My Wish List.

Lots of web sites and web logs include a link to a Wish List or a "buy me stuff" inventory. Well, here are some things that money can't buy, but that all of us in learning/training/e-Learning/hpt/term-du-jour really desperately need. Some of these are things that we have needed for years. First two items (potential for a rant is quite high): - See update at bottom of post -

• We need a better way to measure learning/training results than the tried-and-failed Kirkpatrick "4 Levels." In this post-industrial, post-individual, knowledge and information age, the Kirkpatrick Levels are worse than meaningless.  In my opinion, they can be misleading, in that a high (say) Level 3 measurement - if you can design a meaningful Level 3 metric - is not necessarily an indicator of success and may be an indicator of dysfunction. Not to mention how worthless a Level 1 "smile sheet" measurement is (and always has been). Kirkpatrick Levels 1, 2, and 3 by and large focus on memory/retention views of learning, not on performance or on accomplishment. The Scorecard method may be ok at the business level, since it includes non-numeric assessment. But what do we do to measure results at the group level and at the individual level, where the meaningful, valued outcome is often not quantifiable? And shouldn't we have flexible measurements to apply where the outcome IS quantifiable?
• We need online systems and software that will facilitate collaboration, identify expertise, and provide quality/reliability information or feedback (think e-Bay and Amazon) with or about individuals in a learning group (which may be larger than a temporary cadre or "the group taking this course right now in the current context"), from WITHIN learning applications. "Social software" as now delivered doesn't do this. Neither does "collaborative software." The answer should function without requiring a huge FOAF file for each individual, and without requiring that we download the entireity of that FOAF file everytime we look someone up. We could also benefit by knowing something (subject to privacy concerns) about a person's other collaborations (past and present) and the character of those collaborations (were they hobby, professional, work, avocation, accidental, etc.)? 

That's it for today. My birthday is June 17. These would make lovely presents.

UPDATE: If you can read German, see "Is Kirkpatrick Obsolete?" I don't know that this is the answer, but we're thinking along the same lines.

4:45:22 PM    

Another Learning Object Repository listing.

Learning Object Repositories list that turned up indirectly through my referrers' listing. Not sure, this may be from McGee's Musings. Thanks to whomever is keeping this, anyway.

2:25:05 PM    

Repository Reality Check.

... and we still can't agree on exactly what a learning object is. -- BB

Repository Folly--the Field of Dreams Syndrome. I think Alan Levine's healthy skepticism about learning objects and learning object repositories should be kept in mind because we are in the midst of grant-generated and buzzword enthusiasms. As Alan points out, it is still to be demonstrated that repositories can substantially contribute to the task of practical, everyday course construction by everyday instructors rather than instructional designers, let alone adding efficiences to that task. I sometimes find myself in the camp of the enthusiasts because, on the face of it, the world-wide sharing instructional resources is extremely appealing. However, whenever I've worked at the job of assisting instructors to locate, evaluate, and adopt online resources my enthusiasm gets moderated. JH
_____

cogdogblog: Repositories Folly (FoD Syndrome). ..."Maybe someday we might need a "repository of repositories" but it seems but a re-hash of what I am now calling Field of Dreams Syndrome (FoDs)- "If you build it, they will come and dump their objects in" (very unlikely) along with "If you Build it, the Objects Will Magically Re-Assemble Themselves Into Something Else". I am still looking for examples of meaningful content built from objects." [EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online]

11:24:36 PM    

Staying on top of project progress.

One of the frequent problems in project management happens when progress goes off track and the project manager doesn't find out about it until the project is due. In "Using Inch-Pebbles to Track Project State," Johanna Rothman offers a solution. [Computerworld]

10:16:58 AM    

Chat Rooms and MOOs.

Heckuva of a plan, James! Any data (course completion rates, criterion test results) on how it impacts learning? -- BB

Subvert your Lectures.

Todays plan...subverting your lectures with chat rooms or MOOs! Very very very very simple use of technology which can utterly transform the ol' traditional most ugly transmissive form of education there is!

(I admit that some lectures can be useful... about 2% of them and that's due to the character of the speaker)

12:58:38 PM    

Social Software: Stephen Downes' article.

