eLearning Roadtrip

Secret Handshakes of ID

I recently contributed an essay to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Applied Instructional Design. This is a new journal, sponsored by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, aimed at giving the ID scholar - practitioner greater voice. I contributed an essay, called "In Search of Secret Handshakes of Instructional Design", that talked about the importance of finding the "know 'em when we seen 'em" attributes for recognizing fellow ID practitioners when we encounter them on the long and winding road to enterprise learning. I also observed that theoretical foundations guiding the study of the evolution of a field can fall awkwardly out of alignment with the evolution of a professional practice, particularly one so directly affected by the speed of technological change.

Here is a link to the full essay. 

And here is a 5 minute summary:

Whether we use a constructivistic approach, a social learning approach, a connectionistic approach or a behavioral approach, IDs produce value through the design, development and distribution of learning solutions. We used to look more like teachers, trainers and psychologists than artists, scripters or programmers, but that balance seems to have shifted a bit. Today's IDs work with technology tools, because so much of today's learning and performance support is enabled / managed / distributed via technology. IDs create learning content and courseware. But IDs are not just elearning content authors, either. IDs are also engaged in supporting and enabling distance learning's web collaborations and with mobile learning's apps and mediacasts, too. AND running the LMS.

IDs used to mostly come to the practice out of graduate instructional design and educational technology programs. Today, perhaps as many as two-thirds of today's ID practitioners come to the practice of ID from applied settings.  We come from creative professions (e.g. artists, designers, producers). We became IDs when assigned with learning and development responsibilities. We are the IT professional who is put in charge of the enterprise LMS. We are the training manager who gets put in charge of the new elearning – mobile learning – game based learning – virtual world learning – initiative that the enterprise wants to explore.

Regardless of our epistemological roots, our professional training, the number of or lack of our graduate degrees or the places where we work, we call ourselves IDs.

Do we know how to recognize each other when we see each other??

To be continued....

(Of course it will. You don't think I would get this all queued up and walk away do you??)

 

Data Change Everything

 
During the past several months there have been low background rumblings in the land of education and training, and the rumbling is starting to get louder. That is the sound of the learning world discovering what Internet professionals working in other vertical markets have known for years: The digital “breadcrumbs” that learners leave behind about their viewing, reading, engagement and assessment behaviors, interests and preferences provide massive amounts of data that can be mined to better personalize online experiences. 

Learning analytics are all about applying statistics and research methods in the service of better informed, more accountable decision-making. We're talking about using descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and predictive statistics on the data that we collect about, well, just about everything associated with Online Learning. eLearning. Distance Learning. Whatever you call it.

While predictive analytics are commonly used in consumer settings (e.g. to help generate recommendations for Amazon shoppers and select movies on Netflix), predictive analytics are not yet broadly used in educational settings for assisting with activities such as course selection, or for predicting points in a student’s academic experience where they may be at a point of increased risk. We're not even very good at keeping track of descriptive information in education, a la Google Analytics. at least not yet.

But we're getting there.

Here are five things I know for sure about the rising tide of learning analytics and what this is going to mean for helping people make better, more informed decisions about learning. Yours, mine, theirs, ours.

 

A vast number of today’s online learning transactions are captured in Content Management Systems, Learning Management Systems, Student Information Systems and Enterprise Resource Planning systems. We know A LOT about what happens when students - and faculty - are online. Given what we know about web analytics in Google, and personalized recommendation engines in Netflix and Amazon, and the power of hastags in Twitter, "thumbs up" in Pandora and Facebook...why WOULDN'T we want to personalize our learning experiences in the same way? 

I know for some that the most fun is going to be getting all crazy with the complex statistical modeling that this kind of work is going to require AND enable. But for a lot of us, what we are really going to care about is that learning analytics give ME a foundation for my own learning progress and completion. Set up the right way, these personalized predictively generated experiences will help ME stay on top of what I need to know. And THAT is very cool.

This isn't so much about collecting more information from people. It's more about getting smarter and  putting the data we already collect to better use.

 

This is the hard part. This is the "admitting we may have a problem" part. Because once you take a look at what is going on, you need to be prepared for the fact that you are going to need to respond. To SOMETHING, anything. Ignore at your peril.

Same basic idea, just a different way of saying it. I will tell you all that I've been watching people squirming about how to report results in ways that show the not-as-good as well as the good in a couple of projects recently - enough to tell me that the benefits of learning analytics are going to be balanced with some big cultural barriers that will require direct and focused attention.

Yup. These data we leave everywhere we go...they really are going to change everything. Because once we KNOW what we know, there will be no going back.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Management of Online Education Survey Completion Reminder

The 2010 Managing Online Education Survey went "live" this past week. This is the second annual survey, jointly sponsored by WCET and the Campus Computing Project, that documents the nuts and bolts of what it takes to successfully run online learning programs. Dr. Kenneth C. (Casey) Green, Founder of the Campus Computing Project, is the lead author for this important exploration. Invitations to participate in the survey were distributed last week.

