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Online Learning Faculty Burnout?

2011-05-28T00:04:27Z

by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed

Online education demolishes borders: borders between regulatory jurisdictions, between traditional and nontraditional learners, and between for-profit and nonprofit higher education. But one pattern of erosion that has been less thoroughly documented has been the crumbling of the borders that define the work lives of college professors. Some experts fear that the boom in online education could lead to higher rates of burnout among faculty, especially those whose emotional satisfaction depends on face-to-face interactions with students and colleagues. At the same time, some suggest that technological advances in online learning environments, specifically tools that aim to make virtual interactions more rewarding, could reduce the risk of alienation for online instructors. Does teaching online increase the risk of burnout? Scholarly research devoted to the topic is thin and offers no definitive answers.

http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/dialog/news/2011/05/16/online_faculty_burnout

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On PLNs

2011-03-18T15:59:31Z

Well, I’ve been thinking about this post for some time now, and I can already hear the clatter of keyboards as they dash to respond… The thing is – and this is the nub of the post (and a comment I threw in to Twitter this morning) – I think all this ‘PLN’ business is seriously over-hyped and overrated and most people are kidding themselves about just how much they get out of theirs, just how many of their PLN would be friends and mentors ‘in real life’, and just, well, just how real it all is…

So hey ho, here we go – feel free to tell me just how valuable it is to you, of all the new ‘friends’ you’ve made and all the rest. And I do know, of course, that real friendships and professional relationships and things like that are made every day online – I know there are real ‘success’ stories, but I also think there’s a slightly creepy, slightly seedy, slightly self-congratulatory, slightly odd, slightly desperate and slightly unreal side to the whole thing…

Here’s what I know (and I must stress this is a personal post – your mileage may vary)… My best friends are all, with one or two exceptions, people I have first met face-to-face and then continued to contact online due to distance or whatever. I also know that, like most people, I have an optimum number of friends, and that number is very small. I see these people when I can, and I get more out of two hours in their company than I could ever in a few weeks with them online in Twitter.

In fact I got a lot more out of TESOL Spain last weekend than I ever could in a few weeks of Twitter. And yes, I do know that not everyone gets to go to conferences. But really, all that makes Twitter or any other online community (at least for me) is ‘better than nothing’.

Twitter is, of course, fantastic for many things – new links to interesting websites and research, to reviews and all the rest. On a daily basis I probably bookmark half a dozen or so of these (though I never, of course, have time to go and look at them again). It’s great for quick questions to someone, and excellent at JIT training and solutions when you need to know how to do something. But I can’t help feeling that it’s all being stretched a bit far when it gets called a ‘community’ or ‘network’…. Well, maybe it’s a network in the strictest sense.

It’s a bit like Facebook in some ways. It’s ridiculous for me to sign in to Facebook and see my 500+ ‘friends’. The thing is, you see, they’re not really friends, most of them. At best most of them are acquaintances, generally they’re friends of someone I once met at a conference and with whom I had a most pleasant and edifying chat. But that doesn’t mean we should swap holiday photos or call each other ‘friends’. We’re colleagues, perhaps, in the same way that everyone who works at a university is a colleague of everyone else…. Except they rarely meet each other, have nothing in common and probably never will.

The truth of the matter is that we can’t all be sane, nice, amazing people – there must be some loonies out there… Yet everyday people arrange to meet someone they’ve only met online, to stay in their houses and go out for dinner with them, and more… As if it were the most natural thing in the world. And we educators are generally ok, but there must be some mad axe murderers amongst us. Have any of your friends disappeared from a ‘tweet-up’ recently (God how I hate that word)? Perhaps you should check…

I’m a social animal. I love meeting people, talking to them, discussing their work and mine – but I’m sure there are many hundreds of people I’m connected to on Twitter who would find me dull beyond belief, and I’m sure the same would happen to me. There’s been much written on the ‘love fest’ of online communities, and I really do think it’s over-played. It ain’t all rosy, we’re not all due to be the best of friends, and the sooner we get over that, the better.

Twitter has, of course, improved the first-time conference experience for many – and that is an amazing thing. But when people get home after their ‘tweet-up’, do they ever sit down and wonder if any of the people they met would really ever be close friends of theirs in real life? Do we really all find each other so utterly fascinating, lovely and professionally inspiring that we long to retire to a commune the size of Belgium and start a new Utopia? I think not. Twitter has its strengths, but it is also unpredictable and it draws us in to an ever-increasing love-fest where everyone is frilly and pretty (intellectually and personally speaking, of course). And life isn’t like that. I don’t share my family snaps with strangers online, and increasingly I feel uneasy abut doing the same with my ‘PLN’.

