eLearning Roadtrip

(tap, tap) Hey, is this thing still on?

During the past 6 years I have had the remarkable experience of taking an idea about predictive analytics all the way from brain-storming with smart, crazy people who wanted to try something new and different with big data techniques, to getting multiple grants from the Gates Foundation to see if our idea worked. It involved founding a not-for-profit organization to validate our ideas in the commercial ed tech marketplace, to being acquired by Hobsons, an international commercial software provider.  

Not bad for someone who had really just wanted a voice in the learning analytics conversation that was more focused on students than VC.

Now that I've had a chance to get settled in a new research job at Hobsons,  I've been reflecting on whether or not this work I've been doing in analytics still counts as elearning.  I'm thinking that it does.  I'm thinking that now, more than ever, using digital tools to extend out expectations of learning is exactly the next phase in learning innovation we elearning advocates have been waiting for.

There are some who continue to describe elearning as the activities utilizing electronic technologies to access educational curriculum outside of a traditional classroom. In these cases, people are typically referring to an online course, program or degree. I get that. It helps define elearning as something distinct from other cognitive or pedagogical pursuits. Some people think of elearning as authoring, or collections of webcasts.  I've seen some people say that elearning is dying because mobile learning is about to replace it. 

For me, elearning is about leveraging technologies in support of designing, creating, producing, evaluating, distributing and managing learning experiences that engage and inspire, regardless of physical location or time. It's a much bigger tent than content or courseware.

My new job at Hobsons is a research job. I'm exploring learning impact and efficacy in the P-20 learning systems we depend on in the US to prepare our citizenry for college and and career success. I've been working on reports describing the impact of dual credit for accelerating college completion, on the impact of upward transfers from community colleges to completion institutions, on online learning efficacy, on the value of exploration and engagement in early childhood, the things we can do to support learning success among non-traditional students. 

I'm amazed to see, in all these discussions, the degree to which elearning has evolved beyond content and courseware. Today elearning is more about personalized, interactive, responsive experience.  If ed tech is where we concentrate on better tech tools, these days elearning encapsulates all we have learned to do to extend digitalization into our teaching and learning, education and training practices, constructs and values.

All this reflection made me realize I need a place to reflect on the transformative evolution of our practice as tech changes our expectations of our learning lives.

Looks like it's time to get back on the eLearning Roadtrip.

 

 

 

NEW NSF REPORT: New Technology-based Models for Postsecondary Learning

In January 2013 I  participated in a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation to help establish a 10 year vision to reconceptualize postsecondary learning. This past week our co-convenors, Chris Dede, Harvard University and Eric Grimson, MIT, released the 47 page report that captured the results of that meeting. Entitled New Technology-based Models for Postsecondary Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Research Agendas, this is a comprehensive overview of promises, opportunities and challenges that will keep all of we post-secondary learning stakeholders on our toes for the next decade.

You can download the working draft of this paper here.

The basic premises addressed include the following:

• Advances in technology and in knowledge about expertise, learning, and assessment have the potential to reshape the many forms of education and training past matriculation from high school.
• In the next decade, higher education, military and workplace training, and professional development must all transform to exploit the opportunities of a new era, leveraging emerging technology-based models that can make learning more efficient and possibly improve student support, all at lower cost for a broader range of learners. 
• Potential risks must be managed, including those arising from the disruption of established delivery economics in our current learning institutions, the variable quality of learning outcomes these new models offer today, and the technical and conceptual challenges of better understanding how to design, develop, and implement innovative capabilities in ways that reliably deliver on their promise.

Workshop participants developed a framework for understanding this sea change and sketched steps towards a research agenda for realizing its benefits while avoiding pitfalls.

