Friday, 13 March 2009
Introduction to SCORM elearning standard for non-techies
SCORM is a standard for online elearning materials for a single user – typically self-paced modules. It stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. It’s a very technical specification that governs how the learning materials are created and delivered to learners. The basic idea is that if you create a piece of elearning that is SCORM compliant (the latest version is SCORM 2004) then it can be used in any learning management system (LMS) – so it could be used in or transferred to Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai, Blackboard WebCT, Desire2Learn, SumTotal, or any other VLE.
The first job it defines is how content should be packaged. Data is included in a document called the "imsmanifest", based on XML, which gives the LMS all the information it needs to import and launch the content automatically (without someone having to start editing bits of code). The XML describes the structure of a course both from the learner perspective and as a file structure on the server. Type and name of content is included here, for example.
The second part of the SCORM specification is about data exchange. It specifies how the content ”talks” to the LMS while it is being used. This part of the specification is about delivery and tracking of content. It means that the LMS can find and deliver the content to specific learners and exchange data such as marks and other learner-specific information.
SCORM is a standardized “plug and play” format for elearning modules that was invented by the US Department of Defense but is now acknowledged as the standard across the world. It does not define the look and feel, design or content or even the learning design of the materials in any way. It just makes them easier to use.
Full information on SCORMLabels: e-learning, elearning, learning design, online learning, SCORM, writing elearning
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:27 PM
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
'New and extraordinary insights' at ELESIG
Rhonas Sharpe has made a couple of posts about ELESIG (one of the academic networks I manage the online space for) on her blog. She asked members what benefit they found from the experience of being a member of the community, and got some great answers:From Esyin Chew's "I have experienced something new and extraordinary insights that have challenged my preconceptions about digital literacy and learners' experience through ELESIG.”
to Jana Dlouha's "ELESIG is the working group with great potential for changes in higher (and other) education system as it works with learners' perspective - this is not as usual as it should be! Access to this research (and meta-research, researching the ways of research itself) is available through ELESIG work - often providing free methodological and other resources."
I'm pleased too that Amanda Jefferies was able to say that "The online NING network for ELESIG has been an excellent way to keep in touch 'virtually' with other researchers into the Student Experience and to be inspired by examples of innovative practice. "
More on Rhona's blogLabels: communities of practice, e-learning, elearning, elesig, HE, learner experience, onlne communities, Reach Further, research
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:45 PM
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Top ten elearning tools of 2008
I've posted my top ten social media tools for 2008 on my social media and ebusiness blog at Reach Further.
I guess if I were to do my top ten e-learning tools they would be the same - except I would probably say Moodle instead of Yammer :)Labels: e-learning, elearning, social media, top ten tools
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:47 PM
Monday, 1 December 2008
Technology-enhanced learning in the Teaching and Learning Research Project
Personalisation of learning involves using the responsive and adaptive capabilities of advanced digital technologies
It's all about inclusion – about improving the reach of education and lifelong learning to groups and individuals not well served traditionally. It promotes flexibility and productivity.
What's more important for managers and strategists, it enables institutions to achieve higher quality and more effective learning in affordable and acceptable ways.
The TLRP (http://www.tlrp.org) felt it important that their technology-enhanced learning (note not e-learning) projects were interdisciplinary.
They were intended to support the co-evolution of the understanding of learning & technology – avoiding the problems of communicating between groups who don't normally talk to one another.
The research found that the introduction of innovative technology into learning settings can lead to changed activities – but can also lead to a change in the technology itself. Both the activity and the technology are adapted to serve the needs of teaching and learning. While technology may change the activity to better meet the learning outcome the technology itself must be adapted to meet the needs of learners. In some contexts, technology has been seen as the leading influence in this context, but learning design and activity is just as important if not more so.
The question is: is this appropriation or transformation?
Short thoughts (as LoudTwitter isn't currently doing its job..)
- I have 3 online courses at critical points - two near the end, one halfway through - but is there ever a non-critical point? !
- Anyone have any interesting examples of digital taylorism (including workplace surveillance)?
Labels: e-learning, elearning, learning technologies, personalisaton, technology-enhanced learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:49 AM
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Free international webinar on mobile learning
Yesterday I posted on the Reach Further blog for Blog Action Day on how Online communities bring the world together to share I talked about ELKS, the community of expertise for the UN-GAID run by BDRA at the University of Leicester - a network for e-learning practitioners and researchers to share good practice, ideas and opinions.
ELKS is hosting a free webinar on mobile learning, anyone can become a member (it's free) to join in.Tuesday 21st October from 11 am - 12 noon BST
The webinar will take the form of a 20 minute presentation and a live chat followed by a discussion.
Mobile technologies for education in development contexts - challenging the obvious.
Speaker: John Traxler,
Reader in Mobile Technology for e-Learning, Director, Learning Lab, Conference Chair, mLearn2008 Ironbridge, Associate Editor, International Journal of Mobile & Blended Learning (School of Computing and IT, University of Wolverhampton).In the seminar John will talk about his work on mobile learning in Kenya, the lessons learned and their transferability to other developing country educational contexts.
A short introduction to the seminar:
In 2003, the Government of Kenya announce the introduction of Free Primary Education, leading to an increase in primary enrolment of nearly one million. The subsequent fall of the school population pointed to a retention problem aggravated by over-crowding and under-training. A major challenge was to increase the numbers of trained teachers rapidly whilst at the same time improving the quality of the school system and using it as a vehicle for radical social and cultural transformation across issues that included child-marriage and other tribal practices, perceptions of endemic corruption, poor communications, an over-centralisation and widespread adult illiteracy. Ministry developed an in-service distance learning programme intended to meet needs for 200,000 primary school teachers.
Mobile learning in the form of an SMS service was introduced as part of the in-service programme.
The SMS component underwent field trials in 2006. The system is free to authorised users using a short-code. The messages themselves have a limited and predefined syntax, each type starting with a keyword, and the system has been extended to gather and analyse schools’ enrolment data. At the end of the second trials, the technical and organisational achievements of the system are impressive.
A spin-off of the current system making school exam registration and results nationally more accurate, fast and transparent has already become a self-funding service for Kenyan parents.
This presentation looks these projects and at the confusing insights they provide into the notions of ‘development’.
=====
The webinar is free to ELKS members and staff of member institutions but numbers are limited in the chat session so please book your place by emailing hw74@le.ac.ukMembership of the ELKS community is free and open to e-learning practitioners and researchers around the world: email hw74@le.ac.uk to join.
The webinar will take place in Adobe Connect and online in the ELKS forums
Labels: e-learning, elearning, ELKS, free, mlearning, mobile learning, online seminar, webinar
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:17 AM
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
The importance of tutor / e-moderator presence
For an elearning course led by a tutor to be effective, the tutor presence is one of the most important elements. Showing good e-moderating practice the tutor must:The immediacy of the online environment leads students to expect an instant response. It's a good idea as an online tutor or e-moderator to set expectations at the beginning of a course - e.g., that you will normally respond within 24 hours, or whatever interval is relevant to your course.
- login regularly
- model good online behaviour
- be seen to be present
- post encouraging messages for students
- respond to student queries as quickly as possible
- always sign postings and use people's names
- respond to emails but try to keep learning points within the forum
One of the most useful tools for the teacher is a subscription, such as that offered by Moodle, so that you know whenever a student has posted to your forums (and with Moodle, the content they have posted). This enables you to plan your visits to the course space. If everything is quiet, for example students are working on their own projects or are between e-tivities, then visits do not have to be as often.
Comments from students emphasise the point of tutor presence and encouragement being vital, and appreciated, especially in the early stages of developing the group.