Yow. Lots of comments and re-posts on this article. Nice job, Stephen: a good article raises more questions than it answers. Here are two of the re-posts. I am not yet sure what to say about this, apart from my comments earlier today on "We Learning." Is this the Next Big Thing? It's too early to tell.  I still think something else is going on in the evolution of learning/teaching/facilitation and it may well turn out that this is all merging into that something else. -- BB

Great article by Stephen Downes about combining content syndication and social software. The bottom line - start creating a vast, open, distributed social network system by the simple expedient of including an author field in RSS and pointing it to the author's FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) file.

By Martin Terre Blanche 17 Feb 2004 [Collaborative Learning]

The Semantic Social Network. The Semantic Social Network: "Two types of technologies are about to merge. The technologies are content syndication, used by blogging websites around the world, and social networking, employed by sites such as Friendster [http://www.friendster.com] and Orkut [http://www.orkut.com]. They will merge to create a new type of internet, a network within a network, and in so doing reshape the internet as we know it." Comment: This article is written ahead of its time. What is expressed here will probably only develop more explicitly in the next several years. However, that doesn't detract from the valuable insight it provides. The essential message: blogging provides content, social networks provide community. When separated, their value is diminished. When combined, weaknesses of each are minimized.

12:52:40 PM    

More competition from your alma mater.

If you, as an e-Learning entrepreneur, try to compete on price alone, you are going to lose to community colleges every time. Take advantage of the weaknesses in the lecture-rooted nature of many offerings from the education community -- add value through better design. (No offense to my friends in the education community, but entrepreneurs have to think about the fact that, through the taxes they pay, they are forced to fund their own competition.) -- BB

Mainstreaming Distance Learning into the Community College - Linda M. Thor and Carol Scarafiotti, JALN. Rio Salado, one of the Maricopa Community Colleges in the Phoenix metropolitan area, has not only carved a market niche as a leading distance learning provider for working adults, but has experienced double-digit growth increases as high as 40 percent [Online Learning Update]

12:43:00 PM    

Intellectual Property issues in e-Learning: Paying for things you never thought about.

This is only going to get worse. -- BB

More E-Learning Patent Suits Expected in 2004 - Learning Circuits. E-learning suppliers will dig deeper in 2004 to pay license fees for patents that cover inventions and business processes used in online learning. That’s the prediction from patent attorneys and other experts following another growth year on the intell [Online Learning Update]

12:37:06 PM    

Dept. of Obfuscation Reduction.

Info management terms. Good example of what happens when every small nuance in a concept is given its own multi-syllable term: Definition of information management terms. No wonder people get confused about technology/learning terms. via [elearnspace]

12:24:27 PM    

Designing what?

Instructional Design. Good resource (except for the .pdf powerpoint note format)What do Instructional Designers Design? via [elearnspace]

12:20:51 PM    

Content Management Systems: Comparison tool.

CMS Matrix. Resource for comparing features of various content management systems: CMS Matrix [elearnspace]

12:16:39 PM    

e-Learning Trends: Social Software.

"We Learning: Social software and E-Learning" two-part article in Learning Circuits.

Part I: defines social software and looks at basic tools now being used in e-Learning (collaborative software).

Part II: reviews software tools not yet widely adopted for e-Learning (although wikis, which are addressed here, evidently have a strong core of adopters in the education community).

George Siemens, in elearnspace, observes: "I'm much more at ease with a concept of learning that relies on communication/collaboration tools, versus learning that relies on learning management systems. The former puts the learner in control, the latter puts the instructor in control. [elearnspace]"

I'm not so much an either-or advocate for these tools or about locus of control issues. I think the whole concept of "learning" is changing as we understand more about the neurological elements, and along with it the concepts of "teaching" and "training" are also changing. But maybe my behaviorist roots are showing again. I do think that we have ignored for too long the place of communication and collaboration in learning, and I think many of our tools that are rooted in the one-way, lecture, classroom, sage-on-the-stage world are the wrong way to go for much of what has to be learned in an information-based world.

Thinking out loud again ... don't take any of this too seriously.

12:11:31 PM    

TrackBack and e-Learning.

The biggest problems I have with TrackBack are that it makes your weblog or other content too easily abused by spammers and that it can have unfortunate interactions with search engines. Also it's clumsy. -- BB

TrackBack: Where Blogs Learn Their Places. TrackBack: Where Blogs Learn Their Places. Trackback is the currently very underutlized twin of RSS. It's the push back part of blogging. But it suffers for the same reasons as any type of network-creating tool: too difficult to grasp how it works and what the benefits are. The process in doing it is easy. However, so much of our dialogue is generally one to one. I call you. You call me. I email you. You email me. Trackback allows for the development of peripheral conversations (almost as if we could be party to office gossip about our own thoughts). We still don't understand the value or role of that in communication and knowledge sharing. Our physical history of dialogue is too different. Still, trackback, or some similar concept, will eventually become an important concept in learning online. [elearnspace]

11:41:46 AM    

Monoculture and LMS.

