Cole W. Camplese

Our eLearning Platform

I've been on vacation all week and haven't really even checked my feeds to see what is going on in the World. I was sort of surprised to see that Apple released a new iPod Shuffle that talks given how hyper-connected I typically am. The thing that prompted me to post this morning has nothing to do with music players however. I came across a post at my new colleague Matt Meyer's blog, Blog Platform: Authoring Tool, where he exposes some thinking about how he is planning to author and deliver the Biology Wet Lab course he is the lead designer on. I really like the thinking and thought I'd share some overall thoughts.

I've written about my struggles with eLearning and eLearning authoring in general lots of times, but after reading Matt's post this morning I jumped into my way back machine (this blog) and found a post from a couple years ago where I asked for some help thinking about this topic.

What I struggle with is the idea of what is a really good eLearning environment these days? In my mind, a handful of pages of content that link and embed objects that drive student and faculty to engage in conversations (on or off line) seems to be the goal. With that said, why not design those content pages in a blog so students and faculty (and maybe people from the outside) can have conversations in context? Why are we still struggling with what the right eLearning tool set looks like when we are sitting in a world with dozens of content creation tools? The model we are trying to avoid consists of tons of static text pages that prompt students to leave the content and jump into a discussion forum to interact — I’ve never liked that, but now the technology supports what I am after … the opportunity for conversation at every level of a course experience.

I've built a couple of examples of blog powered eLearning spaces since then and I'm pretty sure having these examples were helpful in sharing my thoughts with Matt last week. I had written about it back in October as I did a survey of some of the emerging ways our blogging platform has been being used.

Recently I took an old topic from an Online IST course I helped design about seven years ago and republish it via the Blogs at PSU environment. It took only a handful of minutes and produces a portable package that can be customized by an entire team in a collaborative way. And since our platform allows for easy export and import, a faculty member who wants the content can easily download an export file and import it into a new blog space to customize the look, the feel, the content, the activities, or anything else for her own instruction.

When I built the examples I wanted to explore the potential of the platform as an easy to use design and development environment as well as experiment with personalization. I ended up with two versions of the content ... one to be used as a "standard" version and one as a fully customized version. The Master Course provides a baseline version of the content in a central location — perhaps in an Open Courseware model. A faculty member could browse the content and download a simple file. This file contains the entire course and structure. This is ideal because it allows that faculty member to manage and customize the content as their own. This can then be used to create a personal version of the content.

What is great to see from Matt's post is that he gets the notion and he is thinking about how to use the built in communication tools as a way to gather feedback. I can see he and the team he is working with taking advantage of the commenting system to get an idea from students as they work screen by screen what they think of the environment. I am also excited that we are buying into the idea of embedding different kinds of content to make the experience a little more complete -- we all know how easy it is to drop in media from YouTube, but imagine collecting data live via an embedded google spreadsheet form and you can imagine that is when things start to get really interesting.

All of this is important stuff and it puts a new look on some existing and (IMO) outdated and outmoded thinking in the eLearning design world. I am anxious to hear what others are thinking about this and the questions Matt is looking to explore.

23 Things and ETS Talk

A tip of the hat to Veronica Diaz from Maricopa on this little find ... the 23 Things open course designed and delivered from Glendale Community College in Arizona. Not much to say here, but fantastic. It is an open, self-paced eLearning course that guides learners through 23 things they should know about Web 2.0.

It got Brad Kozlek and I talking quite a bit about it today and we think this and our follow up thoughts will be featured this week on ETS Talk. Speaking of ETS Talk, I came across a very nice post about our little podcast show from Mike Briggs at Sun. Blows my mind that people are listening!

eLearning and the Real World

Is it just me or is the idea that the University of Phoenix Online buying the naming rights to the Arizona Cardinals' Stadium seem almost unreal. It wasn't too long ago that a well placed administrator told me that eLearning was dead ... this seems to indicate a different opinion. It appears as though we should look at this as a sign that the masses are embracing this mode of study. I know I can appreciate at least a hybrid approach to the standard notion of teaching and learning.

Back in the day (you know, 1999) everyone was talking about the potential of online education as a major cash cow for well connected schools. I'm not sure anyone thought it would be "Universities" outside the mainstream making a real go of it. The last time I checked, it costs a ton of money to name a stadium at any level. All I am saying is that someone might be doing the eLearning thing really well -- read that as making money. It makes me wonder when buildings on my campus will get a name from a competitor who happens to have big pockets? Jeez ... how will it sound if a building here is named the "University of Texas Information Sciences and Technology Building?" Strange days indeed ...

Can you Brand Learning?

When we started the Online IST project it was just a course, a set of resources, and a vision (and a collection of courses to come). It wasn’t called Online IST, I was doing what everyone else does, “This is IST 110, but for the web.” As it started to grow and we were thinking about how to get the entire faculty in our system to use the courses I wanted a way to market the whole initiative. I had come from the commercial eTraining world; so the concept was to build each course as if it were a product within a specific line ... I wanted a brand name. A brand name gave us something we could all easily use to discuss all the pieces of the puzzle that makes up our version of an eLearning course -- the course pages, a communication space, a roadmap, support tools, resources, etc ... without a central brand I didn't think we could mount a marketing effort. I know that sounds strange, but that's what was going on – marketing to build utilization and adoption.

Now if you look at learning resources/materials/objects as products, you have to think that we've finally arrived at this point where we have access to an almost overwhelming amount of content. Some content is free, while other stuff is locked down behind authenticated walls, and others still are available from a ton of commercial vendors. It is interesting to me that we have gotten to the point where there is actually as much choice for learning materials as there is for products that sit on the shelves at Target, Wal-Mart, and in a virtual sense Amazon.com. It seems though what we are lacking is a mechanism for powerful brand recognition ... is a brand in a name or the quality … or both? And whose name matters? In my case, I chose to brand around the school in which we were building the materials for (Online IST) ... or is a particular faculty member who is extremely well respected in a field a good source for a brand? Is it the University -- Phoenix, PSU World Campus?

I was reading a great post over at one of my favorite blogs this morning, The Long Tail, called Brands: Think people, not products. One line that really struck me is, "the changing role of brands in an era of empowered consumers." What got me is how savvy our students have become -- savvy consumers of education if you will. What that is telling me is that we -- the so called innovators in this space -- really need to take the next step with our design, our environments, our ability to integrate the social components of learning, and build some seriously strong learning brands that our consumers demand

I've always thought that eLearning/eEducation should be powered by strong eCommerce models ... it is more true now than ever. If you think of the transactional nature of learning and compare it to business it is so similar it is amazing ... it really has me thinking again about how learning objects could be treated as products and take advantage of the tricks marketers use to get us to buy (in the learning world, I've called it adopt) -- think in the e-sense what that is ... ratings, people who bought this also bought this, user feedback, etc. All of this works by the way. Is it fair to say adoption of eLearning materials, methodologies, pedagogy, etc really is a matter of solid branding and marketing? Maybe, I’d like to know what you think … oh, by the way, it doesn't hurt to have world class people behind it all.

Just some morning thoughts while listening to my favorite jazz ... by the way its the people, not the products that I buy to listen to.