And what of other communities? I’ve already mentioned Facebook – to me it’s simply an address book. I sign in, accept invitations from people who are friends of people who are friends of a guy who once talked to me in Buenos Aires, and then I sign out again. Because if I hang around for too long, the second cousin of the woman who gave me a lift to the bloke who was going to arrange my transfer to the airport is going to open a chat window and ask me about ‘some’ and ‘any’. Or maybe for a quick edit on their PhD thesis on mole wrenches… since we have so much in common and all that.

This week I have been invited to join four more communities and two Nings. And the thing is, I’m already over-stretched with work and Twitter and all the rest. And it’s not that I don’t want to socialise with people, it’s that I don’t know what I can bring to yet another community. If everyone is like me, and if everyone is increasingly spread thinner over life’s slice of bread, what good are we to any of the communities we join? The old thing of 90-9-1 really does make sense…

So I’m currently caught between stools, as it were. I love my work and I love technologies and what they can bring to teaching and training. I love technologies for my work, and also for a lot of my play. I love the fact that I can talk to people all over the world at any point in the night and day. But increasingly I find it’s the richness of one-to-one discussions (online or face-to-face) that make more sense to me. Or small group discussions, again, either online or in meat space. What I don’t get, mostly, is how one has a decent discussion on Twitter or Facebook where the interface is simply not rich enough to allow for that.

Most of the discussions or arguments I see on Twitter, as one example, consist mainly of soundbites which are then re-tweeted as gospel truths. You don’t see much critical thinking in 140 characters, nor should you… It’s all so very tiring when you’re an old man

I’ve more to say on this, I reckon – but there are dozens of seething keyboards warming up to get to grips with this bit, so I’ll leave it here and let you all get on with it. I think I’ll come back when I’ve had a bit more time to think about it, and when I can see what everyone else thinks about it, too. All I can say is that in the past few weeks when I’ve put Twitter on the back burner I’ve done more work, more reading and more in-depth chatting to people than I have all year.

And it’s been wonderful.

Now, I really must go… got to fly to Manitoba to stay with this bloke I met through a friend on Twitter who put me on to his Facebook page and invited in his friends from when he was at college in the 80s. We’re already the best of friends and I’m sure we’re going to have lots in common. I’ll be staying at his place – you can contact me c/o Mad Billy Stokes, Mantitoba

2011 Horizon Report | EDUCAUSE

2011-03-11T23:03:12Z

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2011 are:
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Some basic assumptions about e-learning challenged

2011-03-09T23:03:56Z

Guri-Rosenblit, S. and Gros, B. (2011) E-Learning: Confusing Terminology, Research Gaps and Inherent Challenges Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 25, No.1

Following its admirable policy of ‘publish-when-ready’, the Journal of Distance Education has recently released this article which challenges several of the assumptions often made about e-learning. In particular, it argues that:

The development of a clear and coherent conceptual framework for e-learning research is hampered by the multitude of different terms that are used to describe the use of digital technologies to support teaching and learning.
It is naïve and unrealistic to assume that the use of e-learning, however it is defined, in and of itself will transform students into autonomous and self-directed learners.
There are substantial gaps in e-learning research, particularly at the institutional and system-wide level.
Both e-learning research and practice face inherent challenges. We need to fully understand the benefits and limitations of implementing e-learning, in relation to costs and learning effectiveness, and the potential impact on access and the ability to improve or worsen the digital divide.

Although many instructional designers and distance educators will find most of this article all too familiar, it should be required reading for proponents of open educational resources. The authors take a strong, empirically-based research approach that challenges for instance the assumption that students will become self-learners merely by providing excellent content (the authors might also have looked at the assumption that students will become self-learners merely by participating in social media groups.). The authors argue for instance that:

putting the students in the center of the learning process, and assuming that the information and communication technologies have the power of turning them into self-directed and autonomous learners have turned out to be quite naïve and unsubstantiated assumptions. Most students, even digital natives that were born with a mouse in their hand, are unable and unwilling to control fully or largely their studies. Teachers should not be seen only as guides on the side. They have a tremendously important role in implementing the wide range of possibilities enabled by the new technologies. However, their roles are not self-evident. Materializing the potential of the technologies in learning/teaching settings does not mean just transplanting the practices of face-to-face encounters to the technological milieu.

