eLearn Magazine

E-Learning and ICT Integration in Colleges and Universities in Saudi Arabia

Hend Suliman Al-Khalifa — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:43:24 GMT

In 2002, GOTEVOT, the government authority responsible for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's technical education and vocational training, established the E-Learning Training and Resources Centre. The Centre provides an e-library of more than 50,000 books and 3,000 training programs for lifelong learning and community services with electronic training portfolios. The organization publishes its technical and vocational courses in both Arabic and English on the web.

How to Outline an E-Learning Product

Tim Warner — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:28:04 GMT

Just as the quality of an automobile can be judged by its engine construction, so too can the caliber of an e-learning course be evaluated by its outline structure. An effective e-learning project starts with an effective project outline.

Design Learner Success Into Your Curriculum

Jeff May — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:40:09 GMT

As facilitators of e-learning in corporate environments, it is our responsibility to do what we can to ensure that both the organization and the individual learners gain the maximum benefit from all learning or training initiatives. We have a responsibility to ensure that as many success factors as possible are in play.

Challenging Technologies, Rethinking Pedagogy, Being Design-Inspired

Carlo Giovannella, Sabine Graf — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:58:09 GMT

Technology frames and reframes our society. Technology has accelerated our move into the post-industrial era, where the primary good is the immaterial knowledge that, thanks to the net, flows like liquid continuously in our "stay," wherever we are. Technology is also reshaping the physical environment so that spaces and artefacts become more and more sensitive and responsive, and become more prominent in our net-lives. Technologies will --and have already begun to -- enable individuals to interact in an extremely natural way using gestures, words, and emotions.

Teaching Diagnosis

Roger C. Schank — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:55:26 GMT

What do people need to learn? Every curriculum committee and every training organization has at one time or another convened a committee to answer this question. Their answers are always given in terms of subjects: "more math," "telecommunication," "risk management," "company policies." But subject matter is far less important in learning than you think.

21st Century Skills

Dan Cogan-Drew — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:42:00 GMT

If you've been following public discourse in education over the last couple of years, you have likely witnessed the emergence of a new, ubiquitous catch phrase: "21st century skills." What is still lacking in the landscape of 21st century education, however, are examples of 21st century student work.

Unresolved Obstacles to the Credibility of Online Degrees

Craig Howard — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:50:53 GMT

"This is too much work for an online class." For the last two years I've heard that comment repeatedly from students. I've been teaching since 1995, but about two years ago, I started teaching online. The "too much work" these students refer to is actually the exact same amount of work as in the face-to-face equivalent course. So what's behind what these students are saying?

Predictors of Success for Adult Online Learners: A Review of the Literature

Elizabeth A. Gruenbaum — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:54:56 GMT

What are the predictors of adult students' success in online learning environments? Is there a difference in undergraduate versus graduate online learners and their motivations? Does age play a factor? Do the course's characteristics have an impact on performance and learner satisfaction? What are the implications of these findings for online instructors, and how could that affect their practices and approaches to retaining students in the future?

An Interview with Howard Rheingold

Laurie Rowell — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:54:05 GMT

Howard Rheingold, writer, educator, and thinker, is renowned for tracking not just what is going on now in the digital world, but where the digital world will be going next. His books, such as Tools for Thought (1985), Virtual Reality (1991), The Virtual Community (1994) and Smart Mobs in (2002), usher in the next adventure in computer-human interaction. Here, he talks about skills that matter, such as locating and verifying the accuracy of information in a digital age.

Mobilizing and Globalizing with Online Education

Anju Kanwar — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:43:24 GMT

Whatever the times, education is an important vehicle to rise above certain of life's inequities. While many countries, including so-called third world nations, have slowly been building their educational systems, Americadespite its policies, programs, and good intenthas paid mere lip service to the realization of its educational goals. Consequently, education in many states in America is witnessing a breakdown.

3 e-Learning Technologies to Watch

Bob Little — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:41:02 GMT

In his recent predictions for the development of learning technologies in 2010, Clark Quinna U.S.-based independent consultant with a PhD in applied cognitive science, and (full disclosure) on the advisory board of this web sitesuggests that "several technologies are poised to cross the chasm: social tools, mobile technologies and virtual worlds...

Learning is Still the Same

Roger C. Schank — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:47:54 GMT

Learning is learning and technology is technology. The two are related if and only if the technology makes it possible to learn something that can be learned in no other way. E-learning is quite often a watered down version of school. Whether it relies on computers, mobile devices, or any other technology the question is, "Is it any better than what it replaced?"