IF YOU HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED YOUR INVITATION WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!!!!! Now that online learning IS hot, hot hot it is really important that any and all of you working in higher education online learning make sure that your voice is heard. Please contact Casey directly at [email protected]. Tell him Ellen told you to get in touch with him about the MOE Survey. Don't be shy.

It is possible that your institution is not already part of WCET - possible that your invitation got spam filtered - perhaps the name we have for your institutional point of contact is wrong. So this is my personal invitation to please be sure that your institution is represented in this year's survey results. Get in touch with Casey at [email protected]. The deadline for completion is November 4th 2010.

Seriously. Don't be shy.

Thanks very much.

New from NCES: Postsecondary Institutions and Price of Attendance in US

The National Center for Education Statistics has just released a publication entitled ‘Postsecondary Institutions and Price of Attendance in the United States: Fall 2009 and Degrees and Other Awards Conferred: 2008-09, and 12-Month Enrollment 2008-09'. Great stuff if you are a statistics junkie. And even if you are not.

I learn about these reports from my clients and colleagues at WICHE, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. WICHE publishes alerts of interest to education policy and research communities. You can SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to the WICHE Policy Alerts and/or Stat Alerts distribution lists. WICHE also maintains a Policy Publication Clearinghouse, which includes past Policy Alerts and Stat Alerts, as well as other studies, reports, surveys, and policy briefs.

But back to the new NCES Report -  in 2009-10, there were 6,896 Title IV institutions in the United States (this is a classification that relates to one eligibility for federal financial aid) and other jurisdictions:

• 2,853 were classified as 4-year institutions
• 2,259 were 2-year institutions
• the remaining 1,784 were less-than-2-year institutions.

During 2009-10, 4-year public institutions reported average tuition and required fees of $6,400 for in-state students and $15,100 for out-of-state students.

4-year private not-for-profit institutions are charging an average of $21,100, while Private for-profit institutions reported charging an average of about $15,700

Between 2000-01 and 2009-10, 4-year public institutions reported a 46% increase in average inflation-adjusted in-state tuition and required fees and a 34% increase in average inflation-adjusted out-of-state tuition and required fees.

Over the same 10-year period, 4-year private not-for-profit institutions reported a 31% increase and private for-profit institutions reported a 20% increase in average inflation-adjusted tuition and required fees.

For more information on this topic please refer to the NCES and WICHE site links, above.

Beyond "Rolling Our Own" Technology Solutions for Learning

The debates and discussions following the announcement of Blackboard's intention to purchase two of the the education-targeted web conferencing companies have been fascinating. I was particularly interested in a recent exchange between Dr. Phil Ice (who also goes by the Twitter name @technostats) and Dr. Gardner Campbell (who goes by the Twitter name @GardnerCampbell).

Here is the link to the post that Phil wrote on how Blackboard's acquisition targets and the recently announced partnership with Barnes and Noble may be good for higher education, and Gardner's thoughtful questions on said same post.

What caught my eye is the notion that the education community needs to develop the technical acumen to create to our own non-commercial, open source, community developed platforms and solutions that provide an alternative to evil corporate platforms and solutions (my words, not Gardner's or Phil's. They are both way too polite to say that.)

Not surprisingly, i DO have an opinion on the subject.

I'm all for innovation in education. It's hard to expect that we creative types wouldn't want to tinker with customizing apps to make learning better. But innovation for the sake of innovation and exploration is different from leveraging innovation to create true solutions in education that come from the application of technologies in practice. This is more than creating pilot projects and experimental programs. This is about encourage adoption of innovation in the service of teaching and learning where the impact - and value - is demonstrable, measurable and sustainable.

NO way that even the most technically proficient faculty will create commercially viable software that is able to compete on features, benefits and user support and sales/licensing/upgrade programs...because UNIVERSITY FACULTY AND STAFF ARE NOT IN THE SOFTWARE BUSINESS! Educators are in the education "business" - teaching, service, research. It's what educators do. It's really, really important. But it's just part of the bigger picture.

This is not to say that you can't start a software company...or that you can't do a nice job creating a nice little product for a niche market. It's just that it can be very very hard to serve two masters - in this case, a business agenda AND a research agenda.

Reliable, industrial-strength sustainable software solutions need more than a good idea and great intentions (and associations whose membership dues go toward funding) to succeed. Yes, I know about Sakai and other very good platforms that are being created by and for educators. Yes, I know a lot about the value of UGC, personalized learning environments, apps, etc. Great ideas. Interesting pilot programs. Great ways to test hypotheses.

But academics' day jobs are not aimed at managing platforms, architecture, code strings, patches, and APIs. (Technical documentation? We don't need no stinkin' documentation...something I did hear from one of the big-dog Sakai participant institutions not too long ago.)

At the risk of making my academic buddies cranky with me, this needs to be said out loud - Education change agents need to be okay with the fact that reliable, well-supported and maintained commercial platforms and apps are not inherently evil. They are flippin' commodities! You should expect them to work. If they don't, you stop buying them and look for other alternatives. You need to expect that your vendors will work with you to make sure you are making good decisions. If you don't feel the love from your vendor, you need to find other alternatives where you do.

