Speaking of Scott Leslie ...

Here is a pointer to his list of Open Source CMS.

Open Source Course Management Systems.

9:54:47 AM    

EduTools: Information on tools, systems and policies for e-Learning.

This is a great site, pointed out to me by Scott Leslie. The site offers three basic choices:

Course Management Systems
This site provides the most complete independently-reviewed analyses anywhere of selected course management software, including product comparisons, reviews, and automated decision-making tools.

Student Services
This site is a resource for colleges and universities seeking information about technology solutions to support online student services. Learn more about products, compare products and make decisions.

e-Learning Policies
This site focuses on the unique policy issues that are created by the e-delivery of higher education courses and programs. Learn more about policy areas, search for policies and compare policies.

About EduTools

11:23:40 PM    

Support for dyslexics.

eLearning that confuses dyslexics is not going to be effective. Consider use of specialized typefaces to support accessibility by dyslexic learners.

Read Regular. "There has been growing innovation to combat dyslexia, especially for children, in the form of computer software. However, relatively little design research has been done in the area of typography and type design that might support dyslexics. Read Regular is a typeface designed specifically to help people with dyslexia read and write more effectively. Read Regular aims at preventing a neglect of dyslexia, creating a more confident feeling regarding the problems that occur with dyslexia." [xBlog: The visual thinking weblog | XPLANE]

12:04:44 PM    

Visual simplicity can harm usability.

Balancing visual and structural complexity in interaction design. "How visual simplicity can harm usability: Usability is based on principles such as 'Less is more' and 'Keep it simple, stupid.' But there is more to simplicity than meets the eye. By reducing visual complexity at the cost of structural simplicity, you will give your users a hard time understanding and navigating the content of a web site." [xBlog: The visual thinking weblog | XPLANE]

11:59:56 AM    

C3MS was not a character in Star Wars: Content management for collaborative constructivist community building.

Draft paper on using community software for rich constructivist education.

http://tecfa.unige.ch/proj/seed/catalog/docs/sevilla03-schneider.pdf

This 39 page paper (draft 1.5) by Daniel Schneider is well worth the effort. On top of the ton of good thinking on why traditional CMS don't suffice and what roles the instructor might play within different pedagogical designs, the paper was worthwhile simply for introducing (at least to me) the term "Community, Content and Collaboration Management Systems" (C3MS) to describe packages such as Plone, PostNuke and Drupal. As the author notes, these are often discussed as 'content management systems' but this term belies much of their true nature as collaborative and community-building content management systems. - SWL

- via [Kairosnews]

6:39:05 PM    

Open-Source LMS

Open Learning Management System (O-LMS).

http://www.psych.utah.edu/learn/olms/

New to me is this java-based open source 'LMS' from the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah. This system is designed to support "vigorous shared knowledge communities" and as such focuses very much on communication and collaboration tools and seems to recognize the role of shareable learning content though it is unclear to me what kind of actual functionality it offers there. One thing that seems slightly unfortunate is to base an open source project on Oracle and Solaris, but this may well have been what was literally at hand. - SWL

6:34:08 PM    

Open Source Course Management System (CMS).

Another open source CMS - Interactive Learning Environment.

http://virtualschool.edu/ile/

Again new to me but maybe not new (why does no one put dates on their pages!), an early version of a new open source 'cms', this time in part notable because it is written in Ruby.

Also, you may or may not have noticed that I am slowly moving over some of the more trafficed resources from the old site. So far I've reposted the list of open source course management systems, which I am now trying to keep more up to date. More to come. - SWL

6:14:47 PM    

http://virtualschool.edu/ile/

Again new to me but maybe not new (why does no one put dates on their pages!), an early version of a new open source 'cms', this time in part notable because it is written in Ruby.

Also, you may or may not have noticed that I am slowly moving over some of the more trafficed resources from the old site. So far I've reposted the list of open source course management systems, which I am now trying to keep more up to date. More to come. - SWL

6:14:04 PM    

Pay-per-use e-Learning: Lessons Learned.

