eLearning Roadtrip

Deep in the Heart of Texas

If you have been involved in academic distance learning you know about the University of Texas System TeleCampus.  As it says on the UTTC wesite the Telecampus works with all 15 UT System institutions to build and deliver high-quality online courses, degree programs and support services for distance learners in its mission to expand the reach of the UT System.

Since launching in 1998, UTTC has partnered with hundreds of UT faculty members at UT institutions to serve more than 86,000 enrollments in more than 30 online degree and certificate programs. UTTC partners with the same faculty that teach on campus, and provides a full spectrum of training and support services for both faculty and students. UTTC also provides grants to UT institutions to help fund course and program development, including faculty course release time, instructional design support, and course production.

Today's Inside Higher Education carried a story on the decision of the Chancellor of the University of Texas System in which the UTTC was praised for its leadership, their mission was declared a success and the entire staff was laid off. Headline of story: Texas Kills TeleCampus.

There are a number of references to vague dissatisfaction about licensing duplication, and murmuring of taxes for services. Mumblings of how the campuses "owned" courses and students, the TeleCampus didn't (which, is how it's always worked, was designed that way.) Anyway I leave it to you read the fine article.

So here's where I get to vent a bit. And this has nothing to do with WCET. I am just a cranky UTTC stakeholder.

Apparently the University of Texas System leadership doesn't understand that technology companies typically don't mess with Texas - not with Marge Knox protecting licensing at the UT Austin campus, and with Darcy Hardy at the helm of the TeleCampus. We tremble with respect. So I'm thinking that some of these dis-satisfied murmuring may have more to do with other issues best left alone. All I can say is...Gonna be an ugly moment when the Deciders understand just how many Texans are going to find their dreams of completing their degrees compromised by this poorly considered decision.

There continues to be shocking naivete about how system wide academic, library and student services have to inter-operate to make sure things are seamless. I expect there is also a bit of arrogance and hubris at play as well. Desperate times make some people behave desperately. And despicably, I might add. "Thank you for your service excellence. You are canned." Yee Ha.

Sometime people forget that what they may see as duplication is just another part of an interactive system. UTTC made distance education look easy, because they are so good at it. Very few multi-campus distributed learning/management/services systems in the world have ever achieved their metrics. 

There are many institutions, foundations, NGOs and corporations that turn to the UTTC for ideas about how to create systems, online learning and student support services that are the gold standard for quality online learning in the US. So it's particularly sad to watch these goings on at a time when people are crying for better access to academic opportunities, better student retention, more student completion, and when  demands for quality online education is exploding.

I admit it - I'm biased. I'm on the UTTC advisory board. Have been for several years. I've seen the program grow, watched the staff achieve the very things that people long for in an online learning program: student retention in the mid-90%. An exemplary business - profitable in the terms of how it is funded, with steady year on year growth. I've seen what these folks been able to achieve, up close and personal. A fabulous team. Like I said, award winning and world class.

Will be interesting to see the story evolve. This just feels not quite right - at least not the way it's being represented in the system PR. I do hope that the academic press spends some time poking around. Even more than that - I hope that SREB can help the thousands of students whose program just got cut apart with some online course exchange assistance.

Do You Care about Accelerating the Adoption of Learning Technology Innovation??

IF you care about accelerating the adoption of learning technology innovation, and IF you have a solution you would like to share with a community of post-secondary education practitioners that cares about solutions as much as you do, THEN I would like you to join us in La Jolla CA, Nov 10-13 at the 22nd Annual Meeting of WCET.

Even better than that - I'd like to invite you to submit a proposal to share your ideas and results with higher educational academic technology decision-makers who are actively seeking better ways to meet the informational, instructional, educational demands of today's adult learners

You can find the call for proposals here.

Conference strands include (1) Innovative pplications of Technology (2) Teaching and Learning Success, (3) Student Success (4) Institutional Success and (5) Beyond the Institution.

You don't need to be an educator to have a solution to share, but it helps if you have some direct experience with education. Your audience are educators and the vendors that serve them. We are keenly interested in innovation. But not in the 5 year plan, "bleeding edge" kind of way. There are other associations that are far better at that than we are.

