Anthony Bates, author of Technology, e-learning and distance education (2005) states that audio (via radio broadcast) has been used in education for over seventy years. Examples of its uses include school broadcasting, informal general education, social action programming, and adult basic education and literacy (p.117).

Since its inception in 1969, the British Open University supplied about one-fifth of its output via radio programming. Typically it such programming centered around:

Discussions of course material or issues covered in printed materials

• Alternative viewpoints to those contained in the printed materials (i.e. guest speakers interpreting a text)
• Source materials for analysis (i.e. children’s speech patterns)
• ‘Performance’ pieces, including poetry readings, dramatizations of literature, musical performances

There are of course drawbacks to delivering content via radio broadcast or via analog tape. Radio broadcasts are wholly dependent on the broadcaster’s schedule, and minority programming is usually relegated to inconvenient “graveyard slots” – the learner has no flexibility around the schedule. Similarly, broadcasted material happens in real-time – the learner has no facility to ‘rewind and play back’ a presentation if they miss a point, unless they tape the program ‘off the air’ (if you’re old enough to remember, you’ll recall that this could be a messy business).

Cassette tapes had their problems too: analog recordings deteriorate with use and over time, tapes cassettes have many moving parts, the actual magnetic tape can break and become degaussed, and if you have a lot of them, they’re bulky to store.

The introduction of CD-ROMs in the late 1980’s mitigated most of these issues, and in a sense were the hardware breakthrough that presaged the beginnings of e-learning as we know it today. However, CD-based materials were expensive to produce, many pre-Pentium and PowerPC processors couldn’t handle the multimedia requirements needed to view and listen to the material delivered via this medium (800×600 CRT monitor, anyone?).

It was the emergence of the internet that genuinely facilitated audio and visual media-based learning. But that, my friends, is a tale that’s still being told, so I’m not going to discuss it here.

The Open University today, on iTunes U

All I will say here is that the internet enables access to e-learning content:

• For Anyone. E-Learning resources are available on-demand, via synchronous and asynchronous channels
• Anywhere. Digital content can be distributed just as easily on a home-based PC, a laptop, or (increasingly) via a mobile device. Content can be viewed both online and offline for maximum flexibility.
• At Any Time. You no longer need to rely on an IT department for distribution of large media files; content is easily delivered on demand to facilitate self-paced, OTJ and just-in-time learning.

Now read on…

The purpose of this long pre-amble was to emphasize the importance of understanding your target audience. When you start work on a podcast, you must be aware of not only what is to be said, but also to whom you want to say it. This is not merely a matter of your audience’s intelligence, but also of background, experiences and outlook. It is also powerfully related to the things that the listener would like to do – ranging from learning Spanish for a vacation, to passing their Microsoft Office User Specialist certification.

Podcasts – like blogs – develop a distinctive ‘personality’ according to the characteristics of the source material, the type of audience that material is aimed at, and the individual or team who produce the podcast. So, a Wired News podcast reviewing the latest and greatest computer technologies will sound very different from a podcast about conversational French for beginners.

A study in to the effect of BBC educational broadcasts noted that too many ‘teaching points’ (what we usually call learning objectives) – more than six per 15 minutes of programming were definitely bad for the user’s learning curve. Interestingly, where long, complex sentences with difficult vocabulary and a lot of prepositions did appear to have an adverse effect on intelligibility, the presence of a large number of adverbs and adjectives did not.

The conclusion was drawn that an apparent excess of facts, figures and descriptive terms is no disadvantage, because although they may not be assimilated themselves, they help maintain interest during the learning intervention.

More…
___________

References:

Bates, A. W. (2005). Technology, e-learning and distance education. Oxford: Routledge Falmer

Read more: http://elearningcurve.blogspot.com/2009/07/exploring-podcasting-for-e-learning-and.html#ixzz0MjnglJ8i

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Blogger of the Week

According to the site, they “post information that covers all aspects of e-learning” including:

• An e-learning blog.
• Facilitates collaborative learning between e-learning professionals through its forum.
• Conducts frequent online contests for e-learning professionals.
• Provides free online training and assignments for instructional designers and graphic designers.
• Selects its favorite blog post and blogger from the e-learning blogosphere on a weekly basis.
• Selects active participants in the planet’s forum.

E-Learning Planet select the Blogger of the Week based on the following parameters:

• The number of informative, innovative, and self blog posts in a week
• The number of positive comments from visitors

Previous Bloggers of the Week include Donald Clark, Tony Karrer, and Jay Cross. I’m not sure I deserve to be in such illustrious company, but I’ll take it!

