eLearning Roadtrip

The Reason THIS EDUdotcom May Not Be As Different From Last Time As You Think

If there was ever any doubt that we are in the midst of a new dot.com boom for education, that doubt was removed at this week's SXSWEDU. The event brought entrepreneurs and educators to Austin, Texas for four days of panels and a competition for education start-ups. I had the great fun of participating in a panel discussion on "Are Courses a Commodity?" with Myk Garn, Mickey Revenaugh and Michael Horn. Vanessa Dennen and I helped Curt Bonk rehearse his "cage match" answers while sharing beers and ribs at one of the Cengage social events. I enjoyed hearing Bill Gates speak to the crowd about his vision for a transformed education system. It was definitely an interesting mix of energies.

Gotta say, not all of it felt all that good. This morning's Chronicle of Higher Education led with a headline that explicitly named the tensions between entrepreneurs and educators. You can read the Chronicle report here.

While I was there, I kept hearing that THIS dot.com is different because it's about education, and because the tech is better and data will inform us and investors are smarter and the market is ready, and there are business plans and people aren't just throwing exuberant ideas at the wall and hoping that something sticks. 

Really? 

I have to say that the confident assurances that this educational technology boom is different just didn't make me feel any less skeptical. Because in the same way that there are some who really DO believes that MOOCs are the birth of online learning, it is clear that there is an entire generation of investors and entrepreneurs who really DO seem to believe that the ideas thrown against the wall of the 1990s are somehow less legitimate than some of the ideas that are currently being thrown against the wall today.

So let me tell you why this particular new EDU.dot.com isn't as different as visonaries and investors would have you believe.

Ready?

It's because no matter how new your tech is or how great the idea is, or how impressive the possibilities are, or the circumstances or the bandwidth or the platform or the operating system we won't figure out how to crack the code on transformation until we change the most important part of the equation. And that is the human factor. Eventually it comes down to people being ready to embrace the change. The ability to ride out the hype cycle and get oneself to a true plateau of productivty will all come down to the degree we can induce people to change their ways, completely rethink their practices, and help them figure out how to use new tools toys, apps and the like deliver on their promises.

The excitement around innovative technology futures for teaching and learning has energized educational researchers to think broadly and deeply about the possibilities they represent.  The venture capital communities’ recognition that education may be ready for its “Internet moment” has also generated massive interest in developing promising ideas for products with commercial consideration.

Between these two exciting arenas of exploration live equally important opportunities for transformation that come from practice-focused solutions contributing to demonstrable improvements in student engagement, faculty performance, and institutional accountability. 

People. We've got to get ready, too.

---

[1] 

 

 

eBang Theory, Say "Hey" to High Quality Online Learning That Scales

Once upon a time, equity analyst Howard Block, Ph.D. wrote a report entitled The e-Bang Theory: Education Industry Overview 1999 Illuminismo, Volume 2  (San Francisco: Banc of America Securities Equity Research, Montgomery Division, September 1999). This report is the one credited with igniting the explosion of interest in financial markets that legitimized what is known today as eLearning.

In this report, Block outlined the tenets of his theory that explained why and how investing in businesses that featured technology to facilitate online learning would probably make investors and the companies in which they invested a lot of money. 

I attended a meeting at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA just after this report was released. I still remember the electricity, the "e" in the air. Probably tells you a lot about the times that everyone devoured anything from analysts that talked about investing opportunities using web technologies and the related products and services that accompany them to market, to school and to work.

In making the case that 1999 was the time for a new model of education - elearning - to appear on the horizon, Block noted that:

• "The economy is quickly becoming dependent upon human capital, which forces all of us to increase our aptitude at managing and productively employing human capital, a task incumbent upon all of our learning systems.

• "Political initiatives are inviting more businesses inside the school house door than every before in the history of public education. these initiatives include charter school legislation and voucher programs.

