainframe room-sized computers dismissed them as incapable – and indeed they were often so slow that they couldn’t keep up with the people typing into them. But the point behind disruption is that in due course the quality of the product gets to a standard that is acceptable to consumers (and if not better than the incumbent product, it is at least cheaper). Right now, flash memory is disrupting hard disks. And so on."

Read the complete article

MediaWorks from a student perspective

2010-11-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

Check this out: BCIT student blog, My Life at BCIT, mentions MediaWorks favourably.

Clicker use - NY Times article

2010-11-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

This article in the NY Times suggests clickers can be used to track attendance as well as answer in-class tests (worth 20%), and these tests begin a few minutes after class does, lowering lateness. One professor claims students are more likely to speak in class if they know they have the right idea, so discussions are more fruitful after a clicker "check-in".

About 500,000 clickers will be shipped to 2500 post-secondaries this year alone. Also, apps exist to turn Blackberries and iPads into clickers - did you know?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/education/16clickers.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a23

Flagrant self-promotion: LTC-co-produced video game teaches students to evaluate sources

2010-11-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, we’re pretty proud of this one.

BCIT’s Update blog reports the launch of the LTC co-produced Web Evaluation Video Game, which you can play online here. In this game, students are required to use objective criteria to evaluate the integrity of websites — and play a series of games in the process. By playing the game, students will be better able to evaluate the websites they use in their research and study. The game was produced by small development team involving members of BCIT’s Learning & Teaching Centre and the BCIT Library. (Members of the development team include: Michelle Kearns, project lead; Edwin Rowan, programming; Melanie Sia, graphics; Paul Razzell, writing; Lin Brander, subject expert; Lindsay Belloc, special effects; and Chris Cambon, sound.)

So go ahead and play the game. It’s educational!

— Paul Razzell

Online Course Showcase

2010-11-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

The Justice Institute and Vancouver Community College are organizing an online course showcase event on November 24. The purpose of this event is to bring together post-secondary institutions in the lower mainland to showcase their “best” online courses.

Here are the details:

Each institution has picked 1 or 2 examples of its best in one or more of the following categories (total 2 submissions/institution). The focus is on “best” from an instructional design perspective:

1. Best extended LMS: how do you extend your institutional LMS to create a well-designed online course? Or, do you have a best example of a course built outside of the LMS?

2. Instructional Design: show your course that is your most creative instructional design or addressed a challenging teaching and learning context problem.

The format

Each presentation is 20 minutes, with a collective 30 minute discussion at the end of each category.
There will also be a final 30 minute discussion following the category sessions that focusses on what we saw from a design/look and feel perspective and its importance to instructional design.

Refreshments and lunch will be provided.
The event is free but registration is required.

The Digital Future of Higher Education

2010-10-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

Thompson Rivers University is organizing an interesting one day conference next February with the theme, "Debating the Digital Future of Higher Education". Here is the announcement from conference coordinator, Norm Friesen:

Dear Colleagues,

Thompson Rivers University is proud to announce a one-day conference on “The Digital Future of Higher Education,” Feb. 22, 2011, in Kamloops.

Understanding the digital future of higher education is not so much about the latest Web 2.0 and "net generation" trends as it is about the confluence of a wide range of factors --economic and political as well as technological and demographic. This conference provides an opportunity to explore questions raised by these interrelated developments, particularly as they relate to the future of colleges and new universities in British Columbia and beyond. The conference will also address the open and technically-mediated teaching that institutions, whether new or established, are increasingly expected to provide. Keynote presentations from international experts will be featured, including Anya K Development and the Future of Higher Education. These presentations will be combined with discussion and debates involving researchers, practitioners and audience members, with reflections and responses from decision makers and stakeholders rounding out the day.

Check out the Website (http://www.tru.ca/digifuture), mark your calendars, and register! (Early bird registration starts from only $99; see: http://www.tru.ca/digifuture/registration.html)

Cordially,

Norm Friesen
Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices
Thompson Rivers University
office +1 250 852 6256
mobile +1 250 574 3620

Open Ed Resources & Problem Based Learning

2010-10-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Paul Duguid mentions (quoted here) that one issue with open archives is not the ideological impetus, but the rather mundane and banal issues of maintenance. Who is going to pay the bill and who is going to clean up the mess?

Seth Gurell, Yu-Chun Kuo, & Andrew Walker in The pedagogical enhancement of open education: An examination of problem-based learning in the latest issue of IRRODL portray this issue with their discussion of PBL materials in OER: while PBL materials should be a hot item for sharing since they take so much work to produce, making them an OER resource creates further complicating issues. The fact that they are open not only to instructors but also to learners means that learners can access the problem solutions as well, thus defeating the trick of what makes PBL so motivating. They acknowledge the solutions they propose as being administrative-heavy and add labour rather than save labour. Their paper illustrates by way of example that no matter what the ideological gains of OER are, the implementation is not so simple or easy.

Desire2Learn Workshop Series

2010-09-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

The Learning and Teaching Centre is pleased to announce the Fall 2010 Workshop Series. This set of training sessions includes 3 instructional skills workshops, 11 Desire2Learn-specific workshops, 4 educational technology workshops, and 1 online learning course. Workshop information is available online at http://www.bcit.ca/ltc/instructors/workshops/.