The place(s) where WCET members excel is in implementing technology innovations into solutions that improve access to learning that directly contribute to student success. We care about what we can do NOW,and anticipating what we will have to deal with next quarter, next semester, next fiscal year.  We cares deeply about academic excellence and student success in technology-enabled (distributed, distance, and elearning) education.

(I know all associations say they are the most inclusive place on the planet. Having done my time in many a professional association, I testify that WCET is one place where my ability to engage in meaningful ways wasn't compromised by my job title. Didn't matter if I was faculty or administration, worked at a public institution or for-profit college, an institutional representative or a member of the corporate caucus)

I came in as ED of this fine group in November 2009. We are in the midst of rolling out our new agenda,  focused on accelerating the adoption of learning technology innovation in support of educational excellence.

We're looking for sessions built on real evidence that provide other like-minded educational activists with empirically validated tips, tricks and ideas and case studies.

Proposals are due Tuesday March 16th.

Let me know if you have questions about WCET, the conference and how to get involved.

Transparency By Design: Improving Online Learning Quality

You may remember that my Dec. 12th post entitled "No More Living in Shame" dealt with the topic of the perceived (lack of) quality found in online programs. There is certainly plenty of evidence available today that puts to rest the notion that online programs, are, by definition, inferior to face-to-face learning experiences (e.g. Please click here if you want to get a copy of the 2009 U.S. Dept of Education meta-analysis of online learning evidence-based effective practices.) Nevertheless, as the SNL skit also showed, there continues to be room for improving the perception of quality of online experience where post-secondary education is concerned.

My post for today is a story about one such notable effort. The timing to share seems apropos. Yesterday's story in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes efforts of public institutions to confront the "marketing machines" of for-profit institutions.  I'm glad to share a different kind of story, one that shows institutions from all sectors coming together in shared support of learners regardless of physical location.

To begin, let me introduce the Presidents' Forum. Established in 2004, this is a group of leaders from accredited, national, adult-serving higher educational institutions and programs that have, as noted on their website "...embraced the power and potential of online education". The mission of the Presidents' Forum is to advance the recognition of innovative practice and excellence in online learning. This is accomplished by providing a venue for leaders in higher education and stakeholders to share their knowledge and learn from others' best practices. The Presidents' Forum provides both traditional and non-traditional institutions with opportunities "to exchange knowledge and perceptions of current models and tools for successful operation in an online environment". Charter institutions feature representatives from the public, private and for-profit sectors, including:

• American Intercontinental University Online
• American Public University System
• Capella University
• Charter Oak State College
• Colorado Technical University
• Excelsior College
• Franklin University
• Kaplan University
• Regis University
• Rio Salado College
• Southwestern College
• Union Institute & University
• Western Governors University

Even though these institutions compete for students, they all recognize that the value they would collectively realize by making a public commitment to transparently would benefit all online learning stakeholders. The Transparency by Design Initiative of the Presidents' Forum proposed sharing comparative information to help educate adult learners about  online learning program choices.  In 2008, TBD Initiative leaders chose WCET, an operating unit of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, to provide quality assurance on the standards of data reporting jointly developed by the charter institutions. Data models have been created to enable comparisons between programs, in the hope that universities and colleges focused on improving quality would gravitate toward efforts encouraging greater accountability and transparency. In late 2008, Lumina Foundation for Education provided a grant to WCET to fund the development of the Transparency by Design initiative and the student-centered website, College Choices for Adults. The Transparency by Design initiative supports Lumina Foundation for Education's mission to ensure that 60 percent of Americans are college-educated by 2025.

I had an opportunity to attend the January meeting of the Executive Committee of the Presidents' Forum as a guest. I was very impressed to be with the chief executive officers of nationally known online colleges and universities, all united in their shared desire to improve the value and quality of the online learning experience. Their unanimity underscores the fact that that completing accredited degree courses and programs over the Internet have crossed into the mainstream expectation of higher education today. That's great news for learning technologies advocates.