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Informal learning should no longer be regarded as an inferior form of learning whose main purpose is to act as the precursor of formal learning; it needs to be seen as fundamental, necessary and valuable in its own right, at times directly relevant to employment and at other times not relevant at all.

(Coffield 2000, p8)

Given the current economic climate, there is an understandable rise in interest in organizations’ exploration of ‘learning beyond the classroom.’ There is some doubt as to whether the concept of informal learning is the most useful way forward.

Michael Eraut has contributed one of the most helpful discussions of ‘informal learning’ in recent years. He has suggested that the use of such a catch-all term is not very helpful (2000, p.12). He considers the notion of ‘non-formal learning’ might be more accurate. One aspect of his argument is that the term ‘informal’ is associated with so many other features of situations – such as dress, behavior, discourse –

that its colloquial application as a descriptor of learning contexts may have little to do with learning per se

(Eraut 2000, p.12).

However, the notion of ‘non-formal learning’ in itself may not be any more helpful (and I will discuss this in a forthcoming blog post).

Eraut’s looks at the level of intention in learning. Similar to Rogers’ learning continuum (2004), Michael Eraut establishes a matrix to identify varying types of non-formal learning, based on the timing of the stimulus (past, current, future) and the extent to which such learning is implicit, reactive or deliberative.

According to Eraut,  there is a distinction between implicit (informal) learning, which has a metacognitive component, deliberative learning (where the worker schedules time to learn) and reactive learning (where learning is explicit but almost takes place spontaneously, in response to recent, current or imminent situations but without any time being set aside for it). I would suggest that these categories align closely with Kolb’s 4-Stage Experiential Learning Cycle. Similarly, a link can be made between the synchronous and asynchronous delivery mechanisms discussed in an earlier blog entry and Eraut’s Timing of Stimulus category.

Table 1 Michael Eraut’s typology of non-formal learning (2000, p.129)

More…

__________

References:
Coffield, F. (2000) The Necessity of Informal Learning, Bristol: The Policy Press.

Eraut, M. (2000) Non-formal learning, implicit learning and tacit knowledge, in F. Coffield (Ed) The Necessity of Informal Learning: Policy Press. Bristol

Rogers, A. (2004) Looking again at non-formal and informal education – towards a new paradigm [Internet] Available from: http://www.infed.org/biblio/non_formal_paradigm.htm [Accessed 30th January 2008]

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So without further ado, here is my Second Annual Top 10 E-Learning Tools, in alphabetical order (‘cos every one of them is a winner!):

Adobe Acrobat Connect Enterprise – I could have picked any from the range of Adobe Flash-based content development tools, but I chose this application because of its multi-functionality, and because it manifests what Flash, Presenter, Dreamweaver etc can do. Enables collaboration, content storage, management, distribution, and (a certain degree of) tracking. A powerful content delivery platform to enable learning professionals and organizations distribute informational and training content effectively.

Audacity – I recommend this open source tool to Subject Matter  Experts (SMEs) who wish to create podcasts and/or software demos when using a Rapid E-Learning approach. It’s an easy-to-use non-destructive audio recording and editing tool, comes with a range of impressive plug-ins including Normalize and Noise Reduction (NR), as well as pretty good graphical equalizer (EQ). Audacity enables SMEs and training professionals create high quality audio quickly and efficiently.

Techsmith Camtasia- A SERIOUS rapid e-learning authoring tool for demonstrations, simulations, evaluation, and scenario-based learning. Would be Number 1 Tool on this list if I went for a merit-based rather than alphabetical format.

Blogs – The platform doesn’t matter – I use both the Blogger and WordPress platforms – but the concept of providing a means to create, share, and deliver content is the basis for a new way of learning. My e-learning blog, the E-Learning Curve Blog (unashamed plug) provides commentary and news on the domain of professional learning and development, as well as a handy personal knowledgebase.

Del.icio.us – Personal bookmarking at its best. If, like me you work on a number of machines in a number of locations, it is useful to access stored links and documents from a browser regardless of where you happen to be, once you have an internet connection.

MindJet Mind Manager Pro – Mind-mapping – using diagrams used to represent words, ideas, tasks, and concepts linked to and arranged around a central topic (and used to generate, visualize, structure ideas), is central to the way I work, research, organize, solve problems, and make decisions. I built the framework for my MSc. in Education thesis in Mind Manager. It is powerful intermediary in developing ideas, concepts, and course design.

