Bitten off too much to chew

Working on my final project, I decided I wanted to install the opensource LMS platform eFront to demonstrate different elements such as file hosting, training records, and the like. I assumed this would be just a simple process of downloading the platform and playing with it. Well, turns out I was wrong. I tried downloading Moodle and eFront and realized that the learning curve is a little steep. XAMPP, Apache, Perl, MySQL, huh? I barely know what an FTP is! It becomes intimidating when you have to edit code. So I have decided to save that battle for another day. But the experience is not without learning. I have now identified some areas that I need to get up to speed with.

Nearing the end

On my first posting on this blog, I highlighted some of the things I wish to accomplish in this class. As we one class away from completing the course, I think now would be a good time to revisit that list. Here is a quick recap of my needs and how the class addressed them:

I want to learn easy ways to facilitate online collaboration
I feel more confident collaborating online. I find using cloud computing platforms to be helpful: Google Docs and the like. I am very excited to use Google Wave in a work related context.

I want to learn online evaluation techniques in the absence of an LMS

Evaluation remains an area that I want to learn more about. I have found some LMS platforms that are open sourced such as moodle.org. I think I will host my next class on this platform.

I want to identify technologies and software that I need to learn in order to advance my career in Training.

Well, I think I've got a handle on Captivate, now I want to study HTML, Flash, Dreamweaver and more Webdesign platforms.

I need to learn the specifics of ID as it pertains to the online world

I think I have a much better understanding of the different pedagogical techniques needed to successfully design online learning.

I want to know what SCORM is and how to design SCORM compliant materials

SCORM is basically just a design template, Captivate will do it for me.

I want to be able to add items to this list for future (or current) study that I am currently unaware or ignorant of. 

Webdesign, Flash

Not bad for results hey? Well, I also had concerns starting the class. They almost seem silly to me now:

My schedule: I have many commitments and I hope I will be able to manage my time

This one was tough, I need a bit of a vacation after this class!

My lack of experience in e-learning: I hope I will find enough material to make this class relevant.

I found tons of things to make the class relevant.

My limited experience in curriculum design: same as above

Nothing that learning in action can't conquer

My limited exposure to the corporate training world: same as above

I felt like had I solid enough background to succeed in this course

I guess I have to get over my feeling of "impostorship" (for those who read The Skillful Teacher by Brookfield, you know what I mean)

I faked it well!

My overall evaluation of this class is excellent. Perhaps the only thing I would like to change is to have more class sessions. Or a PPOCCID I and a PPOCCID II.

How were your expectations met for this class? What about your concerns?

Until next time,

-Ben

Google Wave

Thanks to Markis I was got an invitation to Google Wave. It seems like a very interactive platform, and wished we had it for our teamwork. One of the drawbacks to it right now is the limited access Google has afforded during the preview stage. I was given a grand total of 8 invitations to give out...

New Technologies

My preconceived notions about eLearning were simple: learn Software X and you will be proficient. However, I have come to the realization that there will never be a Software X. Sad to say, but you simply simply cannot master one, two, or even ten programs and be an eLearning professional. The rapid evolution of technologies precludes this notion.

Browsing job postings, one comes across a myriad of different requisite software skills. I am certain that I am not the first to have to research the mystery software skill advertised. Technology is evolving so rapidly, that it seems impossible to keep up with some of the trends.

That being said, software is just a tool. The increasingly easy user interfaces (as well as background knowledge of the user) empowers almost every user to exploit them. Software seems to be becoming more and more democratic. Using it becomes simple.

So maybe at the end of the day knowing what to use when is perhaps the most important. You will never know it all. However, know how to access the tools you need as well as how to learn to use them. This will make you a true eLearning professional.

Need I say more...

Second Life

I decided to explore some game based learning tools and became a member of Second Life. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Second Life is a virtual reality simulator with stunning graphics and point of vision graphics.

I was very excited to explore the possibilities of this program and eagerly launched myself into it. However once online I perceived several fatal flaws to the learning process.

