eLearning Roadtrip

eLearning Isn't Software

One of the reasons I attend learning technology conferences is that they offer a highly efficient way to scan the horizon for emerging trends likely to affect learning technology adoption. Conferences also provide a chance to see which "idea seeds" took root from among last year's various trends du jour.  

In yesterday's summary of reflections from the past several weeks of of higher education, elearning, and learning technology conferences, I made the following observation: 

On the commercial front...Pearson intends to own our universe. Adobe has pretty much given up on us. Just about everybody wants to sell us an "analytics solution". Or a mobile app.

I seem to have gotten the attention of the Adobe elearning team. I think I may have hurt their feelings. Understandably. They will tell you that they are the market leader in elearning. There's Captivate. And Connect. And eLearning Suite.

I simply respond by acknowledging that those are fine products. But they are not elearning. Because no matter how much one might believe it to be so...elearning isn't software. eLearning is not a platform, unless one is speaking allegorically. eLearning is something people DO with software. It's a much bigger universe than rapid authoring, web conferencing, and content creation.

The fact that I am saying these words... well...

 

Lessons Revisited: RADAR, Pearl Harbor and Paying Attention to Evidence

One of our Sage Road Solutions LLC clients, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, is holding its biannual meeting at the BYU Hawaii campus on the island of Oahu this week. Having spent the past several days in Denver hosting the annual meeting of the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, known as WCET), I'm still running on Mountain time. I woke up early, so I decided to take advantage of being in this glorious location to take a walk along the beach.

About 200 yards from the hotel an historical marker notes the location of the Opana mobile RADAR site. The story accompanying the marker offers an interesting object lesson for those of us trying to bring innovative applications of technology to the learning technology metaverse.

According to Wikipedia the term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the U.S. Navy standing for radio detection and ranging. It was brand new technology, showing enough promise that pilot programs were launched to test its utility. In 1941, a number of mobile radar trucks were deployed on Oahu to keep an eye on the skies near Hickam Field.

 

Early on the morning of December 7, 1941, two soldiers stationed at the mobile radar site near Opana Point saw electronic blips of what looked like many planes approaching the island. Reporting their findings, they were told that what they were seeing were *probably* planes expected from California, and not to worry about it.  Consequently this information was never reported to those in command. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese planes detected by the RADAR bombed Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor, destroying US ships and planes, leading to the US's declaration of war on Japan and igniting US involvement in World War II.

The historical information was certainly interesting in its own right. The narrative that accompanied the marker, however, was particularly striking:

"The failure to warn the Army or Navy command in Hawaii was not a failure of the technology as much as it was a failure of organization. While the technology of RADAR functioned as intended and detected the incoming planes, there was no way to accurately assess the information and communicate this knowledge to those in command." 

So, let's fast forward to October, 2011. On Thursday of this past week the WCET team working on our Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework project revealed some of the first findings from our ground-breaking big data project. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the descriptive, inferential and predictive techniques being applied to this massive data set are providing some eye-opening perspectives on variables affecting student loss and momentum. As noted in a Forbes.com online article featuring Phil Ice, our project's principal investigator (who, by the way, really hates being called "the other Dr. Phil"...so please don't) these results are going to rock the way that educational decision-makers think about everything from college admissions, student services, technology investments and even "best practices" for online learning. 

Still, I have a feeling that these "big data" results will go through a period of being pooh-poohed by decision-makers who will have a hard time letting go of null hypothesis research methods. Traditional researchers' disdain for the so-called data mining techniques associated with pattern strategy and business intelligence used in other sectors are likely to get in the way. For many traditional researchers, educational data mining is a little bit like a stupid pet trick - even though these same folks really seem to like the convenience of Amazon shopping recomendations, Netflix movie recommendations and Pandora music recommendations.

I can't help but wonder if the findings about student loss and momentum that the cracker-jack research crew are sharing will be disregarded very much in the same way that Army and Navy command dismissed the evidence that Pearl Harbor was in harm's way because the techniques are too new to be taken seriously. I just hope that we can figure out how to help people pay attention to evidence before it is too late.