• "The inexorable technological revolution continuously overhauls the workplace, thereby forcing workers to treat learning as a basic part of their job description. Technology is not only a driver for more learning but it is also an enablers of electronic learning (e-learning). The intellectual demands of the economy are outstripping our capacity to satisfy it. (Block, 1999, P.3)

(Danger, Will Robinson. We seem to have slipped through a hole in the time space continuum. Isn't this the same things we are still talking about today??)

Block went on to define elearning as the convergence of the internet and education and identified 15 unique benefits associated with it:

1. Available at any time. "It's always there!"
2. Accessible from any location "I can always get to it"
3. Multimedia content: use of audio, video, interactive chat, text, etc.
4. Accommodates individual learning styles: self-paced, asynchronous collaborative, synchronous collaborative.
5. Hyperlearning as contrasted with static text, elearning has the capacity to link with the other resources (simulations, other content, study groups, etc) that can enhance the learning experience and avoid the linear learning dictated by textbooks. The self-directed nature of elearning allows hyperlearning.
6. Blindness of the learning engagement: some learners who are inhibited in a classroom may increase engagement online
7. Learner-centered learning: The learner is not a passive participant but a proactive searcher and finder of information.
8. Modularity of presentation: The content's architecture is modular, which facilitates different construction of learning design in both design and length.
9. Manageable structure: The electronic infrastructure supports managed and measurable interactions between advisers and learners
10. Ability to measure the effectiveness of the program. eLearning software empowers administrators to track performance and measures ROI. In addition, monitoring usage by user is simpler, i.e., the number of downloads per user can be measured. This helps training managers to evaluate cost-effectiveness and provides assistance with license negotiations based on estimated use.
11. Simpler data management, The rapid rate with which new learning products are introduced and older products become obsolete creates a challenge for individuals charged with updating libraries. However, if a single version of each product is kept on a host, users get instantaneous access and updated components.
12. Cost savings: provides an efficient and cost-effective model for education
13. Revenue enhancement: provides a way for campuses to expand classroom enrollments without using bricks and mortar.
14. Greater storage capacity. The Internet has so much more capacity than most physical locations or a user's hard drive. This allows learners to access more products and lets the adviser mix and match courseware activities to fit specific needs. Learners can preview presentations of different courses prior to selecting one, or they can access a specific slide from thousands.
15. Individual education programs (IEP) can be generated from a combination of the historical record of the student's prior learning (from monitored usage) and the vast data stored on the server. As student's progress, information is delivered based on what they learned and how they've performed. For example, a student would log on to the learning server and a customized course would be generated from the content data base that knows which courses the learner took, how well she did, what her job description is, what problem is most pressing. This dimension serves to focus the curriculum on skill gaps, saving organizations both time and money. A by-product of IEPs, in our view, is increased motivation from the self-centered nature of the experience.

One has to wonder if maybe our agenda for the next gen of elearning, the Web 2.0 era, should be aimed at delivering on some of these promises that Block and the investment communities were making on our behalf as long as ten years ago. Because when I think about some of the big ideas that were shared among the participants of a fantastic think tank experience I had a few weeks ago at Rio Salado College in Tempe Arizona and what we can finally do deliver on these 15 promises described above...well, I have to say, I am excited about all the new opportunities that are startiong to emerge on the horizon.

And THAT brings me to my real subject of today's blogpost.

Imagine how excited I am that one of the hottest new emerging trends that is going to rock post-secondary education is a return to High Quality. Scalable. Online. Howard Block gave us the roadmpap more than a decade ago. And now, as we all try to figure out how to navigate in what Josh Jarrett calls "The New Normal", it seems as if High Quality, Scale and Online easily fit in the same sentence. Again.

There are  initiatives on the horizon that will challenge the way we think about our practice. Hopefully give us all some tools and techniques to think about achieving our goals in creative new ways. I have to say, when I think about where  the next waves of innovation are likely to emerge in my little slice of the education ecosystem I start getting butterflies in my stomach. Excited butterflies.  

