eLearning Roadtrip

AAAS and the March for Science

Today's post is a PSA for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I would like to share the letter I received this morning from Rush Holt, the chief executive officer of the AAAS, talking about the upcoming April 22 March for Science. If you like science, you might want to get involved.  Here it the letter: Now more than ever, we must demonstrate the importance of science to policymakers and the public. As you may know, there is a great deal of energy associated with the March for Science, which will take place in public spaces around the world on April 22, 2017. Activities will include marches and rallies, open houses, children's science festivals and teach-ins. AAAS has now signed a Memorandum of Understanding to partner with and support the March for Science, and we are developing a wide array of activities for before, during and following the March. We believe it is incumbent on AAAS to help ensure the March has a positive outcome. We want the March to remain a nonpartisan, educational, diverse, and ethical expression of the value of science to society, and we want to make sure the momentum doesn’t disappear after the March takes place. Over my entire career, I do not believe I have ever seen such a large, spontaneous outpouring of support for the idea of science. We think it is perhaps the best opportunity in many years to communicate a positive message to the public and public officials about the value, utility, beauty, and power of science, engineering, and technology. It is an important opportunity to advocate for the maintenance, and even the defense, of the conditions necessary for science to thrive. If you are interested in learning more, please visit www.marchforscience.com. However, we also need your help. Here are four things you can do right now: Visit our Force for Science website to stay up-to-date on the issues, understand the role that science plays in policy, follow AAAS advocacy activities, and find ways to engage and take action. Share your thoughts and ideas on our MemberCentral Trellis group. A team of AAAS staff meets every day to plan our advocacy activities, and we frequently take these discussions into account. Help make AAAS a stronger Force for Science by making a tax-deductible donation to our Flexible Action Fund. Tell others about AAAS, what we’re doing and why you’re a member of AAAS. You will be hearing more from us soon about new advocacy efforts and how you can get involved. Thank you for being a part of AAAS and for standing with us at this critical time for science. Sincerely, Rush D. Holt Chief Executive Officer, AAAS Executive Publisher of the Science family of journals

20 "eLearnings" From Two Months on the Road(trip)

Been a busy couple of months of elearning road-trips. From EDUCAUSE to Online EDUCA, from WCET to WICHE, from DevLearn to AECT (with a little bit of virtual Sloan-C tossed in for good measure). Literally thousands of plenaries, presentations, and poster sessions from which to choose, along with hundreds of vendor stands and trade show booths. Here are some of my big take-aways:

• Hooray and congratulations! This distance/online/elearning thing we do has tipped into mainstream consciousness. Let's give a cheer for the researchers, the teachers, the authors, the artists, the technologists, the producers, the analysts and the evaluators who have made this happen. We rock.
• We matter enough that governments want to regulate us. Congressmembers rail against us. No more flying under the radar.
• Analytics are hot, hot, hot. Learning analytics, content analytics, web analytics, engagement analytics, to name a few.
• Speaking of analytics...mathematically speaking, a learning outcome is pretty much the same as a point of sale. (Thank you, Phil Ice.)
• Second Life is dead, dead, dead. Sorry.
• Mobile is the future.  Smartphones and tablets and readers, oh, my.
• Game based learning has a long way to go before people take it seriously.
• High quality video conferencing is making a comeback.
• We may get inspired by big ideas, but we are moved to action by fear, uncertainty and dread.
• 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.
• People really need to quit thinking that "open" is the same as "free".
• It's a lot easier to pontificate about the importance of change than it is to do things differently.
• There is a lot of research out there. Some of it is useful. 
• Empirical evidence doesn't need to be quantitative...but it does need to be a little more robust than simply pointing to people who are doing the same things.
• Quality is rarely absolute. It's contextual and situational. It may make more sense to think about "effective practices" rather than "best practice".
• Practitioners who make big sweeping statements without doing any background work on what others may have already been doing, saying or thinking end up sounding just a little bit naive and foolish. C'mon, people...use The Google.
• On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog...but EVERYONE knows if you are not prepared.
• One can pack a lot of snark in 140 characters.
• Learning is as natural as breathing. Learning really isn't the problem. Enabling meaningful, intentional outcomes and creating experiences that engage and inspire without costing an arm and a leg and without killing our interest and enthusiam for learning is the problem. 
• Sometimes you just need to show up.

On Secret Handshakes and Making the World a Better Place with ID

I attended the 2011 annual conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) in Jacksonville, FL this past week. AECT is a professional association focused on scholarship in the academic disciplines associated with instructional design. Its members are primarily college professors and their graduate students; members also include school librarians, media specialists, computer center directors, public television and publishing executives.