1. Very complicated to join and learn, the learning curve may be too great for average learner

2. Too many distractions, I found the graphics and interface would interfere with the learning experience. It was just too much.

3. Content was too open. While freedom of speech is always a welcome attribute, the blatant open sex practices on Second Life are too distracting to the learning process.

Above summarizes my opinions of the Second Life platform. Granted I have limited experience with it and would be open to explore more aspects of it.

What have your experiences been with Second Life?

Selling Lesson Plans Online

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Ms. Bohrer has sold 31 M&M counting exercises, which come with directions, sorting mats and work sheets, for $3 each.

Today I came across this article published in the New York Times. It details the new practice of teachers selling their lesson plans online. The article brought to light some interesting ethical questions regarding the commoditization of learning in the school system.

In the corporate world we have no scruples (or little depending on your organization) about buying and selling learning materials. Reusable learning objects are a cornerstone of eLearning 2.0. Yet somehow there still seems to be a stigma around its use in the educational system.

Merlot.org and other learning object repositories have been a great resource for me in my personal teaching endeavors. I find www.lessonplanspage.com as well as www.enotes.com to be particularly helpful for the courses I teach (Junior level English Lit and Elementary French). I have bought some lesson plans. As a volunteer GED instructor, I teach two classes per week on top of my full time job. I have found that it takes me on average 3-4 hours to prepare for an hour and a half lesson. Taking the short cut of buying a lesson plan for $6 is not only a time savings but a money savings. It also allows me to concentrate my time on facilitating knowing that I have the materials to back me up. I do not feel that it compromises my students learning experience. Using classroom tested materials only buttresses my teaching capabilities.

The gray area that the article brought up was the fact that some teachers may be selling materials that were developed while they were on the public school payroll. In my experience, it seems that most instructional design will occur outside of school hours. Being accomplished on private time makes it fair game for the marketplace. How can this be distinguished though?

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that academic materials such as this should remain shareable and free, or do teacher/entrepreneurs have the right to sell their information? Or should the information not be shared at all?

Online Facilitation

Here are some of the key differences I came up with between Online Facilitation and in traditional in person facilitation as well some ways to address them:

Reading reactions: it is very difficult to assess participants reactions. Close attention must be paid to any response including clarifying questions. This also involves taking the time ask more questions then you might have in a traditional classroom setting.

Prework: you can't wing it online. Everything needs to be prepared and rehearsed well in advance.

Technical Tools: when selecting tools, make sure you have the end user in mind.

Record the Session: Results generated may be easily lost or not received. Make sure your objectives were met by posting a summary or archive of the class.

Patience: the flow of communication may seem slightly slower than verbal communication. That's OK, concentrate on quality communication and enrich it with outside sources. Include hyper links, media clips, and visuals. These can convey more meaning than just the spoken word.

I just found this great Wiki with tips for online facilitation:

http://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/

Interesting Site

I came across this website and I think it is very interesting and relevant to our class:

http://www.elearningbuzz.com/

Online Engagement

Considering our class presentation, I realized the importance of creating interactions that are suited to a virtual environment. Many of the activities we incorporated were direct translations from a f2f (face to face) setting. While these may prove to be engaging in person, the limitations of a virtual classroom may render these techniques less effective. The use of breakout rooms (buzz groups) seemed to work very well, however the virtual gallery stroll (slide 13) felt a bit awkward to me.

In this activity we asked students to brainstorm and list words or phrases that would summarize the individual analyses. I feel that the biggest limitation to this activity was the on screen typing mechanism. It seemed awkward, difficult to use, and did not identify the speaker.

Another limitation to this was the difficulty to facilitate and elicit student responses. In a traditional classroom, I find it easier to engage students using nonverbal cues and taking the pulse of the class. In this virtual environment, I felt at a bit of a loss. It is impossible to read silence over a computer screen. In person, I can usually assess whether or not students are reflecting, lost, or indifferent. Silence is just silence online. That might be a good topic for a future post (assessing silence online).