Quality in E-Learning

2010-09-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of participating in a small symposium on quality in e-learning last week, organized by Athabasca University and the International Council for Distance Education. One of the things that bothers me about the quality issue is that only seems to reach the top of the agenda when e-learning is involved. The discussion seems to always start from the premise that the quality of e-learning is inherently suspect and we need to ensure it meets the same standard as our face-to-face instruction. In fact, there are no system-wide quality standards for teaching and learning in higher education and most higher education institutions rely almost entirely on student satisfaction and graduation rates as their measures of education quality. Nonetheless, perception is often more powerful than reality and, according to Frits Pannekoek, President of Athabasca University, distance education and online learning is facing increasing restrictions around the world and its quality is being increasingly questioned. With this in mind, the 13 participants spent a day and a half exploring what the quality issues are, real or perceived, and what the key dimensions of quality should be. We used the Quality On the Line framework as a starting point. Although this was developed on 2000, we found the key categories still relevant:

Institutional Support
Course Development
Teaching/Learning
Course Structure
Student Support
Faculty Support
Evaluation & Assessment.

Trying to specify the actual benchmarks in each category proved to be much more difficult. At BCIT we have developed our own framework that took into account the Quality On the Line document as well as as several others. Ours is more course-specific, has more specific categories, and doesn't address institutional factors. The categories are:

Course Overview & Introduction
Learning Outcomes
Assessment
Course Materials
Learner Engagement
Educational Technology
Course Resources
Learner Support Resources

Coming back to my opening point, what strikes me about both these frameworks, and the quality in e-learning discussion more generally, is that most of the issues are also directly applicable to all teaching and learning. So if we are going to focus on quality and invest time and effort in developing standards, let's make sure they are not just applied to e-learning.

Here are some additional resources. Paul Bacsich, formerly of the UK Open University provided these links to different quality frameworks:

Torstein Rekkedal from NKI Norway (one of Europe's largest online distance education institutions) provided these references:

Rekkedal, T. (2006): Distance Learning and E-Learning Quality for SMEs - State of the Art. In: Paulsen, M. & Vieira, V. (eds.): An Analysis of E-Learning Experiences in European Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, pp. 11-18. Bekkestua, NKI.
Rekkedal, T. (2006): State of the Art Report on Distance Learning and E-learning Quality for SMEs. 27 pages. Paper prepared for the EU Leonardo project, E-learning Quality for SMEs: Guidance and Counselling, May 2006. http://nettskolen.nki.no/in_english/elq-sme/ELQ-SMEStateofArt.pdf
Rekkedal, T. (2002): Quality Assurance in Norwegian Distance Education - the Background for NADE's Quality Standards with Reference to some European Initiatives. In: Hansson, H. (ed.): Eight Contributions on Quality and Flexible Learning. Report 1:2002, pp 27-53. Härnösand, Swedish Agency for Distance Education. http://nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/DISTUMQualityAssurance.pdf
Rekkedal, T. (1998): Quality Assessment and Evaluation - Basic Philosophies, Concepts and Practices at NKI, Norway: In: Rathore, H. & Schuemer, R. (eds): Evaluation Concepts and Practice in Selected Distance Education Institutions, pp. 39-65. ZIFF Papiere 108, Hagen: FernUniversität, 1998. http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/ZIFF/ZP_108.pdf
Rekkedal, T. (1996): Quality of Education Produced and Delivered by Different Institutions. In: Helsinki University of Technology: Open and Distance Learning - Enhancing Mobility in Europe, the Future with Socrates, pp B1-B9. Espoo: European Commission/Helsinki University of Technology. http://www.nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/30/quality.htm
Ljoså, E. & Rekkedal, T. (1994): From External Control to Internal Quality Assurance: The Background for the development of NADE's Quality Standards for Distance Education. In: EDEN: Human Resources, Human Potential and Human Development: the Role of Distance Education. Proceedings 1994 EDEN Conference, pp 153-166. Tallin: EDEN. http://www.nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/17/tallinn.htm
NADE - Norwegian Association for Distance Education (1993): Quality Standards. Oslo: NADE. http://www.nettskolen.nki.no/forskning/18/kvalen1.htm

An Online Course on Online Teaching - Free

2010-09-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

The South African Institute for Distance Education has produced a comprehensive self-study online course aimed at preparing instructors for teaching in online and blended environments. While the materials are clearly aimed at instructors working in developing countries, much of it is applicable to any context. It is not only free but free to use, but free to remix and adapt.

Thanks to Tony Bates for highlighting this resource.

Education practice in PSE: Is it time to break the mold?

2010-09-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

Lectures: Are they the best way to learn?

Interesting article in The Globe and Mail, where Julia Christensen Hughes, the dean of the School of Business at the University of Guelph talks about the lecture as a learning and teaching strategy in a practice context.

More on the Facebook Study

2010-09-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the Daily Mail article that Paul Razzell reports on in the previous post.

The author of the study, Paul Kirschner from the Open University of the Netherlands, says:

"Our study, and other previous work, suggests that while people may think constant task-switching allows them to get more done in less time, the reality is it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to more mistakes...We should resist the fashionable views of educational gurus that children can multi-task, and that we should adapt our education systems accordingly to keep up with the times."

And read more about the fallacy of multitasking in the Net Gen Skeptic.