Tips for Effective Webinars

Maria H. Andersen — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:33:42 GMT

Giving an effective webinar requires some presentation redesign and technology skills that you don't necessarily need in a face-to-face presentation. A great speaker in a face-to-face environment can easily crash and burn in a webinar setting if he or she isn't prepared for the unique challenges and needs of that environment. Here are some tips to help you pull off a webinar that will get you asked for an encore!

Using Digital Comics for Language Learning

Bill Zimmerman — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:31:44 GMT

Telling stories by building comic strips is a way to strengthen struggling students' emerging English-language skills and make the difficult job of language learning a much more enjoyable experience. Comic strips are a perfect vehicle for learning a language. Each strip's three or four panels provide a finite, accessible world in which funny or compelling characters live and go about their lives. And readers with limited reading skills are not as overwhelmed in dealing with the size of a comic strip as they can be with a book of many pages.

An Alternative Way to Assess the ROI of e-Learning in Training

Patrick Lambe — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:15:42 GMT

In Part I of this article, Patrick Lambe provided a brief background on the economics of e-learning. Here in Part II, he looks at some of the most common ways that organizations deploy e-learning to support their strategic objectives, and shows how measurement of viability and impact can be approached within those situations.

An Alternative Way to Assess the ROI of e-Learning in Training

Patrick Lambe — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:54:07 GMT

Patrick Lambe explains in this article ways that e-learning professionals might assess the return on investment of their programs. Here in Part I, he provides a brief background on the economics of e-learning. Part II looks at some of the most common ways that organizations deploy e-learning to support their strategic objectives, and shows how measurement of viability and impact can be approached within those situations. The article is adapted from Patti Shank and Saul Carliner's book, The E-Learning Handbook, Past Promises, Present Challenges (Pfeiffer, 2008).

Predictions for 2010

staff — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:58:39 GMT

Will GoogleWave flourish or perish? Are mobile phones going to be the next big learning devices or are they already on their way out of the e-learner's toolbox? At the start of each year, eLearn Magazine's contributors predict what changes are afoot for the coming 12 months. Here are our predictions for 2010.

Book Review: Learning in Real Time by Jonathan Finkelstein

Colleen Roller — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:29:21 GMT

Jonathan Finkelstein says there are certain learning objectives that cannot be met without real human interaction. To remove live interaction from the learning environment is to remove the lifeblood of learning. This is why asynchronous online training solutions sometimes fall short. But when the asynchronous and the synchronous are combined in a synergistic way, the results can be highly effective.

What I Learned from Teaching Adult Learners Online

Denise A. Blake — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:28:24 GMT

Being asked to teach an online course when you are inexperienced with distance education can be daunting. Denise A. Blake of Shenandoah University reflects on her personal experience with e-learning, which started just in this way. She shares what she learned about online learners, particularly adult students, and what instructors should be doing to meet their needs.

Sound Your Best in Virtual Trainings

Susan Berkley — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:14:20 GMT

Voice-over artist Susan Berkley provides tips for making your voice sound the best it can be in webinars and online teaching.

e-Learning Optimism

Bob Little — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:10:05 GMT

The e-learning sector is "flowering" in 2009 despite the recession, or so says a recent report on e-learning in the U.K.

10 Ways to Ensure Distance Learning Success

Cynthia Wolfe — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:22:43 GMT

As a distance learning student, you will find that being pro-active and engaged in your personal learning experience will pay off in good grades and depth of learning. These 10 best practices can help.

Book Review of 'Disrupting Class' by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson

John Sener — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:30:58 GMT

It seems like everyone these days wants to "fix" American education -- including the business community, which has produced a steady stream of books offering business-oriented solutions to the education "problem." 'Disrupting Class,' by Christensen, Horn, and Johnson, was 2008's star solutions manual, receiving much attention and acclaim from not only the business community, but also education leaders, as evidenced by favorable reviews and testimonials found on a web site related to the book. But is the book suitable for the unique structure of online education?

Online Educators, Come Out of Your Caves!

Mark Welch — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:00:29 GMT

Mark Welch explains why he and other online educators really (really) love networking and attending conferences.

Sensible Tools of Engagement

Debra Beck — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:48:17 GMT

In teaching both traditional undergraduates(17-25 years old) and non-traditional graduate students, I've found that age is not necessarily the deciding factor for judging a student's comfort level with technology. Some of my more media-savvy students have been my age or older, while some of those who struggled most were younger. In my experience, the following three types of technology (beyond the threaded discussions that take place online) are within the reach of the majority of my students and are the most useful teaching tools: podcasts, wiki-based group projects, and social bookmarking.

Do Serious Games Work? Results from Three Studies

Richard Blunt — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:38:59 GMT

Three studies in higher education look at whether serious games (or video games whose primary purpose is something other than entertainment, such as military training, education, physical therapy) really do change learning outcomes.