To those brave executives who are baring their statistics... Good on ya!! One has to imagine that it's not particularly comfortable sharing information that might possible be used by competitors. There's got to be a measure of comfort in knowing that accurate data about the status of one's programs is the best way to make informed decisions about ways to improve. And at a time when online learning is growing in its impact and influence, wouldn't you prefer to be a part of the quality conversation, on the excellence side??

I promised I would make this pitch: If you represent a regionally-accredited, adult-serving distance education institution seeking to improve access to information for adults learning at a distance, please visit the Join Transparency by Design page for more details. Questions can be addressed to Cali Morrison, Project Coordinator of Transparency by Design (303-541-0234; [email protected]).

No More Living in Shame

My Saturday mornings are typically spent with a cup of coffee or two or three, surrounded by various screens, catching up on the news of the week. I used to subscribe to a lot of newspapers. These days I subscribe to RSS feeds and I follow some really smart people on Twitter. Long way of saying that I had lots of "reading" to look forward to this morning. And then I got struck by a proverbial bolt of lightning.

Maybe it was finally having the time to simultaneously "background process" on several of the articles I tweeted on Friday (Hint to non-tweeters: click on the link with the http://, it is a shortened url that will take you to the report or article):

• Very nice RT @toddahitchcock: Another gr8 pub from our friends at SREB > Overcoming Doubts about Online Learning -http://bit.ly/6lemYY
  
• Bet this will get a few hearts pumping in higher ed tech circles  - publics taking advice from proprietaries?? http://bit.ly/7LjCdK (PS read the report, not just the Chronicle summary)
  
• RT @eLearnMag: online learning from student view: http://bit.ly/52xGUo. Online students are still living in shame? Hmm. Very bad.
  
  

Maybe it was that I had just competed trip reports describing some of the highlights from several of the of the elearning conferences that I follow most closely. 

Or maybe it was the catalytic effect of the Baily's Irish Cream.

I found myself wondering: if we are all so smart and good and proud and energized about how great elearning/distance learning/ online learning really is....

WHY ARE ONLINE STUDENTS LIVING IN SHAME??

I hadn't planned for yesterday's tweets to be about elearning quality issues, it just happened that way. Which was telling in and of itself. At the very moment elearning in its various forms is finally being seen as a viable alternative to face-to-face learning experiences we are finding the quality question rearing its head with greater and greater frequency, in increasingly critical and pointed ways.

You think I'm kidding? Have you seen this spoof on online learning that played on the US TV program Saturday Night Live this past October??

Go ahead and click on the links, above. You will see that every one of the articles or reports they lead to are pointing to some tough questions about quality in online learning.

So here is my question to you out there in eLearning Land: How is it that we ever-so-smart online learning leaders are allowing our students, our future alumni, our prospective stakeholders - shoot, let's get real, our prospective CUSTOMERS - to be ashamed of online programs and services they buy from us? Could it be that we've been so busy preening and presenting and yipping at each other that we sorta forgot.

Let's get serious. There is no excuse for online students to be living in shame

I guess I know what issue I will be bringing to the WCET strategic planning meetings in Boulder this week.

WCET 2.0

The team at Sage Road Solutions has taken on a project that is near and dear to my heart. I am pleased to tell you that WICHE (the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education) signed a professional services agreement with my company, naming me as WCET’s new executive director. 

WCET is a membership cooperative of institutions and organizations dedicated to advancing access and excellence in higher education through the innovative use of technology. WCET has been in business for 21 years. We used to be the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, from back in the days when we in the western US were trying to figure out things like how to cross a LATA line. Things have evolved since those early days. Now, as they say, WCET doesn't mean anything. 

Grrrrr. I KNOW that what people mean to say is that WCET is not an acronym. But it still really rubs me the wrong way to ever hear it said that WCET means nothing. Because it has mattered to me, in a variety of ways, for a very long time. 

Just how long, the chorus asks in unison??