Typical student comments include:Encouraging responses don't have to be long and complicated. The simple can work well. Here are some examples from my courses (which would all be signed with my name):
- "Tutor support has been pretty immediate and I have found that very encouraging."
- "The comments from the tutor have been helpful and encouraging and have prompted reflection."
- "[The tutor] has been really prompt and supportive in replying."
- "Well done, Martin and Louise - keep going. Thank you for your thoughtful postings."
- "We'll be looking at this issue of XXXXX in Week 3
Thank you for bringing up the subject."
- "That's a very interesting point you made, Karen. What would it look like in practice do you think? Does anyone else have any further ideas?"
Labels: e-learning, e-moderating, elearning, online tutoring
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:06 AM
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Read the question!
My son is in the middle of GCSEs and I've been giving him the best piece of advice I know for success in exams - read the question!
It sounds basic, but it is surprising how easy it is, especially in a stressful situation such as an exam, to miss the obvious, to answer the question you wanted to answer or that you thought was being asked. Taking some time to really read and ponder on the question before starting to answer is an excellent tactic - and then halfway through, and at the end, reading through what you've written to see if it really answers the question.
It is a tip worth bearing in mind in many aspects of life, not just exams. In my workshops and courses supporting University and college lecturers in developing elearning, I emphasise again and again how important it is to be absolutely clear and explicit about the task the students should be doing, how they should do it and when they should do it. However, even my own students don't always read the questions I so carefully frame - they often leap in and give their opinion - even if it's not what was asked for!
To some extent, it doesn't worry me - especially with adults, who are in charge of their own learning. Sometimes it can be frustrating, yes, when you've carefully framed a question for discussion and the students go off and discuss something else entirely - but if that discussion furthers their learning, then it's perfectly valid. Yes, it's more work for me to reframe the questions that follow, or to moderate the discussion in a way that brings in my original learning points (because they can't just be abandoned), but that's my job as a tutor.
In the Best Practice Models community discussion on online communities yesterday, we were discussing whether a community of practice can be used for learning, and I made the point that a community of learners is something I aspire to, but that ultimately learning is planned and guided within that community. A community of practice is much more member-led, and the learning is more informal - though obviously it can still be facilitated, one example being that very discussion yesterday in a community of practice that was focused on communities of practice... I'll probably come back to the differences between learning communities and communities of practice in a later post.
There are deep challenges for the tutor in turning the learning over to the learner, but it's wonderful when it all comes together. One encouraging example for me was yesterday when one of my students on our How to Blog course posted exactly the material I had ready for that day's posting. And she hadn't even SEEN the question yet! A learner taking control of learning in a very real way. Wonderful.Labels: ACL, adult learning, BestPracticeModels080604, blogging, e-learning, e-moderating, elearning, emoderating, exams, How to Blog course, informal learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:40 AM
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Model or template for case studies of elearning implementation
As it's something I do a lot, I thought I might try to put together my own model for case studies of elearning implementation.
The logical place to start would seem to be that the case study of an elearning initiative should follow the same structure as the development of the initiative itself – and all implementation of elearning should be based on learning design (instructional design) principles.
So here are the elements to go into my model:
Assessment of needs
Context (the course, the students, the tutors, the topic), background (how did you do things before?), what existing problems or opportunities were to be addressed and why? What was the “vision”? What did you want to be able to do
Design
What was the process of design and what did it take into account? What technologies were available and how were they chosen? what did you decide to do and how was it going to work? Summarise the elearning approach decided upon.
Development
Were there any problems or issues with developing the elearning, was any training needed, or extra resources found, and how was the development stage managed?
Implementation
How was the elearning implemented, what was the process involved, how did you get everything and everyone up and running and working, what further developments are needed
Evaluation
How was the exercise evaluated? what were the tangible benefits (to the student, the department, the staff, the institution)? Did you accomplish your original aims? Summarise and reflect.
The case study should include:
- DATA – quantitative data - is there any data eg from Moodle or other VLE used re logins and number of students engaged?
- Links to URLs / screenshots as appropriate
- Quoted statements from tutors and students
- Supporting documents such as course materials, transcript of discussion, any images or photographs, video or audio, interviews
A very useful resource/template for creating case studies can be found at the CAMEL Tangible Benefits of Elearning wiki. (I keep returning again and again to this project, because tangible benefits are what we are all working towards.)Labels: case studies, case study, e-learning, elearning implementation, embedding elearning, evaluating elearning
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:56 PM
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
eXe - for creating elearning NOTan .exe. file!
The project eXe has been brought to my attention. A New Zealand-based open source authoring application, it aims to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup. Resources authored in eXe can be exported in IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2, or IMS Common Cartridge formats or as simple self-contained web pages. Obviously an alternative to CouseLab which I looked at last week.
I'm testing out both to compare, and will report back in due course (though don't hold your breath as I'm pretty busy and will have to spread this research over some time!)Labels: e-learning, e-learning tools, elearning, elearning tools, eXe, learning technologies, tools
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:38 PM
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Free learning objects to use in your courses
Reusability and tools for designing reusable learning objects
Best resources
CETIS
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/ JISC centre for educational technology and interoperability standardsIntute
http://www.intute.ac.uk/ is a free online service providing you with access to the very best Web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners.
Jorum
Collection of reusable learning objects contributed by UK HE
MERLOT
http://www.merlot.org/Home.po MERLOT is a large, high-quality repository of learning materials for teachers and students in higher education worldwide. Resource types include tutorials, animations, and simulations, as well as books and websites. Each resource is peer-reviewed to ensure that it's of sufficient quality for inclusion. Resources are sorted by categories and sub-categories, with the categories probably of most interest to School staff being Health Science and Biology.RELOAD
http://www.reload.ac.uk/ is a project funded under the JISC Exchange for Learning Programme (X4L). The project focuses on the development of tools that are based on emerging learning technology interoperability specifications. (See also tools section)
Re-usable Educational Software Library
http://www.resl.ac.uk/ Re-usable Educational Software Library
Welcome to RESL - a library of resources to support good practice in the re-use of educational software
Came out of the SoURCE project: http://www.source.ac.uk
RLO-CETL
Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs)
has a showcase of RLOS http://www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk/rlos.htm
Sharing the Load
http://www.ucel.ac.uk/load/index.htm A JISC-funded project exploring the reusability of learning designs. It is creating a learning design taxonomy based on designs implicit in existing collections of mature reusable learning content. Using these designs as a starting point, 'real-world' learning designs will be captured in workshops, and exemplars will be created using the ones that are the most shareable across subjects.TASI - Technical Advisory Service for Images
http://www.tasi.ac.uk A JISC-funded service to help people use digital images for teaching and learning materials. TASI provides online advice documents, image sites, a helpdesk, training, consultancy services, and a mailing list. For help see their website, or email info@tasi.ac.ukWisconsin Online Resource Center
http://www.wisc-online.com/ A large, searchable repository of learning objects in wide range of subjects, all implemented in Flash (as is much of the website). You have to register to use the site, but this is free, and you can deep-link to objects within the site.Tools for creating Reusable Learning Objects
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/ free tools for creating rich, interactive elearning content for the Flash platform.
RELOAD tools (ww.reload.ac.uk)
RELOAD Metadata and Content Packaging Editor
The key aim of the RELOAD project is the implementation of a reference-standard Content Package and Metadata Editor. The RELOAD Editor enables users to organise, aggregate and package learning objects in standard IMS and SCORM content packages tagged with Metadata (in various subsets) and vocabularies. Also supported is Level A Learning Design. The editor page links to all the downloads and further information.