Review of 'The Complete Guide to Simulations & Serious Games' by Clark Aldrich

Peter Shea — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:29:43 GMT

The Complete Guide to Simulations & Serious Games is described as an "encyclopedic overview and complete lexicon for those who care about the next generation of educational media." This book differs from Learning by Doing in that it doesn't seek to distinguish the wide and various categories of simulationshow simulations differ based on their structure and content and why those differences matter. Rather, it seeks to "present and distinguish between the different mechanisms" related to simulations, so that people who create simulations have a shared understanding of the concepts they use in conversation with one another.

U.K. Study Finds 'People Problems' in e-Learning

Bob Little — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:50:40 GMT

Attitudes in Britain toward the use of learning technologies are changing, which has implications for U.S.-based firms that want to use e-learning in its U.K. offices. A recently published benchmarking study by Towards Maturity showed that 64 percent of organizations in the U.K. are increasing their learning technologies budgets in 2009 for the following top three reasons: 1) strengthening on-boarding training, 2) improving the quality of learning, and 3) developing a better qualified workforce.

Book Review: 'Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology'

Jenna McWilliams — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:47:20 GMT

"Our fear is that social cohesion and equity inherent in the promise of public schooling will be undermined by (the Knowledge Revolution)." Allan Collins and Richard Halverson make this statement early on in their fascinating, but ultimately somewhat short-sighted book, Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America (2008). This fear comprises the lynchpin of the authors' thesis: that new media technologies are changing how, where, and why learning happens as well as what role schools play in that learning. The results of this shift, according to the authors, aren't good.

Enhancing K-12 Academic Integrity

Doug Barnard, Terry Hutchins — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:40:25 GMT

Cheating has dramatically increased, at all levels, in the past few years. How cheating and false identity issues are addressed by individual online education programs will determine the collective futures of everyone working in e-learning.

Teaching Teachers to Use Blended Learning

Sally Knipe, Miriam Edwards — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:47:27 GMT

Blended learning focuses on what students do and how teachers support the learning process. At Charles Sturt University, Australia, first-year undergraduate preservice teachers use blended learning in their own education as they become more familiar with the physical, emotional, social, and cultural aspects of the early adolescents they will soon teach.

IT Training On-Demand

Marianne Cherney — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:20:17 GMT

In thinking about technical professionals, such as IT staff, under what conditions does online training work best? As we've seen at GoGogh.com and Dashcourses, the way many companies are shifting to e-learning is by streaming live instruction via webinars and other digital delivery systems, which doesn't always meet the needs of the professionals on the other end. Technical professionals are recognizing that the quick progression of technology, combined with handling more work as businesses try to cut costs, means they need training that is better designed for their specific needs. And just what are those specific needs?

Learning Business Through Scenarios

Roger C. Schank — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:51:07 GMT

In his latest column, Roger Schank explains how a new series of soon-to-launch, story-based business courses came to be, and outlines the content and scenarios of the seven storylines that make up the curriculum. In future columns, after the course launches, he will comment on whether they are working as planned.

The State of Distance Education in Saudi Arabia

Hend Suliman Al-Khalifa — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:43:37 GMT

In this exclusive report, Hend Suliman Al-Khalifa of King Saud University, Riyadh, explains how Saudi Arabia has begun adopting distance education as part of its educational and development strategies. Saudi Arabia has been slower than many nations to move into distance education. Bachelor degree programs have only been offered through traditional universities' distance education programs for about a decade, and policies for single-mode, distance, and virtual tertiary institutions are still under development for approval by the Ministry of Higher Education. Some public universities, such as King Abdulaziz University and Al-Imam Mohammad ibn Saud Islamic University, are dual-mode, while single-mode distance education is offered by the Arab Open University. Distance education is primarily applied where gender segregation is required in tertiary education, where male lecturers are only authorized to teach female students by means of closed-circuit television, one-way video and two-way audio and broadcast.

Rapid e-Learning Polarizes Opinion

Bob Little — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:45:05 GMT

Rapid e-learning tools offer subject matter experts the opportunity to produce e-learning materials relatively quickly and cost-effectively, at least in the U.K. and U.S. But e-learning experts complain that rapid development tools only help amateurs turn out low-quality and poorly-designed materials that merely pay lip service to the ideals of instructional design. At a recent meeting of the eLearning Networkthe U.K.'s foremost professional association for users and developers of e-learningWilliam Ward, formerly of Cable & Wireless but now an independent consultant, examined the rise of rapid e-learning, which he dates to 2003, when tools such as Qarbon, Breeze, and ToolBook became available. Ward stated that these rapid application tools had changed not only buying patterns within the industry, but also ideas about why and where to use e-learning.