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.

Why For Profit Universities Matter to Online Learning

IMHO, Online learning is one of the best things to happen to higher education in a long time. Also - and this is my provocative poke for the day - IMHO for-profit universities may be one of the best thing to happen to online learning.  Both matter, because both have been huge catalysts for change in US post-secondary education.  

Online education is coming under some interesting fire right now, under the auspices of quality oversight. And as questions are raised on the quality/relevancy/appropriateness of online learning (which, in 2010, is a question that I really don’t quite understand...) I’ve also observed a tendency for critics to equate online learning with for-profit education.

For-profit higher education – that is, colleges and universities run as businesses, funded by investors who buy shares of stock and use investments and tuition and student fees to fund operations and programs profitably enough to return financial dividends – is under full-blown attack.

I am uncomfortable with the hostility aimed at colleagues in for-profit institutions. In the same way that I am uncomfortable when someone goes after an online program in ANY environment, just because it’s online. I’m all for eQuality. I’m all for fairness, too. And I'm all for giving adult learners choices. I want anyone interested in pursuing the dream of a college degree to have the opportunity to pursue – and achieve – that dream.

I’m not suggesting that for-profits will ever replace Harvard and Stanford, OR Sonoma State or your local community college, for that matter. And I am certainly not suggesting that they should. But I AM suggesting that they are obviously filling a demand that has not been met by traditional institutions. And we all need to pay attention to that.

Now, there are some darn good reasons for some of the frothing and flaming that is going on. Diploma mills are a bad thing.  Buying a credential with no requirement of demonstrating skills or competence is cheesy. Tricking prospective students into borrowing more money than they can afford to pay back is as evil as tricking people into buying mortgage instruments with rates that blow payments into the stratosphere as they mature.

But tarring every single for profit institution with the same brush, categorizing all such institutions as being evil and predatory is just wrong. It obfuscates the very important conversation that needs to take place around the critical need we have in this country to provide adult learners with choices for pursuing the dream of a college education. 

Not all of us will find our educational aspirations met on an R1 residential campus. Some of us work full time and can’t get to campus for a 50 minute class, three times a week. Others of us live hundreds of miles from a campus, any campus. Some of us find that getting to class gets trumped by rush-hour traffic. Some of us are serving our country oversees. Some of us try to take classes at our local community colleges but can’t get the required courses we need because there is simply no room and all the classes are over-subscribed.

And so for some of us, the online options from publicly traded educational enterprises are some of the best options we’ve got. 

I'm getting a little tired at the ad hominem logic used to lump anything online with anything for-profit, and that any school run as a for-profit enterprise is a bad thing.

I would hope, instead, that those of us who care about online learning quality – eQuality -  will focus on working on rubrics that matter, programs that build capacity, technology that open the walls of the campus, standards and benchmarks that promote student success and faculty engagement.

WCET sponsored and I hosted a webcast with Dr. Kenneth C. Green, founding director of The Campus Computing Project today, October 5^th. Casey is also the voice behind Digital Tweed, a column in Inside Higher Education. The topic of our webcast was Data-Driven Decision-Making, D3 – It’s So Trendy. (I’ll post the url to the webcast as soon as it’s posted.)

Casey and I talked about the role that data have in helping people get their arms about what is meant by quality in digitally enabled learning settings. We talked about how the higher education community’s heightened awareness about the pervasiveness of data collection from our consumer lives. How many of you use the Like button on Facebook? Did you know you were leaving a datum behind? The more we know about social media, web statistics and web analytic services, the harder it to ignore that the numbers are telling us some very important things.

I would suggest that, given the fires of criticism leveled against the for-profit sector these days that they are not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. I would suggest that they are learning from other web companies that use their data to figure out what their constituencies are looking for, and acting on that information in ways that generate demonstratable improvements and positive results.  You can be fairly certain that strategies and steps being taken to actively build more eQuality into these systems and programs are all actively informed by data.  