RELOAD Learning Design Editor
The Learning Design Editor (based on the IMS Learning Design specifications) allows the creation of re-usable "Pedagogical Templates" allowing the user to define a set of Learning Objectives, Activities and Learning Environments. These templates can be re-purposed with the user's own content to create on-line Learning Design compliant resources. The LD Editor is available from the download page.
RELOAD SCORM Player
Also available is an ADL SCORM Player. This toolkit allows the playing of SCORM 1.2 packages within a developer edition of the Player. The player page links to all the downloads and further information.
Repositories
List- http://www.jimmyr.com/free_education.php
AEShareNet. Australian Web site that connects those looking for learning objects to those who have them, with an online facility for licensing.Apple Learning Interchange. Apple Computer's effort to encourage the interchange of ideas related to learning objects with "a museum of online exhibits created by educators for educators." http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/
Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute.
http://cnx.org/content/Consortium-based Portal for Online Objects in Learning (POOL) formed to develop an infrastructure for learning object repositories. It addresses the issues of building the architecture and makes its tools available for download. http://ilearn.senecac.on.ca/lop/
Internet Archive’s library of Open Educational Resources and university lectures. - http://www.archive.org/details/education
Maricopa Learning Exchange (MLX). Maricopa Community Colleges' (AZ) "electronic warehouse of ideas, examples and resources" (more than 500) presented as "packages" of reusable information.
MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htmNational Digital Learning Repository
http://www.ndlr.ie/
The NDLR is a HEA funded pilot project between all Irish Universities, Institutes of Technology and their affiliated colleges. The NDLR is an online resource bank to support collaboration and sharing of teaching and learning resources within the Irish Third Level Education sector.OER Commons is a teaching and learning network, from K-12 lesson plans to college courseware, from algebra to zoology, open to everyone to use and add to.
http://www.oercommons.org
Open-Of-Course is a multilingual portal for free online courses and tutorials. (Biult in Moodle)
http://www.open-of-course.org/
The OpenLearn website gives free access to course materials from The Open University. The LearningSpace is open to learners anywhere in the world.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/Podcasts
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php
SMETE Digital Library. RLOs assembled by the Society for Mathematics, Engineering and Technical Education for students studying in those fields.
Stngyscholar Learn for free on the Web
http://stingyscholar.blogspot.com/
Tufts University OpenCourseWare
Educational content, tools, and infrastructure to educators, students, and self-learners.
http://ocw.tufts.edu/TuftsOER
Wisc-Online. http://www.wisc-online.com/Collection of open-access RLO's produced by higher education institutions in Wisconsin, plus guidelines for creation and use in instruction.
Tools for sharing
There are tools that already exist for sharing your materials. These include:
* Open SLedware an initiative of SL educators to make course content accessible to all
* List of 2.0 Apps
* TeacherTube (think YouTube for teachers)
* Zoho show
* Common Content: a open catalog of Creative Commons licensed content
* Poll Daddy
Labels: e-learning, elearning tools, free elearning, reusable learning objects, rlos
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:38 PM
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Women bloggers
Janet Clarey has blogged this month about Women in the edublogosphere 2007
She says "When I first started blogging early in ‘07 I felt there weren’t that many female bloggers."
Which is so sad - I've been blogging since 2003, and I know a lot of women, especially in the new media and education areas who've been blogging that long. Looks from Janet's list that she now knows plenty of women edubloggers too :) I'm looking forward to surfing through her list and adding to my feeds.
Meanwhile we are sorting out speakers for a conference of women bloggers in Leeds on 12th June, and there's no shortage of people to approach - though if you have a suggestion for a speaker I'd be delighted to hear it.Labels: blogging, conference, e-learning, edublogging, educational blogs, Leedswomenontheweb, women bloggers
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:46 PM
Monday, 14 January 2008
Beyond the Campus: Learning Futures Conference at Leicester
The Learning Futures conference at the University of Leicester this year, run by the Beyond Distance Research Alliance (BDRA) had the theme Beyond the Campus. Here are some first thoughts:
Tony Bates emphasised that the most effective model for implementing e-learning in an institution was not a top-down edict (although strong vision, leadership and comitment is vital) nor individual adopters or champions beavering away alone, but a department-based team effort - just as we found in implementing Carpe Diem workshops during the Adelie project.
Phil Candy showed us some great quotes about the Internet, the Web and e-learning including a lovely Buddhist quote (thanks to Lindsay Jordan for the link).
The individual sessions held some gems. I found out all about the Fundacao Bradesco, an educational organisation funded by a bank (more on that later) with some fabulous e-learning going on in deprived areas of Brazil. Also a great project in Leicester's History Department based on the principles of ARG.
One of my favourite sessions was the drama workshop visioning workshop on Wednesday afternoon, led by Paula Salmon. We discussed and played games around three scenarios, My Very Own University, University of the World and University of Earning and Learning. At the end we split into three groups to create a playlet representing each of the three scenarios, which were videoed. Look out YouTube!
A very frendly conference with lots of food for thought and a great standard of participant. I liked the identity badge lanyards which clicked apart to reveal a flashdrive: a great idea that they had at ALT too (from Wimba, thank you). I just wish my flash drive hadn't fallen out at some point, one can always do with an extra one...Labels: BDRA, conference, e-learning, learning futures
posted by Helen Whitehead 2:29 PM
Monday, 17 December 2007
Edublog awards 2007
While I've been away with a virus (head rather than computer...) the winners of the Edublog 2007 awards have been announced. They are a great selection of blogs. I was intrigued by the "most influential blog post" which is the one by Karl Fisch back in 2006 which started the "ShiftHappens" meme.
We are about to show the latest version of the video to the staff at an FE College as part of an inspirational e-learning day. I hope they find it as intriguing as the 10 million people or so who have already seen versions of the presentation or video.
It's always as interesting to check out the nominated blogs as well as they winning ones, and some nominated blogs have won in the past...Labels: awards, blogs, e-learning, FE, Fisch, Shift Happens, shifthappens
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:24 PM
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
E-learning Advent Calendar
I've been writing less in the blog at the moment - lots of effort is going into the ELKS "Advent of Technology" Calendar, full of people's favourite tools for teaching and learning with technologies.
You don't even have to be a member to see the calendar :)
DIRECT LINK to calendar
Today's entry (December 11th): Google and Google ScholarA good search engine has to be among the “best tools”. And can I be controversial and recommend Google Scholar too? Although it’s nothing like as good as the databases and services your institutional library undoubtedly offers, I find it’s a great place to start my literature search to get a bit of a feel for the subject and its primary exponents.
It’s surprising how many students don’t know how to use a search engine properly, or how to evaluate the results when they get them. It’s something that a group of us at ELKS have started creating guidelines for. Hopefully the guidelines can be used by any tutor for any class where students need to search the web (there’ll be a section on Wikipedia as well… but that’s a ‘whole other story’ !).
Labels: advent calendar, e-learning, elearning, Google, learning technologies
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:34 AM
Monday, 3 December 2007
Advent (of technology) calendar
This December at ELKS (the community of expertise which I manage for the UN's Global Alliance for ICT in Development initiative) we've adapted a December tradition to produce an "Advent of technology" Calendar - with a resource, tool or tip about e-learning for every day of December.There are 30 days to fill - so we need your contributions! Tell us what tool (including software, hardware or gadgets), or what resource (such as website), or what conference, journal, model of best practice, or even person has greatly impacted on your practice as a teacher using technology. What's been the greatest boon? What changed your life? Well - at least what changed your teaching practice, at least a little!