Publish or Perish

Clark Quinn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:17:33 GMT

It's not news that we're experiencing increasing change. The quantity of information available is growing astronomically, new offerings are increasingly quick to be copied, businesses are under pressure to do more with less, and the internet is a disruptive force, threatening all manner of content industries. Organizations have to become more nimble, more agile. Optimal execution is only the cost of entry, and organizations have to be tapping into continual innovation. Publishers are not exempt from this. There are major pressures coming in a variety of guises. Yet, surprisingly, we're seeing little innovation in products, services, or business models.

lrnchat

Dave Ferguson, Christy Pettit — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:39:40 GMT

#lrnchat (or "Learn Chat") is an open online meeting about learning that takes place weekly on Twitter. eLearn Magazine asked two recent participants to share their thoughts about #lrnchat, describe how it works, and explain the benefits of participating. According to Dave Ferguson, Twitter chats are no different than the business conference cocktail houra prime time for networking. And Christy Pettit has explored business opportunities thanks to her involvement in #lrnchat. So instead of must-see TV, tune into #lrnchat on Thursday nights, 8:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern time.

Book Review of Make Money Teaching Online

Mark Welch — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:42:26 GMT

Mark Welch reviews the book Make Money Teaching Online: How to Land Your First Academic Job, Build Credibility, and Earn a Six-Figure Salary by Dr. Danielle Babb and Dr. Jim Mirabella, published by Wiley Press (2007).

Work and Learning

Tom Barr — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:23:25 GMT

The days of orchestrating corporate learning through special "events," such as classroom training and seminars, have given way to learning on-the-job. Indeed, working and learning are becoming so tightly integrated that it's often difficult to differentiate between them. Motorola University, and indeed corporate universities and training departments in general, have undergone or are undergoing quite a transition in the wake of Web 2.0 technologies. System work tools and learning tools are becoming synonymous.

How Tiny Camcorders are Changing Education

Laurie Rowell — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:20:10 GMT

How effective are Flip cameras and other mini-camcorders as learning tools? Where are video-in-the-classroom assignment s taking education? Jake Dunagan, one of the tech prognosticators from the Institute for the Future, helps explain where video in the classroom will be going in coming years. Additionally, three intrepid instructors, who have been experimenting with mini-camcorders in their curricula, explain how they are using the technology and what their students are learning. These folks believe that using camcorders as a medium is affecting not only the message but the student communicators and their learning process.

E-Learning Tools for STEM

Maria H. Andersen — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:22:49 GMT

You'd think that instructors who teach math and hard sciences (or STEM fields) would be quick to pick up new technologies and be early adopters of e-learning. But in many of my interactions with administrators, what I actually hear is this: "Faculty from almost every discipline are interested in using new technologies and teaching online, except the people in math, science, and engineering." It's not that these faculty members don't want to teach online; it's that they can't see how to do it in their discipline. Here are six tools that are absolute necessities to get a math or hard sciences instructor teaching online successfully.

The Benefits of Experience

Bob Little — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:30:37 GMT

The effectiveness of any learning depends primarily on what the learner's manager does before the learning intervention, such as stating what is expected of the learner and how the learner will be measured. The next most important factor is what the tutor or instructional designer does before the learning takes place, and the third key factor is what the manager does after the learning has taken place. Giving people new knowledge and skills is way down the list.

E-Learning and Management Information Systems

Haitham A. El-Ghareeb — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:28:35 GMT

E-learning is the 'learning' process revolution enabled by new technologies that, hopefully, will present an effective and efficient learning process that doesn't exist today. Learning management systems (LMSs) are responsible for 'learning' activities, while university management information systems (UMISs) are responsible for handling University managerial activities. This article seeks to explain the differences between the two and how they are used.

Discussion Management Tips for Online Educators

Jo Macek — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:53:08 GMT

Jo Macek examines 10 best practices for managing class discussions in an online or virtual classroom.

Online Mentoring Programs

Gary A. Berg — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:34:30 GMT

One-to-one relationships, facilitated through the Internet, is changing how personal and professional mentoring occurs. Despite the pervasiveness of large lecture courses found in colleges, the core of learning at the graduate level and beyond formal education is one-to-one dialogue between a mentor and a learner. The Internet and trends in e-learning have finally made mentoring practical and cost effective.