Moodle – An institution in institutions! Martin Dougiamas’ erstwhile thesis project continues to meet the learning management requirements of any number and type of organization. Social Constructivist? Virtual Learning Environment? Easy-to-use? Great Platform.

Sony Vegas Video – Easier to use than Premiere, more powerful than MovieMaker; Vegas is my post-production "weapon of choice" for 90% of the video elements that appears in courseware developed in my organization. Whether you’re just "topping and tailing" a piece of video or creating the elements for a sophisticated soft skills course, Vegas is a must.

StatCounter – every learning professional knows that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This mantra has an extra resonance in the online learning world. StatCounter is a Web and blog analysis tool that enables me to understand the requirements of learners who use my courseware, as well as how visitors interact with my blog.

TextPad – I would have chosen pen and paper, but decided to keep this list digital; TextPad is an advanced text editor that enables users to create and edit text documents, XML, JavaScript and other interpreted content without the extraneous "bloat" of word-processing applications. I find it useful to develop content in this stripped-down environment before transferring to Word, PowerPoint, Blogger or some other application for final enhancement and publishing (this list was created in TextPad, for example).

What are your Top 10 E-Learning Tools?

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Now read on…

I started this series of posts about using the iPhone – and by extension the multitude of Converged Media Devices (CMDs) – with the goal of understanding approaches to leveraging the rich potential of personal media players.

In the course of articles to date, I have looked at

• The implications of poor media player client support on mobile devices
• What is M-Learning?
• Learning theories applied to M-Learning
• Learning opportunities supported by CMDs
• Practical applications of M-Learning

Based upon the research that I have undertaken,  I would assert that the iPhone (as it currently exists) is not an appropriate learning channel for converged multi-media delivery of instructional content as I stated here:

[A CMD like] the iPhone is not a powerful computer: it is a Web-enabled Portable Digital Assistant (PDA). I would suggest that in many consumers’ minds that to be able to surf the internet in a full-featured Safari browser on the iPhone means that it’s a “real” computer. Apple surely want to manage users’ expectations.

Yet, the device obviously has huge potential to delivery information, knowledge, and learning. The challenge to e-learning professionals is to be smart about how learning content is distributed via this channel – in a sense, where it fits in the learning value chain.

Figure 1. Parameters for learning channel selection

Given that mobile devices like the iPhone cannot deliver integrated, immersive learning deliver, I would suggest that the most practical approach to using these devices in an e-learning context is to use these devices as a learning platform, and to supply content based upon the precepts of a modified cloud computing model.

Learning Platforms

According to the UK Dept. of Education and Skills (DfES), a Learning Platform (LP) is

a generic term to describe a system of information and communication technologies that is used to deliver and support leaning.

We can say that while learning platforms can vary considerably, each should provide the following range of ICT-based functions:

• Content management - enabling teaching staff to create, store and repurpose resources and coursework which can be accessed online
• Curriculum mapping and planning - providing tools and storage to support assessment for learning, personalization, lesson planning etc.
• Learner engagement and administration - enabling access to pupil information, attendance, timetabling, e-portfolios and management information
• Tools and services - providing communication tools such as e-mail, messaging, discussion forums and blogs.

A learning platform brings together hardware, software and supporting services to enable more effective ways of working within and outside the traditional learning contexts including  classrooms. A learning platform is not a single ‘off the shelf’ product, rather it’s a collection of tools that are designed to support teaching, learning, management and administration.

A high-performing learning platform should be embedded in the behaviors and culture of the learner, and should offer a wide range of benefits to educators, learners, managers and administration.

Practical benefits to trainers

An effective learning platform will enable trainers to:

• Create and share training materials which can be accessed online (including via portable media devices), printed, or used with an interactive whiteboard
• Put their resources online page by page, lesson plan by lesson plan, so colleagues can access them from multiple locations
• Access a wide variety of learning materials that they can customize for the exact needs of their pupils
• Access lesson plans from colleagues to support group learning
• Assess, monitor and track learner progress progress
• Receive submissions of work from learners in a single, easy-to-manage location   
• Increase learners’ ICT competence and confidence.