Email helen.whitehead AT le.ac.uk with your suggestions to add to our calendar, the sooner the better. If you can accompany it with a photo related to your location (as square as possible), that would be even better. You'll see December 2nd is a view up the Attenborough Tower at the University of Leicester, where the Beyond Distance Research Alliance (where ELKS is based) has its offices.
There's also a discussion - please let us know what your tool, resource etc. means to you.
To find the Advent Calendar go to ELKS and click on Showcase in the left hand menu. Click on the Advent of technology Calendar then double-click on today's picture and "view details" to see the resource behind it. You don't have to login to see the calendar.
If you have an interest in the role of e-learning in development, and would like to become a member of ELKS, just get in touch with me and I'll send you a password. helen.whitehead AT le.ac.uk
Labels: calendar, e-learning, elearning, elearning tools, ELKS, learning futures, online communities, UN, UN-GAID, universities
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:39 AM
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Accessibility of e-learning materials - why bother (Moodle)?
Why should educational developers and learning technologists make efforts to ensure their e-learning materials are accessible?There is of course the legal side of things in the UK: The Disability Discrimination Act, Part IV 2001(SENDA) requires responsible bodies to anticipate the requirements of disabled people or students and make appropriate adjustments. This applies to all the interactions a student makes with a school, college or University, and includes every element of course delivery.
More importantly, it is about equality of opportunity. One of the reasons I am so passionate about e-learning and online learning is that it is accessible to those who for various reasons cannot access learning in person - thos who cannot get to a face-to-face class by reason of disability, lack of transport, work commitments, young children, etc. etc.
While physical accessibility for those with visual, hearing or motor problems is obviously important, as well as provision for those with dyslexia, clear and unambiguous language should be used to support those whose first language is not the one you are teaching in.
I strongly believe also in ensuring intellectual accessibility - avoiding unecessary jargon, vocabulary and style that excludes some learners. Each subject discipline has a level which it expects its students to reach but one should not make language etc. unnecessarily difficult to understand. There are benefits to all students in clear and unambiguous instructions, and a functional and well-designed navigation and layout.
Moodle, for example, offers the following accessibility features:When creating pages within any VLE, sensible rules to follow are those for ensuring accessibility of any web page.
- Conforms to XHTML 1.0 standards
- Uses stylesheets to control layout.
- Optional stylesheet selector can be implemented.
- Auto-detection - for use on mobile phones, TV sets, consoles and handheld devices.
- If content is web-based using HTML mark-up, then learning content can be used with Screen Readers.
- Works on multiple operating systems and browsers.
- Use simple presentation and design
- Provide meaningful text to hypertext links and a text alternative to images (Moodle forces this)
- Create HTML web pages rather than using proprietary document formats (e.g. Word documents)
- Avoid defining text appearance using tags and font colours
- Remove any unecessary menus, blocks and columns on the page
- Avoid large blocks of italicised text, as these can be hard to read for most users
- Use simple table formatting and avoid creating tables within tables
- Within the course, where possible, open links in the same window
- Include an option for students to compile and print materials
Labels: accessibility, e-learning, VLE
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:27 AM
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Discovery: topicality of e-learning materials
I love it when materials in a course turn out to be relevant and topical. In my Season of Inspiration writing course at the moment we are this week writing about caves and other underground spaces.
We already have great inspiration from some fabulous photographs from Nottingham's Papplewick Pumping Station Victorian underground reservoir on the day it opened to the public, and Aborigine cave art from my co-tutor's Australian property.
Today, the BBC reports on the discovery of what is thought to be the Lupercal, a mythical Roman cave, the long-lost underground grotto where ancient Romans believed a female wolf suckled the city's twin founders.
And here is the e-tivity which we have offered to our writing participants this week...
E-tivity 7.6: Discovery
Purpose: To write about the thrill of discovery.Task: Something marvellous is found in a cave or subterranean space, it could be rock art, engravings, smuggled treasure, prehistoric artefacts, a mummified animal or person. Describe your discovery and its significance to the local population. What will the discovery mean to those who found it? Will this important discovery end happily or will it end in conflict? Write a poem or story about this marvellous discovery.
Respond: Give a reasoned critique to at least two of the stories posted.
Labels: cave, discovery, e-learning, e-tivities, elearning, etivities, learning design, online writing courses, underground, writing
posted by Helen Whitehead 7:48 AM
Friday, 16 November 2007
Do you use Salmon's 5-stage model or E-tivities framework?
Do you use e-learning or learning technologies such as discussion forums etc. in teaching?
Have you used or adapted Salmon's 5-stage model or e-tivities framework in your teaching? Or have you used it at any time in the past few years?Gilly Salmon's 5-stage model and e-tivities framework have been used successfully to support learning in a variety of contexts, courses, disciplines, types and levels of education from schools to Masters to continuing professional development.
References
I am doing some research to find out how they have been applied in learning and teaching across the world in the last ten years. We know that teachers have used them in a variety of different ways, adapting and developing the models to suit their own purposes. As part of the background to a new book, we would like to find out about the models in practice. The general results of this research will be made available to all practitioners.
If you have any good examples of using the 5-stage model or e-tivities,
please would you take my survey?
http://www2.le.ac.uk/.../smeltsurvey
E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online
Gilly Salmon, (2004) Routledge Falmer
ISBN: 0415335442
lifelong learning, m-learning, mobile learning, online courses, online learning, online tutoring, technology, universities, wiki-tivities, wikitivities
E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning
Gilly Salmon, (2002) Routledge Falmer,
ISBN: 0749431105Labels: collaborative working, e-facilitation, e-learning, e-learning tools, e-moderating, education, elearning, learning and teaching, learning design, learning technologies
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:48 PM
Monday, 5 November 2007
Links for week commencing 5th November
The Bazaar - Home
http://www.bazaar.org/
The Bazaar - portal for Open Source for Learning in Europe
The Bazaar is a community portal for people who want to use, exchange and share Open Source Software and resources to support learning.
Distance Learning through Telematics
http://www2.plymouth.ac.uk/distancelearning
The University of Plymouth's e-learning website, containing regularly updated pages of research, projects, events, personnel and news on e-learning, web 2.0 and distance education. Also holds course content including handouts, workshop materials and PowerPoint presentations for free download.
World map of social networks
http://valleywag.com/networks-273201.php
A map of the world, showing the dominant social networks by country, according to Alexa. Very different in different countries. Facebook has sway in the UK, but hi5 is the most international network…
Coming Of Age: An Introduction To The NEW Worldwide Web
by Terry Freedman et al.
http://fullmeasure.co.uk/Coming_of_age_v1-2.pdf
Ebook (2006)Labels: e-learning, ebook, elearning, links, social networking
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:37 AM
Monday, 22 October 2007
Links for week commencing 22nd October
Some interesting social software for learning:
Ecto
http://www.ectolearning.com/
Their blurb: "Ecto is a hosted, open networked Personal Learning Environment. Use Ecto to transform learning into an interactive, collaborative, and student centered activity. Ecto is the only learning management system built from the ground up on the principles and architecture of social software."
It's an online service and at the moment you can join for free although it's a commercial offering. At the moment it looks pretty vanilla - it seems to be social networking aimed at learning and teaching, nothing really new about it.
ELGG
http://elgg.org/
Elgg is an open source social platform based around choice, flexibility and openness: a system that firmly places individuals at the centre of their activities. ELGG is being used by a LOT of universities and educational organisations, but you do need a server to run it on so it's not a solution for individuals.Labels: e-learning, education sector, elearning, FE, HE, online learning, social networking, universities, VLE, web applications
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:20 AM
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Drivers to e-learning
The reasons why University staff are considering e-learning in their courses tend to be as varied as the disciplines they come from and almost as varied as the individuals concerned.