The current issue of Information Week (October 20, 2003) has an excellent article on how UPS solved its IT training problem. (You can read this article online here.) If you are building your business as a vendor of online learning, there are some powerful lessons here, and not just from UPS. Here is a summary:

UPS :

• Wanted to get away from costly classroom training for IT staff ($300 to $1000 per employee per course off-site).
• Vendors wanted to charge $500,000 for a menu of about 150 courses.
• UPS IT staff is not supportive of online learning - they prefer classroom training from instructors who can share war stories.
• UPS chose to buy a membership in a consortium of noncompeting companies; this allows UPS IT employees to take courses online for about $100 per employee per course, and requires UPS to pay $50,000 per year for a two-year membership.
• About 90% of UPS IT training still takes place in traditional classrooms; the company goal is to grow e-Learning's share to 20% in 2004. (About 750 UPS professionals have taken Unix courses through the consortium.)

Colgate-Palmolive:

• Offers 3000 global sales and marketing staff customized e-Learning (Web and CD-ROM format) from a vendor at $20 per person per course, vs. $500 per person for a classroom course.

So here's what I see as obvious extrapolations from this data. If you are offering online courses to clients:

• The price per seat needs to be cheap;
• Cafeteria models (x hundred courses for y hundred thousand dollars) are not seen as cost-effective because actual usage rates will be low;
• You need to add value, including being flexible about delivery (i.e., offer hybrids with Web and CD-ROM, offer customization)
• Look for ways to provide programs through consortiums.

These are probably all very obvious, but a lot of vendors still seem to be missing the point.

2:40:56 PM    

Taking a sip from a firehose.

Gee whiz. I went off to Kansas for two days for a funeral and came back to find dozens of posts sitting in the aggregator, waiting to be reviewed, commented, and posted.  I surrender!

There is a lot of activity right now in e-Learning and in the application and technology of weblogs, and I dumped most of the interesting items into Clippings, without comment for now. My apologies for ripping your lips off.

Quick thought until I catch up: Weblogging as an e-Learning tool cannot be allowed to become a substitute for lecture. That is, one of the basic models for weblogging is publishing, perhaps publishing and commenting. This is too much like either lecture or raconteur-ng (to pervert a term).  I get a little heartburn whenever I see references to weblogging as "a personal content management system." It's more like a personal content collection system. The tools mostly don't allow for much "management." At least not without a lot of effort. Yes, I know this is superficial reaction and needs more thought and work. Patience.  I just don't want to see weblogging become a "solution searching for a problem" as has too often been the case with "knowledge management" or even with XML.

How is publishing different from education? hmm... (chewing on the question)

11:51:34 AM    

Download IMS Specifications as Content Packages.

http://www.imsglobal.org/specificationdownload.cfm

You can now download the various IMS specification documents packaged as an IMS Content Packages themselves. The advantages, as their feed says, are that "by downloading the specification as IMS packaged content, you can see what a content package looks like and how it is organized. You can also import it as a learning resource into your Content Packaging enabled learning management system or repository." - SWL

11:19:39 AM    

eLearning Specification Abstract Framework (IMS).

Major importance for e-Learning application developers. More comments when I get a better handle on it.

IMS releases elearning specification Abstract Framework.

http://www.imsglobal.org/af/index.cfm

"The IMS Abstract Framework (IAF) is a device to enable the IMS to describe the context within which it will continue to develop its eLearning technology specifications. This framework is not an attempt to define the IMS architecture, rather it is a mechanism to define the set of services for which IMS may or may not produce a set of interoperability specifications." It's hard to describe how huge this is. A lot of work has gone into this. It is not for the faint of heart. Start with the white paper, that alone is worth a few days or reading and digesting, and is invaluable for the appendices alone. - SWL

11:17:22 AM    

e-Learning evaluation support (in German).

This is an intriguing site, even for someone whose German is as bad as mine. It will be interesting to explore it as it is built out. Our articles in the next three issues of The eLearning Developers' Journal are on various aspects of e-Learning evaluation, so this is a timely post from Peter if you have an interest in best practices in this area.

Support for evaluation activities. During the "SCIL"-Conference I had a panel on "Evaluating Corporate eLearning". On this occasion Peter Schenkel presented a new initiative: A webservice to help and support people with the evaluation of e-Learning. The website can be accessed under http://www.evaluationsnetz.de and is still under construction. [Peter on eLearning]

11:38:42 AM