 

When I Think of the Future of Online Learning

I am attending a Summit later this week. The University Professional and Continuing Educational Association and the Association for Continuing Higher Education are co-hosting a sold out invitational meeting to consider the Future of Online Learning. Many dozens of learning leaders will be in attendence. I am looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say.

As a long-time online learning / elearning / distance learning / teletraining kinda gal, these kinds of events please me in an odd, parental sort of way. It is quite satisfying to see how over the past more than 25 years of grinding their way into teaching practice, learning technologies now routinely extend the reach of the traditional classroom. Online learning has tipped into mainstream consciousness, even if mainstream exceptance continues to be somewhat elusive. 

Since I DO have some skin in this online learning game, let me tell you some of the things I hope we will hear about during the next few days:

• I hope we will hear that it is time to move past online learning as a technological analog of the traditional college classroom.
• I want us to talk openly about getting serious about high quality, online learning experiences that scale.
• I want to hear how more students will have the opportunity to achieve the dream of a college education.
• I want to hear more about the $10,000 degree. Or the $5,000 degree. Either one.
• I want to hear how we will make sure that online students can quit being ashamed to say they got their degree from an online school.
• I want to revisit how adult learners demonstrate that the knowledge they have accrued outside the classroom is a legitimate part of competency certification.  
• I want to hear how the campus learning portal / LMS is being deployed in new and innovative ways, 
• I want to hear how online learning professionals are going to use descriptive, inferential and predictive analysis of de-identified student records to better predict when students might benefit from a bit of extra help to stay on academic track.
• I want to hear how institutions are going to make online learning experiences more compelling,  engaging, personalized and professionally relevant.
• I want to hear that there is room for informal collaborative learning moments in every student's program of study.
• I want to see more attention paid to interactive digital learning content - PDFs and digital textbooks, apps and learning objects - that students produce and publish.
• I want to understand how OER will sustain itself.
• I want to understand how mobility is changing the online learning game, and how social media bring real-time interpersonal interactivity to our conversations.
• I want to see the use of game mechanics and gamification extend our thinking about how to motivate and engage learners without turning games into the next generation of crappy elearning.

From everything I can see on that horizon these issues are all going to be part of the future of online learning. With respect, they are already part of the present. IMHO, it's time to make dealing with these issues part of our practice. Looking forward to what comes next.

 

...And Another Thing (about Predictive Analytics)

Judging by some of the reactions I have been getting to my Data Change Everything blogpost last night, I would say I've touched a bit of a nerve. Good.

People get ready, there a change a comin'.

Just a few more random, ancillary analytical thoughts:

Predictive analytics are not just used in for-profit universities. While institutions like the University of Phoenix and APUS are investing in analytics tools to help them improve services and customize the experience of learning online, forward thinking publicly funded institutions including Rio Salado College and the Colorado Community College System are doing the same kinds of things.

Predictive analytics are also not just used with online learning (and, by the way, online learning is not the same thing as for profit education.) But with so many of the transactions of online teaching and learning captured in various technology systems, it does seem like fertile ground for finding out what learning analytics may be able to reveal. Which is why you are seeing so many researchers/companies/foundations moving into this space these days. Learning analytics are hot, hot, hot.

Some researchers respond quite negatively to predictive analytics in education. I've heard mutterings of Orwellian conspiracies and dismissive comments about how data-mining is so... ad hoc.  True enough. But remember, analytics aren't really about research, they are more about supporting decisions. That's different. And it's about reliability and convenience. That's also different.

I mentioned some of the most familiar uses of predictive analytics in consumer life - Amazon shopping and Netflix movies. iTunes Genius recommendations are another example. They help you narrow your search. Sometimes they suggest just the right thing. But I forgot to mention one of the most popular consumer use of predictive analytics.

Any guesses??