I spoke on the topic of Secret Handshakes of Instructional Design. My presentation was based on various blog posts I have written on this topic, as well as an essay published in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Applied Instructional Design on said same. It was intended as a gentle yet pointed look at this ID thing that we do. These may be the best of times for those who understand how to create experiences that inspire and enable learning, but our practice may be better served if we make our secret handshakes more inclusive, our practice less theoretical and abstract, and all our designs more actionable.

Here is the deck Download FINAL AECT Secret Handshakes for distrib I used in my presentation. I've removed copyrighted materials. All photos used in the deck come from iStockphoto. This presentation deck is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike, Non-commercial license.

Quick reflections - It was very nice to be back among the scholars. I enjoyed seeing former students and associates. It was great to talk with old friends, some I've known since my graduate school days. It was great to meet some new friends. I was inspired by the big ideas.

And yet, I was reminded that, regardless of our epistemological roots, our professional training, the number of or lack of our graduate degrees or the places where we work, many of us call ourselves IDs. And many of us in this wild and wacky ID practice universe continue to have a hard time recognizing one another. We come at this practice from diferent and various points in the ID value chain.

I was also reminded that big ideas and great intentions, while essential ingredients in successful recipes for change, are rarely sufficient for bringing about the kinds of systemic changes to culture and practice that are required to disrupt and transform.

Education transformation really is a team sport. Old ideas don't just fade away. Old ideas can be stubborn and relentless. Systemic change calls for many contributors. There are many variables to address, much practice and dedication required to develop expert skills. Transformation demands a clear understanding of what is to be changed, AND the will to see changed implemented. And with all due respect to everyone who claims the ID badge...We simply can't afford to all think the same way.

For real change - true transformation - we need all ID hands on deck. Scholars, analysts, artists, technologists, evaluators, and managers alike. Big thinkers. Expert practitioners. Skilled producers. People who can translate big ideas into actionable strategies and tactics driving real results about things that matter to the communities and stakeholders we purport to serve.

Secret handshakes DO help us recognize each other, help us evaluate what we and our fellow practitioners know, and what we don't. Maybe we DO need to make these "know 'em when you see 'em" attributes of our ID secret handshakes more explicit.  Maybe we really can use these secret handshakes as a conceptual checklist to find more of the expert practitioners who share ideas, information and practices that are similar or complementary to our own.

When you get right down to it, perhaps the most notable secret handshake all IDs share is the passion for finding solutions that make the world a better place for learning. And that is a great place to begin.

 

Getting Ready for #ASTD TechKnowledge - #TK11

I am looking forward to being back in San Jose next week for the ASTD TechKnowledge 2011 conference. This is ASTD's dedicated event for learning professionals who are responsible for or interested in elearning and learning technologies methods, new media and other forms of digital solutions in learning, development, HR and beyond.

We will be at the San Jose Convention Center February 2 - 4, 2011. I'm personally quite pleased that Kara Swisher from All things Digital and Karen Wickre and Ann Farmer from Google will be joining us as keynoters. I'm looking forward to the cool things that my fellow committee members (Ed Prentice, Michelle Lentz, Steve Villachica, Kris Rockwell, Jonathan Halls, and Cammy Bean) have planned. I am looking forward to seeing Twitter and Facebook friends up close and personal.  I'm very excited about the mobile app we'll be using for our conference program. After a year of planning it's always fun when these things come together.

Cammy Bean has just posted a nice advance organizer of our event here. You can find out more about TechKnowledge, including how to register on site, by clicking here. Hope to see you there.

Dispatch from the Road -The Other Side of Jane Hart, #oeb10

Thanks to social media tools like Twitter, many of us who work in the technology-mediated learning arena find ourselves making lasting connections with fellow practitioners of this thing that we do with technology and learning from all over the world. With a little bit of practice and with virtual venues such as #Lrnchat and Facebook, one can form astonishingly robust connections with people that we wouldn't recognize if we walked past them on the street.

These days, when I attend an industry event such as DevLearn, WCET or Online Educa Berlin, I find myself scanning the tweetstream to see who else is attending that event, and then trying to find those people to say hello, face-to-face. Finding a fellow "tweeter" at a conference is a bit like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...and I know I am not the only one who feels this way. It always makes me smile when I overhear, "Wow, I follow you on Twitter. it is so great to meet you in person!" (a comment often followed by something like "uh, you don't look anything like your photo" or, my personal favorite, "That avatar looks just like you!"). It reminds me of how important it is to never forget about cultivating the other side, the inter-personal side, of the connections that we create online.