Our online learning systems have given us a way to collect more information about the teaching and learning process than has ever been available. Our for-profit brethren are showing all of us that paying attention to our bottom lines and our consumer demands might not be such a bad idea.  And I'm betting that they are going to have the data to prove it.

Data change everything. We’re all learning the new lessons that it’s what we do with that data that counts.

So perhaps we all owe our colleagues on the for-profit side a tip of the hat for drawing attention to these very important developments that can't help but influence the future of online learning.

 

Now that Online Learning is Hot, Hot, Hot

Seems as if everywhere one looks these days, people have some things to say about online learning.

On one hand - and I say this as someone who has been around the online learning block a time or two - It's about damn time. It is nice to finally see online learning getting its fair share of attention.

We're not talking about distance education here - that is, the delivery of courses using broacast or telephony technologies. We not  talking about elearning either, if one tends to think of elearning as the delivery of asychncronous, pre-packaged content for indidivual viewing at one's own pace. We are talking about courses being delivered via the Internet. Sometimes with an instructor, sometimes not. Sometimes with real-time activities, sometimes, not. What they have in common is that some percentage, all the way up to 100% of the course, is accesible via the Internet.

Seems to make sense, given how much of contemporary life plays itself out on the Internet today, don't you think?

The number of people turning to online learning as a solution for pursuing a college degree on more flexible terms than possible at a traditional post-secondary institution is growing like crazy.  4.6 million adults in the US are currently online students. That says something, right there.

So I am a little bit shocked at some of the nasty-grams that have been popping up lately, questioning the quality, relevancy, value and impact of online learning.

Just today I noticed this particular news item from CNN, asking if online learning is good for the armed forces. In reading the article, I realized that CNN was equating online learning with for profit universities. And the inference is that both are bad.

These days, for-profit universities and colleges are coming under intense scrutiny and are generating waves of raucous criticism for being predatory, "bad actors".  Economists have called them the next sub-prime market. The practices of several for-profit institutions have harshly criticized in a recent Senate hearing, with all for-profit institutions, AND all online programs effectively being tarred with the same brush. Worries over financial aid fraud and academic integrity continue to plague online learning and were also raised in the Senate hearings. Gainful employment requrements are being discussed and proposed as a requirement for financial aid eligibility in online - er, for-profit degree programs.

While online education is increasingly equated with for-profit education, more than 90% of today's traditional instituions also offer some kind of online courses or programs. This means that there are online learning practitioners at state schools, AND private schools, AND community colleges, as well as for-profit schools. So whether or not the intent is to curb the excesses of a few "bad actor" schools, regulations that touch online learning practice touch about every institution.

Online learning has tipped into mainstream consciousness. That is a good thing. Let's be conscious about how we let our practice be governed / regulated / accredited. Quality counts. So does being fair, equitable and focused on the right questions. At a time when more adults need more opportunties for developing skills needed for a new economy, it's going to be essential to get past hyperbole and rhetoric.

 

A Flash Primer for Non-Techies

Do you know what Flash is?

It's a serious question. During the past few months, volumes and volumes have been written about Flash. It's dead.  It's dying. It's lazy, buggy and bloated. It's everywhere. It's efficient, it makes the web work. It's ubiquitous. It creates rich, engaging digital experience. It is going to drive the knowledge commerce economy. It's proprietary. It is irrelevant. In its future iterations, it's where the mobile Web is headed. Yadda-yadda-yadda.

I've been finding myself defending Flash lately.  Let me be clear - I am not being a complete and total fangrrl. here.  This is less about loving Flash and more about really despising less-than-accurate information being used to sway opinions on the scale that we've been seeing in the media-verse. Bitch-slaps from Apple, gnashing of teeth and lighting of candles over HTML5. Microsoft needling from the sidelines. It's not to say that these aren't hugely important developments, because they are. But some of the common wisdom going around these days about both is simply not accurate. And some of THIS arises from the fact that people aren't quite sure what Flash really is.