What Can Be Taught: Part II

Roger C. Schank — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:11:25 GMT

In a previous column, ("Things That Can't Be Taught"), I opened up the idea that there are some things that can't be taught, even though some e-learning tries to teach them. Then, in Part I of this article, I looked instead at things that can be taught and began outlining the different ways through which we learn them, which can be categorized into the processes that inform them: conscious processes, subconscious processes, analytic processes, and mixed processes. In Part I, I wrote about learning through conscious processes. Here, I will look at the other three.

What Can Be Taught: Part I

Roger C. Schank — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:33:19 GMT

Not everything we would like to teach can be taught. Similarly, not everything we would like to learn can be learned, especially if we are taking the wrong approach to learning. In a previous column, I discussed things that can't be taught. Here I discuss what can be taught. In this two-part article, I discuss the kinds of thing we can learn. I consider how we can best approach learning by listing 16 types of learning. There may be more, but those 16 will at least cover enough ground to describe how human learning looks. The types of learning are divided into four groups: 1) conscious processes, which I will cover here in Part I, 2) subconscious processes, 3) analytic processes, and 4) mixed processes (nos. 2, 3, and 4 are covered in the forthcoming Part II).

Tips and Tools for Fostering a Creative e-Learning Class

Susan Doctoroff Landay — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:27:23 GMT

Despite the effectiveness of e-learning, online learners remain notorious for losing focus, getting bored, checking email, chatting, texting, sorting through piles of neglected mail, or tuning out altogether. It's not their fault. Trainers haven't equipped online learners with an arsenal of tools and toys that will help them stay focused. Here, we will look at some popular classroom methods of addressing the kinesthetic, visual, tactile, and interactive needs of learners, and explore some low cost ways to help online learners make the most of their remote learning experience.

10 Things I've Learned About Teaching Online

Michelle Everson — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:35:14 GMT

Michelle Everson has been teaching online for five years. Here, she shares the top 10 best practices she has learned about online teaching.

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: Best Practices and Principles for Instructors

Eileen B. Entin, Jason Sidman, Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:25:57 GMT

[The following is a chapter from the upcoming book Programming for e-Learning Developers, by Jeffrey M. Rhodes (ed.). It is reprinted here with permission from the authors.] The value of peer learning is well known, especially for domains in which people will apply what they learn in collaborative settings, but it is challenging to design courses that effectively incorporate and support peer learning. When learners are co-present in the classroom, it is easier to devise exercises that facilitate peer learning. Currently most training outside of the classroom is self-paced, eliminating peer and instructor contact, due to the perceived cost reduction and the greater ease of implementation. It is a challenge to develop online training that incorporates these rich human interactions while respecting the time constraints under which learners operate, yet it can lead to deeper learning that is more memorable and more easily applicable (Neal and Miller, 2005; Notess and Neal, 2006). This chapter discusses considerations and tradeoffs in designing, developing, and evaluating online training for an instructor and students who are geographically distributed. The discussion will take readers through the development process, starting with analysis of audience and goals, to the challenges in acquiring and adapting course material to the online format, and finally the implementation and evaluation. We focus on considerations involved in supporting active engagement of learners and meaningful and thoughtful learner-learner interactions appropriate to the subject matter (Neal and Miller, 2006).

Five Questions for Marjee Chmiel

Lisa Gualtieri — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:15:34 GMT

Marjee Chmiel is the director of digital media for National Geographic's The JASON Project where she designs and produces a variety of video games and other interactive online applications that support The Jason Project's award winning online science curriculum. Chmiel spoke to eLearnMag.org editor-in-chief Lisa Gualtieri about The Jason Project and her insights on making education engaging for children, teachers, and adult learners.

Learn From Rogue Tweeters

Lisa Gualtieri — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:13:42 GMT

Many organizations are struggling with social media, trying to determine exactly how to use it in a formalized way. But while they strategize about how to push messages or disseminate information, they're being preempted by rogue individuals who, in the true spirit of social media, stake a claim and represent their organization with nothing more than permission.

Must e-Learning Be 'Cool?'

Roger C. Schank — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:09:36 GMT

Upon taking a tour of some training applications in the virtual world Second Life, Roger C. Shank wonders why organizations push for their elearning solutions to be 'cool' over being effective.

Promoting Interaction in Distance Education

Richard Anderson, Natalie Linnell — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:06:13 GMT

The Center for Collaborative Technologies at the University of Washington is dedicated to creating software tools that encourage interaction in the classroom. These include Classroom Presenter, a Tablet PC-based presentation and interaction system, and ConferenceXP, a video conferencing application for distributed courses, co-developed with Microsoft Research. In this article, we describe the use of Classroom Presenter in a pair of international distance learning courses. The two classes used different technologies: one was a synchronous class that used internet-based video conferencing and the other was an asynchronous class that used Tutored Video

Capture the Backchannel

Laurie Rowell — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:01:29 GMT

When you look out over the sea of faces in your lecture classes, are some students focusing on laptop screens while others are working their thumbs on their cell phone pads? Imagine you could harness all that clicking as a backchannel stream tied into the lecture. In principle establishing a backchannel sounds easy. You can either set up a separate Twitter account or use a specialty application like Live Question Tool, which requires no registration and takes about a minute for the instructor to create an instance. The real question is whether a secondary stream would be a learning advantage to your students.

