Topics for next week's presentations

Prepare to present a 3-5 minute infomercial about one of the following next week. Post your findings on the Wiki (do not prepare ppt slides!)

Assignment notes: Tell us what we need to know as instructional designers--cost; how we might use it; purchase info; support cost; some business cases for it; who’s using it (include links). Assume we don’t know anything.

Let's define them:

• Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS):a tool that manages content; allows users to create and reuse small units or "chunks" of content; shareable content objects

See LCMS/LMS differences

• Content Management System (CMS): a tool that organizes content, mostly informational content as opposed to instructional content. I like this brief definition from Wikipedia: "A CMS facilitates the organization, control and publication of a large body of documents."
• Course Management System (CMS): a tool allows instructors to manage course content on the web without the knowledge of HTML. It provides instructor with a set of tools and framework for relative ease of online course creation.
• Learning Management System (LMS): a tool that acts as a portal for delivery and tracking of content but is not necessarily geared around courses. Element K is an example

On the different "MS" (management system) acronyms:

• CMS/LMS“course ms” and “learning ms” often used interchangeably.
• LCMS: Learning content management system: manages learning content: for people who build learning content. Like your clipart library, but manages your SCOs instead of clipart. (Note, clipart could be a SCO.) Helps you (designer, programmer) build the instruction. Sometimes is part of the LMS (vendors will try to sell you both).

AECT next year in Orlando Dr. M urged us to submit a proposal (good vita builder); only need 1000 words; if you write a paper, it will go into proceedings, so you "get" both a presentation and a publication out of it. Student rates available for AECT. See http://www.aect.org/default.asp Also see http://aectnow.org

SCORM/SCO eLearning Summit at FedEx Institute yesterday on "Implementing SCORM"

Sharable content object reference model: If you are going into corporate elearning, there's a good chance the organization follows the SCORM standard. It's a reference model...a way of describing content so that it can be reused.

What is ADLnet.org: advanced distributed network initiative started by US Dept of Defense; now grown to involve all areas. An outgrowth of a study from the military: 63 different courses on how to assemble a rifle. Needed to standardize so all military branches could share the learning objects.

Idea in a nutshell: imagine you are Chrysler and you have lots of people to train. You have many brands within the organization. Chrysler has to create sales force training on how to change a tire on a new [name the model]. Tire and jack are in different places in different autos so that means you need 20 different CBTs. However, SOME things are the same regardless of type of car. (Eg., pulling off the side of the road, putting out the signals). Break down the content into SCO’s (sharable content objects) and you can build individual SCOs and then pick and choose from them to construct a complete learning module (sort of like building with LEGOs)—you select, assemble, and sequence. (Think of it as a massive clipart library, you can pick and choose objects to turn them into some kind of instruction.)

When you use SCORM, you create individual objects which can be assembled into a variety of different courses. A key concept with SCOs: the idea of granularity: how small are the pieces. (Granularity refers to the size of the object.) The question always is how small do the objects need to be in order to be useful? If they are too large, they may have too much contextual information to allow them to be useful in your assemblage. If theya re too small, you have a huge task of sequencing a really large number of individual objects.

Class brainstorming about possible pros/cons of SCORM approach • May be more geared toward corporate? (Hard to imagine elementary students do this.) • Need to have enough people on board to build the concept…..and get the buy-in…. what are the costs and the cost-savings? May be harder for a smaller organization. • Instructors want to tweak the objects to customize them to your context. • Limits authenticity, meeting the learners where they are. The recipe might not meet the students where they are….Does this take away the human element? Does it dehumanize? Sounds a bit Orwellian. • Break from non-traditional classroom environment may be a benefit to students with learning disabilities…..

What is a learning object? Some digital resource that mediates learning: def of a learning object (David Wylie’s definition)

• http://auspace.athabascau.ca:8080/dspace/bitstream/2149/253/1/Richa242Learn.pdf
• http://www.reusability.org/read/

Factoids

• Largest user of SCORM is no longer the military); the largest user is Korea which adopted a national curriculum (K-12); mandated all learning content students use to follow SCORM standard. What does that mean? Teachers are no longer trying to determine how they are going to teach something; teachers and students are concentrating on building content. By adopting SCORM, whatever object someone builds, it will play within the national learning management system. (Students also contribute to the content.) (See KERIS)
• Florida Virtual School: How many students in the Florida virtual high school? See
  • http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-virtual1907oct19,0,2682606.story says 54,000 students
  • Graph at http://www.flvs.net/general/school_data.php suggests >60,000
  • "Student Enrollment: FLVS served over 52,000 students in 87,000 half-credit enrollments in 06-07. Enrollment is open to public, private, and home school students. Students outside Florida enroll on a tuition basis. FLVS expects to serve 100K enrollments in 07-08.” (http://www.flvs.net/educators/fact_sheet.php)
• Academic ADL Co-Lab predicts 1 in 10 students will be in online courses.
• MERLOT = Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching: a collection free learning objects/instructional resources. Your organization joins to use the objects; once you get there, you can locate a topic. Topic may or may not fit your context; GREAT idea, but in reality, doesn’t always fit the needs. MERLOT is a big library of stuff; some of the objects are really pretty large.

Open question: Is there someplace where you can get RSS feed code that you can add to your website?

• Cut and paste RSS Feed javascript: http://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/build.php
• There is also software you can tell to goto the site and figure out what to put into a feed; it’s called an RSS scraper. http://rssscraper.rubyforge.org/

We discussed the html assignment by brainstorming feedback on Bethany's website--what is the difference between an informational website and an instructional unit that uses the web for delivery? Some ideas:

• Info can be jargon that you may or may not know. • Instruction is like you are talking to the person and teaching them something as if you are talking to them. • Personalization, interaction directly with the learning; immediate feedback; feedback is important to see if they learn—checking for misunderstandings. • Some kind of goal and objective; gives you some context of what you are going to learn and where I am going to take you. • Some kind of assessment (implicit or explicit) explicit is a quiz; implicit assessment (behavior change). • The way it’s written….. today we’re looking at; some kind of sequencing of what is going to happen. • Hierarchy. • Some acknowledgement of the learner’s state in terms of preexisting knowledge. • The gap between what they know and what they need to know. • Practice is built in. • Some consideration of motivation (Keller’s ARCs of motivation). • A bit more helpful to think about it as a unit rather than a website. • Your objectives can be explicit, or implied. Probably will use explicit, but make it conversational. Be sure you are TALKING TO THE LEARNER

After the break Dr. M noted that he's added more files to the umdrive: flash samples including 4 specific cbi files to view to get ideas about interaction possibilities.

How flashy does the flash product have to be? NOT AT ALL! Words to remember: Flash is not an instructional development tool! Don’t spend time trying to make it flashy. Interact with the learner; gaining attention… think about sequencing things; giving them opportunities to practice. MAKE THE INSTRUCTION SOLID. Pick a model, follow the model, make sure there’s alignment between what you say they are going to learn, what you teach, and the assessment. If you’ve got that, that will trump everything else. FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT, don’t be dismayed if your program isn’t flashy; don’t spend time to make it flashy. Conversational tone; interacting with learning;assessing; giving them some chance to practice…..

FINALLY, we took a poll of ways people are thinking of approaching the Dick and Carey Flash assignment. We were reminded that we can give an overview; could focus on a single stage. Some responses: • Instructional objectives • Overview of the whole thing • Narrow scope down to one of the components • Assessment doing a jigsaw puzzle • Fun with Dick and Carey • How to align the test questions with the assessment • Overview; to click on the model • Think of novel ideas of how to approach it. • A scenario; • Hopscotch hop along the model