Some of the drivers are:
- from above, e.g., Department or Faculty head: "our modules should use the VLE more";
- from students - our students are arriving more e-literate and they will want to use the kind of digital environments and resources that they are used to at school;
- assessment - can e-assessment be more effective or time-saving?
- new course - time to use some of this e-learning stuff;
- have been using the Web so far and want to find out if the VLE can be used instead;
- have heard about wikis and blogs: how can I use them?
- distance learning courses - for which there are obvious advantages in using e-learning - but what does it mean?
- competition - similar courses have more e-learning - are we falling behind?
- there is a particular topic in the course that students have trouble with - can we solve this with e-learning (answer - it might or might NOT be appropriate!)
Labels: e-learning, e-learning drivers, elearning, learning, learning and teaching
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:40 PM
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
What does 'embedding' mean?
One of the "hot topics" at the HEA Pathfinder workshop in York that I attended with the University of Leicester's Adelie project was the definition of "embedding" - which was important to the description of what the Pathfinder pilots were asked to do.
How can an institution measure embedding? What does it mean - is it the provision of technology or something much more radical relating to attitudes and blends of learning opportunities?
For me: it is about embedding skills relating to learning technologies into lecturers' (and other staff's) everyday practice of designing, delivering and facilitating learning opportunities.Labels: Adelie, e-learning, elearning, embedding e-learning, HE, online learning, Pathfinder
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:19 PM
Thursday, 4 October 2007
E-learning is greener than conventional learning!
The University of Leicester is having a Big Green Week from October 15-19 and various events are taking place. In another environmentally friendly initiative, soon all our litter bins will be removed from our offices and we will have to walk to the nearest recycling bin. (May I say that I am very keen on recycling - and re-using for that matter.) However, I'm not sure what we are supposed to do with non-recyclable waste like my lunchtime banana skin and boiled-egg shell (let's not go any further into detail!). Tempted to throw them out of the window... I'm on the 18th floor...
Anyway, here in the Beyond Distance Research Alliance we were wondering what we could do to contribute to the week and we decided that as e-learning champions we are probably already promoting green education. But is e-learning really more energy efficient?
The Open University have proved e-learning is green (bit of an old study, but I would think computers are even more energy efficient now...)
"a study by the Open University found that on average 'distance/open learning courses used 90% less energy consumption and produced 90% fewer CO2 emissions than the conventional campus-based university courses.' The major factors in this fairly huge saving were travel and the energy consumption associated with housing students on campus."
http://www3.open.ac.uk/events/3/2005331_47403_o1.pdf
Hurrah!Labels: Big Green Week, e-learning, elearning, environment, recycling
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:20 AM
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
Integrating Web 2.0 - some doubts
Here are some issues that have been mentioned to me (by academic staff) about integrating Web 2.0 technologies into institutional VLEs, and how they might be overcome.
- Institutional IT policy can be a barrier - you don't know what's available.
Fear of "what people will say"- How to cope with the student who goes "off the rails"
- Managers fear adverse comments about their services and don't see it as constructive.
- Can cause horrendous" problems in mature learners who aren't familiar with the technology.
- Students (esp. mature students) worry about "breaking" the technology.
Labels: challenges, e-learning, elearning, issues, learning design, learning futures, learning technologies, student expectations, Web 2.0
posted by Helen Whitehead 1:52 PM
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
How they do mobile learning in Japan...
This is a 2D barcode of the URL of the ELKS community.
Apparently these barcodes are all the range in Japan where people use their web-enabled mobile phones to read them and then surf to the URL. They are used, e.g., on a poster for a radio station to encourage people to listen, on the doors of public libraries to direct users to a page that shows opening hours, or on tutor's offices to direct students to a page that shows opening hours.
As 100% of students have web-enabled mobile phones and data transfer is cheap, they can be used for all sorts of learning applications from voting on which of the videos shown in the lesson they preferred, to assessment quizzes, to sending a question randomly to one of the students in the class (of course - you could just point at one!).
Thanks to Keiso Katsura for introducing me to these tools in a seminar at Leicester University yesterday.Labels: e-learning, elearning, Japan, Keiso Katsura, learning technologies, mobile learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:58 PM
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Lessons for ELKS from ALT-C...
I'm the convenor of the ELKS community of practice - that's E-Learning and Knowledge Sharing- and it's a community of expertise in e-learning in HE, which is run for the UN's GAID (Global Alliance for ICT in Development) initiative by BDRA out of the University of Leicester. It has several other institutional founders around the world (4 continents in fact!), and with an Australian Omnium web interface. So there were several people and sessions at ALT which were of interest to me wearing this hat, particularly as one of the strands was e-learning and internationalism.
In a session yesterday afternoon Alannah Fitzgerald spoke about social computing and the sustainable support of learning communities. The community she spoke about met the needs of a very specific niche group - volunteers and workers in micro-credit and micro-lending organisations based on Professor Mohammed Yunus' Grameen Bank model. I guess an international version of the credit unions we have in the UK.
They've created a network of resources etc. aggregating information about successful projects for others to learn, including real and fictional case studies, guiding questions and reflective practice. Really helping to empower individuals and their communities and I'd love to have her talk about to the ELKS community.
I hadn't heard of the software she mentioned to aggregate metatags from the social network - SUPRGLU, must check it out. A feed aggregator for blogs relevant to ELKS would be a great idea for our community.
Karen Robinson discussed her study about how cultural and linguistic backgrounds of students affected their use of e-learning and whether technology could support them better. Her story of the student pasting other people's contributions and his own into a translator before he could post on the forum alerted me to that possible issue in ELKS discussions being entirely in English (though I am thinking of adding Spanish to the mix in some way).
Also, the use of discussion boards requires a higher level of English than listening to lectures and writing essays: and there can be cultural differences in how a forum (for example) actually looks (colour of the background!), let alone the culture of behaving in the online space.
Tore Hoel also had a message for me - "Syndication and aggregation work better that overarching frameworks or platforms." In other words, people don't necessarily want an all-singing all-dancing community that is a new, separate and time-consuming place they have to go and visit - even unique content isn't necessarily appropriate - it may be better to provide an aggregate of information that is appropriate to our project in the ways that members already like to interact.
This morning I heard Marc Dupuis talking about a European virtual campus - lots to learn here about working together, and if within Europe is difficult - going global is even harder! "European collaboration is difficult," he stated - and I have to admit from my experience of EU projects I concur. Copyright and intellectual property are of particular importance across institutions and nations - must get that issue clear for ELKS. Linguistic differences cannot be underestimated. I wonder if lessons from a European project like this can be extrapolated to global collaborative projects?
Chris Douce of the Open University talked about the plethora of standards across Europe for e-learning - so what will the situation be like when you add in the rest of the world? How difficult might it be for us to provide universal simple learning such as online tutoring skills courses or learning objects?
Paul Bacsich reminded us that teaching may be in English but "secret learning" may well be in the students' native language(s) - Arabic in the case of the Arab Open University. He also gave us compelling reasons not to have more than 9 chapters in a report - sage advice!
As next year's ALT theme is about the digital divide, I think it's probably a cue to offer a short paper about ELKS, if we're still going at that point!Labels: ALT-C2007, altc2007, communities of practice, conference, e-learning, ELKS, global, internationalism, UN, UN-GAID
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:06 PM
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Wikis - advantages and disadvantages
A wiki is a universally-editable website with minimal formatting. The word comes from the Hawaiian wiki-wiki which means "quick".