Teaching an Online Experience-based Leadership Course

Anders Ortenblad — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:35:32 GMT

Is it really possible to give online courses, with no physical meetings whatsoever, in leadership, where the students' learning to a large extent is based on experiences during the course in itself? Would it at the same time be possible to encourage critical thinking on a course like this, to create an online, experience-based, academic leadership course? I think it is, and I have tried to develop such a course.

Not Dead Yet

Mark Notess — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:29:13 GMT

Are Google Wave or WordPress making professional learning management systems obsolete? Many instructors are pushing the open education movement by adopting freeware technologies and cobbling them together to meet their needs, rather than using a licensed LMS. However, there are at least three other factors promising to keep institutionally adopted and integrated LMSs alive for years to come.

Five Questions ... for Ben Sawyer

Lisa Gualtieri — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:27:25 GMT

Ben Sawyer, co-founder of Digitalmill, organizes the annual Games for Health Conference. The conference is produced by the Games for Health Project, which is sponsored by the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Leading the project, Ben has single-handedly pulled together a diverse community of people working on video games used in therapeutic practices, to teach health professionals, and for increasing education and adherence in patients with the goal of improving health through games and their associated technologies.

Things That Can't Be Taught

Roger C. Schank — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:22:55 GMT

Roger Schank here addresses an issue in education and training that's not well understood: It's not possible to teach or train individuals to do things that are not in line with their personalities. This matters because much of what we try to teach in school and train in the real world is really an attempt to alter personality.

Five Questions ... for David A. Cook

Lisa Gualtieri — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:20:44 GMT

David A. Cook is an associate professor of Medicine in the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, a consultant in the Division of General Internal Medicine, and director of the Office of Education Research. He has developed and studied multiple Web-based courses for residents and medical students, conducted several systematic reviews, presented at numerous national and international conferences, and published more than 60 journal articles and book chapters on medical education topics. In this interview, Lisa Gualtieri, editor-in-chief of eLearnMag.org, asks him why online learning poses both unique advantages and challenges to medical students and practitioners.

The Cost of E-Learning

Howard B. Schechter — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:17:59 GMT

E-learning is a business activity. It has a value to the business, a start-up cost, and running costs. The costs must be managed if the program is to stay within budget and yield an adequate return on investment. The question of start-up versus ongoing costs can best be answered if the program scope can be defined for the first two or three years. First-year costs are high, while ongoing costs are typically lower. Return on the time and money invested are typically realized toward the end of the first year. Second-year returns are higher as more courses are offered and the subscriber base expands. The answers to questions of cost are usually broad and rough at the outset and then become more refined as the project comes into focus.

Questions to Ask When Choosing an Online Graduate Program

Judy Unrein — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:14:26 GMT

An increasingly large group of professionals are looking to change careers or shore up their existing qualifications by going to graduate school. The options have never been more numerous thanks to online education, but it seems more complicated than ever to judge one program against another. Here are the key questions to ask before choosing an online educational program.

15 Tips for Webinars

Patricia Fripp — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:12:17 GMT

Whenever you open your mouth, whether you're talking to one person or a thousand, you usually want to get a specific message across. How do you do that best when you are communicating through a webinar? What's different when the lecture is in the virtual world? How do you catch and keep your audience? Here are 15 tips.

That Was a Bad Webinar, Wonder Why?

Matt Bovell — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:10:44 GMT

How has your experience giving webinars been? Three major factors contribute to making a high quality webinar: technology, content, and style. If you hit those three marks, you'll leave your audience wanting more, rather than relieved that it's over.

Five Questions for Michelle Cardinal

Lisa Gualtieri — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:08:11 GMT

Michelle Cardinal, director of conferences for IQPC, was interviewed on her use of social media, which she used heavily in planning and promoting the Corporate University Summit.