The argument is really for betting training of instructors, taking account of not only new technology developments, but also many years of research into the effectiveness of learning through media. At the same time, it is also clear that we do not have enough wide-focus research on recent e-learning, its costs and effectiveness.

I will be doing a blog shortly about the need for and problems with research into the costs of e-learning.

The dissonance between the constructivist paradigm and the implementation of institutional e-learning « The Weblog of (a) David Jones

2011-03-06T10:43:03Z

It’s my argument that there exists a dissonance between the philosophical underpinnings expected of good teaching and learning and the philosophical underpinnings of how universities attempt to encourage and enable good teaching and learning, especially in e-learning. In terms of e-learning, I’m going to argue that this dissonance is enhanced by the lack of flexibility inherent in the tools, policies, and procedures being used to implement it.
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(Nie)łatwa zmiana ze szkolenia tradycyjnego na webinar

2011-03-03T09:47:24Z

Z Wojtkiem Gradem, trenerem biznesu, prowadzącym blog o komunikacji ZSSR.EU przeprowadziliśmy serię webinarów na tzw. miękki temat „Jak mówić, aby ludzie chcieli Cię słuchać?”.
Oto zapis naszej rozmowy na temat wspólnych doświadczeń z przygotowania, prowadzenia a także obróbki materiałów po webinarach.

Czytając dowiesz się:

Ile czasu poświęciliśmy na przygotowania?
Czy trener szkoleń tradycyjnych musi zmienić sposób myślenia o procesie szkolenia, gdy przygotowuje webinar?
Czy warto dbać o interakcję z uczestnikami?
Jakie techniczne krok należy poczynić, aby zorganizować swój webinar?

Marta Eichstaedt: Wojtku, przygotowaliśmy razem i przeprowadziliśmy serię trzech webinarów na temat “Jak mówić, aby ludzie chcieli Cię słuchać?”. Co w czasie tej czteromiesięcznej pracy nad tym projektem było dla Ciebie największym zaskoczeniem?

Wojtek Grad: To nam zajęło aż 4 miesiące? Szybko minęło! Ogromnym zaskoczeniem dla mnie było to ile czasu zajmuje przygotowanie dobrej, czytelnej, prezentacji. Jako zupełny laik w temacie szkoleń z prezentacją (w szkoleniach tradycyjnych unikam jej jak ognia z wielu względów) miałem zupełnie błędne przekonania co do tego co powinno się
w niej znaleźć. I że każdy slajd ma znaczenie.

Marta Eichstaedt: To prawda, zaczynaliśmy od prezentacji z małymi literkami i wypunktowaniami a skończyliśmy na barwnych slajdach, na których umieściliśmy zdjęcia korespondujące z tym co mówiłeś. Tu pamiętam, że też często się zastanawialiśmy nad ilustracją. Bowiem nie każdą treść da się łatwo zilustrować. Trzeba korzystać z metafor
i skojarzeń, a te trzeba wymyślić i zaplanować przed webinarem. A potem umieścić w skrypcie, aby o nich nie zapomnieć.
Kiepsko bowiem słucha się i ogląda webinar, gdy na slajdzie widać drogę a trener mówi o tym, że każda wypowiedź powinna mieć jakąś myśl przewodnią. Jeśli nie nawiążemy w wypowiedzi do drogi, to uczestnicy zamiast słuchać trenera, będą się zastanawiać o co chodzi chodzi z drogą.

Ktoś może teraz pomyśleć, że przez 4 miesiące Marta z Wojtkiem siedzieli i myśleli nad obrazkami Ale aby tak stało, warto powiedzieć ile przygotowań technicznych za nami. Od wyboru programu do stworzenia strony www, tzw. landing page, z zaproszeniem, formularzem zapisów i obsługą płatności po oprogramowanie do webinarów. Co w Twojej ocenie było największym wyzwaniem w czasie przygotowań technicznych?

Wojtek Grad: Dla mnie wszystko to było nowe. Dobrze, że miałem w Twojej osobie profesjonalnego przewodnika, bo inaczej byłbym jak dziecko we mgle.
Na przykład dokładne opracowywanie scenariusza pod każdy slajd wydawało mi się dziwne. Tak jak mówiłaś wcześniej, żeby w ferworze nie zapomnieć o czymś co jest ważne.To było wartościowe doświadczenie i zupełnie różne od tego, jak przygotowuje się do szkoleń tradycyjnych. Tam mam plan, przygotowane materiały, ćwiczenia. Natomiast nie rozpisuje sobie wszystkiego w tak dokładny sposób.