However, listening to the classroom responses after the fact, they seemed to be engaged, it was not a failure. If I had to redesign this activity, I would perhaps create a bank of concepts for students to choose from and then categorize; maybe a drag and drop type activity. It seems to me that ease of use is of paramount importance in e-Learning.

I also found out that having students create learning outcomes on the spot was perhaps a too complicated task to accomplish in the given time allotment. If I were to redesign this activity, I would perhaps have a list of learning outcomes with some that are irrelevant or incorrect and have the students select the correct responses. I understand that this is not achieving the goal of higher order thinking, but perhaps such an activity could prepare the students for an offline assignment where they could display their internalization of the knowledge.

What online interactions have you found to be successful? I am intrigued by the concept of game based learning and came across this site:

http://web.me.com/jen.dewitt/BakedNotFried/Welcome. (Thanks Margaret!)

Teamwork makes the Dream Work

Working on the team presentation has highlighted to me the importance collaborative learning. When the assignment was first given, it was my natural instinct to go at it alone. In the past I have relied on my own hard work and imagination. But in the spirit of this class we took a projectized approach to the presentation, and maximized our resources by doing so. I was amazed at what synergies were created (and still are) when all four of us were focused on accomplishing the same goal. We were able to draw individual strengths from each member and create something that none of us could on our own. I know this sounds like an old tune, however, working together has shown me how important teamwork is especially in a e-Learning 2.0 environment. I hope this will reflect in our work on Wednesday.

My Learning Paradigm

In my learning, I tend to gravitate towards connectivism. We live in an information overloaded society. Knowing how to access quality sources and weed out the clutter is of paramount importance. When I was a child, I loved spending hours in the library reading. My favorite books were encyclopedias. I remember wandering through article after article and getting giddy with joy after seeing a particularly interesting diagram. I realized at a young age that even if I had completely read every encyclopedia, there would still be information out there that I needed or wanted to know. As an undergraduate, I studied French Literature. At first I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of articles written about any given work. I developed a method of finding what was most relevant by surveying the bibliographies of a number of articles and looking for common sources, I would then concentrate my efforts on the most referenced items. This was during the time when most references were not published on the internet and I had to manually browse through index cards, microfiche, and the like.

Fortunately, today this method of research and learning has been greatly facilitated by the availability of online resources. Now I simply browse Web2.0 products such as blogs, YouTube, Wikipedia and the like. I can now follow a reference at the click of a link and determine whether or not the information is relevant to me or not. The very reason that I am completing this certificate program is that I browsed several LinkedIn profiles of training professionals and found that many had attended this program.

That being said, I do not feel that connectivism works in every situation. In a previous training engagement, I was a flight attendant instructor. In this safety critical position, we had to rely on good old fashioned behaviorism. There is no way a flight attendant can be trained to open a door in an emergency by browsing YouTube. This would be the result:

In summary, I believe the learning paradigm needs to be adapted to the learner and learning object. The instructor must be attuned to the learner's needs and flexible enough to adapt an a case by case basis. Having a solid foundation in all of these paradigms will allow the instructor select the most appropriate delivery method.

Privacy and Blogging

Laura brought up a good point in her posting about privacy and feelings of vulnerability on the blogosphere. I have to admit, I also feel some trepidation bearing out my soul on the internet. The classroom has historically been a domain for exploration and experimentation safe from external scrutiny. Does a public forum threaten to breach this fostering environment? I can certainly see this hampering some students. I wonder if there have been any studies done on this subject?

But on the other hand I can also see the benefits of using this media. A blog does offer various levels of anonymity. Some may have difficulties expressing themselves in person or in front of a crowd. This can be eloquently circumvented by blogging.

And then there is a bit of "sniffing each other's butts." In the animal kingdom, this is done frequently and frankly. We humans have developed a far more delicate system of intricacies to assess and learn from each other. While posting, the blogger knowingly puts his work out for examination. This in and of itself can be a daunting process, but I believe the internet offers a comforting barrier, inline with our human timidity. Moreover the knowledge that your work will be sized up in a public sphere offers a great incentive to put forward a polished, well thought out product. A bit of competition can be good for the learning experience. What are your thoughts on this?