Practical benefits to learners

An effective learning platform will enable learners to:

• Access learning materials created by their trainers and mentors, outside training time and from multiple locations
• Store work and notes online for use in just-in-time learning
• Learn in a self-pace fashion and with a wide choice of learning material
• Create an online portfolio, including digital photos and videos of performance as well as text
• Improve their ICT skills and online management of materials
• Submit coursework and assignments for assessment
• Communicate via e-mail and participate in live discussions and forums with fellow learners

Practical benefits to managers

An effective learning platform will enable managers:

• Play a part in employees’ learning, via managers’ access to the learning platform
• View reports and data about assessment activities
• Communicate effectively with staff managing their staffs’ learning and development
  Become active partners in organizational learning and development

Practical benefits for administration and management

An effective learning platform will:

• Provide up-to-date management information on skills and knowledge acquisition
• Track the progress of individuals and teams
• Collate summative and formative assessments
• Reduce the administrative burden on L&D and HR by using transferable data
• Enable communication within the learning environment and beyond, on a one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many basis

More…

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It’s uncomfortable for me not to be able to correspond, as I’m serious about my commitment to the activity, and in my view it’s a great discipline to set yourself a target of writing 500-1000 words a day of publishable material. Much as in my daily attempts to run or go to the gym, I believe that if you can find a good reason not to undertake this task, sooner or later you’ll find a bad excuse, and then the whole thing falls apart.

Even though I have not had the time to blog, I have been keeping an eye on my blog stats, and I’m pleased (even gratified) to find that the number of hits on my blog has not reduced by any significant margin.

Interesting.

What can this suggest? Intuitively, I would consider that if a blog isn’t updated frequently, then access and usage would drop off over time, but this doesn’t seem to have been the case.

Based on my blogs metrics, the number of hits via RSS – the daily feed – have gone down: obviously if I’m not posting regularly, the RSS doesn’t update, and subscribers have no new content to access. The other useful metric – number of hits through searches – has increased to the degree that it’s actually compensating for the fall-off in RSS-based or return viewers.

This suggests to me that an appreciable number of people are using my blog as an information-, knowledge- and learning resource, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the core value of my blog, and it’s certainly the reason that I subscribe to the blogs I read on a regular basis. I tend to write in what I call part-works and occasional series. For example, I will take a topic, such as open-source software for learning, and undertake a multi-part exploration of the topic over a period of time (usually about two weeks or so). This, I feel, enables me to cover a subject in some depth, but without overloading the reader with too much information in any given blog post.

In my occasional series posts, I will return to a particular theme over time. I find that this approach is especially useful when discussing new or fast-changing stories like elearning and the current recession.

It seems that what has emerged over the last year or so is that I have created an archive of material that addresses the needs and concerns of a significant number of other learning and development professionals. Hopefully I have also managed to challenge some preconceptions about the e-learning industry, and inspire others to enter into a dialogue with me about the nature of our profession, with the ultimate aim of enhancing the role of elearning as an means to educate.

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If you’re a regular reader of the E-Learning Curve Blog, you’ll know that I include archaeology and the study of ancient cultures among my personal interests. Recently I posted on the 2008 Stonehenge dig, and today I’d like to talk about the return voyage of the Viking longship Havhingsten fra Glendalough (Sea Stallion from Glendalough) from Dublin, Ireland to Roskilde, Denmark.

The Sea Stallion is a Danish reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, one of the Skuldelev ships. According to tree ring dating, the original ship was built near Dublin circa 1042.

The original ship was built with oak from Glendalough, Wicklow, Ireland, hence the ship’s name. The reconstruction was built at the shipyard of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde from 2000 to 2004.

In the Summer of 2007, the longship made the voyage from Denmark to Dublin – a journey of exceptional endurance on the part of the boat and the crew, and fraught with a certain amount of danger, given the lousy weather we had in Northern Europe last year.

If you saw these lads coming 1,000 years ago, it was time to pack up and leave… quick!

After wintering in the Collins’ Barracks site of the National Museum of Ireland, the Sea Stallion is due to set sail for for her home port today.

Thanks to Web 2.0 information sharing tools and technology, you (and I) can share the journey with the crew via their daily blog and video podcasts, play a Viking Attack game, as well as follow the voyage via Google Maps live GPS tracking as the boat and her crew as they make their journey back across the North Sea to Denmark.

Bon voyage…

If you’re a regular reader of the E-Learning Curve Blog, you’ll know that I include archaeology and the study of ancient cultures among my personal interests. Recently I posted on the 2008 Stonehenge dig, and today I’d like to talk about the return voyage of the Viking longship Havhingsten fra Glendalough (Sea Stallion from Glendalough) from Dublin, Ireland to Roskilde, Denmark.

