This was published about a month ago but I just found it today. An interview with Kathy Pletcher who chaired the task force for the University of Wisconsin's choice of a new course management system. The outcome of this was of much interest to many in the field as it was a fairly well document and rigorous process that ended up selecting a relative newcomer, Desire2Learn, as their final choice. Lots of good tidbits on their process:

"The evaluation scheme was 10% for general requirements, 65% functional and technical requirements, and 25% cost. On a scale of 10,000 points Desire2Learn received 9,700 points."

97% !! We are seeing similar results in other RFP processes we have been privy too through edutools. This is not an endorsement, just a statement that people are starting to pay attention to this smallish company from Guelph, Ontario. - SWL 

4:27:07 PM    

A good looking list of resources communication resources. Actually an good looking blog overall: Here's a snippet from the intro:

"This site provides guidance, know-how and resources to facilitate your ability to learn, communicate and network effectively with new media technologies." [sharewood tidings]

4:07:42 PM    

The Measure of Success.

Even before you've deployed your new e-learning system, there are steps
you can take to ensure its victory.

BY CARMINE PORCO

Many corporations substantiate their e-learning initiatives after the fact by eliminating related jobs or reducing travel expenditures for training. Although these are viable cost savings, they should not be the sole motivation for an e-learning initiative. E-learning must demonstrate that employees are learning more efficiently and retaining more of the curriculum compared to in-class training. The bottom line is: Is e-learning improving employee productivity?

[Darwin Magazine]

I'm commenting on this article because I note that other e-Learning weblogs have picked it up and passed it along without much comment. I think e-Learning managers should read it, not because I think they should heed it literally, but because it illustrates the classic way that e-Learning programs get killed.

The writer makes the point that the pressure is on e-Learning, more than on other technology investments, to make a business case before the purchase of the technology. Leaving for the moment the question of whether it's true that an LMS purchase is treated differently than an ERP purchase (I think smart CIO's demand a business case in advance for ERP, CRM, and any other member of the alphabet soup club), there are some other issues here that e-Learning advocates would be wise to attend to.

One reason business leaders are skeptical about e-Learning is the really poor track record training has in most enterprises. It would be a mistake to think demonstrating the value of an e-Learning implementation on the basis of numbers alone will be effective.  Demonstrating only that e-Learning cuts the cost of training implementation and citing only numbers of downloads of e-Learning materials just invites the CFO to observe that the best way to cut costs in the training program would be to cut out the training program entirely. Better address the credibility issue and better show how the e-Learning will support the attainment of corporate goals near and dear to the decision-makers' reputations with the board and the shareholders.

If productivity is going to be cited as part of the return on e-Learning, be sure to translate it correctly into benefits that are valued by the decision makers. Productivity gains mean the company can achieve more of what matters most to it without having to add staff. I think the author has gone astray by implying that "learning more efficiently and retaining more of the curriculum compared to in-class training" equates to "improving employee productivity."

This is a minefield. Get a good guide before you enter it. Your best guide is not an LMS/LCMS vendor. Your best guides are your own CFO and CIO. You may not always like what they have to say, but it is fatal to fail to work with them BEFORE talking to vendors.

1:05:34 PM    

Good list of presentations from the Cetis Pedagogy Forum launch meeting in April.

[elearnspace blog]

Note: all of the links go to PowerPoint files. These are quite large and take a long time to download if you are on dialup.

4:05:28 PM    

Implementing e-Learning: Ensuring You Get The Most.

A talk by Lance Dublin, January 15, 2003, at the SofTECH E-Learning SIG in San Rafael, California.

via [Kim's Learning(e) Weblog]

Some good thoughts by Lance, who has been in this business since before it was a business.

10:33:48 AM    

Sharing Your Site with RSS.
by Jason Cook

So, do you need to publish RSS on your site? Who's really using and reading RSS? And should you download an RSS aggregator?

This brief how-to will answer those questions one at a time, and then provide a walkthrough of a no-frills RSS feed — one you can build for your site in just a few minutes. We'll conclude with some tips on publicizing your RSS feed and automating the feed-building process.

[Webmonkey/Authoring]

9:58:24 AM    

Organizational Learning is No Accident makes an important point: effective learning requires time to reflect...and our "right now" form of communication (email, IM, etc.) doesn't allow reflection time...making it difficult for people and organizations to change (time being an important component to acclimate to changes).