 I believe this so much that I'm dedicating much personal energy to developing capacity at WCET to cut through the hyperbole surrounding emerging tech developments so that educators can quit feeling yanked by every acquisition announcement and new product release. I would so much rather see educators' energy spent on figuring out how to use what we know about motivation, pedagogy, design, assessment and so on to provide learning solutions that engage and inspire.

Educators are certainly going to find themselves/ourselves cobbling together assets and apps. But that's more like packing the car for a trip down the info-highway, not like building the roadbeds and bridges and on/off ramps that you need to actually move your well-stocked vehicle from point A to point B. We've gotta quit knee-jerk reacting about the perceived cost of licensing and start thinking about TRUE costs of ownership, and then focus on leveraging our knowledge and skills to making education work better for our various stakeholders.

Sigh. I wish there was a way to take education research peeps on field trips to the many tech companies that will be surrounding us while in San Jose for the Sloan-C conference...I expect it would be eye-opening.

Seriously? You Call This Flash Bashing Journalism??

This morning's digital edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education featured a story that is such a cheesy, headline-seeking piece of writing that I simply can't help calling the question - Do you guys really call this kind of brand-mongering, SEO-sucking, sensational silliness "journalism"???

Maybe I do have a soft spot for my former employer. I'm not shy about being an Adobe Systems products fangirl. Well, some products, anyway. Nonetheless, to lead with a headline about how Flash threatens the security of student records, citing a research study that is unavailable for public review that looks for ways to hack code and then suggest that Flash is at fault for the servers under faculty desks that university IT cannot control.  Wha-a-a-???? That just seems over the top to me. But maybe I am being old-fashioned.

Here, take a look and see what YOU think: 

Flash on College Websites May Pose Security Risk to Students

I will say that I was glad to see that the letters posted to the article have been calling the same general questions that I am, so I don't think I am too far off base. 

With all the real issues that education needs to deal with where learning technologies are concerned this just seems like a sad way to distract from things that really matter.

Thank you for letting me share. I feel much better. 

Have a great weekend.

MacArthur Funds Cal-Irvine Digital Media Learning Research Hub

A newly-created Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the University of California-Irvine will provide a international center to nurture exploration of and build evidence around the impact of digital media on young people's learning and its potential for transforming education. Funded through a $2.97 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Center was announced on October 27th at a national forum at Google headquarter that brought together leading thinkers around the challenge of reasserting American global leadership in education.

Through study of how youth are using digital media, researchers will seek to understand the implications inherent in how this generation of youth - unlike any previous one - is embracing the online world to access information, socialize, and engage in public life. Research is expected to help schools, libraries, museums and other institutions engaged in teaching and learning better prepare students for the 21st century workforce.

With a physical office at UC Irvine and a new virtual destination -- www.dmlcentral.net -- the Center will support emerging research on digital media and learning by hosting international conferences, facilitating workshops and working groups, and bringing together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, industry leaders and others working on related projects. It will also house related research initiatives of the MacArthur Foundation's digital media and learning initiative.  Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the nonprofit research group FutureLab are partnering with UC Irvine on Hub activities.

More information about the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub can be found by clicking this active link.

For more about the  MacArthur Foundation please click this active link. These people are amazing.

New eLearning Guild LMS Report by Sage Road

On Monday October 19th, Sage Road Solutions and the eLearning Guild will be sending out an email blast announcing their newest research report entitled The Evolution of the LMS: From Management to Learning. This is Volume 1 in from the 4-volume series  Deep Analysis of Trends Shaping the Future of eLearning, where we explore issues that are going to have profound impact on elearning practitioners from the point of view of elearning professionals themselves.   

Topics we address in the report include:

• Home-grown LMSs are on the decline
• Moodle moves to the from of the LMS Adoption Pack
• Hosted Options for LMSs are Achieving Popularity
• Open Source, Open Applicatons and Open Education Resources are on the Rise
• Blackboard Gains Corporate Market Share
• Commercial LMS Customers: Less Formal, More Holistic
• Extensibility Matters
• Campuses and Businesses alike are slow to adopt Enterprise 2.0
• Revising Standards, Specifications and Structures

The Sage Road crew looking forward to seeing you at the upcoming eLearning Guild DevLearn conference in San Jose, CA. 3 of the 4 Sage Road research reports in this series will be featured among the program's concurrent sessions:

• The User Generated Content Revolution - Colleen Carmean, Beth Davis, Anne Derryberry 11/12, 10:45 AM
• The Learning Metaverse: Emerging Technologies that will Change e-Learning Forever - Ellen Wagner and Beth Davis 11/12/2009 3:00 PM

And of course....

• The Future of the LMS: A Software Lifecycle Perspective Beth David and Colleen Carmean 11/13 11:15 AM

Happy reading! We'll look forward to seeing you in San Jose.

Mobile Web Statistics

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

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

Download Mobile.SFSU10.08.09.final.

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

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

Hope you enjoy the slides and articles.