The Sea Stallion is a Danish reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, one of the Skuldelev ships. According to tree ring dating, the original ship was built near Dublin circa 1042.

The original ship was built with oak from Glendalough, Wicklow, Ireland, hence the ship’s name. The reconstruction was built at the shipyard of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde from 2000 to 2004.

In the Summer of 2007, the longship made the voyage from Denmark to Dublin – a journey of exceptional endurance on the part of the boat and the crew, and fraught with a certain amount of danger, given the lousy weather we had in Northern Europe last year.

If you saw these lads coming 1,000 years ago, it was time to pack up and leave… quick!

After wintering in the Collins’ Barracks site of the National Museum of Ireland, the Sea Stallion is due to set sail for for her home port today.

Thanks to Web 2.0 information sharing tools and technology, you (and I) can share the journey with the crew via their daily blog and video podcasts, play a Viking Attack game, as well as follow the voyage via Google Maps live GPS tracking as the boat and her crew as they make their journey back across the North Sea to Denmark.

Bon voyage…

“E-learning” means different things to different people. When you consider that you can call the discipline “e-learning”, “elearning” or even “eLearning”, it’s no surprise that there is a range of definitions of the subject, as “we prefer to define things according to how we use them” (Morrison, 2004, p.4). Clark and Mayer (2003) consider the “how, why and what” of e-learning: that the “e” in e-learning refers to the “how” – the course is digitised so that it can be stored. The “learning” refers to the “what” – the course includes content and ways to help people learn it, and the “why” – that the purpose is to help learners achieve educational goals or to help organisations build skills related to improve job performance (pp.13-14). The assumptions in their definition are telling: note the use of the term “course” and references to organisational skill-building – there is an inherent, unspoken claim on e-learning (what ever that is!) to be part of the corporate, human resources development arena. Now consider Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, published only three years later. In the e-learning context, a quick scan through a text’s table of contents, introduction, or index will usually orient the reader to the author’s perspective on what they think e-learning is: not in this text. The very first point Richardson makes is that “this may look like a book about technology, but it’s really a book about …connections” (p.vii). With a nod to Jonassen, the author discusses “cool tools”, “collaborations and conversations” and “creatively motivating students to learn more deeply” using a teaching and learning “toolbox” (p.9). He’s obviously talking about e-learning, but does not see the need to define what it is. So, e-learning has become a common if imprecise term used to refer to technology-enhanced learning. The two views described above signify the breadth and the richness of the terrain that e-learning encompasses, and I contend highlight its importance of the context of learning.

References:

Clark, R. C. & Mayer R. (2003) e-learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer

Morrison, D. (2004) E-Learning Strategies: how to get implementation and delivery right first time, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press

“E-learning” means different things to different people. When you consider that you can call the discipline “e-learning”, “elearning” or even “eLearning”, it’s no surprise that there is a range of definitions of the subject, as “we prefer to define things according to how we use them” (Morrison, 2004, p.4). Clark and Mayer (2003) consider the “how, why and what” of e-learning: that the “e” in e-learning refers to the “how” – the course is digitised so that it can be stored. The “learning” refers to the “what” – the course includes content and ways to help people learn it, and the “why” – that the purpose is to help learners achieve educational goals or to help organisations build skills related to improve job performance (pp.13-14). The assumptions in their definition are telling: note the use of the term “course” and references to organisational skill-building – there is an inherent, unspoken claim on e-learning (what ever that is!) to be part of the corporate, human resources development arena. Now consider Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, published only three years later. In the e-learning context, a quick scan through a text’s table of contents, introduction, or index will usually orient the reader to the author’s perspective on what they think e-learning is: not in this text. The very first point Richardson makes is that “this may look like a book about technology, but it’s really a book about …connections” (p.vii). With a nod to Jonassen, the author discusses “cool tools”, “collaborations and conversations” and “creatively motivating students to learn more deeply” using a teaching and learning “toolbox” (p.9). He’s obviously talking about e-learning, but does not see the need to define what it is. So, e-learning has become a common if imprecise term used to refer to technology-enhanced learning. The two views described above signify the breadth and the richness of the terrain that e-learning encompasses, and I contend highlight its importance of the context of learning.

References:

Clark, R. C. & Mayer R. (2003) e-learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer

Morrison, D. (2004) E-Learning Strategies: how to get implementation and delivery right first time, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press