Since my assistant professor days at the University of Northern Colorado. Back when I ran the new distance learning institute for UNC's college of continuing education. Again, after working at WCET as a visiting scholar and project director during my university sabbatical. When I left higher education it offered me a safe haven for staying plugged in to the needs and issues of educational technology practitioners. When I came back to WCET as a member of Macromedia's corporate marketing team I was welcomed anyway. That’s kind of a joke, but as many corporate members will affirm, higher education membership associations can be lonely places for their corporate members. But not so at WCET. They elected me to serve as a member of the Executive Council – and even gave me a lifetime achievement award, the Richard Jonsen Award, in 2008.

After all that, you really didn’t really think I could stay away, did you?

I am especially pleased that the terms of our engagement mean that my Sage Road business partner, Beth Davis, will also be participating in the “new” WCET as our business strategist. Many of my WCET colleagues don't come from the world of software so they may not understand what a really big deal this is. Until I mention Dreamweaver, the HTML tool that transformed the Web. Beth introduced Dreamweaver to the world. Dreamweaver was her first step on her way to being a general manager of the products business at Macromedia. Needless to say, but I will anyway - she is wicked smart about identifying, defining and capitalizing on new market opportunities. 

In the spirit of the new economy, we made a proposal to WICHE President David Longanecker that we focus on renewal, refocusing and re-engaging in the learning tech communities. We asked for a one year contract, designed for flexibility in a time of economic uncertainly. Sage Road will provide executive leadership oversight and management for the next calendar year on a renewable contract. We will be responsible for very specific deliverables that ensure WCET is positioned for success in the post-recession world of post-secondary services and support.

We will be bringing you a first look at WCET 2.0 next month, January 2010. We believe there is a unique place for a community of academic learning technology professionals and the vendors that serve them. Between now and them we have a lot of work to do to make sure that focus on  places where we maximize value and impact. 

Given the consequence of inaction, how could we do anything else?

Mobile Web Statistics

Thanks to Dr. Kim Foreman and the crew from San Francisco State University's #ITEC830 class for the opportunity to spend last Thursday afternoon with them. 

Dr. Foreman had asked me to focus on the state of mobile learning and to share some of my views on the subject.  It was a great opportunity for organizing links and charts I've been collecting for the past several weeks in a somewhat cogent slide deck for the students to download. I've uploaded a PDF of the deck here. Help yourself. The materials contained in the deck include statistics from AdMob and ComScore, among others. Everything from stats on Twitter to the distribution of mobile operating systems in the US and India.

Download Mobile.SFSU10.08.09.final.

For anyone interested in some of my articles on the subject of mobile learning I invite you to click the Publications Tab in the right column of this blog. You will find several links to articles from the past few years.

It happened that we were meeting at the same time that #Lrnchat was scheduled. I generally try to sit in on #Lrnchat for at least part of the time so I fired up Tweetgrid while we were all talking in the classroom, and tried to follow along while sharing what was going on in the back-channel around us. But to be honest, I was busy with the face-to-face discussions. Are you kidding? Putting a former professor back in a classroom with students in it? I love the distance/virtual/distributed thing as much as anyone, but still...

Hope you enjoy the slides and articles.

mLearning at the Tipping Point

A few months ago (March 4th to be exact) I asked a question in this blog about whether it was possible to successful deploy mobile learning and performance support initiatives at the enterprise level. I am happy to say that, thanks to ongoing developments in several key market segments, we seem to have reached a tipping point for mobile learning. After years of watching and waiting and poking and pushing, the market variables that needed to be in play to push mobile learning over the top of mainstream awareness and adoption seem to have finally converged.

I was pleased to be at BlackBoard World 2009 this week for Michael Chasen's announcement that Blackboard has acquired TerriblyClever Design LLC, makers of MobilEdu((TM). As noted in the PR release, MobilEdu apps "allows education institutions to deliver a rich set of campus life services and content to mobile devices, uniquely branded for each institution, to better connect current students, parents, faculty, prospective students and alumni to the campus experience in a way that wasn't possible before. With an Apple((R)) iPhone, iPod Touch((R)) or other device with a mobile Web browser, MobilEdu users can navigate course catalogs and campus maps, e-mail professors and classmates and get real-time updates on their course schedules, campus events, news and sports teams."