Advantages of using wikis in learning and teaching
- No special software needed
- Immediate posting of content
- Low graphics content - fast loading
- Simple or complex hypertext structure as required
- Can have email notification of new content
- Can track changes
- Can have associated discussions
- Can easily link to other wikis and websites
- If students do not like what they see, such as the approach taken by others, they may be more inclined to participate in order to propose an alternative approach.
- Facilitates collaborative and constructivist approaches to learning
- Students can see what they are learning
Although it is "new" technology in learning, wikis could soon move into the "Pets' Corner" or familiar area of the Media Zoo.
Disdvantages of using wikis in learning and teaching
- Students reluctant to make public unfinished working documents
- Students reluctance to let others contribute changes.
- Students very competitive about changes
- All content modifiable including pages for instructions, handouts etc.
- Simultaneous edits are allowed but not successful
- No standardised markup/spellcheck - formatting is basic
- No equations or drawing
- Institutional wikis vs external wikis: using external wikis brings problems of copyright, ownership, continuity, etc.
- Institutional IT policies: still relies on an infrastructure that enables the permissions to be set appropriately (e.g., some universities allow wikis to be editable only by those with University accounts)
- The wiki is forever evolving.
- Not really appropriate for tracking contributions or discussion, following individual students
- When new to both tutors and students lack of familiarity causes problems: can cause confusion and lack of clarity
- Staff opposition to student collaboration
- Research shows that on moving to an online environment, even groups that already know one another well face-to-face have to go through the access and socialisation stages, albeit in a more abbreviated manner, to be able to work together collaboratively in an effective manner.
(For reference list see this post)
Labels: e-learning, elearning, HE, online learning, wiki, wiki bibliography, wiki-tivities, wikis, wikitivities
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:01 AM
Monday, 20 August 2007
See you at ALT-C
I will be attending the ALT-C conference : ALT-C, Beyond Control, Learning technology for the social network generation in Nottingham on 4-6 September 2007.
I'll be there with my colleagues Ale Armellini, Sylvia Jones and Gilly Salmon. We'll be running a practical workshop on Wiki-tivities. I'm writing it now... it should be a good experience.
It's from 4-5.30pm on Wednesday 5th September.
http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/timetable/abstract.php?abstract_id=1155
See you there?
Also, my old colleagues at NCSL are running a Pre-conference Workshop: on NCSL's Tools for eLearning at the Learning and Conference Centre, Nottingham. Lunch from 12:30. Starts 13:00, ends 16:00.
More at the conference websiteLabels: ALT, ALT-C, ALT-C2007, conference, e-learning, Nottingham, wikis, workshop
posted by Helen Whitehead 1:36 PM
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Uses of wikis in education
Contrary to the usual practice on a blog, I am going to use this post to assemble links to published papers, resources, etc. on the subject of wikis. (This may in fact be more of a wiki-type activity itself, except that I am the only person contributing.)
This post will therefore change as links and resources are added.
McAlpine, M. (2007) The use of Wikis for Assessing Collaborative Learner Achievement Proceedings for 11th CAA Conference 2007
Phoebe Project. A practitioner-focused environment to support design for learning, Phoebe is a prototype online tool designed to encourage teachers in colleges and universities to explore new approaches and tools in their pedagogy. (A wiki based tool for designing a learning session.) From Oxford University
http://phoebe-app.conted.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/
Augar, N., Raitman, R. & Zhou, W. (2004). Teaching and learning online with wikis. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 95-104). Perth, Australia. 5-8 December. Accessed August 2007 http://www.ascilite.org.au/.../augar.html
PDF READ
"In an attempt to remedy the lack of interaction noted in online discussion groups in previous years, a traditional icebreaker exercise used in classroom situated tutorials at Deakin University was adapted for use on a wiki"
Bergin, J. (2002) Teaching on the Wiki Web. In Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (pp. 192-195). Aarhus, Denmark. 24-28 June 2002 ISBN:1-58113-499-1 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=637610.544473 (abstract only not full text)
Proceedings of the 2006 international symposium on Wikis, 2006, Odense, Denmark 21-23 August 2006 ISBN:1-59593-413-8 http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?...=88179999 (abstract only not full text)Hao-Chuan Wang, Chun-Hung Lu, Jun-Yi Yang, Hsin-Wen Hu, Guey-Fa Chiou, Yuch-Tzu Chiang, Wen-Lian Hsu : Inst. of Inf. Sci., Acad. Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan; An empirical exploration of using Wiki in an English as a second language course Advanced Learning Technologies, 2005. ICALT 2005. Fifth IEEE International Conference on
Publication Date: 5-8 July 2005, p 155- 157, ISBN: 0-7695-2338-2
Accessed August 2007 from http://iasl.iis.sinica.edu.tw/...Course.pdf
Their finding of a significant, but inverse, relation between students' editing usage and academic performance challenges some idealistic hypotheses that Wiki technology is "naturally beneficial" to learning. They believe that building an instructive or constructive instructional model with Wiki in a rigorous manner requires more empirical evidence.Desilets, A. and Paquet, S., Wiki as a tool for Webbased collaborative story telling in primary school: A case study.
Forte, A.; Bruckman, A. From Wikipedia to the classroom: exploring online publication and learning, Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Learning sciences, Bloomington, Indiana, p.182 - 188, June 27-July 1 2006, ISBN:0-8058-6174-2 http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?...27
In Proceedings of Ed-Media 2005, (Montreal, Canada, June 27-July 2, 2005). Retrieved August 2007 from https://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/...NRC-48234.pdf
Interesting look at how primary aged children can create a collaborative hypertext story, with enough detail for tech-savvy teachers to use for themselves. READ
Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/forte-bruckman-icls06.pdf
READ "suggest that collaborative publishing on a wiki offers an interesting model for creating authentic classroom writing activities and can be a powerful tool for constructing knowledge."
Parker, Kevin R., Chao, Joseph T., Wiki as a Teaching Tool,
Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, Volume 3, 2007, p. 57-72 Retrieved August 2007 from
http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p057-072Parker284.pdf
READ "Reflective learning requires structured approaches that enable students to reflect upon their learning and to understand their own learning processes. An essential part of reflective learning is that learners should be encouraged to reflect on their knowledge and make it explicit. Wikis allow this reflection to be done collaboratively, moving closer to a fully social constructivist mode of learning."
Boulos, M.N.K., Maramba, I., & Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts: A new generation of Webbased tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education, BMC Medical Education, 6(41).
Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6920-6-41.pdf
"Wikis in particular actively involve learners in their own construction of knowledge" in a study of virtual collaborative clinical practice and education.
Schaffert, S., Bischof, D., Buerger, T., Gruber, A., Hilzensauer, W. & Schaffert, S. (2006). Learning with semantic wikis. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Semantic Wikis - From Wiki To Semantics (SemWiki2006), Budva, Montenegro: June 11-14, 109-123. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wastl.net/...SemWikiLearning.pdf
"The collaborative features of wikis make them particularly well suited for cooperative
learning environments"
Schwartz, L., Clark, S., Cossarin, M. & Rudolph, J. (2004). ISSN: 1492-3831 Technical Evaluation Report 27. Educational wikis: Features and selection criteria.
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(1). Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/163/692 (PDF)
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/163/244 (web) READ "wikis can provide an efficient, flexible, user friendly and cost-effective interface for collaboration, knowledge creation and archiving, and student interaction."