Using Facebook while studying can lower exam results by up to 20%

2010-09-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

As reported in The Daily Mail:

"Students who use Facebook while they study get significantly lower grades than those who do not, according to psychologists.
A study has found that the exam results of those who used the social networking site while working, even if it was on in the background, were 20 per cent lower than non-users.

Read more.

Wall Street Journal shows less than 25% of college entry test takers are academically ready

2010-08-18T10:37:00.001-07:00

"New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703824304575435831555726858.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3

Best free online post-secondary learning resources, including aggregators

2010-08-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

In this post there are lists of lectures, podcasts, even free online textbooks.

http://lifehacker.com/5615716/where-to-get-the-best-free-education-online

Characteristics of Successful Project Teams

2010-08-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

This is is a worthwhile read: 10 Characteristics of Successful Project Teams

Clearly defined goals
Clearly defined roles
Open and clear communication
Effective decision making
Balanced participation
Valued diversity
Managed conflict
Positive atmosphere
Cooperative relationships
Participative leadership

Also worth reading, 12 Characteristics of Ineffective Project Teams.

Thanks to weknowmore.org for highlighting this.

The Future of Enterprise Technologies in Higher Education

2010-07-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

One of the key educational technology issues in higher education is how to respond to the growth in increasingly sophisticated and easy-to-use cloud-based and consumer technologies. What enterprise technologies should institutions be providing and which ones should be phased out? How do IT and educational technology departments support the cloud-based and consumer technologies? Joshua Kim has provided an interesting analysis of the distribution and breakdown of consumer vs. enterprise technologies in higher education, how this has changed over time, and what the trend is.

He defines "enterprise" technologies as "any that we (the campus technology folks) provide. Consumer technologies are anything that the students arrive on campus with."

Read his analysis.

Alternatives to the Learning Management System

2010-07-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

There is a growing trend by instructors to avoid institutionally-supported learning management systems in favor of using a customized set of cloud-based web tools and resources that might include things like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking tools, document sharing applications, social networking sites, timeline tools and others. Some institutions have even begun to support LMS alternatives. UBC, for example, has installed WordPress and supports faculty who want to use it as an alternative to Vista.

This document from EDUCAUSE, Seven Things You Should Know About LMS Alternatives, outlines the benefits and disadvantages of using an LMS alternative. It concludes, "The use of LMS alternatives may hold the promise of a more student-centric approach, one that encourages students to reach across the boundaries of academic terms and learning disci- plines and to see their education as a coherent whole that they can maintain using a range of applications. By going outside the LMS to use tools that allow for more student engagement, more effec- tive collaboration, and more active learning in general, instructors could establish new expectations for the LMS. "

The iPad Art Movement

2010-07-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

The iPad is promoted as a "revolutionary" mobile computing device...but here's an article that discusses how it is being used to create art.

"Artist David Kassan, along with an emerging community of iPad artists, have put iPad art on the map by using its easy-to-overlook finger painting or “brushes” app. While the vast majority of iPad users may see the app as a simple freehand paint program, artists like Kassan have taken to utilizing the app as a virtual, completely mobile art station. Much like the portable art easels, the iPad can very simply be positioned on a tripod and painted on using the fingers just like a small canvas. And with the various textures available to the app, artists can use a variety of mixed medium techniques to create incredibly life-like, realistic works of art."

Design Principles for Learning Environments

2010-07-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

From Virigina Tech, a useful set of principles to guide the design of higher education learning environments. My only criticism is that, despite the talk of interaction, collaboration and accomodation of different pedgagogies, they seem to be grounded in a fairly presentational view of teaching. Most of the technologies mentioned are presentational in nature and the specific guidelines, specifications and requirements are all related to presentations technologies.

Virtual Patient Cases - The Pine Project

2010-07-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a valuable set of resources for Health Sciences education: "60 public access virtual patient cases released under a Creative Commons licence for open use and reuse. Cases were created working with subject experts in workshops across the province. Using the open-source OpenLabyrinth platform the PINE project has a research and development theme investigating common simulation, gaming and narrative patterns in educational case design. This is facilitated by the use of the Vue topic mapping toolset that allows authors to create visual representations of activities and decision making processes."

It's called the Pine Project (Pathways for Interactive Narrative Education). It's a collaboration between Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Laurentian, McMaster, and Ryerson Universities and Confederation College and it was funded by the now-defunct Inukshuk Fund.

Using Wikis and Podcasts to Move Students from Consumers to Producers

2010-07-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

For the past few years BCIT faculty member, Kathy Vance, has been investigating and experimenting with wikis and blogs in her communications courses. One of her recent projects involved using a wiki in combination with podcasts to help her students make the transition from consumers to producers of workplace communication. Her experiences are the basis for a paper she presented at the Annual Convention of the Association for Business Communication. Using Wikis and Podcasts to Help Students Make the Transition from Consumers to Producers of Workplace Communication reports on her experience of having her students work in teams to post and analyze their own discovered examples of workplace communication and then create podcasts of their answers to job interview questions and written analyses of those answers according to criteria developed in their teams.

Vance concludes that, "Using wikis with the students taught the researcher that the transformation for them was to view themselves as writers trying to communicate with their readers. The researcher felt that this transformation could occur because the students, rather than the teacher, had been gathering, sharing, and analyzing the examples of workplace communication, and thus had gained enough control to define their experience of workplace communication."