When a mainstream company like BlackBoard makes an investment in a small edgy mobile apps company like TerriblyClever, LLC, that's a big deal. It means that there is finally enough evidence that the education market will support demand for mobile applications. I also like that Blackboard is strengthening its previous commitment to mobile services that it initiated with its acquisition of ConnectEd, now known as Blackboard Connect. This successful emergency notification business now has a number of use cases that point to how higher education customers are deploying notifications systems for campus security and operational announcements, as well as now extending their infrastructure to do more with student services, enrollment management, business continuity, and even with learning support and campus community-building. 

It's taken long enough to get to this point of recognizing the value and impact of enterprise mobility. I had my first real brush with mobility and learning in 2004 when my former boss at Macromedia asked me to take a look at scoping out the mobile market for education, to see what we could do to support Macromedia's agenda for getting Flash on mobile handsets around the world. I was thrilled. I worked with Bob Regan (now Director of Adobe's Worldwide Primary and Secondary education marketing) and Adi Sideman (CEO of Oddcast) to develop a Spanish language tutorial called "Let's go to Peru" for deployment on my Flash-enabled Nokia phone. We featured mobile learning at our Macromedia Higher Education Forum. I carried a variety of Nokia mobile phones that were loaded with Flash apps that I could demo at a moment's notice. I gave a presentation on mobile learning during a somewhat infamous Forum session with Curt Bonk and Chere Gibson at the University of Wisconsin Teaching and Learning at a Distance Conference.  I submitted an article called "Enabling Mobile Learning" to EDUCAUSE Review in May of 2005, and was very pleased when it was accepted for publication.

And then we waited. And waited. And wondered why mobile learning wasn't the killer app we thought it was going to be. It's not that individual innovators didn't keep trying to do cool things with mobile phone apps - it was just that individual pockets of innovation don't make a very good business case for supporting enterprise or institutional deployment. I wrote an article about THAT particular phenomenon in June, 2008 that was published by the eLearning Guild. The biggest reason, in my humble opinion, was that we completely "mis-underestimated" the complexity of the infrastructure - and organizational change and IT support required -for enterprise mobility to be achieved. Also the need for many early adopters to craft their own, "gerry-rigged" solutions for making their mobile services/ apps come together in any meaningful way limited adoption to those organizations with the tech capacity for building one's own mobile apps. And guess what else- it wasn't as much about Flash as many of us had hoped.

We in the US are still somewhat constrained by the need to choose either a handset OR a carrier. For example, I've had my eye on a Palm Pre. Problem is, the Pre only works with a network carrier that I don't currently use. I have resisted getting a new iPhone because AT&T has made it fairly unattractive for current subscribers to purchase a new phone, given the required service contract.

But regarless of these little irritations, it is really nice to see manufacturers taking smart-phones seriously. There are lots of choices, whether you are looking for an iPhone or a Pre, a Blackberry or a Nokia or an HTC Android phone. Depending on whether you want ATT or T-Mobile or Sprint or whoever else happens to be in your area there are choices for phone plans and data plans. I suppose it's not surprising that that phone companies are the largest advertisers when it comes to Internet ad spending (Download ComScoreDataPassport_1H2009).

It is also really wonderful to see that the market for mobile apps has been exploding thanks to the very successful Apple iPhone Apps portal. It is clear that mobile infrastructure needs to be robust enough for apps to be reliably connect users and distribute apps and content on demand, but that the real differentiators are the applications themselves. When the Apple App Store team celebrated its 1st birthday a few weeks ago they could point to more than 1 billion downloads of more that 50,000 different applications.

It's fantastic to see the number of mobile app designers and developers growing, seeing how many design schools are featuring mobile app development as part of their curricular offering. It's also especially nice to see more instructional designers who have specialized in mobile learning applications receiving more and more attention in the literature and on community websites.