[elearnspace blog]

The article cited is from the Harvard Business School, and actually turns out to have less to do with e-Learning (nothing to do with e-Learning, actually) than it does with change management. Having said that, it really is important to include change management as part of the action plan any time e-Learning is employed. Many times e-Learning has failed to bring about the business results that were desired, not so much because there was anything technically "wrong" with the e-Learning, but because the e-Learning was applied to support a bad management decision. Front-end analysis is still critical. It is unfortunately still true that training never gets credit for good results, but it takes the full burden of blame for failure.

(My glum thought of the day.)

9:33:34 AM    

A couple of really interesting comments overnight / yesterday:

A 'jaded' Lindon Parker says (in relation to RSS, weblogs etc.):

"..BUT the ground swell appears to be having little or no impact upon cheque signers..I can build customised RSS Aggregators that integrate with wikis, blogs, XML, swiss cheese(OK maybe not swiss cheese, brie maybe but not swiss...)etc, until I'm blue in the face but so far no one has shown the slightest interest in supporting a business model for one..and by that I mean paying me in some way I can feed my family... The more I look at the EduBlog space the more I think this is all falling apart through lack of interest, not on your or the other RSS/Bloggers part but on the part of the institutions that might want to implement them"

&

Mitra comments in relation to the Good Question thread prompted by 10 Reasons:

"From another perspective - yes there are tools that do everything from making the coffee to delivering courses online. But there are good reasons why we keep screwdrivers in our toolboxes. The complex tool designed precisely for the job will probably do it quicker, but adapting the complex tool to a job it was designed for is often MUCH harder than using a simpler tool. Its the same with WebLogs (and other CMS systems), they can be easily adapted for many tasks while a specific tool is often very hard to adapt to even a slightly different way of working."

11:58:52 AM    

Greg @ ten reasons responds to my response to his thoughts about the use of weblogs in education (or something like that, hyperlinks agogo)

Again, thanks for the check, shouldn't go throwing hyped terms like KM about (especially when I agree wholeheartedly that it's unpossible). It does help me 'manage' (or 'organize' 'add semblance of reasoning' 'engage' etc.) my mind though and if used in order to 'share' knowledge (through personal publishing) is a pretty obvious tool. A Knowledge Sharing tool?

(and just because it might not be called that doesn't mean it isn't it. I used the TV guide to whack a huge Aussie spider the other day, 'twasn't meant for that originally but did the job just fine... :o)

So, I guess the question is what are / could weblogs (and associated tools, RSS etc.) be good for in education? And where are they just discrediting themselves by trying to be something that they're not?

Perhaps we could start with VLEs... I wonder what I could do with a copy of Manila, a few open source tools & someone who knew what they were doing with the code that Blackboard couldn't ;o)

11:57:20 AM    

Will links to a story posted by a (one of his? creative writing?) student, scroll down for feedback from peers... interesting use, looks cool!

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]

The cited item is an excellent example of the collaborative use of weblogs in education. This can be extended to many fields beyond writing.

12:34:59 PM    

A Socio-Technological Approach to Sharing Knowledge Across Disciplines.

By popular demand (OK, OK, for the two of you who asked for it), here's an electronic version of my thesis (PDF, 4 Mb) which I defended in early May. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to compile the LaTeX source into a copy-pastable document (any tips on how to do that are welcome!). [Seb's Open Research]

11:54:32 AM    

Open Education

We've changed the platform for Open Education (from PostNuke to Drupal). With Drupal, every new user automatically has his/her own blog...Work Groups can be syndicated individually (same with specific categories)...chat and discussion forums are available...and the community book (like a wiki) also looks promising.

Here's a series of syndication links: (if you're new to syndication, download a news aggregator like SharpReader...and copy/paste these URLs into the aggregator)
- Main Site: Open Education
- All Work Groups
- Advocacy Work Group
- External Relations Work Group
- Learning Objects Work Group
- Open Standards Work Group
- Software Work Group
- Templates Work Group
- User Experience Work Group
- Web Site Work Group

[Elearnspace]

11:53:17 AM    

This asynchronous, online course from Virginia Tech is designed to provide you with the necessary resources to begin investigating the process of designing instruction to enhance student learning. [Ed Tech Dev]

Cool, the more open materials the better... it does kinda bug me though that ID often deemed to be something you can package up so nicely. I mean, who'd offer a resource or website on 'How you write curriculum' or 'How you teach' (cue influx of such sites :o). Well, OK, who would write them and expect them to be taken seriously...

Having said this, I've only had a cursory glance at the above!

11:47:04 AM    

Aral Balkan wrote a tutorial showing how to build an RSS aggregator in Flash. [Scripting News]

11:45:54 AM