So. Seriously. Whaddya think?

Well... You don't need to be embarrassed if you don't know. It's surprising how many people, especially non-technical experts, really aren't sure what Flash is.

Here are a few hints:

• It's a free media player available on the web. You need it to view SWF files  - movies, video, animations and so on - on the Web. Except on iPhones and iPads. And that's too bad. But as you will see, this is a an important but relatively small part of the big picture. Comes in two flavors, Flash Player and AIR.
• It's a web animation scripting tool. Generally goes by the name of Flash Professional.
• It provides a way to share video on the web. The current Flash Player supports the open H.264 video spec, by the way.
• It's a vector graphics program. Ideally suited for designing content once once and reusing it many times for a variety of display screens. As long as the content is designed to be reused. If it's not, it won't work. But then it really isn't a Flash problem. That's a design problem.
• It's a file format. Most commonly known as SWF. Like PDF for web content. For example, you build your animated content as FLV or FLA,  you publish as SWF. It's locked down. People can't get inside and mess around with your files. Sometimes designers create big monster Flash files that have lots of problems. That's usually more attributable to bad design than to Flash, the scripting tool.
• It's the foundation of most non-technical authoring for rapid elearning. In other words, many rapid elearning tools produce SWF files. In fact, there are so many SWF tools that there are entire websites dedicated to sharing information about them.
• It's a published web specification. There are no restrictions on its use. Really. More on that in a minute.
• It's the foundation of the elearning industry and it is going to take a while for the industry to evolve away from Flash. Yes, innovators will continue pushing to find better and faster ways to create and share digital experience. HTLM5 will certainly drive that shift. But for now this is where a lot of the industry is going to remain as we move through hype cycles and adoption curves.

Here is the nut of the situation. In layman's terms, HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web. HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and DOM Level 2 HTML. It aims to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Apache Pivot, and Sun JavaFX. And that's great for people who want to program. But people who don't want to program are going to want tools to build HTML5 programs and apps.

(Psssssst. Remember HTML? Can you spell D-r-e-a-m-w-e-a-v-e-r ???)

Another important part of this whole discussion is that Steve Jobs hates Flash and doesn't want Flash anywhere near his universe. Which is too bad, given how much revenue gets driven for Apple with each release of Adobe design tools.

Two important points to raise in this discussion. The first is what to do about the Flash embargo on Apple mobile hardware for elearning professionals.The fact that Steve Jobs wants to keep the iPhone and iPad experience free from Flash is an Apple  business decision. I've talked to developers who are fine with this decision. And this won't present a challenge to companies with the technical acumen and business flexibility to specialize around Apple. Not all businesses, particularly elearning businesses, have that flexibility. At least not yet.

In the age of open there are many people who would rather not use proprietary tools because they don't want their money going to evil corporations. Open is free. Let me offer this alternative point of view. To paraphrase Scott McNeeley, open is free as a puppy is free. Those of us who really have to do business using the web, where writing everything from scratch is not an option, need supported, maintained software and SaaS.

As the Web has "gone mobile", and there are increasingly more that screens involved in sharing rich digital content and experience, it made sense for Adobe to think about ways to emancipate Flash. To that end, the Open Screen Project was announced May 1, 2008.  This is a project and many other industry leading companies that want to reliably deliver rich Web and video experiences live and on-demand across a variety of devices.  Adobe has open access to Adobe Flash technology, accelerating the deployment of content and rich Internet applications (RIAs), including:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications.
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees - making future releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

I've copied the list of current partners from the Open Screen Project website below. I know I could paste a link to that page. But then I wouldn't be reasonably sure that you had seen who is a part of this initiative:

Adobe
AMD
Antena 3
Atlantic Records
ARM
BBC
Burda Digital Systems
CELL
Chunghwa Telecom
Cisco
Comcast
Condé Nast
Daum
Disney Interactive Media Group
EPIX
FOX Mobile Group
Freescale Semiconductor
Google
HTC
Imagination Technologies

Intel
LG Electronics
Lionsgate
Marvell
MIPS Technologies
Motorola
Movial
MTV Networks
NBC Universal
Nokia
NTT DOCOMO
NVIDIA
OpenPeak
OpenTV
Palm
Paramount
PBS
Qualcomm

QNX Software Systems
Research in Motion
RTL Interactive
Sagemcom
Samsung
Sonic Solutions
Sony Ericsson
ST-Ericsson
STMicroelectronics
STERN
Symbian Foundation
Teleca
Texas Instruments
The New York Times
Tomorrow Focus Technologies
Toshiba
Verizon Wireless
Vizio
Wind River
ZiiLABS

Look. What a surprise. No Apple. And that matters. But pretty clearly Apple really isn't the only game in town.

There is no doubt that Flash will continue to evolve and change. I'm fairly certain that the HTML5 specifications will making today's plug-in tools unnecessary and that Flash as we know it today won't be around for the ages. We many never see Flash on iPads or whatever they evolve into. But knowing how long it takes for enterprise adoption of innovation to occur, I think many of us are going to  keep Flash in our toolkits for a while.

Putting the Internet of Things to Work

I've been interested in mobile learning solutions since 2004, when our VP of Macromedia Solutions Marketing wanted to see if there was market for mobile Flash in education. The short answer to that question was a big N-O. Lots of interest - but the ecosystem wasn't ready. Very different from today, when everywhere you look there is a new development or announcement or app that makes physical location irrelevant. (Sidenote: some of the work we did at the time got boiled down into articles published in 2005 - one in  Educause Review, and another one in ASTD T&D. Still relevant).

That market research experience changed my world view about mobile learning solutions from worrying about the tools and tech to being more focused on considering enterprise requirements of mobility. A little more than a year ago I shared some thoughts in a blogpost entitled Mobile Learning and the Internet of Things, about developments in the networked objects arena that seemed to have some fascinating implications for vendors interested in working with the mobile learning community.

Cut to 2010 - I literally just finished reading a GREAT McKinsey Quarterly newsletter article written by Michael Chui, Markus Löffler, and Roger Roberts entitled Internet of Things.  If you care about mobile support and services including elearning and performance support you should take a look. There's no point in my summarizing too deeply when you can click on this link. But I do want to provide enough to tease you into wanting to click. So here are a few high points:

"Predictable pathways of information are changing. The physical world itself is becoming a type of information system. In what’s called the Internet of Things, sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects—from roadways to pacemakers—are linked through wired and wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet. These networks churn out huge volumes of data that flow to computers for analysis. When objects can both sense the environment and communicate, they become tools for understanding complexity and responding to it swiftly. What’s revolutionary in all this is that these physical information systems are now beginning to be deployed, and some of them even work largely without human intervention."

Got you hooked yet? Here's a bit more: The six areas where the Internet of Things is already being put to work:Information and Analysis

• Tracking Behavior

•  Enhanced Situational Awareness

•  Sensor-driven Decision Making

Automation and Control

•  Process optimization

•  Resource consumption optimization

•  Complex autonomous system

Take a look - it's a fascinating read. Just seems that with some much converging interest in the mobile web in general and mobile learning in particular, that there are quite a few learning solutions ideas lurking in here just waiting to hatched.

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]).

Online Educa Berlin Trip Report

There's nothing like a quick three day trip from California to Germany and back to sharpen one's appreciation for"anywhere, anytime" distributed communications technologies. 

Even so, #OEB2009 was excellent this year - worth a little jet lag, which was easily cured with a few extra hours of sleep, some aspirin and a good soak in the hot tub.