In the past few weeks  I have had the pleasure of spending face-to-face, in-person time at both Online Educa Berlin and at DevLearn with one of my personal favorite people to follow, UK-based social media expert Jane Hart. On Twitter, Jane is better known as @C4LPT.  As the managing director of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, Jane has been helping educational institutions and  businesses understand how new technologies can be used to improve education, training as well as business performance. She currently focuses on the use of social media for collaborative learning and working - as well as for social media marketing.

Can I just say - Jane's Top 100 Tools for Learning and her Pick of the Day are resources I use all the time. Best way I have found to keep track of the constant stream of new social media tools. If you are an elearning professional, whether corporate or from education, you need to know about Jane. 

Tonight, as Jane and I and a number of us converged upon Marlena's Bar at the Intercontinental Hotel for a glass of wine following our session, talking and laughing and teasing and telling funny stories to and about each other, I reflected on how very nice it is to have the chance to sit around a table looking each other square in the eye. Have to say, I like knowing Jane and friends even better than I like knowing about her :-)

Next time I check out Jane's Pick of the Day, you have to know that I will be smiling, thinking about the warmth of the camaraderie we all shared this evening. It was a treat to spend time on the other side, the non-digital, inter-personal side, of Jane Hart and friends.

Great Advice in Less than 140 Characters

During the recent DevLearn 2010 #DL10 conference I had the pleasure of participating in the closing panel hosted by Brent Schlenker where my co-presenters - Richard Culatta, Aaron Silvers, Gina Schreck, Jane Bozarth and Cammy Bean - and I each had 5 minutes to share a big idea with our DevLearn colleagues.

It was one of the best presentation experiences I've ever had. Thanks again to my co-presenters for being the wonderful people that they are, each and every one.  

One of my favorite moments came when Cammy Bean offered some sage advise on the topic of social media manners. Go, Cammy!

Fast forward a week. I've had social media, analytics and transparency on the brain. I have also continued to  noodle out loud on the topic of digital manners. The question I posted today looked something like this:

To which  Dr. @JaneBozarth responded

Yes!! Thank you Dr. Jane!

And then, just as she did at DevLearn (#dl10), @Cammybean reiterated what IMHO should be the golden standard for guiding our community's online behaviors:

@janeBozarth and @cammybean to the rescue.

Sometimes the best advice comes in less than 140 characters.

What Dave Longanecker Said About Alaska

During the WCET Annual Meeting Thursday November 11, 2010 Luncheon presentation, during the session the Debate  between Dr. Dave Longanecker and Dr. Peter Smith on the topic of Rethinking the Academy in times of Great Change, a question about higher education cost was presented to the debaters from the audience.

Peter responded first, talking about the importance of choice, and that students benefit when there are a variety of options from subsidized to completely tuition driven. Then it was Dave's turn. And this is part of what Dave said:

"If you look at National Center for Higher Education Management data, there's the 250% difference in the cost per degree from one state to ...from the lowest cost state to the highest cost state. And it's not a quality...if you looked at the states you will see that quality is not the determining factor. The most expensive cost per degree state in the country is Alaska. I work with Alaska, I love Alaska, but I wouldn't put it as the most, as the best system in higher education in the country."

If you click here you will be redirected to the Sonic Foundry Mediasite archived recording of the Debate. Move the slider bar to the time-stamp at 45:45. (That's 45 minutes and 45 seconds into the session, less than two minutes before the entire session was adjourned). You can see and hear what Dave said for yourself.

Here is  the NCHEMS data that Dave was referencing when he made his comment about most expensive cost per degree state.

This slide was taken from a presentation that Dave had recently given to the CCCCIO conference in San Diego CA on October 28th. You can download the entire presentation here  Download Statistics from 101028 - CCCCIO Presentation on Quality Improvement Pretty interesting stuff about higher education that most of us typically don't see about cost, graduation, tuition and so on. 

His comments upset several of the WCET attendees from Alaska, who talked to me, talked to him, have written letters and fired off tweets. I know Dave has already apologized. It's not worth pissing people off. Especially when absolutely no harm was intended.

As this issue had been raised to public awareness through the #wcet10 tweet-stream I wanted to be sure people had access to the links to take a look for themselves, and to see some of the data that Dave was referencing.

 

 

 

Next Week in Madison for #DTL_2010

If you are an elearning/ distance learning / online learning practitioner you should plan to join your peers and peeps at the 26th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning in Madison, WI August 4-6, 2010 at the Monona Terrace Conference Center. 

