LearnDash - The New WordPress LMS

I'm really looking forward to a new Premium Plugin for WordPress called LearnDash that essentially transforms your WordPress install into a Learning Management System. I've worked with many LMS"s over the years such as Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai, Angel, and Canvas. Each LMS has their pros and cons. The key to a good LMS is a very simple intuitive interface, excellent collaboration tools,  assignment managers, and a simple yet powerful Grade Book.  I'm looking forward to piloting the LearnDash Plugin on my own site as WordPress is my favorite CMS so being able to use it to teach a class would be awesome.  LearnDash features I'm looking forward to most are:

• Quizzes
• Communication Features
• Certificates
• Run Reports

Speaking at the WCET Conference - Best Methods of Collaboration in Inst. Design

Best Methods of Collaboration in Inst. Design
November 13, 2010, 8:00 AM-9:00 AM - Pavilion
WCET Conference - http://wcetconference.wiche.edu/

Presenter: Terence Armentano
Presenter: Michael Edwards

In today's connected world, instructional designers and content experts have multiple ways of collaborating on projects. From video conferencing and social networks to blogs, wikis and simple emails, options for collaboration abound but can almost be overbearing. This roundtable will focus the discussion on how best to select and deploy the best and most efficient methods for effective collaboration in instructional design.

Wolfram Alpha - Making the world's knowledge computable - Now What?

See ya later great knowledge memorizers of the world, and hello great knowledge appliers of the world. Is it me or are the people inhabiting this third rock from the sun, connecting, computing, and collecting knowledge like nothing we've ever seen before. Well, except for maybe the time we humans tried building that Tower of Babel, which ended up not working out so well. Introducing.... Wolfram Alpha, a powerful computational knowledge engine that seeks to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by ANYONE. Connect this to a mobile device and we become walking and talking systematic knowledge carriers. We've had access to knowledge via the internet for quite some time, but this immediate access to systematic knowledge is something a little newer and worth pondering. I wonder if teachers will FINALLY stop creating tests that assess our students ability to memorize facts and start testing the application of those facts to solve real world problems. I'm especially looking at Universities to take up this challenge. With tools like Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared available to us, educational institutions should start building curriculum with the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy in mind. Maybe instructional designers could start with the fact that humans have access to just about all the available knowledge in the world and build from there. It sounds kind of funny, but it's true. This doesn't mean everyone understands the knowledge, but for the first time in history we do have easy access to it. Therefore, it is crucial we teach students where to find the knowledge, and then help them develop the skills to apply, analyse, synthesize, and evaluate it. We need to re-think assessment and skill acquisition for this day and age in this Knowledge Economy. It's time for schools to build curriculum that challenge us to really engage in the application of knowledge and not the memorization of definitions, forumulas, and factoids. That's lazy instruction. Yes, there is a place for memorizing in education...It is a good idea for teachers to memorize their students' names and interests. Personally, I don't care how great of a memorizor my accountant is. I want to know if that person can think about whole systems and solve financial problems that can save me money. What does it mean for you to have access to the world's systematic knowledge? How will you apply it? What does it mean for schools? How can they apply tools like Wofram Alpha and Google Squared to their curriculum. What does it mean for businesses? What do you think?

Research shows better learning when students use sites and sounds

This article and supporting research explains why it is important for instructors to implement blogs and wikis into course projects. It's not just about the bells and whistles folks...

One qualitative study, which surely won’t be welcomed by manufacturers of basic word processing software, found that students who create and edit documents using Web-based collaboration tools include more complex visual media in their assignments — and come away with a better understanding in the process. Another ongoing experiment finds, with statistical significance, that instructors can be more effective in grading students’ work if they record their comments directly into documents as audio.

Check out Jing

This is a post about the new product Jing. It is free right now so if you've ever wanted a free screen recorder, now is the time to check it out. As an instructional designer or online instructor, screen recordings are priceless and Jing just made it that much easier. In a very short amount of time, I can capture, upload, and share what I've captured in seconds. Click the following link [http://screencast.com/t/4kaZjJnl61]to see how it works, then go to http://www.jingproject.com/ to check it out yourself.

If you want to embed Jing in a website or blog, it appears you should keep the screen recording size under 640X480 since unlike YouTube videos, it doesn't automatically resize the whole recording.

71 year old physics prof is a web star

And yet another reason for university faculty to podcast and get their stuff out to the masses. "Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace." Prof. Walter H. G. Lewin was No. 1 on the most downloaded list at iTunes U for a while, with objects he uses for his physics lessons.