Vance's presentation was made possible by funding from the BCIT Instructional Development Committee and the Communications Department.

More on the iPad

2010-06-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Following up on Kyle Hunter's interesting iPad demo at the all staff meeting yesterday, here are two excellent iPad resources:

1. The iPad for Education Revisited
This is an excellent article that discusses the benefits and limitations of the iPad with implications for education (athough from primarily a K-12 perspective)

2. My iPad Delicious Bookmark List
I am using Delicious to bookmark interesting iPad articles and resources.

Google Adds OCR to Docs

2010-06-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

This is cool: a little checkbox will have Google Docs perform OCR on PDFs and image files you upload. "[R]esults aren’t perfect and will nearly always require some editing, but  they’re not terrible, either. Obviously the accuracy of the character  recognition depends on the the quality and legibility of the files  submitted — a high-resolution PDF is likely to yield better results...."

Read more.

What is a Polytechnic?

2010-06-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

BCIT quietly dropped the "polytechnic" brand some time ago but we are still part of the polytechnics group of institutions in Canada. This article by Alex Usher in the Globe and Mail tries to make sense of the fuzzy concept of polytechnic education.

Usher concludes that the future of the polytechnic in Canada is uncertain:
"a lot more meat has to be put on the existing bones to make it viable, and provincial governments need to be convinced to start finding ways to accommodate a "third way" in their educational policies. "

Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network

2010-05-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent article by Jon Mott and David Wiley that argues that learning management systems and their underlying educational model hinder substantial teaching and learning innovation in higher education.

"As currently designed and implemented, not only does the CMS fail to help learners realize their full potential while engaged in formal learning, but it also fails to prepare them to be effective learners throughout their working lives. We contend that the CMS falls short in three important ways. First, the CMS imposes, or at least reinforces, artificial time constraints on learning and learning continuity. It does this by perpetuating the Industrial Era-inspired, assembly line notion that the semester-bound course is the naturally appropriate unit of instruction (Reigeluth, 1999). This student throughput-focused model perpetuates the increasingly false notion that career preparation and learning occur during a discrete, uninterrupted, several-year-long period immediately following high school. Second, while the job marketplace increasingly puts responsibility for learning and authentic, job-related skill acquisition and refinement on the individual, the CMS continues to privilege the instructor as the locus of energy and action in the learning process. The CMS does not afford learners the opportunity to contribute to the learning process in significant ways or to self-organize around learning topics, conversations, or content. Finally, the CMS continues to artificially situate instruction and learning inside walled gardens that are disconnected from the rich and vibrant networks of learners and content in the wider world." - Jon Mott, David Wiley

New Issue of Journal of Distance Education

2010-05-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

A new issue of the Journal of Distance Education has been published.

This issue marks a significant change in the publication model of the journal. It has moved from batch publication to continuous publication which means articles will be published as soon as they are edited and formatted. We will no longer wait until we have a complete issue which often delays publication for several months.

Table of Contents

Articles
Community of Inquiry en e-learning : à propos du modèle de Garrison et d'Anderson
Annie Jézégou

Redesigning Online Learning for Graduate Seminar Delivery
Michael Power, Norman Vaughan

Collaborative Learning in an Online Course: A Comparison of Communication Patterns in Small and Large Group Activities
Namsook Jahng, Wendy S. Nielsen, Eric K. H. Chan

Mobile Learning in Distance Education: Utility or Futility
Marguerite Koole, Janice Letkeman McQuilkin, Mohammed Ally

FYI
Teaching Undergraduate Nursing Courses via Videoconference: All that Glitters is not Gold
Lorraine Mary Carter, Roberta Heale

Book Reviews
Book Review:Leading 21st Century Schools. Harnessing Technology and Achievement
Lorraine Mary Carter

Book Review of Mobile Learning Communities. Creating New Educational Futures
Lorraine Mary Carter

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (2nd ed.)
Lorraine Mercer

U of California Looks to Online Learning

2010-05-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

Does adversity breed innovation? That appears to be the case in California where the economic meltdown and drastic budget cuts in education are forcing institutions to look at new ways serving their students. At the University of Californa system, this means more online learning. The UC system is putting $5 to $6 million into a pilot project to create online versions of courses and fully online degree programs.

Read the Chronicle of Higher Education article and the Huffington Post article.

Canadian Journal of Learning & Technology

2010-05-13T09:36:00.001-07:00

A new issue of CJLT has been published.

Articles
Authenticity in the process of learning about Instructional Design
Jay R. Wilson, Richard A. Schwier
Online professional development conferences: An effective, economical and eco-friendly option
Lynn Anderson, Terry Anderson
Developing the level of adoption survey to inform collaborative discussion regarding educational innovation
Doug Orr, Rick Mrazek
School cultures, teachers, and technology transformation
Andrew D. Kitchenham
Weaving a Personal Web: Using online technologies to create customized, connected, and dynamic learning environments
Jessica McElvaney, Zane Berge

Book Reviews
Distance and Blended Learning in Asia. 2010. Colin Latchem and Insung Jung. New York, NY: Routledge.
by Norman Vaughan
The Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) for Educators, 2008, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
by Dorian Stoilescu, Douglas McDougall

Instructional Designers Wanted

2010-04-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

As a result of resignations and leaves, the Learning & Teaching Centre is looking to fill three vacancies for Instructional Development Consultants. One is a permanent position and two are temporary, one year contract positions.