Leuf, B. and Cunningham, W. (2001), The Wiki Way: Quick collaboration on the web. Boston:
Addison Wesley.
creators of the original wiki concept
Godwin-Jones, R. (2003). Blogs and wikis: Environments for on-line collaboration. [Electronic
Version]. Language, Learning and Technology, 7(2), 12-16.
suggests that wikis may be ideal for building communities of practice by creating a collective repository of expertise in a subject area, which is refined over time by the contributions and problem-solving of interested individuals. It is this function that distinguishes communities of practice from other online communities, such as chat groups or bulletin boards. See also PROWE project
De Pedro, X., Rieradevall, M., Lopez, P., Sant, D., Pinol, J., Nunez, L., et al. (2006). Writing documents collaboratively in Higher education (I): Qualitative results from a 2-year project study. Congreso Internacional de Docencia Universitaria e Innovacion (International Congress of University Teaching and Innovation), Barcelona: July 5-7. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://uniwiki.ourproject.org/...Congressos
Wikis enhance asynchronous communication and cooperative learning among students, and promote cooperation rather than competition
Reinhold, S. (2006). WikiTrails: Augmenting wiki structure for collaborative, interdisciplinary learning. Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, Odense, Denmark: August 21-23, 47-58.
Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/proceedings/p47.pdf
Wikis will facilitate not only communication but also the collaborative finding, shaping, and sharing of knowledge, all of which are essential properties in an educational context.
Mader, S. (Ed.) (2006). Using wiki in education, a wiki-based book (some chapters free, some fee-based). Retrieved August 2007 at
http://www.wikiineducation.com
Mader, S. (2006). Ways to use wiki in education. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://www.wikiineducation.com/...education
Fountain, R. (2005). Wiki pedagogy. Dossiers technopedagogiques. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.profetic.org/dossiers/...110
Website with some interesting examples
Duffy, P. & Bruns, A. (2006). The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities. Proceedings of the Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, Brisbane: September 26. Retrieved August 2007 from
https://olt.qut.edu.au/...Duffy_OLT2006_paper.pdf
READ Lists several possible educational uses of wikis:
• Students can use a wiki to develop research projects, with the wiki serving as ongoing
documentation of their work.
• Students can add summaries of their thoughts from the prescribed readings, building a
collaborative annotated bibliography on a wiki.
• A wiki can be used for publishing course resources like syllabi and handouts, and students
can edit and comment on these directly for all to see.
• Teachers can use wikis as a knowledge base, enabling them to share reflections and
thoughts regarding teaching practices, and allowing for versioning and documentation.
• Wikis can be used to map concepts. They are useful for brainstorming, and editing a
given wiki topic can produce a linked network of resources.
• A wiki can be used as a presentation tool in place of conventional software, and students
are able to directly comment on and revise the presentation content.
• Wikis are tools for group authoring. Often group members collaborate on a document by
emailing to each member of the group a file that each person edits on their computer, and
some attempt is then made to coordinate the edits so that everyone’s work is equally represented; using a wiki pulls the group members together and enables them to build and edit the document on a single, central wiki page.
Naish, R. (2006). Can wikis be useful for learning? e.learning Age. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.qiconcepts.co.uk/pdf/C...earning.pdf
Describes icebreakers
Lamb, Brian. (2004). Wide open spaces: Wikis, ready or not. EDUCAUSE Review, 39(5) (September/October), 36-48. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.educause.edu/....bhcp=1
Describes using wikis for writing instruction
Wikipedia (2007) School and University Projects Retrieved August 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....projects
Bruns, A. & Humphreys, S. (2005). Wikis in teaching and assessment: The M/Cyclopedia project. Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.: October 16-18, 25-32. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://snurb.info/files...Assessment.pdf
In a new media technologies course, students developed the M/Cyclopedia (Media/Culture), a wiki-based encyclopedic collection of information on new media concepts and topics. The wiki was also used for student interactions, discussions and coordination outside the official tasks.
Lund, A. & Smordal, O. (2006). Is there a space for the teacher in a wiki? Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, Odense, Denmark: August 21-23, 37-46. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/.../p37.pdf
Discusses ideas of letting the learners co-construct subject entries in an encyclopedia.
Chen, H.L., Cannon, D., Gabrio, J. Leifer, L. Toye, G. & Bailey, T. (2005). Using wikis and weblogs to support reflective learning in an introductory engineering design course. Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon: June 12-15. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://riee.stevens.edu/....._and_Weblogs.pdf
A pedagogical challenge common in project-based courses is that students see what they have produced but they do not see what they have learned. A wiki helps solve this.
Seitzinger, J. (2006). Be constructive: Blogs, podcasts, and wikis as constructivist learning tools. Learning Solutions e-Magazine. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.elearningguild.com/pdf/2/073106DES.pdf
provides a thorough discussion of the benefits of constructivist online learning environments
Hamer, J. (2006). Some experiences with the "contributing student approach". Proceedings of the 11th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE’06), Bologna, Italy: June 26-28, 68-72. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1140123.1140145 (abstract only not full text)
Betty Collis' contributing student approach
Chang, Y.-F. & Schallert, D.L. (2005). The design for a collaborative system of English as foreign language: Composition writing of senior high school students in Taiwan. Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’05), Kaohsiung, Taiwan: July 5-8, 774-775. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://portal.acm.org/cita...18 (abstract only not full text)
Honegger, B.D. (2005). Wikis – a rapidly growing phenomenon in the German-speaking school community. Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis, San Diego, CA, USA: October 16-18, 113-116. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2005/proceedings/paper-10.pdf
Notari, M. (2006). How to use a wiki in education: Wiki based effective constructive learning. Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, Odense, Denmark: August 21–23, 131-132. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/proceedings/p131.pdf READ
This paper asserts that collaboration is less likely to be a success without proper guidance,
such as a script.
Pearce, J. (2007). Using wiki in education. The science of spectroscopy. Retrieved August 2007, from http://www.scienceofspectroscopy.info/...wiki_in_education.
Interesting website READ
Jon Udell: Heavy metal umlaut: the movie an illustration of the growth of a wiki page over time
Ebner, M., Zechner, J., Holzinger, A. (2006) Why is Wikipedia so Successful? Experiences in Establishing the Principles in Higher Education, Proceedings of I-KNOW 06, 6th International Conference on Knowlegde Management, Graz, Austria, S. 527-535, ISSN 0948-695x Draft accessed August 2007 at http://lamp.tu-graz.ac.at/...iknow.pdf
READ Trying to use Wikipedia paradigm: Unsuccessful wiki in creating an encyclopedia of concrete due to lack of motivation (using "free time"), and community feeling and inertia (new technology and environment). "Learners usually consume the learning content and are generally not interested in creating it on a voluntary basis."Labels: e-learning, elearning, wiki-tivities, wikis, wikitivities
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:03 PM
Saturday, 4 August 2007
E-books on online community
Useful resources, especially for beginners
Otis Online Tutoring e-Book
NCSL's e-learning facilitation toolkit and 70,000 heads are better than oneLabels: e-learning, e-moderating, e-moderation, e-moderator, ebook, elearning, emoderating, online communities, online community, online learning, online tutor, online tutoring
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:53 PM
Friday, 3 August 2007
Join me on the Creativity in E-Learning network
Labels: creativity, e-learning, education sector, elearning, FE, HE, learning and teaching, learning technologies, social networking, universities, Web 2.0
posted by Helen Whitehead 4:06 PM
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Learning resources for free
Learn for free on the Web
http://stingyscholar.blogspot.com/
Tools for sharing
There are tools that already exist for sharing your materials. These include:
*
* Open SLedware an initiative of SL educators to make course content accessible to all
* List of 2.0 Apps
* TeacherTube (think YouTube for teachers)
* Zoho show
* Common Content: a open catalog of Creative Commons licensed content
* Poll DaddyLabels: creative commons, e-learning, free apps, second life, Web 2.0
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:34 AM
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
What is online community?