<drumroll>....Dating sites. Match.com and that ilk. No matter how you feel about online dating, here is an impressive statistic: 1 one of 8 American marriages come from an online dating relationship. 

Pretty good completion rate, if you ask me. 

That is all. For now.

Lines are being drawn...over learning technology standards and specs?

Interesting article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus about a growing shitstorm around learning technology standards.

Per Jeff Young, author of article in question: "The issue centers around a single line of the 53-page grant guidelines for the program, known officially as the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program: “All online and technology-enabled courses developed under this [program] must be compliant with the latest version of SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model).”

So what's the big whiff?

And then I read a little bit further and all became clear: Dr. Rob Abel, IMS Global CEO, is pitching an absolute hiss over this particular requirement. Why? Because his group supports a different standard.

There is a rich and storied pissing match history that has developed between Dr. Abel and the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative of the US Department of Defense over the past several years, and I am very sorry to see that the stains are going to get all over this exciting new collaboration between the US Departments of ED and Labor. 

A bit of perspective -The federal government made a decision 11 years ago to develop SCORM as a specification to serve as a cost-saving criterion for RFP / vendor selection. ADL/DOD have been the keeper of SCORM on behalf of all the Feds. So it seems to me that the US Dept of Labor is well within their rights to adhere to their own government spec. Especially since the SCORM spec is built upon the standards coming from IMS Global, and other standards bodies, including AICC, IEEE-LTSC, and ARIADNE.

Hats off to Dr. Abel, he has done a great job persuading .edu that the IMS Global is the only standard that really matters. I mean that sincerely. IMS's Common Cartridge helps institutions get better value from LMS vendors and publishers. Even the most technically skilled educators don't want to worry about learning technology standards. The tap dances required to get things to interoperate in the old days of LMS ops were excruciating. Common Cartridge is a good thing, and he should be commended for his leadership on offering a solution to the big audacious higher ed  problem of content distribution and management.

But CCCT is a whole different initiative, one of several federal projects designed to force issues of openness precisely to have the different conversation. Because the IMS conversation only addresses part of the new opportunities. And the CCCT efforts are about tying education to training, jobs and development. Not the other way around.

(inserted note - SCORM dominates in corporate and government and  non-profit learning platform tech as an RFP "checklist" item. IMS dominates in higher ed. They are not mutually exclusive. They are different.)

It is pretty amazing to watch the lines getting drawn. Time to pull up a chair, grab some popcorn and get ready for some great pyrotechnics. 

Why Electrowetting may be good for Flash

Electrowetting is a type of screen display technology. Engaget has called electrowetting the Holy Grail of display: flexible, foldable display surfaces offering full color, high refresh rates, visibility in all lighting conditions, and low power consumption. 

The reason I know this is because I just saw a press release announcing that Samsung bought Liquavista, a company that specializes in electrowetting technology.  Yes, that would be Samsung of the television display, computer display, mobile-telephone-with-display company.

It made me think about how cool it would be to be able to unfold a screen stashed in a purse and put it out on the table when you want to show your friends, say, a sports game in progress. NOT on an iPad. On a full-on, foldable screen.

Well here's how and where two unconnected puzzle pieces may connect. I often touch base with Diana Helander (@flashair) from Adobe's Flash Platform team to stay on top of all things Flash: Flash and iPhone and iPad,  Flash vs HTML5, Flash on mobile devices, AIR, standards such as H.264. Flash is very important in elearning. Diana shares my belief that developers need to know what's going on.

Diana recently reminded me that, as fellow members of the Open Screen Project, Adobe and Samsung and lots of others are looking at this notion of excellent screen experiences from an industry wide perspective. Flash continues to be an important part of that conversation. Not the only thing. But still very much a part of today's interactive Web.

The Liquivista acquisition underscore that Samsung is continuing to focus on display experiences. And  THAT world continues to accommodate the need for interoperating with Flash content. At least as we all figure out the migration path to HTML5.