Candidates should have a full range of recent instructional design, curriculum development, and instructor development skills and experience in a variety content areas and delivery modes.

Details are available on the BCIT HR website. Closing date for applications is May 4.

Multi-tasking Again? Think Twice

2010-04-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Janet Zadina, Brain Research and Instruction Newsletter, Spring 2010:

Multi-tasking Again? Think Twice

Researchers at Stanford, E. Ophir, C. Nass, and A. Wagner investigated whether people who believe that they are effective at juggling multiple media tasks are really effective. They wanted to know whether students who manage several types of simultaneous electronic information, such as several e-mail messages, instant messages, text messages, television, and web pages while doing homework actually are effective. Their study, published in the August 24, 2009 edition of Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences (a prestigious journal) found that multitaskers pay a mental price. According to Nass, "Everything distracts them." The scientists tried to find skills that might help self-proclaimed multitaskers be effective, such as being able to ignore distractions, better memories, better at switching attention, or skill at storing and organizing information. So the scientists tested them on all of those skills. Turns out that the low multitaskers did much better. Those who were high multitaskers got worse and worse as they went along. According to Ophir, "they couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing." While the scientists don't know yet whether these students who keep all these media messages coming at them were born with poor ability to concentrate so they distract themselves with multiple tasks or whether they are damaging their ability to control their attention by engaging in this activity. However, the scientists do conclude that when they multitask their minds are not working as well as they could.

Educational iTouch applications

2010-04-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

This link shows a YouTube video of a PowerPoint that highlights some educational applications already developed for the iTouch and hints towards the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68KgAcx_9jU&feature=related

Cheers,

Peter

Apple, apps . . . and apples

2010-04-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

Does it seem odd that with so much conclusive evidence linking the quality of students' diets to their performance in school, campus food courts and convenience stores offer very little in the way of nutritious foods?

Forget Apple gadgets and apps for a moment: what about the power of the apple to transform education?

Does anyone know of any movement to reform campus eateries to align them with the basic principles of nutrition?

And does anyone know where I can get some fresh-squeezed juice within two miles of this campus?

Above: A wide range of peak-performance salty-transfats to fill you up before your exam. MMMMM . . . transfats!

The I-Pad and the Future of the LMS

2010-04-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

I am betting that the I-Pad will both change the nature of mobile computing and accelerate the trend to more mobile access. In the process I think it will change one of the staples of learning technology - the learning management system. The release of an I-Pad app for Blackboard is an indication of what these changes might look like.

In reviewing the app, Michael Feldstein says:
"Looking at apps like this one, you could imagine LMSs becoming more like Twitter in the sense that everybody uses their own preferred client (whether native or web-based) and mostly ignores the original UI that is delivered by the application maker. It could be possible for students to use an LMS every day but never log into it or look at its interface...The LMS as a monolithic user experience can stay as it is, fade into the background, or disappear entirely, depending on your needs, preferences and philosophy."

Making Informed Technology Decisions in Higher Education

2010-04-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Tony Bates offers some advice for how postsecondary institutions should be preparing mid-level and senior administrators to make informed technology decisions. In What Do Senior Administrators Need to Know to Make Good Technology Decisions, Bates says instead of delegating such decisions to IT professionals, or relying on technology specialists and learning technology managers, "vice-presidents, deans, heads of department and program directors all need to know what questions to ask, have a basic understanding of technology issues, and how these are managed within the institution, and need to understand the implications of their decision-making regarding technology."

After examining 11 case studies with colleague Albert Sangrá for a book on technology integration in higher education, they conclude, ‘Too often, key decisions about technology were made by senior administrators without the necessary knowledge and skills to make an informed decision, or committee recommendations were overturned by other factors (such as competing priorities) that were not well explained or communicated to the committees that had done the work."

One of their key recommendations is that every institution provide newly-appointed administrators with a comprehensive briefing about the institution's technology plans, goals and strategies as well as an overview of how technologies are supported and what is currently in use.

Overall, some excellent suggestions, but what about the administrators already in place at our institutions?

Read the details on Tony Bates' E-learning & Distance Education blog.

E-Learning Project Management

2010-03-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

A special issue of the Journal of Distance Education has been published with a focus on project management of e-learning.

Table of Contents

Managing Innovative Distance Education Projects in a Telework Environment - Mohamed Ally
Making it Real: Project Managing Strategic E-learning Development Processes in a Large, Campus-based University - Mary-Helen Ward, Sandra West, Mary Peat, Susan Atkinson
The Learner’s Place in E-learning Project Management - Janet Bartz
Putting Ourselves in the Big Picture: A Sustainable Approach to Project Management for E-learning - Janet Buchan
The Clash of Cultures: Hybrid Learning Course Development as Management of Tension - Peter Cowie, Mark Nichols
Agile Project Management for E-learning Developments - Iain Doherty
Management and Evaluation of a Pan-Canadian Graduate Training Program in Health Informatics - Marilynne Hebert, Francis Lau
Developing Communities of Practice Around E-learning and Project Management - Ruth Laxton, Andrelyn Cheryl Applebee
A Quality Framework for Continuous Improvement of E-learning: The E-learning Maturity Model - Stephen Marshall
Harnessing the Power of Technologies to Manage Collaborative E-learning projects in Dispersed Environments - Maree Veroncia Gosper, Margot Anne McNeill, Karen Woo
Managing Projects for Real Change? Three Cases of Contextualised Project Management and Embedded Instructor Professional Engagement and Development - Belinda Tynan, Rachael Adlington, Cherry Stewart, Deborah Vale, Rod Sims, Peter Shanahan