Dla mnie dalej dużą niewidomą jest jaki program do webinarów wybiorę sobie na stałe. Przećwiczylismy chyba 4?
Jestem mocno przekonany, że prowadzenie tradycyjnych szkoleń jest łatwiejsze. Dużo łatwiejsze. No przynajmniej dla mnie.
Dużo czasu zajeło nam ustalenie strategii marketingowej. Jedne narzędzia sprawiły się lepiej inne gorzej.

Marta Eichstaedt: Taaak, i w sprawie marketingu mamy wiele przemyśleń, które będziemy testować. Najciekawsze moje spostrzeżenie dotyczy Facebooka. Okazało się, że lista osób zapisanych na listę na Facebooku (za pomocą aplikacji “Wydarzenia”) zupełnie się nie pokrywa z listą osób zapisanych przez stronę www.

Natomiast rzeczywiście testowaliśmy kilka programów. I moim zdaniem przy kolejnych webinarach powinniśmy przestestować co najmniej jeszcze jeden, tu myślę o Adobe Connect 8.

Dla mnie wielką przygodą techniczną była praca nad landing page, czyli stroną informującą uczestników dlaczego warto wziąć udział w naszym webinarze. Dużo czasu zajęła nam praca nad tekstem ale i chochliki wordpressa, dzięki którym trochę czasu zajęło nam doprowadzenie tej strony do przyzwoitego stanu. No i trzeba tu powiedzieć, że prace techniczne w tym zakresie wykonywał Przemek – informatyk. Gdybyśmy mieli robić je sami, to nakład pracy w przygotowanie webinaru jeszcze by wzrósł.

A jak oceniasz stopień i jakość interakcji z uczestnikami w czasie webinaru? Warto w ogóle trudzić się i wplatać interakcję?

Wojtek Grad: No tak, bez Przemka byłoby dużo trudniej. Warto zwrócić uwagę, że w momencie kiedy człowiek nie jest, że tak powiem “biegły informatycznie”, to warto wybrać program, który umożliwia robienie wszystkich czynności koordynacyjnych automatycznie. Mam na myśli rejestrowanie zgłoszeń, wysyłanie powiadomień i innych niezbędnych informacji, nagrywanie sesji itp.

Ja sobie nie wyobrażam szkolenia bez interakcji. Jako ktoś, kto zdobywał praktykę trenerską w szkoleniach tradycyjnych, to właśnie interakcja z uczestnikami, jest czymś co napędza mnie do efektywnego działania. Dzięki interakcji mam informację zwrotną, że to co mówię, do uczestników dociera i w jaki sposób dociera. Nabieram dzięki temu pewności siebie. Oczywiście ze względu na samą formę ta interakcja jest dosyć mocno ograniczona. Warto też wziąć pod uwagę, że dobrze jest mieć moderatora, który panuje nad czatem. Trener prowadzący nie jest w stanie robić tego i jednocześnie prowadzić webinaru bez szkody dla jakości i merytoryki.

Marta Eichstaedt: Co dalej? Masz ochotę kontynuować prowadzenie webianarów na tak zwane tematy miękkie?

Wojtek Grad: No jasne! Ostatni webinar juz mi sie nawet podobał . Dużo się przez te kilka miesięcy nauczyłem. Wiem co jest najwazniejsze, żeby zrobić dobry webinar. Teraz więc pora na kolejne doswiadczenia. Tym razem z klientem biznesowym.

Marta Eichstaedt: Dziękuję za rozmowę

Podcast: The Future of the Textbook, as Seen by Publishers

2011-03-02T12:45:16Z

“An e-book is not an engaging experience, merely replicating a textbook,” say William D. Rieders, executive vice president for new media at the publishing company Cengage Learning. At the 2011 Higher Ed Tech Summit, he said this major publisher sees little future in e-books, despite the proliferation of Kindles and other e-book readers, and tablets like the iPad. The biggest areas for Cengage, he says, are software programs like homework solutions and assessment tools. Print textbooks are still healthy, but they function now as a reference for professors and students, while these other materials are taking center stage in the learning experience.
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Ask – so what? about e-learning

2011-03-02T01:04:12Z

Linda Harasim, one of the pioneers of online learning, has opened an intriguing new web site called, Ask, So What?.