Contributors to this report include Daniel E. Atkins, W.K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information, and Professor of Information and Computer Science, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Lori Breslow, Director, Teaching and Learning Laboratory, MIT. John Cherniavsky, Senior Advisor, Division of Research on Learning, NSF. J.D. Fletcher, Senior Research Staff Member, Institute for Defense Analyses. Diana Oblinger, President and CEO, EDUCAUSE. Roy Pea, David Jacks Professor of Education and Learning Sciences, Stanford University. James W. Pellegrino, Distinguished Professor and Co-Director, Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago. Bror Saxberg, Chief Learning Officer, Kaplan, Inc. James H. Shelton III, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement,U.S. Department of Education. Russell Shilling, CAPT, MSC, USN, Program Manager, DARPA. Greg Tobin, President, English, Math, and Student Success, Pearson Higher Education and yours truly, Ellen Wagner, Executive Director, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Cooperative for Educational Technologies. Arthur Josephson, Harvard Graduate School of Education, was our researcher.

Funsuckers

Marc Prensky once famously accused instructional designers of sucking the fun out of learning at an EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Conference a number of years back. As you can imagine, instructional designers were not amused. 

I was reminded of Marc's quotable quote during a recent conversation regarding the value and role of structure and specifications - or the lack thereof - for designing learning experiences. This is a more nuanced conversation than differentiating between formal and informal learning, or whether one is online or on-the-ground. This also includes things that lead to immersion, augmentation, mobility, and personalization. It inevitably leads to thoughts of learning analytics. Life-long learning tracking even.

It's almost as if today's emergent designers want to dance on ADDIE's grave and declare that ID funsucking is a thing of the past. Which brings me to my point.

It is inspiring to know that there are exceedingly passionate designers out there who want to create learning experiences that engage and inspire, helping the world see new possibilities with fresh eyes. Good on ya. The world needs you. 

But designers also must bring order to chaos. Most of us work in settings where we are mostly responsible for the practical, pragmatic applications of design principles to achieve tangible measurable results for individuals AND enterprises.  It does not matter if we believe something to be true with total heart and soul if it cannot demonstrate tangible value of those beliefs to stakeholders. Not in the future. Now.

So here is a message for the "true believers". When someone tells you than an idea is a little early for their stakeholders....it doesn't mean he or she "don't get it", nor does it necesarily mean that she or he is a pin-headed, short-sighted idiot. It simply means that the case still needs to be made.

To be clear, if it weren't for people believing that they have a better way of doing something and being willing to social the ideas ad nauseum we probably *would* still be sniffing ditto copies in our obligatory F2F training sessions.

All *I'm* saying is that visionary awesomeness on its own probably isn't enough. Sometimes it might just take a few funsuckers to spin all that straw into gold.

 

 

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.

 

Thought You Might be Interested...

...in some of the thoughts I shared with my WCET crew today about learning analytics and lessons we can learn from Moneyball. It's an extension of my eLearning Roadtrip post on the same general topic.

I suppose this gives you an idea of what is top-of-mind for me these days. Well, that and wanting to raise the bar on online learning excellence. Simple pleasures.

If you are interested in taking a look at my WCET post, please click here. 

While there, please take a look around at what the fine folks at the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies are doing these days. If you happen to care about accelerating the adoption of learning technologies innovation in practice you might find that WCET is engaged in work that matters to you.

As a matter of fact....WCET's Annual Meeting is being held in Denver October 26-29. We will be sharing some of the preliminary results from our Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework, along with lots of other information about learning analytics and other emerging topics of interest to online learning and learning technology professionals. Might be a great time to come see what the WCET buzz is all about.

Maybe the "E" Really Does Matter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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.

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.

 

Seven Steps for Using More Rich Media in Learning

Many of the best tips for creating rich, engaging digital assets for learning come from sources that are probably not first-of-mind for most learning designers or IDs, much less trainers, professors, or instructors.

Case in point: My so-called seven steps for ramping up the engagement level in digital learning assets, below, are a thinly disguised version of a comparable list that appeared in today's eMarketer FYI newsletter. In an ad for Adobe's Scene7 platform, no less. Do you even know about Adobe Scene7? You probably do if you are a sales and marketing professional, but I would be surprised if many elearning or education professionals did.