Researching the Net Generation: Separating Fact from Fiction

2010-03-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

Elluminate Live presentation: March 17, 10 am PDT
Mark Bullen, Tannis Morgan, Adnan Qayyum

http://elluminate.nait.ca/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1261533799686

Description

Generation is often used to explain and rationalize the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. However, a comprehensive review of the research and popular literature on the topic and an empirical study at one postsecondary institution in Canada suggest there are no significant generational differences in how learners say they use ICTs or their perceived behavioural characteristics. The results of this investigation add to a growing body of research that calls into question the prevailing net generation discourse that argues that generation can be used to explain the use of ICTs in higher education. This presentation will review and analyze the key net generation claims and the growing body of empirical research that contradicts the popular view of the net generation learners as being sophisticated users of digital technologies with unique needs.

Commonwealth of Learning Newsletter

2010-03-13T09:15:00.000-08:00

The latest issue of the Commonwealth of Learning newsletter, Connections has been published:
Contents:
FRONT COVER:
Samoa Workshop Develops VUSSC Maritime Training Materials
PCF6 in India, 14-28 November 2010; Kerala
PCF5 Souvenir DVDs
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb

NEWS:
Excellence in Distance Education Awards; Nominations deadline: 30 April 2010
COL at CHOGM 2009
Commonwealth Welcomes Rwanda
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/News.aspx

COL IN ACTION:
Lifelong Learning for Farmers: Sri Lanka
Honorary COL Advisors Named
COL Launches Blog (www.col.org/blog)
Closer Ties with USP
Open Schools Association Launched
OERs for Open Schools
LIVES: Mobile Phones for Learning
LINUX for IT Managers
Developing Capacity in Radio Scriptwriting in Africa
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/inAction.aspx

IN FOCUS:
Meeting the Growing Demand for Teacher Education
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/InFocus.aspx

FAIR COMMENT:
Time for a Radical Change in Teacher Education
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/FairComment.aspx

FROM OUR PARTNERS:
IGNOU celebrates 25 years
COL Publications in Chinese
Environmental Engineering Courses
Internet Radio in Maldives
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/Partners.aspx

NEW RESOURCES
Mega-Schools, Technology and Teachers: Achieving Education for All (Routledge; Daniel)
Multi-media for Open Schools (NAMCOL)
EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010 (UNESCO)
Good Practice in Information and Communications Technology for Education (ADB)
Guidelines for Broadcasters on Promoting User-generated Content (CBA/UNESCO)
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/NewResources.aspx

PEOPLE:
A Fresh Perspective: Reflections on a Lifelong Learning for Farmers Study Tour in India (Lydia Meister, COL staff)
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/People.aspx

EVENTS:
COL RIM Introduced to African Universities
Case Writing Workshop in Bangladesh
Harnessing the Potential of Media for Learning
Upcoming Events
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/Events.aspx

EDTECH NEWS:
eReaders
Mobile Phone Banking in Africa
Virtual Servers
The Learning Potential of Google Wave
www.col.org/news/Connections/2010feb/Pages/EdTech.aspx

Educational Technology AWARDS!

2010-02-16T10:24:00.000-08:00

Go to http://etug.ca for more information!!

Federal Government Cuts Online Learning Funding

2010-02-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

The federal government has decided to end the Inukshuk Learning Plan program that saw a share of wireless profits channeled into the development of innovative online learning programs.

BCIT received an Inukshuk grant in 2008 to help fund the development of 3D learning objects of the Aerospace curriculum.

Read the Globe and Mail story.

Developing Online Courses

2010-01-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

The following blog site, devoted to the topic of developing online courses at BCIT, is now available and ready to use:

Developing Online Courses

Besides describing the various steps in online course development, there are resources (templates, checklists, etc.) that will help you as you develop your course.

E-Learning Handbook

2010-01-18T13:39:00.000-08:00

The Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education (STRIDE) of Indira Ghandi National Open University has released what looks like an excellent handbook of E-learning. The handbook contains contributions from 26 e-learning experts from around the world including Sanjaya Mishra, Som Naidu, Terry Anderson, Tony Bates, and Stephen Downes.

Publication: International Higher Education

2010-01-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) at Boston College, has a great quarterly publication that features a broad range of perspectives and reports on international education from around the world. The articles are all very short and readable, and together with some very informative twitter updates (bc_cihe) it provides some fantastic take-away information (eg. Mumbai University has 354 affiliated undergrad colleges and over 650,000 students!!). It's also notable and admirable that the newsletter is published in Chinese and Russian, in addition to English.

EDUCAUSE Quarterly on Student Engagement

2009-12-22T15:19:00.000-08:00

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly has been released and it is a special issue with a focus on student engagement: "a rendez-vouse between learning and digital tools and techniques that excite students."

Check it out online.