And it's great to see a mainstream provider of learning management, transaction and notification solutions giving "the mobile lifestyle" such a vote of confidence. In tough economic times, people want to stick with enterprise solutions providers that can weather the slings and arrows of recessions and hype cycles. Looks like Blackboard has voted with its venture capital.

Will mLearning stand on its own? Frankly one of the big problems with enterprise adoption of innovations is that until there is a clear differentiating reason for people to change at an enterprise level innovation is not likely to get the kind of attention and support it needs to be successfully deployed. We've learned the hard way that mLearning will be successful when enterprise mobilty makes it economically feasible to do so. But it sure is a lot easier to consider when there is an enterprise-ready platform to help with the aggregattion, distribution and management of mobile experiences.

Congratulations all you Graduates

This is the beginning of graduation season. We've all been reading about Obama at Notre Dame, and about Eric Schmidt at UPenn. My favorite story comes from UC-Merced where the first graduating class of the brand new UC system campus sent more that 900 handwritten valentines to Michelle Obama as part of their campaign to convince her to be their commencement speaker. And she did, much to the delight of the campus and the community.

Now that I am out of the academic business I haven't had the occasion to attend very many graduations. Luckily I have several upcoming graduations among friends and family this year, and I have to say that that I am looking forward to their pomp(s) and the circumstance(s). It's really nice to celebrate their successes, their learning and their achievement.

So this is simply a shout-out to all of you who have earned your diplomas. Congratulations on your accomplishment! Here's wishing you the best - a big cheer for achieving your goals, and a wish for new opportunities for showing off your stuff.

My Top 10 for IDs

ID is about producing value through the design, development and distribution of learning solutions. Used to be that IDs looked more like psychologists than programmers, but that's not the case any longer. Any ID looking for a job these days must expect to work with technology tools, because so much of today's learning and performance support is enabled / managed / distributed via technology. But IDs are not just elearning content authors. IDs are also engaged in supporting and enabling distance learning's web collaborations. IDs are starting to work more with mobile learning's apps and podcasts. IDs are learning first-hand that game design and instructional design have a lot in common. If only we don't suck the fun out of it...

For better or worse, I don't think about ID competencies as a supervisor or a professor needs to think about them. I think about ID more in terms of what I hope to see from our emerging professionals - the ones that will be strong enough to take technology-mediated learning to the next level. I would hate to lose the learning part of what we do. I do think we need better business skills. I think we need to stop thinking about instructional design as a process and to think about what we do as product development. We need to be more assertive, more focused on the so-called business of our respective businesses. Maybe head in the clouds, thinking of new solutions...but definitely feet on the ground. It's the only way to get things get done.

So. My fantasy. Ellen's imaginary ID-cathelon. MY Top 10. It's not ADDIE. It may not even really be instructional design when you get right down to it, maybe more like ID Life Cycle Management. Whatever. Don't tell me about your favorite learning theory du jour (although I do expect that you have one). I don't really care which model you use, although I do hope that you use one. What I really care about is whether or not MY ID can do these things:

1. Determine real opportunities /consequences. Show me how a learning intervention can drive sales. Increase revenue. Open new markets. Create new lines of business. Attract new customers. Save money. Even if you are working in education or non-profits.
2. Propose solutions that respond to real problems/opportunities. Help me see what my alternatives are, give me scenarios to consider and help me make a good decision for moving ahead.
3. Socialize proposals with key stakeholders. Do you believe in your plan enough to pitch it? Can you persuade funders to your point of view? Can you articulate value, make the pitch, create some buzz?
4. Analyze solution requirements. What are you going to build? For whom? what does it need to do? How does it need to work? What platforms will you use?
5. Analyze customer requirements. This is much much more than thinking along the lines of whether one is a visual learner or an auditory learner. This has more to do with defining the attributes of the target market. The kinds of distribution and management requirements that need to be met, Funding cycles. Hiring cycles. Platforms. Networks.
6. Create Prototypes. More than a clickable model. Calls for research. Content development. Scripting. Storyboarding. Rough cuts. Final cuts.
7. Field Test solutions with stakeholders, customers. Collecting real data describing real life experiences of real live customers/users. Factoring in what people want.
8. Develop and produce solutions. Or finding the people who can produce it for you. It's product management, pure and simple. Developers, Coders, DB analysts. artists and programmers.
9. Launch the solution, get organizational buy-in and get systems online. Knowing how to get the word out, how to go to market. How to successfully socialize and roll out a new learning intervention. How to determine if everything is working and ready to rock and roll. Keeping the power on. Keeping the LMS up and running.
10. Evaluate, Summarize, Document. Building the assessments. Validating the screening tools. Summarizing costs, comparing to benefits. This also means having a handle on statistical methods, survey methods, evaluation methods as well as basic budgets and financials.