Here is a good example of a great teacher taking advantage of the technology experts available to him to communicate and educate people all over the world. Some faculty fear the idea of having to keep up with the latest technology and are worried that as soon as they "get it", "it" will be come obsolete. The flaw with this way of thinking is that they don't have to have a PhD in technology and education to move into the information age. That is a field in and of itself. There are departments at universities dedicated to studying and implementing technology for instructors, thus making the technology virtually invisible to the faculty so that they can focus on the subject at hand. Faculty are the subject matter experts. Does anyone think that Dr. Walter H.G. Lewin was responsible for recording, optimizing, and uploading his podcasts? What about choosing the compression codecs? Or what system they chose to use for podcasting? Probably not. He is a great "physics" professor and relies on a team to assist him with the technology. Now of course there are faculty who love technology and want to know how everything works, but what makes it all come together is team work between the Instructional Designers, Multimedia Experts, and the Subject Matter Experts. Congrats to Dr. Walter H. G. Lewin for using the resources available to him at M.I.T. to make his lectures available world-wide. Check out the article in the NY Times about Dr. Lewin

Excellent example of visual communication online

When designing online courses for the education environment, we are always asking ourselves how we can best communicate a message online and capture the emotion and humanness within the digital medium. The human element is crucial to a good learning environment. I found this example from the NY Times Online to be an excellent model for conveying a message using multiple forms of media to enrich our understanding. In this example, they use text, audio, video, and images within the digital medium to convey a human element through stories that impact our understanding of the situation in Iraq. As someone who reads the NY Times daily I find that more stories than not, focus on the negative aspects of the war and how much has gone wrong, so it is encouraging to see the other side presented in such a rich way and that progress is being made. If this example were incorporated into an online course, it might be followed up with discussion in the forums or an individual or class blog contribution. Those that are interested in designing online courses at universities should consider these examples and share them with your multimedia and instructional design team on your campus. View example

Teaching Online - What to Expect

What to expect from an Online Course – A Teacher’s Perspective
Since I have both assisted college faculty with course design as an Instructional Designer and have taught Masters level online courses, I have come to learn first- hand what teachers can expect from an online course. Depending on how well an instructor prepares an online course, facilitating one can be a great adventure full of exciting discussion and engaging assessments resulting in a rich learning community, or it could be a confusing information dump with little interaction resulting in bitter students and low or no future enrollment. So to answer the question of what an instructor can expect in teaching an online course, I would say that you can expect to get out of it what you put into it. Faculty teaching online at BGSU have the opportunity to work with the IDEAL Group, Instructional Designers, Multimedia Developers, and e-Learning Specialists, to ensure the highest quality online courses.

It's Like Planning a Wedding
I will have been married for 3 years in October, and I remember the kind of planning and preparation that went into the wedding to make that day run smoothly. Well I should say I learned a lot by watching my wife, but anyhow, I noticed a similarity between planning a wedding and planning for teaching an online course for the first time. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made up front so that when the day comes, you can thoroughly enjoy it. You can spend more time talking with your guests and sharing stories rather than having to worry about baking a cake the day of the wedding, or trying to get a limo to take you to the reception. Similarly, the more time you spend preparing your course, the fewer snags you will have throughout the course and the more time you will have to interact with the students, facilitate meaningful discussion, and effectively facilitate the course! Hopefully this article will help you better prepare for teaching online.

Preparation Phase: At least 3 months before start date

• During the preparation phase, teachers will set up the course by creating their course modules in the LMS (Learning Management System). A module is like a lesson on a topic which includes all reading material, assignments, quizzes, etc. Instructors have the option to work with Instructional Designers from IDEAL who specialize in online delivery. The following might be included in a module:
  • Required Readings
    
    • Textbook
      
    • Websites
      
    • Journals
      
  • Lecture Materials
  • Powerpoint Presentations (with or without audio narration)
  • Video Lecture
  • Audio Lecture
  • Word Documents
  • HTML Lecure (website)
  • PDF's
• Communication and Collaboration Opportunities
  
• Discussion Forums
  
• E-mail
  
• Live Chat (Text, audio, video)
  
• Online Document sharing
• Wikis
• Blogs
  
• Module Assignments
  
  • Case study (i.e. turn in paper and/or discuss the case at the discussion board)
    
  • Essay
  • Research Papers
    
  • Quantitative and Qualitative Assessments
    
  • Journal
    
    
• It is very important that students know exactly what is expected of them at all times so a detailed syllabus should be created to set student expectations such as reading materials, assignments, tests, participation requirements, and all due dates.
• Once you have all of your modules built and the preparation phase is complete, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor and can focus on interaction and feedback during the delivery of the course.

2 Weeks before the start of class

• E-mail your students the course syllabus, introduce yourself, set student expectations, and give them access to the course so they can look around and explore the online classroom before the official start date.