Threading, Tagging, and Higher-Order Thinking

Mary Burns — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:03:20 GMT

In much of the developing world, Web 2.0 applications remain little known and are rarely used as formal educational tools. In Indonesia, Education Development Center's (EDC) use of Web 2.0 tools as part of an online course appears to be yielding initially positive, and unanticipated, results. However, real impediments stand in the way. This past year a pilot program was launched in which a group of master trainers work as school-based coaches. To support coaches in their work with teachers, we constructed a Moodle-based online course with coaching-related readings, videos, and a discussion forum. To facilitate communication and information sharing, we built in a number of Web 2.0 tools: Diigo, VoiceThread, Ning, Dimdim, Flickr, Word Press, TeacherTube, and Curriki. (The accompanying list at the end of the article provides a brief description of these tools.)

Paying Teachers for Performance

Laurie Rowell — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:59:49 GMT

Basing teachers' raises, salary grade, bonuses, or commissions on their performance, or that of their students, is a topic that sparks energetic debate. Many argue merit pay has a long history of working in the private sector and there is no reason not to use similar metrics to pay for what you want in education. Those opposed say there is no clear-cut way to determine whether a teacher is performing well. But would offering teachers a bonus in the pay packet make for better student scores on these tests?

Reminding and e-Learning

Roger C. Schank — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:55:53 GMT

'How do we get reminded?' is an important question for thinking about how real knowledge management should work. To make the computer really useful for work and for learning, we must think about building a reminding machine. A reminding machine would have in it thousands of stories from experts in various areas of life telling about important aspects of their lives that have lessons about life in them, the kind of stories you tell to colleagues or to students. What they would have in common would be lessons that follow from them about what to do if something like this happened again.

Five Questions for Massood Zarrabian

Lisa Gualtieri — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:51:52 GMT

Massood Zarrabian is the CEO of Boston-based OutStart Inc., a global maker of technologies that help organizations transfer knowledge through formal and informal learning and social software. Zarrabian was interviewed about the importance of quality content and how it can give organizations a competitive edge.

Patterns in e-Learning Standards and Specifications

Rachel Ellaway — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:48:44 GMT

E-learning standards and specifications display common patterns in the ways they support various aspects of educational and meta-educational activities and processes. This article considers the nature of these design patterns, and it suggests how (once identified) they can enable better educational technology designs, and how they can be analyzed to better understand the philosophy and practice of contemporary technology-mediated education.

Cog-Learn: An e-Learning Pattern Language for Web-based Learning Design

Junia Coutinho Anacleto, Americo Talarico Neto, Vania Paula de Almeida Neris — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:12:39 GMT

Designing online learning material is a difficult task for novice teachers who lack experience in their design. Patterns have emerged as means to capture design knowledge in context and offer solutions to designers. Cog-Learn is a pattern language aimed at supporting the design of learning material for e-learning systems. Here, we describe Co-Learn and discuss the patterns' identification and formalization processes through two case studies in which a set of cognitive strategies was applied with the goal of better organizing the content seen by the student. The purpose is to facilitate the student's interaction with the material's interface and, consequently, improve the learning process.

The World is Open for a Reason

Curtis J. Bonk — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:09:02 GMT

The educational world has become filled with millions of pieces of free and open content. The momentum for open education quickly accelerated in the early part of this decade when MIT announced its OpenCourseWare initiative and dozens of other colleges and universities around the world joined in the cause. These open educational resources have made a huge impact on the educational possibilities of young learners as well as retirees looking to build upon their past educational experiences. Curtis J. Bonk offers 30 reasons why there is so much excitement for open education today.

Using 'Txting' to Teach Native Languages

Ignacio Aguaded Gomez, Sandra Cortes Moreira — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:54:38 GMT

A study conducted at the Secondary School of Silves, in Portugal, was designed to understand how new media, such as texting and chats, might affect the correct usage of maternal (native) languages. It takes into consideration the idea of valuing student experiences in the teaching and learning process of languages. It brings their daily practices and personal "libraries of knowledge" to the classroom as a valid way of gathering motivation and promoting a better adaptation of teaching methodologies to each student's learning rhythm.

Five Questions for Pat Agre

Lisa Gualtieri — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:46:17 GMT

Patricia Agre has been director of Patient Education at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City since 1994. She is a former registered nurse and respected photographer, who incorporated those skills into a career overseeing the creation and development of educations tools for cancer patients. She spoke with eLearn's editor-in-chief Lisa Gualtieri about her experiences producing comprehensive multimedia health care education tools.

Divided by a Common Language

Bob Little — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:03:09 GMT

Many U.S. companies -- especially those in the learning technologies sector -- view the U.K. as America "writ small." They believe the U.K., with a land mass roughly equivalent to the state of Oregon, speaks the same language, buys for the same reasons, and is susceptible to the same marketing techniques. These companies have discovered, often at considerable cost, that these assumptions are false.

chmod 777 education

Carlos Santos, Luis Pedro — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:13:24 GMT

In 2005, a few months after Tim O'Reilly crafted the term Web 2.0 and the discussion about Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0 emerged, IBM's James Snell wrote a short post explaining his view about the Web 2.0 concept. He used a brief Unix/Linux command -- chmod 777 Web -- to convey the message that Web 2.0 is all about granting users full-access privileges to the Web. His thought-provoking comments got us thinking. What would happen if we executed a "chmod 777 education" command to provide openness to education?