The conference has been addressing challenges facing practitioners and administrators of distance learning programs since 1984. Back in the day, a crew of learning activists from the University of Wisconsin and others were convinced that distributed education experiences were the answers for responding to the growing demand for adult education programs. They created a conference that brought together other like-minded non-traditional educators, researchers and administrators, all looking for alternatives to the traditional residential campus experience. After more than two decades, the conference has become a distance learning tradition.

Drs. Michael Allen, Jane Bozarth and Etienne Wenger are featured keynote presenters at this year's event. There are lots and lots of concurrent sessions – poster sessions – demo session – deep dives and short intensive blasts of information. Something for every learning preference and attention span.

I’m a long-time fan of the DTL conference. No attempt at objectivity here – for me the DTL conference has been a part of my summer for so long I can’t imagine not being there, except under extreme conditions.  I’ve keynoted, been a part of forums and panels and concurrent sessions, been an exhibitor and a sponsor. I am a total fan of the Conference team. I’m a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate 2X, so I love to get back to Madison in August when the weather is magnificent.

WCET is pleased to be a part of this year’s conference exhibition – my colleague, Cali Morrison, will be on site to tell you about Transparency by Design, and College Choices for Adults an innovative “consumer education” project funded by the Lumina Foundation and managed in partnership with the Presidents’ Forum.

I’ll be wandering around, as well, so if you want to grab a coffee and talk about whatever is on your mind, ping me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/edwsonoma.

For more information about DTL 2010 click here

Hope to see you in "Mad Town"!

mLearnCon Trip Report

Kudos to the eLearning Guild for last week's exceptional inaugural mobile learning conference in San Diego. Having been actively following mobile learning developments during the past 6 years or so (and wondering what it would take to tip this obvious, self-evident next step of connecting people to information when and where they want it into general practice) it was enormously satisfying to see, feel and hear the energy and enthusiasm. Thank you Brent, Mary, Juli, Steve, Luis, Heidi, David and Bill for a great event.

Aaron Silver (@mrch0mp3rs) was a most excellent host and facilitator of the mLearning Future Zone, while Neil Lasher (@neillasher) was "Cage-master extraordinare" in the MOSH Pit (and thanks to both for including me among their cast of characters :-) Both Aaron and Neil convened a great group of people who have been innovators on the edge (both leading and bleeding) of mlearning. As with any new technology applications, there are lots of little things that practitioners can't anticipate until they get into the middle of rolling out a new program. So many great conversation, discussions and debates....I know I came home a lot smarter.

Highlights of the conference for me included a great panel discussion about future directions for mLearning with Kris Rockwell (@hybridkris) from Hybrid Learning Systems, and Judy Brown (@judyb) from the ADL. It was super excellent to spend time with Silke Fleisher and Eric Converse from ATIV (This is the company that developed the great mLearnCon conference program app. I like it so much I am getting one like this for the WCET conference in November.) Silke is a friend and co-conspirator from my Adobe eLearning days, and it is very exciting to see the success that ATIV is having as a mobile app development shop. It is always a treat to see Michelle Lentz (@writetechnology), Jeff Tillet (@mojotillet) and Mark Chrisman (@badsquare).  Watching Allison Rossett (@allisonrossett) falling in love with the new iPad that she bought on her way to the conference was particularly amusing.

One of the best parts of my conference experience was having the opportunity to go toe-to-toe, "mano-a-mano" with Clark Quinn, (@quinnovator) in The Great Debate: HTML5 or Flash? Not surprisingly, I took the pro-Flash position. It's not so much that I love Flash, per se - It's just that I have been really irritated at the lack of accurate information about the current state of Flash and HTML5 as it affects elearning designers and developers. Having spent several years inside Adobe, I know the Flash platform story fairly well. Perhaps more importantly, I know how much elearning people currently depend on Flash. For the past 13 years Flash has been the gold standard for creating interactive online content. Our industry has been and will continue to be highly dependent upon .SWFs, at least in the short run and probably for longer than that. While we are all certainly moving away from our dependence on SWF animations toward more rich internet applications (RIAs), apps and richer video and audio experiences, there is going to be a period of time where we will need to be aware of what our customers and stakeholders need for dealing with the needs of their customers and stakeholders. If they can't play their content and launch rich web experiences we produce when and where they need it it really doesn't matter how we feel about the tools that we think we should use, does it??

My friends from the Adobe Platform group shared a number of slides with me to help tell the Flash side of the HTML v. Flash story. I've included some of their info and a number of other slides (including a few funny screen shots of how Apple and Adobe to continue to poke at each other as they position around these issues) that you can download here. Download Final mLearn Con Flash and HTML5. for distrib

Enjoy!

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.