What she has done is taken a post by Mark Smithers on the awful content in most online courses, and asked ‘So What? So, what is the point of this post and what can we do now? What has he learned about what needs to be done?’ This is followed by comments not only from readers but also from Mark himself.

I’m guessing Linda’s idea is to create a web site that encourages discussion about issues, rather than (like mine) a set of statements by the author which may or may not promote in-depth discussion. I look forward to Linda taking on some of the online gurus and challenging their statements.

I guess I’d also better watch my back from now on – but then I always do!

Presentation: “Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know”

2010-12-03T09:21:39Z

From my observations of some student presentations I invigilated recently I know there are clearly issues with students knowing and understanding what is legal and what is not when you use and re-use content or images you find on the Internet.

Many of us already know about Creative Commons content and how it works, but I found this presentation, with audio slidecast, that I have also made available to staff and students alike, in the vain hope it’ll make a difference. It is well worth listening to the 20 minute slidecast that accompanies this presentation, it brings the static pages to life.

If you want some background on what Creative Commons is, please see my previous post and video on “What is creative Commons?“.

Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know. View more webinars from Rodd Lucier.

Why I’m not going to speak from a script again

2010-11-26T13:18:55Z

For some reason, there are lessons that take a long time to learn – however often an action leads to negative consequences, you just seem bound to repeat it. One lesson I really hope I have now learned is that reading from a script doesn’t work – at least not for me. when recording a podcast (free-form interviews work much better).

Brought to you by: eLearning Learning

Path to Learning: In Class or Online?

2010-11-25T00:10:05Z

by Paul Azrak, professor of economics at Queensborough Community College, CUNY (letter to editor of NY Times)

As someone who has been teaching online classes for the last eight years, I found the online experience that was described in “Still in Dorm, Because Class Is on the Web” (front page, Nov. 5) unfamiliar. Students get a large dose of one-on-one interaction with the instructor that is often missing in a traditional classroom setting. Some students who would be loath to discuss their views when face to face with their professor thrive in an asynchronous discussion in which they have the time to digest what is being said and formulate their thoughts before replying. Others, however, find the high level of weekly interaction too much to take and would prefer to sit in the back row and take notes. Online education is clearly not for everyone, but it certainly doesn’t have to be the impersonal experience that you describe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/opinion/l12educ.html?_r=1

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SLanguages Conference, 15-16 October 2010

2010-09-24T10:34:00Z

SLanguages 2010 is a 24-hour virtual conference on language teaching and learning in Second Life. It will run from 10:00 SL time (5pm GMT), 15 October, 10:00 SL time (5pm GMT), 16 October. Wherever possible, sessions will be repeated to enable people in different time zones to see them. There will also be group discussions and social events and the opportunity to visit an exhibition of SL tools for educators. Further information can be found in the AVALON Ning:

http://avalon-project.ning.com/events/slanguages-2010

Preparation for Oxford Union Debate on Informal Learning

2010-09-11T09:24:42Z

I’m going to be debating the merits of informal learning with some downright scary competition: Nancy Lewis, who’s probably best known as the champion of IBM’s formidable sales training, and Allison Rossett, who has developed more can-do instructional designers than anyone else on the planet.

Brought to you by: eLearning Learning

Moodle & #Blackboard LMS Feasibility Study Now Available from OSC

2010-08-23T14:00:17Z

The Open Source Collaborative project of North Carolina Community College System has released it’s most recent LMS Feasibility Study (Part 2): http://goo.gl/XNbU. The full report is over 120 pages, (give us a little time to go over that) but the summary is a lean 7 pages.

[The original] Report concluded that Moodle was a viable alternative to Blackboard in areas of functionality, usability, and total cost of ownership. The Report also recommended that a Learning Management System (LMS) Feasibility Study be conducted to answer the follow up research question, “What is the best LMS solution for the North Carolina Community College System?”

This report helps to answer that question.

Read more and download the report and summary at http://oscmoodlereport.wordpress.com.

Three Generations of Distance and Online Learning Education Pedagogy

2010-07-07T00:05:20Z

by Terry Anderson, IRRODL

In this presentation Terry defines three pedagogical models that have defined distance education programming – behavioural/cognitive, constructivist, and connectivist. He talks about the challenges and opportunity afforded by each model, with a focus on the emergent development of connectivism.