Community is not the same as commonalityPeople at a bus stop are not a community. people who go online are not a community.
"A community is a group of people who form relationships over time by interacting regularly around shared experiences, which are of interest to all of them for varying individual reasons." Jake McKeeLabels: e-facilitation, e-learning, e-moderation, nlabwomen, nlabwomen07, online communities, online community
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:46 PM
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
A narrative-based approach to designing e-learning
So - how do you make boring subjects interesting when creating e-learning?
Mandatory training can be dry and boring so there needs to be a reason or motivation to undertake it if the learning is to be memorable and considered valuable. In a narrative-based approach, digital storytelling concepts and multimedia elements can be combined to create an innovative narrative learning structure. Extensive use is made of humour, imagination, reward, anticipation or drama; topics and themes are chosen as likely to be relevant and interesting to a clearly identified target audience. An interesting context or scenario into which the activities are placed can engage and stimulate the learner, assist the activity to have meaning and help students to contextualize content.
References
Brown and Voltz "Elements of Effective e-Learning Design" in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 6, No 1 (2005),
Brodsky, M., May 2003. E-learning Trends, “Today and Beyond. Learning and Training Innovations”. http://www.elearningmag.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=56219
Gee (2003), What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy,
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In their paper "Elements of Effective e-Learning Design" in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 6, No 1 (2005), Brown and Voltz suggest Scenarios.
There needs to be a reason or motivation to undertake an educational activity if the learning is to be memorable and considered valuable. An interesting context or scenario can assist the activity to have meaning. In some situations, the context will either be evident or require little explanation, for example, in relevant workplace training situations or in situations where student motivation is known to be high. In other contexts, possibly the majority, where the learning agenda is largely institutional, students are encouraged and assisted by an interesting scenario into which the activities are placed. Scenarios are usually provided by a story, role play, or simulation, within which the activity plays a pivotal role in helping students to contextualize content (Brodsky, M., May 2003. E-learning Trends, Today and Beyond. Learning and Training Innovations. http://www.elearningmag.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=56219).
The scenario will most likely be fictional; however, there is an assumption that the learning or skill gained through the activity will be transferred to future real world situations. This transfer is assisted if the learning scenario raises issues and problems similar to those in the real world; scenarios with this real world correspondence are often referred to as being ‘authentic.’ An interesting scenario will make extensive use of humor, imagination, reward, anticipation, or drama to enhance the activity. It will have topics and themes likely to be relevant and interesting to the target audience. It will make the learning activity seem like an obvious or necessary thing to undertake, given the situation presented by the scenario. Designers of entertainment products have long understood this requirement, and the study of their techniques is of increasing interest to educators such as Gee. In his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Gee (2003) suggests that “learners participate in extended engagement (lots of effort and practice) ... in relation to a virtual world that they find compelling” (p. 67). For the effective design of e-learning materials, the target audience must be clearly identified in order to develop scenarios that are likely to engage and stimulate the learning.
[One caveat:] ... if a resource is too much like a game with rules unrelated to real world contexts, then teachers would avoid using it. From this feedback, it is clear that authenticity and interest are highly valued aspects of e-learning design scenarios.Labels: e-learning, instructional design, learning design, online learning, scenarios
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:45 AM
Monday, 18 June 2007
A mosaic of some of Flickr's images tagged "learning technology"
1. SmartBoard - saved Flickr favorites in a mosaic, 2. Wireless world, 3. montage, 4. kid_camera_rwanda photography workshop 2006, 5. Pioneer's" Hologram, 6. Ballroon Dancing Robot, 7. Nasa Exhibit, 8. Da Weeg (is nerdcurious), 9. The Techno TwoLabels: e-learning, images, learning, photographs, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:13 AM
Thursday, 24 May 2007
Wayne Hodgins: Off course, on target
I've discovered a new blog from Wayne Hodgins
He discusses an excellent online learning resource about tying knots (think sailing!) and describes Pecha Kucha, the fast and furious new presentation format from Japan now sweeping America (of which more anon).Labels: blogs, e-learning, online learning, presentations
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:27 AM
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Culture and technology
So often those who start using learning technologies (or creative technologies, or social technologies....) carry over into the new context assumptions, methods and processes that were appropriate in the old context but not in the new. However, it can take time for new ways of working to be discovered and to develop. By throwing off the old it is possible to explore affordances of the new technology that the old does not have and may release creativity and innovation.
Some examples:
Stage play to Film
When film was first invented, films were merely recordings of stage plays because that's what people were used to. It took time - and the development of the technology - before film developed as a medium - simple things like zooming in, filming outside the theatre=studio, moving, short scenes - all those features of film that we are now very familiar with and have since gone on to influence another new medium - television - and on and on....
Manuscripts to print books
I have a book that was published in 1475. It still has the spaces at the beginning of each chapter for the initial letters to be painted in. Other features of early books which were carried over from manuscripts include the use of abbreviations (much easier when laboriously writing common words to abbreviate them) and the lack of spaces between words (to save precious vellum).
In many ways, I believe that multimedia hypertext should owe more to those original manuscripts than to the print book - which is a sort of cul-de-sac in the development of text...
Stagecoaches to trains
Early trains had carriages with side to side seating in, just like stagecoaches. It wasn't for some time that the longitudinal layout with a corridor was invented. The stagecoach had to be filled with as much seating as possible in a small space to be economic - but the train is a bigger canvas.
Roman to Arabic numerals
Have you ever tried doing long division with Roman numerals?
It can't be done. Long division could not be invented by the Romans, it needed a new system of number.
The use of technology is embedded in cultural practice, and the job of a learning technologist or e-learning champion is to challenge such practice.Labels: culture, e-learning, history, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:50 AM
Useful books on e-learning
McConnell, D. (2006) E-Learning Groups and Communities: Imagining Learning in the Age of the Internet.
Jochems W, van Merriënboer J and Koper R (2004) Integrated E-Learning: implications for pedagogy, technology and organisation, London: Routledge and Falmer
Collis B and Moonen J (2004) Flexible Learning in a Digital World (2nd edition), London: Routledge and Falmer
Rosenberg, Marc (2006). "Beyond E-Learning: Approaches and Technologies to Enhance Organizational Knowledge, Learning and Performance," Pfeiffer. ISBN 0-7879-7757-8
and a website
Re-Engineering Assessment Practices (a study from Scotland)Labels: assessment, books, e-learning
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:34 AM
Saturday, 19 May 2007
Nice little example of online learning
A digital camera simulator
http://www.photonhead.com/simcam/Labels: e-learning, photography
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:08 PM
Wednesday, 18 April 2007
BBC Online courses
The BBC still have available various short self-study online courses. They include several in creative writing. Of course, a "real" course like Season of Inspiration, with tutors and fellow students to feedback on the exercises and writing, is much more useful than self-study, but until we announce the next Season of Inspiration course, I guess it's what's available :)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/onlinecourses/Labels: e-learning, season of inspiration, writing, writing courses
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:11 AM
Monday, 5 February 2007
Curt Bonk's advice...
Curt Bonk - a larger-than-life e-learning expert from the University of Indiana - has posted "A Quick 30 Writing Tips for the Start of an Academic Career" on his blog at
http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/
He's also briefly mentioned the Learning Futures conference at Leicester, and discusses Ten Observations Related to E-Learning in the UK.Labels: academia, curt bonk, e-learning, PhD, universities
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:40 PM