In any event, by changing the word "customer" to "learner", and making a few other obvious modifications, these tips for making commercial online sales sites more engaging for customers this holiday season seemed particularly relevant for those of us looking for ways to engage our stakeholders in more compelling ways:

1. Mobilize your website. When it comes to the small screen, think big. Engage with full-screen video and interactive zoom. Remember how you like to use your mobile devices. There will be many devices with different operating systems, so be sure to choose an approach that makes sense for you and your learners.

2. Socialize your rich media. Blogs and Facebook are perfect homes for rich media. Post your online “catalog” of courses, assets, links and resources  in Facebook and go after word of mouth promotion of your resources by making your multimedia viewers embeddable by bloggers.

3. Cover your rich media bases. Learners are hungry for visual information. Cover all the bases, from visual search to to pan and zoom on all images and angles. Put up online examples, games and apps. (Chatroulette, anyone?)

4. Enrich your online image. Don't be static this term. Engage learner with rich-media activities and messages. Give your learners reasons to keep checking back to see what ELSE is new.

5. Persuade, delight & inform with videos. Speak to your learners with moving images; lectures, demos, interviews, field trips. Self-produced or links from YouTube.    

6. Invite user-generated content. Ask your learners to share their product experiences with photos and videos. Getting members of your learning community to contribute content makes the experience more authentic.

7. Let learners have fun designing one-of-a-kind assets and apps. Give learners the tools to personalize or design an online experience of their own. Use configurators to keep assembly simple and to help deliver a great online experience regardless of their technical abilities.

Perhaps those of us who design and produce intentionally targeted communications that are intended to bring about a call to action, a change in memory, performance or emotion have more in common than we might realize.

Thinking about mobile learning? Ask yourself these questions

I recently had the opportunity to write a short article for ELearning! Magazine on the topic "When Mobility Meets Learning". It gave me an opportunity to share a series of questions that I have been asking my clients over the years whenever they have started thinking about whether or not a technology learning project makes sense for their organization. 

With laptops, notebooks, netbooks,  tablets, feature phones, smart phones, iPods, iPhones and iPads at the ready, the question may not be if one is going to look for opportunities to try a mobile learning initiative, but when it is going to be time to “go mobile”. When thinking about adding mobile services to your enterprise’s learning technology portfolio, it is useful to give some serious thought to WHY a mobile learning initiative makes sense. Without establishing a baseline for assessing and evaluating costs relative to outcomes the likelihood of being able to demonstrate value and impact will be compromised.

With this in mind...

Why a mobile learning project? What is it that a mobile learning project will allow you to do that you could not do before?

What do you really want to do? Is the fascination with the attraction of offering learning stakeholders something new and different? Are there people in the field who won’t have the resources they need without a mobile learning solution? Are you simply curious, and just want to see what happens?

How you know when you have met your goal? How will you know if your mobile initiative made a difference?

What unique result do you want your mobile learning effort to achieve?

What technologies do you need to get started? What devices will you support? What network will you use? What carrier will you choose? Will you establish strict selection policies, or will you try to integrate everyone’s devices regardless of operating system?

For whom is your mobile initiative intended? Will it be for everyone, or will you focus more on the needs of traveling staff, or will it be aimed more at remote, distributed and field based personnel?

What will your stakeholders need to be successful? Will they know what is expected? Will they need training or orientation sessions to understand what they need to do?

How are you going to fund it? How are you going to sustain it, and for how long?

How will you evaluate your effectiveness? What will you tell your sponsoring executives when you go back for next year’s budget request and they ask you to justify your program?

Although mobile learning certainly brings its own unique challenges, the good news is that many of the antecedents of mobile learning have prepared learning technology stakeholders for the journey ahead.  In reflecting upon Christiansen’s notion of disruptive innovations, Penny Wilson has described mobile wireless devices—such as cell phones, handhelds, and notebook computers—as “tools of mass disruption” that are going to help spark a period of innovation for learning technology stakeholders of all kinds. While these devices may not yet be completely ubiquitous, reliable or rich, it is already clear that mobility is changing life as we know it. Our challenge as learning professionals is to make mobile learning so compelling that stakeholders continue to see possibilities, not problems.