Using Flash to breath new life into old statistics

2009-12-22T10:56:00.000-08:00

You may remember Hans Rosling from his popular speaking engagements at TED. His team of developers used Flash to take existing data and present it in a way that allows the viewer to easily grasp complex patterns of social change in the developing world. Users can experiment with the interactive data graph online at Gapminder.org.

How might this type of interactive data visualization be utilized by educational institutions with other topics such as Engineering or Nursing? Visualizing stresses on machinery over time? Or the effects of combining medication on a patient?

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education

2009-12-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

A recent article in Wired highlights how iPhones and iPods are being used as learning aids in a pilot program at a Texas university.

No Evidence to Support Use of Learning Style Assessments

2009-12-17T15:21:00.000-08:00

A newly-released review of the literature on learning styles concludes there is no scientific basis for using learning style assessments in education to make decisions about teaching and learning methods.

Writing in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork argue that few of the studies of learning styles used appropriate experimental methods that would allow appropriate conclusions to be drawn about the impact of customizing instruction for particular learning styles. Furthermore, in the few studies that did use appropriate methods, the results do no support the hypothesis that tailoring instruction to learning styles will improve performance.

They conclude that "at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning- styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number."

What's your digital identity?

2009-12-11T12:45:00.000-08:00

Digital Tattoo is a web-based learning resource created at the University of British Columbia to support students in learning how to be proactive about gaining control over their digital identity.

And over at SCoPE, there's a discussion about the many threads digital identity can entail. If we hold back what we share about ourselves digitally, are we creating roadblocks to knowledge sharing and knowledge making? If we post that less that flattering photo, how will it haunt us in the future, and even if it does, will we be forgiven?

Mobile Online Courses

2009-11-17T11:51:00.000-08:00

Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey is implementing an interesting model of mobile online course delivery that uses cloud computing technology and flash drives to deliver the courses. The goal is to make the courses accessible without the need for a constant Internet connection.

Read more about this initiative.

New Issue of Journal of Distance Education Published

2009-11-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

Volume 23.3 of the Journal of Distance Education has been published. Here's the table of contents.

Research Articles
Teachers’ Perspectives on Motivation in High-School Distance Education
Elizabeth Murphy, María A. Rodríguez-Manzanares

Le développement professionnel des enseignants en contexte de mise en réseau de classes de petites écoles rurales : au-delà de l’alphabétisation technologique
Stéphane Allaire, Thérèse Laferrière, Julia Gaudreault-Perron, Christine Hamel

Learning From a Distance: The Experience of Remote Students
Janet Owens, Lesley Ann Hardcastle, Ben Richardson

Mobile Learning in Nursing Practice Education: Applying Koole's FRAME Model
Richard F. Kenny, Jocelyne M.C. Van Neste-Kenny, Caroline L. Park, Pamela A. Burton, Jan Meiers

An Exploration of Burnout Among Online University Professors
Jack Thomas McCann, Roger Holt

Dialogues
A Rose by Any Other Name: Still Distance Education - A Response to D.R. Garrison Implications of Online and Blended Learning for the Conceptual Development and Practice of Distance Education
Terry Anderson

FYI
Far Seeing and Far Reaching: How the Promise of a Distance Technology Transformed a Faculty of Education
George H. Buck

Book Reviews
Traveller, Nomadic and Migrant Education
Lorraine Mary Carter

Internationalizing the Curriculum at BCIT

2009-11-01T15:45:00.000-08:00

BCIT's new strategic vision emphasizes internationalization; in this project, attitudes, strategies, and challenges around internationalization of the curriculum were revealed through surveys and interviews of BCIT instructors and students, as well as a literature review, and phone interviews of faculty at other institutions. Download the Internationalization of the Curriculum at BCIT report (PDF).

Principal investigators: Terry Fuller and Qin Liu

View Framework for Internationalizing the Curriculum presented in Toronto at the Canadian Bureau of International Education (CBIE) conference on November 10, 2009.

Digital Learners in Higher Ed Report Released

2009-10-28T11:42:00.001-07:00

The Phase 1 report of the Digital Learners in Higher Education research project concludes that there is no empirically-sound basis for most of the claims that have been made about the Net Generation. The study reviewed the net generation literature and research and surveyed a random sample of BCIT second year students. The findings show that there are no meaningful differences between Net Generation and non- Net Generation students at BCIT in terms of their use of technology, their behavioural characteristics and learning preferences.

Read the full report.

Factors for Successful Implementation of Online & Blended Learning

2009-10-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

I participated on a panel of postsecondary administrators at the The Future of Online and Blended Learning conference this morning. My contribution focused on the key factors for implementing online and blended learning in campus-based institutions that is sustainable, strategic and programmatic as opposed to ad-hoc and experimental. The factors I identified:

1. Institutional culture
Teaching must be valued and online and blended learning must be part of the strategic direction of the institution.

2. Support
There must tangible support that integrates pedagogical and technical and face-to-face and online. There needs to be a balance between centralized and school-based support.

3. Program and Course Development Processes
These need to be consistent and program design needs to be based identified needs.

See my presentation for more details of these three factors.

Open Ed Tech 2009: A Call to Action

2009-10-21T15:14:00.002-07:00

An official communiqué has now been issued by the Open Educational Technology 2009 summit. The Call to Action provides the context for the summit and the final action items. Interestingly, the eight action items agreed to by the participants have been reduced to five.