I guess this is an interesting observation, but ... I'd have just said that too many LMS schemes try to make your learning problem fit their solution, charge too much for the privilege, and want to make it look like your fault when the solution fails to work. -- BB

Monoculture. Apply this same concern to enterprise level systems (particularly relating to learning management systems): Monoculture: "In biology, species with little genetic variation -- or "monocultures" -- are the most vulnerable to catastrophic epidemics. Species that share a single fatal flaw could be wiped out by a virus that can exploit that flaw. Genetic diversity increases the chances that at least some of the species will survive every attack." Alright, maybe it's a bit dramatic...but the point remains, to do things ONLY one way requires that many other options have to be ignored. This results in reduced innovation and creativity. Learning is too rich a process to be confined to the structure laid out by most learning management systems today. [elearnspace]

11:37:44 AM    

Instructional Strategies.

N/C

Effective—and Ineffective—Instructional Strategies - Jackie Dobrovolny, Learning Circuits. Here’s a closer look at the features of self-paced, technology-based training that adults say are useful and the relationship between those course features and the learning strategies adults consistently use. [Online Learning Update]

1:30:31 PM    

Learning Objects Explained.

N/C

eLearning and Learning Objects. If you want to learn more about the Learning Objects (LOs) approach read as a first introduction the "Learning Object Tutorial" by Eduworks Corporation (where you can find more papers on "standardization" issues). There is a online book as well that covers the connection of LOs and eLearning in more details: The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. [Peter on eLearning]

1:28:08 PM    

Instructional design issues.

(Warning: this is a ramble. Doing weblog entries off the cuff is probably a bad idea. Apologies. Skip this if you don't have time for a long read, or patience for a fumbling attempt to be coherent.)

Holly, if I understand her weblog entries correctly, is looking for a way to guide learners without directing or telling them. One of the interesting problems we all run up against is that we use models that other people developed to guide our own work, even though it is clear that those models have their limits. So when I read this, I wondered if Holly is trying to figure out how to modify the constructivist model, to sort out a middle ground (compromising both models), or to create a new model. 

I am skeptical of models that insist that all learners learn the same way, that all learning tasks demand the same approach, etc. Over the last 35 years, experience has taught me to think about the learners, the learning tasks, the learning economics and motivation, and whether the learner and the sponsoring organization (if any) will be better served by stepwise instruction or by practice in applying principles.

Given all this, my job is to pick an approach that is "good enough" (no approach will ever be perfect for everyone) and to build delivery support for that approach in media and method that fit the time and budget available. Even after that, not every learner will "get it" to the same degree. Sometimes there isn't enough motivation in the world to get someone to do something -- I learned this from coaching people in starting businesses, and then watching the majority of them fail because they weren't willing to do what had to be done in order to succeed or because they just didn't stick with it through the pain of getting the business off the ground.

On my gloomy days, it seems to me that any task that 100% of the learners can master to perfection every time must be a pretty trivial task. Learning leads to trying, trying leads to failure more often than success at first, and there is no guarantee that repeated trials will lead to success. That's life.

On my better days, which are most of them, I remember that my job is just to help people make their lives better, even if only slightly. Just because not everyone who finishes a course in grammar then goes on to become an excellent writer or speaker, does not mean that helping learners become competent in grammar is useless. I have been "learning" to play guitar for almost twenty years now, and I will never be as good as Leo Kottke or even as good as the old guys who play blues on street corners. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been worth the effort. -- BB

Constructivism and hands-on exercises.

11:36:29 AM    

Resource: Interactive simulation as a tool for learning.

Holly's weblog may become an interesting resource for developers, or it might just serve as a reminder that we are all struggling with the same problems. -- BB

Holly Henry-Pilkington's Research Journal. Holly studies at Columbia University in New York, and her research focuses on interactive simulation as a tool for learning.
[Seb's Open Research]

11:01:58 AM    

TechKnowledge Conference.

Jay Cross: TechKnowledge Conference

Good coverage of ASTD's TechKnowledge Conference.

• Day one
• Day two
• Day three

10:03:19 AM