This was the 10th anniversary of my first OEB, which is now in its 15th year. I've attended seven times. Online learning has done a lot of growing up during the past decade, and OEB has grown right along. Today it is the largest international conference dedicated entirely to online learning in the world. It's an energetic, occasionally seething mix of academic researchers, non-governmental organizations, large global enterprises, small innovative businesses, ministries of education, labor and defense. More than 2000 delegates from 92 different countries. Eye-opening and inspiring.

I know we can read the papers and view the presentations, follow the #oeb2009 tweets and retweet what others are saying. We can reach out and virtually touch someone in a webinar.  But you know...and I know I am speaking heresy here...but sometimes being there, in person, really is better.

<Waiting for lightning to strike....>

Here is my top line summary from this year's OEB trip report:

Opening plenary: Lord Puttnam on education, climate change and the the role of moving pictures and virtual worlds and the future of learning. Brian Durran on the London Grid for Learning. Zenna Atkins from Social Solutions asks if education institutions will lead the news ways of learning or if learners will lead by demand.

The Internet Time Alliance brings us Creating the New Era of Corporate Learning - Jay Cross, Charles Jennings, and Jane Hart in person, Harold Jarche and Jon Husband via Connect from Canada. Jerry Michalski and Jay Cross. Barcamps and Unconferences. Excellent.

Quality time with Jane Hart. I'm a fan of Jane's Pick of the Day. I follow her on Twitter, I read her C4LPT blog, I admire her work with the eLearning Guild. I'm glad we were Battling Bloggers together. More on that in a bit.

The Online Educa Debate. Wow. It's an artform. Nothing like my weinie debate experiences from high school. No offense to my high school.

The Adobe eLearning Suite and Solutions exhibition stand. Okay, I admit it. The Adobe eLearning Suite fell short of what I had hoped to accomplish when I was at Adobe Systems. But I have to say, when I saw the trade show stand featuring "my baby", I was very proud to have been a part of bringing that product to market.

Happy birthday, Jerry Michalski!

Time with Eric Shepherd from Questionmark and discovering my new favorite blog.

Hindsight, Insight Foresight, Oversight: Learning Futures plenary. Professor Gilly Salmon from the University of Leicester, and Aaron Porter, National Union of Students, Artur Dyro from Young Digital Planet and Lisbeth Goodman from FutureLabs. Yours Truly as session chair.

Battle of the Bloggers. Donald Clark and Jane Hart and Clive Shepherd and Bert De Coutere and me. Wow. How very cool for me to share the session with these well known elearning leaders. Thankfully, we didn't really battle - I would have been shredded in a true debate.I am very glad to have met these luminaries in person and am looking forward to ongoing future conversation. Hopefully over beers.

Best of all - reconnections with friends from around the world. Sometimes when I get tired and cranky I think about all these amazing people from all over the world, doing amazing things with learning technologies. Have to say, then I don't feel so tired and cranky.

So, now. We have a new roadtrip in the works.

On to Boulder. It's time for WCET 2.0

Happy Birthday Internet

Happy 40th birthday, Internet!  In 1969 a UCLA team sent the first message over ARPANET, the computer network that later became known as the Internet. That event, which took place on 29 October 1969, is celebrated by many as the moment the Internet was born.  

I've embedded a link to the blogpost from Cathy Davidson, Duke University, that reflects on what this has meant for the world as we know it.

And for those of you who snickered at Al Gore for saying that *he* invented the internet, I have included a link to an ERIC document that describes the authorization of NREN, the National Research and Education Network. Let it be known that legislation authorizing the creation of what has been referred to as an electronic "information superhighway" was first introduced by Senator Albert Gore in 1988. 

The National Research and Education Network, signed into law in early 1991, was hailed as an expansion of the still private, mostly military Internet to educational researchers, teachers and students. I was still teaching at the time this happened, and remember that the prospects were quite exciting but the reality not so good - it was still a bit dicey to get email addresses for ourselves and for students. Huh. And now we're talking about farming student email services off to third party providers. My how time flies.