1. We must encourage the reuse and remixing of rich media. In order to achieve this, it

must be easier to find, use, and cite pieces of media, especially for educational

purposes. Contextual tools that perform these tasks, co-developed by students as the

end-users, must be created and made available to all. We must also develop ways to

translate rich media, not only between languages, but also between modalities, such

that content produced in a certain geographical area and medium may be accessed

and reused in other places and in other forms. Portability of rich media is key; content

must not be tied to a certain platform for delivery, nor to a specific medium or

environment.

2. We must embrace the full promise of mobile devices as learning platforms. Mobiles

— not simply phones, but all kinds of handheld and portable devices — are a

powerful tool for learning because they are controlled by the holder. With mobile

devices, users can direct their own learning experiences, accessing information where

and when they need it. It is critical that we effect a paradigm shift toward recognizing

mobiles as a primary platform for delivery of educational content — not content that

is translated for use on mobiles, but content that is designed for such use from the

outset. We must actively encourage development practices that remove platform

independency. Likewise, we must advocate for a global mobile network that is as easy

to use, as inexpensive, and even more ubiquitous than the web.

3. We must award credentials based on learning outcomes. It is time to recognize the

learning that occurs outside of courses and beyond classroom walls. The model of

awarding credentials solely on the basis of participation in established programs must

give way to a more flexible design that separates credentials from coursework and

recognizes mastery regardless of where or how it is attained. As more learners choose

alternate means of education, including non-university programs, mentoring,

apprenticeship, and other informal or innovative options, we must accept and

recognize their achievements as equivalent to those gained in more traditional ways.

4. We must enable a culture of sharing. Recognizing that the sharing and reuse of

scholarly work is a key component of the university of the future, we advocate

building a culture of sharing in which concerns about intellectual property, copyright,

and student-to-student collaboration are alleviated and the model of proprietary work

dissolves in favor of a more open one. To this end, we must establish reward structures

that support the sharing of work in progress, ongoing research, highly collaborative

projects, and scholarly publications of all kinds, including reputation systems, peer

review processes, and new models for citation of such content. We must empower

students to share knowledge with one another in ways that are viewed as

collaboration rather than cheating. Assessment models must change to support these

practices. Ultimately, we see a culture of sharing as a crucial piece of the infrastructure

of a scalable educational system that can support the millions of learners who will

participate in it.

5. We must take care that open resources include the context that will enable its use and

understanding. Content out of context is at best easy to misconstrue, and at worst,

too difficult to use. Producers of open content must consider ways of attaching

pedagogical narratives to content that will help provide necessary context. One

approach is the notion of “pedagogical wrappers” — specific guidelines and processes

that can ensure the content is placed in an appropriate context — or in the case of

broadly useful topics, a variety of appropriate contexts. Such wrappers would ensure

that the focus remains on learning objectives and process, rather than on the

technology used to deliver the learning materials.

Read the full communiqué.

Open Education 2009

2009-10-21T15:14:00.001-07:00

Action Steps Towards Open Access Higher Education

2009-10-21T05:34:00.000-07:00

The second Open Educational Technology Summit wrapped up yesterday with the adoption of eight action steps or goals that define a vision for open access education. The event brought together 40 participants from around the world with expertise in different areas of education. We we worked in teams of ten to brainstorm around four themes:

1. Access to high quality education for all, and the role of open content

2. Informal learning, and the role of the mentor in choice making

3. Personalized learning, and learning standards that work across borders

4. Applications of digital video, mobile devices, social media, and the global network

The idea was to think about how these themes could be incorporated into a hypothetical new post-secondary institution with a mandate to provide high quality education in an environment of open access. The event was organized by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and the New Media Consortium.

The summit settled on eight action steps:

1. Annotate, index and share rich media

2. Move to a paradigm of mobiles as personal learning devices/environments

3. Base credentials on outcomes not seat time

4. Enable cultures of sharing

5. Develop pedagogical wrappers for content

6. Support leadership that takes risks

7. Extend multiple literacies/digital literacies

8. Create sabbatical experiences for learners

I think it is probably more useful to think of these as the key themes of a vision for this new institution rather than concrete action steps. Clearly each needs some definition to be meaningful as they have multiple interpretations. They each emerged out of the small group brainstorming so they are based on some specific ideas. Over the coming days, the action steps will be elaborated and defined.

More information about the Summit is available from the Open Ed Tech 2009 Wiki

Medbiquitous: blueprint for medical ed tech

2009-10-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

A lot of time, effort and money goes into developing learning objects for healthcare education. Learning repositories such as MedEdPortal provide the space for objects to be shared. However, differences in formats and platforms create technological barriers to sharability.

Medbiquitous is a group creating a technology blueprint for healthcare education so that universities, healthcare providers, governmental and commercial groups can share healthcare-related learning objects across platforms. They are specifically focusing on:

healthcare learning object metadata
SCORM for healthcare
Virtual Patients
Medical education metrics
activity reporting
competencies

MedBiquitous adheres to the principles of openness and due process for its standards development activities. Educators and industry alike collaborate to develop standards and exchange ideas about innovative uses of Web technologies for healthcare education and communities of practice.

ETUG conference - Cloudworks

2009-10-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

Today is Day 1 of the ETUG conference - all day workshop focussed on learning design led by Grainne Conole, using Cloudworks: http://cloudworks.ac.uk/index.php