Whew. That's a lot. Maybe too much for one person. But maybe not. That's what's so great about thinking of this as an ID-cathelon. It's not for everyone. Only the best.

When the Rubber Hits the Road

Depending on who you talk to, instructional designers - IDs - are either (1) the learning and teaching-oriented people to turn to when it's time to come up with great ideas for an engaging learning experience, in a presentation or a video or an online class, or (2) technologically proficient people with an awareness of learning principles who develop, produce, distribute, and manage elearning assets and programs. 

Generally speaking, there has always been an expectation that IDs are technically competent learning specialists. Seems these days that the more dependent we are on the distribution and management of learning resources and experiences via technology, the more IDs feel the pressure to be technologists first, learning specialists second.

There is a concern in the worlds of technology, learning, elearning, distance learning, distributed learning, mlearning, virtual learning et al that perhaps IDs have lost their relevancy. In recent weeks I have seen tweets and blogposts positing that ID is an artifact of the 20th century, to deal with 20th century problems. Inferred in this statement is the notion that in the age of Web 2.0, Learning 2,0, eLearning 2.0 et al, that ID has got to go, that ID is already preprogrammed in many of the authoring tools du jour, so we don't really need it anymore.

I take a different position on the topic. For me ID represent the essential core of what makes our work unique when compared, say, to the work of a graphic artist or a web designer or an LMS administrator or a content author, or a technical writer or a research analyst.

Think about it: what do ILS, CBT, distance learning, distributed learning, elearning, mlearning, game based learning, virtual world learning et al have in common? They ALL depend upon the participation of instructional designers to ensure that learning goals are met. The systematic framework IDs use for problem-solving provides essential structure needed to respond to whatever kind of learning or performance support opportunity that may present itself, regardless of the technology framework or paradigm being used.

Does this mean that the skills needed for CBT are the same skills needed to be a good webinar facilitator? No, of course not. But it does suggest that anyone who calls themselves an ID who isn't always working on and modeling new media competence of some kind or another is not a particularly good ID. Because without THAT experience, it's impossible to anticipate what kinds of design competencies will serve learning best.

About a month ago I mentioned that my ID was less concerned about working to the specification of the ADDIE model, and was more concerned about producing solutions that empowered stakeholders to do more, better, faster. My ID is a decathelete, skilled not just in one or two area of professional activity, but in a full range of activities, each demanding the development of unique competencies and skills. I also mentioned that there are a lot of things that I expect my ID to be able to do even before we ever set eyes on each other - specifically, being an exceptional writer, a persuasive presenter, a technologically competent media producer/consumer and have a more than passing familiarity with and appreciation for design.

So when we get right down to what I want my IDs to be able to do it looks a bit more like the 10 item on the following list than it does on the ADDIE process model. In my experience, these are the places when the true ID rubber really hits the road:

(1) First, determine the "business" opportunity /consequences    

(2) Propose a solution that responds to a real problem/opportunity

(3) Socialize solution proposal among key stakeholders

(4) Analyze solution requirements

(5) Analyze customer requirements

(6) Create a Prototype

(7) Field Test with stakeholders, customers

(8) Develop, Produce, Implement

(9) Launch solution

(10) Document, Evaluate, Hold Post-mortem

Thoughts? Comments? Additions? With the understanding that each of these 10 points has depth, with additional competencies implied?