Facilitation Phase – These are common activities during my facilitation phase

• Once class has begun, I include a welcome announcement in the LMS (Learning Management System) explaining all facets of the classroom and setting my students’ expectations again. Repetition of information is a key in online facilitation.
• Throughout facilitation, you can expect many questions from students. For this reason, I created a “Questions for the Instructor” forum in the Discussion Board so that all questions are streamlined to a central location for all students to see and learn from. I let them know about this in my welcome announcement on Day 1.
• If you have a weekly classroom discussion at the Discussion Board (which I highly recommend) you can expect to spend a few hours per week adding your personal insight and expertise to the discussion and helping coach students to critically think and explore the topic further. I outline the student discussion board participation expectations in the syllabus, welcome announcement, and at the discussion board. Again, with the repetition.
• Every week I communicate updates, changes, summary of weekly lessons learned, and other major announcements.
  
• Try to update grades and provide feedback every week to help the online students stay on task and motivated.

The result of a teacher who takes adequate time to design and prepare their online course will enjoy facilitating the course for many years.

University 2.0 - Online Courses Enhance Universities

Online information and communication is changing the way the world interacts and learns. We are part of a global human network in which we can now harness the collective intelligence of people from all walks of life to come up with solutions to problems that could have never been possible in the past. The following video clip does an excellent job demonstrating the "human network" that the world is embarking upon.



A few thoughts strike me after watching that clip. The world is communicating online. The world is learning online. The world is our classroom. In addition, I have come to realize that the only reason I am able to share the video with you is because someone shared it with me online. It is true that we may catch the commercial on TV once in a while, but now that it is online, it can be accessed and discussed any time, any place. It has become a shared learning object. This is powerful and kids today are growing up with this kind of access to information.

My question is what are universities across the world doing about this information revolution? How are we demonstrating to our future students that we are not only a part of this human network but that we are leaders in the movement? Most universities were built and designed to function effectively in a single geographic location to a specific group of people in a print based environment. Now that we can communicate with people around the world instantly and access books, journals, presentations, videos, and more online, we should think of the world as our classroom. Future students understand this information age and expect universities to be on the front lines. As the world moves toward a global economy and information can be accessed from anywhere in the world, universities need to think more critically about how they want to proceed in developing leaders of this brave new digital age.

One clear response from universities world wide as well has here in the US, has been to invest in the design, development, and implementation of online and blended university courses. These universities understand that an online course goes far beyond information posted online. An online course is a beautiful collision of technology and education, people and information, ideas and communication, diversity and unification, cultures and communities, students and experts. More and more universities are weaving online courses into the fabric of their traditional university. According to the latest national survey from the Sloan-C Foundation, "nearly 3.2 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2005 term, a substantial 35 percent increase over the 2.3 million reported the previous year." Since there is such a massive amount of information available to people via the Internet, our future students are looking to universities to help them research, organize, understand, and successfully sail this vast ocean of information. Hundreds of universities across America, from Berkley on the west to Harvard on the east, are developing their online courses and programs to enhance communication between faculty and students as well as student to student, and student to content. The result of a well designed online course is a learning community that far exceeds anything we have experienced in education to date.

Imagine taking a college course in African Studies and your teacher actually lives and performs research in Nairobi, Kenya. In addition, you could imagine the kind of dynamic discussion that would ensue in an online Foreign Policy course when your classmates actually live in 15 different countries. The conversations and insights shared in class, online, would be far reaching and potentially world changing. Universities that take a proactive role in developing high quality interactive online courses will become worldwide hubs for connecting people, information, and ideas in the pursuit of knowledge, understanding, research, cooperation, and change. Universities with online course offerings will expand students' learning networks and facilitate their growth as critical thinkers, problem solvers, and world changers. A well developed online course is essentially a personal and communal learning environment for both the students and the teacher. The educational tools within an online course equip the instructor to develop a course fit for the demands of students living in the information age. The result is a course that enables the students to become both receivers and transmitters of information.

With the advent of Web 2.0, the read/write web, the online learning environment is the ideal space for communication and learning to occur. The following list demonstrates only a fraction of the capabilities and benefits a technologically enhanced online university course offers:

• Students can choose classes based on what they want to learn rather than what fits into their schedule. Online course content can be accessed and engaged any time any place so that students are not bound by geographic locations, scheduling conflicts, building conflicts, etc. When I did my undergrad work, I never once got the class schedule I planned on because classes were either full or conflicting.
• Content can be easily published and discussed. The online environment enables both students and instructors to publish and comment on text, images, audio, and video, thus enabling students to construct knowledge as well as reach diverse learning styles.
  Information is easily retrievable. Just as Google has shown the world the power of the search engine, online courses enable students to efficiently and effectively search course content and class discussions.
• Information can be more accessible, relevant, and up-to date. Now that almost all journals and professional websites are using RSS technology to syndicate content, instructors can use feed readers in their online course to pull in and provide the most up to date information from the most credible sources in their field of study. This not only provides the students with a collection of the most up to date resources available, but it also enables students to read, discuss, and synthesize the content in the context of their learning environment.
• Information can be mobile. The mp3 player is revolutionizing the way we entertain and educate ourselves. Now, a small device that can fit into your pocket can hold thousands of audio books, lectures, music, etc., enabling students to take their education with them. Podcasting enables both instructors and students to create, syndicate, and receive audio and video content on a computer or mp3 player. For more on how universities are using podcasts I recommend doing a Google search on Berkley + itunes, Stanford + itunes, or Harvard +itunes. You will find some interesting information.
• Discussion is enriched. Discussion forums enable the entire class to engage in meaningful discussion. In addition, the wisdom brought out in discussion can be saved and returned to at any point in the future. When a discussion becomes profound in our face to face classes, we may write it down and ponder it for a while. When discussion becomes profound in an online course, the entire class has a chance to save it, read it, revisit it, and comment on it. This is great news for instructors who have a plethora of profound discussion points to share with their students. In addition, students who are typically shy in class feel more comfortable contributing online.
• Assessments can be more thorough and feedback more prompt. Online quizzes and exams can be set up to generate instant feedback that enable students to make corrective actions in their work and get back on the learning track sooner.
• Cheating online is difficult. Cheating online is a lot more difficult than glancing over at the person's paper next to you. If someone is a cheater at heart they will find ways to cheat whether it be online or face to face. However, the good news is that the technology in online courses make it much more difficult. Online tests can be designed in a way that deters cheating. For example, timed tests ensure students know the material; randomizing questions makes it difficult to share answers; pulling questions from required knowledge test banks keeps students on their toes; locking down all windows but the test window makes it more difficult to search for answers. As technology continues to improve, even more will be done to curb cheating, such as biometric pass-codes, online video monitoring, and more, but cheating is first stopped in the heart of a person that values education whether it's face to face or online.
• Information is organic. Hyperlinks within a lecture enable students to explore topics in greater detail than ever before.
• The course design mimics 21st century business design. Businesses such as Best Buy and IBM, are developing a new system of working that fits into the fabric of human life rather than patched on top of it. The flexible and accessible nature of online courses mimic this design. According to BusinessWeek Online, "Best Buy did not invent the post-geographic office. Tech companies have been going bedouin for several years. At IBM, 40% of the workforce has no official office; at AT&T, a third of managers are untethered. Sun Microsystems Inc. calculates that it's saved $400 million over six years in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of all employees to work anywhere they want. And this trend seems to have legs. A recent Boston Consulting Group study found that 85% of executives expect a big rise in the number of unleashed workers over the next five years. In fact, at many companies the most innovative new product may be the structure of the workplace itself." Click Here to view the article. (Remember what I said about the power of hyperlinks).
• Online courses harness the collective intelligence of the class through the social network. Social networking sites are a powerful tool to connect people and they can be utilized within the classroom. Students and instructors can create an online learning social network in which each member of the learning community can share photos, videos, journal assignments, and more. Instructors could use this for a wide range of learning activities.
• Online courses can include face to face communication. Now that web cams are affordable and the software is often free, web cams can be effectively used for face to face discussions, oral presentations, office hours, and more.
• Online courses have quality management built in to the system. The quality of an online course can be ensured like nothing we have seen before. Student and faculty participation, projects, assessments, journals, debates, essays, exams, and more can be accessed and reviewed at any time. If quality is in question, bring up the archived course and review it.

These points only represent some of the benefits of going online. Overall, well designed online courses leverage technology to offer an interactive, communicative, and collaborative environment to equip students to become the leaders of the future. One mission of IDEAL is to create this environment for online courses at Bowling Green State University.

Good Courseware, Content, and Delivery

I found the following modular flash lesson titled "How Changing Technology will Change Learning" a good example of courseware, content, and delivery. The missing link to higher levels of learning, of course, is the collaborative piece enabling communication between learners and presenter to discuss and critique various aspects of the lesson.

I found this resource useful for several reasons:

1. It is a pretty good design for courseware using flash (navigation, audio, text, and images)
   (NOTE: I think the design could be enhanced if there was an audio controller to tell the learner how long the audio will be as well as enable the learner to control the play functions)
2. The clarity and expressive tone of his voice made it more motivating to keep listening.
   
3. This coureware demonstrates the effectiveness of chunking information into 2-3 minute segments
4. The content of this module is relevant to my field of online education and was quite interesting.