I'm still not ready to give up my iPhone. But now I WILL actively consider Samsung tablet alternatives to iPads while anticipating big things in electrowetted screens.

Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Do YOU care about 4G?

I was amused by the reaction of several friends who saw yesterday's blogpost about QR codes fly down their Facebook feed. "What happened to you?" teased one of them I've known since high school."You used to be fun."

I agree that my interests in QR codes are a little tech-ish. It's just that I've been seeing them around a lot lately, and seeing them in the strangest places. They remind me of stories from the 1930s Depression when traveling hobos would paint symbols on the fence near a house to tell others about the person who lived inside, and whether it was safe or worthwhile to knock at the door and ask for work or a meal or whatever.

But the real reason I care about tech stuff is that so many people in my various personal and professional circles really don't care very much about tech stuff. They depend on me and people like me to care.

Here is a case in point from today's Silicon Alley Insider's Chart of the Day. Apparently a lot of people don't care about 4G. Which, considering how much people want broadband services on their phones, you would think they WOULD care. But no.

To that I say "au contraire, mes freres et soeurs!" You need to care! Because this is the kind of thing that makes a difference when you are trying to make up your mind about what kind of phone to buy, and are getting barraged by ads for HTC Evo Sprint 4G phones or Samsung Android phones with Flash, or Verizon iPhones or AT&T iPhones.

Crash course: 4G is very high speed broadband services for your phone. It will make phone web surfing and video viewing much more like the experience you have on your laptop. There isn't a lot of 4G available in the US yet. That will change, but it's still fairly new. Just be aware that if you live in the 3% of the country that AT&T ads say are not yet served by 3G it's gonna be a while before you see blazing fast speeds. Also be aware that while 4G and LTE are talking about the same basic thing -  high speed wireless broadband -  they are different specifications. And that will make a difference in the phone you buy and the carrier you select. Consider Verizon. They will continue to use a specification that only works in the US, the CSMA standard. This is different from the 4G extension of 3G, which is used in the majority of countries around the world. Might not matter if you don't travel. If you do you need to pay attention.

The iPhone situation....well, before you get a Verizon iPhone, just read the Consumer Reports news on the topic. 

Don't even get me started on data plans. We can save that for another day.

A QR Code of Your Very Own

There must have been something in the water this weekend - seemed as if everywhere I turned I found myself talking about QR Codes.

QR codes are the machine readable badges - basically overlapping barcodes - that are starting to appear on ads, billboards, in print media. They capture information such as a name, a phone number, maybe a url.  QR readers are apps on mobiles phones that will scan and decode the QR code and act on preprogrammed instructions - such as, to call the scanned phone number, or to click on the scanned website url.

So I knew the universe was speaking to me earlier today when I read a tweet from @HansdeZwart about a post on QR codes he'd made in George Siemen's open access SCoPE course LAK 11 - Open Course on Learning and Knowledge Analytics. 

Then I saw a recommendation from Allison Kipta to read David Hopkins' blogpost on QR Codes: The Nuts and Bolts, a very nice article that summarizes the basics of QR codes, how they work, and why you should care.

I was so inspired I made a QR code for eLearning Roadtrip. It looks like this:

If you have a QR Code reader on your phone you can scan this image and it will automatically take you to my blog site.

Kinda cool in a very geeky way.

I strongly encourage you to read David's post on the subject. It was quite good. Lots of ways in which this simple tool can be used to engage learners. If you can't wait, here is a link to a QR code site to get you started. Kaywa.com. But then go back and read the post. This is a cool way of sharing information that more elearning professionals need to know about.

Trust Me

I'm not really sure why some are so surprised to find that we elearning pros frequently work with and for people who don't "get it" as well as we do. Of course they don't. Our practice is to help our stakeholders do a better job using (1) technologies in their learning practices and (2) learning technologies in their business practices. That's what we do. It's why our customers give us money.