-Ben

Team 1

Hello fellow classmates, I have signed up for team 1 for the group assignment. I know it is daunting to be the first ones up, but then don't you get extra moxie points for being the guinea pigs? I am taking the Group Facilitation class next week. If anybody else is in that class, we can team up and work on the project together after class on Friday or Saturday. Let me know if you guys are up for it. See you all on Tuesday!

After the first class

First impressions of class:

I had always assumed that the physical environment plays a secondary role in online learning. I figured out how wrong I was within the first few minutes of the class. I was following along in computer lab where other students were typing away. I did not feel as comfortable expressing myself as I normally would in a classroom setting.

I liked the pace of the instruction, even though it was mostly housekeeping items that were covered, it didn't seem to be dummied down.

I really liked the surveymonkey CIQ. I have been looking for a way to deliver CIQ's online and I just found it! I wonder if it will work with a 1 minute essay also.

I want to see the pugs. I had a pug called Bud when I was a boy.

Until next time!

Learning Theories 101

Here is a quick refresher cheat sheet for Learning theories. Please note that all quoted material has been directly sourced from the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_theory_(education).

Behaviorism:

1. "Learning is manifested by a change in behavior."
2. "The environment shapes behavior."
3. "The principles of contiguity (how close in time, two events must be for a bond to be formed ) and reinforcement (any means of increasing the likelihood that an event will be repeated ) are central to explaining the learning process. "

• Classic Conditioning: reflex response to stimuli (Pavlov's dogs)
• Operant Conditioning: reinforcement by reward or stimuli (Skinner's doves) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AepqpTtKbwo

In short learning is facilitated by environment.

Cognitivism:

1. "The memory system is an active organized processor of information"
2. "Prior knowledge plays an important role in learning. "

Basically learning is facilitated by the learner, not so much the outside environment.

Constructivism:

• "Constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge or experience."
• Social Constructivism: Learning created when groups interact and collaborate.

Connectivism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism_(learning_theory)

• "Learning is the process of creating connections and developing a network"
• "In other words, "know-how" and "know-what" are being supplemented with "know-where" (the understanding of where to find the knowledge when it is needed), and meta-learning is becoming just as important as the learning itself."
• "To teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect"

Hope this helps,

-Ben

The night before

Thanks for stopping by my blog for detailing my journey through the Principles & Practices of Online Course Creation & Instructional Design Course. Boy, that's a mouthful. It's 1:30am the night before the first class, I have just finished the required readings and reviewed the revised syllabus. My first reactions to the readings were:

1. I need to brush up on pedagogical theory.
2. It sounded like Web 2.0 hype was still very new when the texts were written (I think in a large part the Web 2.0 has already been assimilated in many domains.
3. What the heck is an Advance Organizer? http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Advance_organizers (I think I will try KWL in my next class!)
4. The texts seemed to be very precursory, I hope we go into a little more detail in class.

I suppose now is the time for me to list some of my needs and expectations for the class. I am sure I will revise them as we go along.

1. I want to learn easy ways to facilitate online collaboration
2. I want to learn online evaluation techniques in the absence of an LMS
3. I want to identify technologies and software that I need to learn in order to advance my career in Training
4. I need to learn the specifics of ID as it pertains to the online world
5. I want to know what SCORM is and how to design SCORM compliant materials
6. I want to be able to add items to this list for future (or current) study that I am currently unaware or ignorant of.

Here is a list of the concerns that I bring to the class. By mentioning them of the bat, I hope I will be able to manage them and not let them get in the way of my success. (I'm really into making lists tonight!)

1. My schedule: I have many commitments and I hope I will be able to manage my time
2. My lack of experience in e-learning: I hope I will find enough material to make this class relevant.
3. My limited experience in curriculum design: same as above
4. My limited exposure to the corporate training world: same as above
5. I guess I have to get over my feeling of "impostorship" (for those who read The Skillful Teacher by Brookfield, you know what I mean)

Well, that's all for tonight. I look forward to class tomorrow, and hope I can jump in at 7:30 sharp.