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/865/1551

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Length of online course and student satisfaction, perceived learning, and academic performance

2010-07-07T00:10:51Z

by Janet M. Ferguson & Amy E. DeFelice, IRRODL

This research presents findings from a two-part study. In the first part, graduate students taking online courses were given a course evaluation form. Student responses from online abbreviated summer sessions were compared to student responses from online full-semester courses. Both the intensive and full-semester courses were taught by the same professor and both had identical requirements in terms of assignments and exams. The independent variable was the length of time taken to complete the requirements, with the dependent variables being satisfaction with the course, perceived learning, and academic performance. A statistical analysis of the data found significant differences in a number of areas.

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/772

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eLearn: Case Studies - Why Don't Teachers Adopt Technology?

2010-05-31T06:51:13Z

Education and Technology in Perspective: eLearn magazine is the source for news, information, and opinion regarding online education and training.

Passionate Learner - Pages 1-45

2010-05-27T22:03:00Z

Image Source: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413G1WF3EZL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-
76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

"We wouldn't exist, as a human race, unless we had evolved as the most effective lifelong learners in the history of the planet." One of my favorite quotes so far!

I've been snatching a few pages here and there from Robert L. Fried's book, "The Passionate Learner." Here are a few quotes from that jumped out at me...for fun, I titled each of the quotes...sort of like what you might see in Bible quotes. I won't provide chapter and verse, though (or even page #). You'll find all these quotes in pages 1-45, though.

OVERCOMING LONELINESS
The loneliness of the solitary educator and the isolated parent, the school cut off from a vital connection to its neighborhood, the home and classroom that feel like totally other worlds to the child--these things must change if we are to raise a generation of passionate learners.

SINFUL LEARNING
"High school was like a penance imposed for some unknown sin. Everything I ever learned that was important to me was learned outside of school. So I never though to associate schools with learning." --A former high school student

CELEBRATE THE ETERNAL
The Passionate Learner is all around us, within us. It is the child who questions, who daydreams, who invests problems and tries to solve them. It's the child who winces at injustice and wants to know how to make life fair. It's the child who acts and then steps back to wonder why things turned out that way, who reads and then links the universe of the book, seamlessly, with that of her own imagination. Let us find ways to celebrate the eternal promise of the passionate learners that we are.

AVOIDING INTERFERENCE
Children spend the first years of life solving problems all the time. They are born learning; if there is nothing to learn, they are bored and their attention is distracted. We don't have to train children to learn, or even account for their learning; we have to avoid interfering with it. - Frank Smith

EVOLVED EFFECTIVENESS AS LIFELONG LEARNERS
We wouldn't exist, as a human race, unless we had evolved as the most effective lifelong learners in the history of the planet. As human beings, we are makers and users of tools. We just have to make sure that the tool we have invented, called "school," has a handle that can fit every child's grasp.
(Miguel's Note: When reading this, it made me wonder how Creationists would interpret this paragraph).

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How to design elearning that’s memorable and budget-friendly » Making Change

2010-05-26T17:40:06Z

Practical ideas that help you develop lively, powerful elearning. Concisely covers instructional design, authoring tools, and rapid elearning development, with an emphasis on simple, creative ideas that have a big impact.

HootCourse and CloudCourse

2010-05-24T16:33:22Z

Two interesting new items I came across today - they actually each deserve a posting on separate days, but I already have another one scheduled for tomorrow, so am going to put them into one posting here.

First, HootCourse. I came across this in a comment on one of my postings on the C4LPT Facebook page.

The way that HootCourse is described intrigues me - and I think we may see many more course-related resources appearing like this. I've signed up for an account - and it looks fun!

Find out more at www.hootcourse.com

The second is CloudCourse. I heard about this through a number of different tweets today, so checked out the Google blog posting about it.

Google explains ..

"... connecting our expert teachers to eager students around the globe can be a complicated business. To that end, we are excited to release our new internal learning platform, CloudCourse under an open source license."

The main CloudCourse page describes it further

"CloudCourse is a course scheduling system.
Built entirely on App Engine, CloudCourse allows anyone to create and track learning activities. It also offers calendaring, waitlist management and approval features.
CloudCourse is fully integrated with Google Calendar and can be further customized for your organization with the following service provider interfaces (replaceable components):
Sync service - to sync CloudCourse data with your internal systems

Room info service - to schedule classes in your locations

User info service - to look up user profile (employee title, picture, etc)

CloudCourse has been developed in Python, using the Django web application framework and the Closure Javascript library."

Interested? Go to code.google.com/p/cloudcourse/