Of course it's easy to get aggravated at the mis-steps, the voluminous RFPs, the jerk project manager, the spread-sheet-brained executive devil. Creepy association people. Of course it feels good to vent. Social media users have found that Facebook status bars, Twitter posts, and  blogs are easy ways to share just precisely how one feels about everything, to everyone, in an instant. 

I just want to go on record saying that I think a well crafted, snarky dart is a thing of beauty. Sometimes one must loudly and proudly proclaim a principled position and bitch-slap the opposition. And sometimes people say stupid things and deserve to be called on the stupid things they say.

I really haven't been able to come up with a good reason for people to completely lose their good manners just because it is possible, even encouraged, to say whatever one wants to say on the Internet. A rude remark is no less rude just because it is digital.

Lest anyone think I am sprouting a halo and wings, rest assured, I am not. My quest is rooted in enlightened self interest. It's all about trust.

Chris Brogan talks about the emergence and importance of Trust Agents. His and Julien Smith's book on the subject is based on the premise that while it is easier than ever to reach your customers, it's also less likely that they will listen unless they trust you. Trust is the most valuable online currency today. Trust comes from reputation. Reputation is built a variety of variables -  competence, commitment to excellence, discretion. The ability to conduct civil discourse.

Civility. What a concept. 

These days I am paying attention to what it takes to build and maintain trust. And a lot of what I am seeing seems suspiciously like common sense. Behaving toward others with the same courtesy that I would like them to behave toward me. Thinking before writing down the snide remark, and thinking twice before hitting send.  Being mindful of the impact of snark, and to remember that what I think is hilarious and witty can sound hurtful and mean to someone on the receiving end. Remembering that tweets and facebook posting do tend to have a life of their own, and to never forget the value of discretion. To never really believe one's own press releases, and maintain a sense of humility (even when you know you are right). And doing one's best to rise above the petty and the personal. 

It will make a difference. Trust me.

Maybe the "E" Really Does Matter

Today's (January 13, 2011) early #Lrnchat session was loosely oriented around learning technology standards. As happens during #Lrnchat sessions on Twitter, moderators post questions for participants to discuss in 140 characters or less. One of today's questions asked participants to speculate about elearning in the future. In responding to this question my good Twitter friend Dave Ferguson (@Dave_Ferguson) remarked:

"In ten years, God willing, we will get rid of the silly "E" in front of stuff. (And maybe the "I", too)"

And all of a sudden, these words flew from my fingertips: "Consider this: Maybe the "e" matters. Designing for "e" demands technical acumen AND knowledge of learning", I wrote. And in writing that, I realized that I have completely flipped my point of view on this topic. Some might even say that I have flip-flopped. But that's okay. I prefer to think about it as being "enlightened".

Because these days I DO believe that the "E "- as in, what you can to to engage learners you  deploysoftware and hardware that plugs into power outlets or batteries or whatever  - matters.I don't know why people who are reasonable savvy consumers of electronic entertainment get so simple when it comes to thinking about what we can and can't do with that "E" for learning facilitation and support. Or that it might actually take some time to learn how to use some of the tech tools that are so easy to talk about.

These days, we simply can't afford for theoretical expertise and expert practical knowledge to be trumped by one's lack of technical acumen. Now that I am back up to my eyeballs in online learning and learning content creation I've come to believe that maybe the "E" really does matter, after all.

(As an aside, Dave and I chatted today, and we agree far more than we disagree on this topic. Didn't want anyone to think I was snarking about Dave. Oh, no I'm not.)

With all due respect to the theoretical and avocationally passionate among us - if you can't work with the tools, then  you really aren't a learning technologist. Anymore than the most techie among us, who wouldn't know a learning theory from a white paper, can be considered a true learning technologist, either.

These days working near the intersections of pedagogy, creative expression and technology, with the business chops to keep things running smoothly, requires a higher degree of technical acumen than ever before.  All of which is a long way of saying that the "E" really does matter, maybe even more that we care to admit. Because if there is one thing we have all learned over the years it's that it takes more than passion, great intentions and an LMS for the "E" to work in service of learning.