Five Questions ... For George Siemens

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:28:00 GMT

George Siemens is the author of Knowing Knowledge and the recently released Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning. He is also associate director of research and development with the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba and is the founder and president of Complexive Systems Inc., a learning lab focused on helping organizations develop integrated learning structures to meet the needs of global strategy execution. Lisa Gualtieri interviewed him about educational systems.

Accidental Homeschoolers

John Edelson, Mary Arnold — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:17:38 GMT

The media creates an image of homeschoolers as a backward-looking dogmatic group who are withdrawing from mainstream society, but this is far from the truth. Indeed, homeschoolers are often progressive, pragmatic, highly sociable, and enthusiastic e-learning families. This article describes the path many parents have taken after placing their children in traditional schools, becoming dissatisfied, and then shifting to homeschooling as an 'accidental' change in direction.

The Semantic Web and e-Learning

Chris Daly — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:02:13 GMT

The goal of the Semantic Web is to provide the capacity for computers to understand Web content that exists on systems and servers across the Internet, ultimately adding value to the content and opening rich new data, information, and knowledge frontiers. Billions of Web pages are downloaded daily and are easily understood by humans. The knowledge gap exists for computers as these pages are only structured in the hypertext markup language (HTML) formatting language. When applied to the realm of e-learning, be it content interactions or learner management, the potential to add value is almost limitless.

Long Live Instructor-Led Learning

Saul Carliner — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:48:45 GMT

In March 2009, the monthly question on ASTD's Learning Circuits blog wonders what training will look like in 2019. Nearly all the contributors predicted the death of the classroom. Before you buy that, perhaps I can interest you in some mortgage-backed securities? Consider the case for the death of the classroom to be about as strong as those securities.

Connecting with Students through Inventive Marketing

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:46:39 GMT

Lisa Neal Gualtieri interviewed Keith Bourne about marketing online programs. Given the current economic state, what are the primary advantages and disadvantages of a solely online marketing strategy?

Increase Student Viewership with Striking Titles

Scott Buros — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Few designers put much effort into creating a striking title for their e-learning projects. The title is usually a dull summary of the content or a cliché phrase. Rarely are we surprised by a creative presentation title.
If you make money on course access or increase the likelihood of viewership, you will want to incorporate some guidelines into your design practices right away. How can you create a striking title for your project? Here are a few tricks.

Evolution of a Video-Learning Object Format

Peter J. Fadde — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:09:11 GMT

In a previous article, Peter J. Fadde emphasized the value of creating an identifiable format for video-learning objects. Developing such a format requires an investment of time and creativity, yet the return-on-investment is significant. In addition, viewers (or learners) know what to expect from each video-learning object -- of key importance with video objects because they can't be perused in a glance.
Here, I analyze a series of mini-lecture video-learning objects called 'Real Time Minutes' (RTMs) produced by Jonathan Finkelstein, the creator/curator of Learning Times, an online community for teachers.

E-Learning in 2009: Are We Winning the Battle but Losing the War?

Jane Bozarth — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:56:50 GMT

As the news about the economy grows ever bleaker, organizations are finally forced to take a hard look at travel and other expenses associated with traditional classroom training. Jane Bozarth predicts this will bring several changes to the e-learning horizon.

How Will Online Courses Weather the Economic Downturn?

Laurie Rowell — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:04:53 GMT

In the minds of most e-learning professionals, the University of Phoenix is closely tied to the concept of online courses, at least in part because the for-profit institution's pop-up advertisements for them are so ubiquitous. In fact, the university's students racked up a hefty $2.8 billion in federal loans and grants in fiscal year 2008, according to the government site Top 100 Recipients of Federal Assistance.
How the economic downturn is going to affect general college enrollment in 2009 is not yet clear, but the emerging consensus is that community colleges will likely get a bump in enrollment while four-year institutions may struggle. Online enrollment, however, is expected to do well across most institutions.

Predictions for 2009

Lisa Neal Gualtieri — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:21:28 GMT

Once a year we turn to the experts in our field to share their predictions on what lies ahead for the e-learning community. While our colleagues unanimously agree the global economic downturn is the overwhelming factor coloring their forecasts, they do see a great array of opportunities and challenges in the coming 12 months.