This article leaves me as depressed as a Netherlands soccer supporter. Elluminate follows another Canadian product (WebCT) into Blackboard’s maws, and Wimba as well.

I’ve deliberately waited a few days before commenting on this, because my immediate reaction was unprintable. At the end of the day, [...]]]> Kolowich, S. (2010) Blackboard’s big buy Inside Higher Education, July 8

This article leaves me as depressed as a Netherlands soccer supporter. Elluminate follows another Canadian product (WebCT) into Blackboard’s maws, and Wimba as well.

I’ve deliberately waited a few days before commenting on this, because my immediate reaction was unprintable. At the end of the day, I found myself asking: does this really matter?

It does if you believe competition between commercial products is important for innovation and development. This further consolidates commercial e-learning software into an increasing monopoly, with the inevitable shift in the balance of power between Blackboard and its clients, resulting in even higher prices and less adaptation to individual customer needs. It doesn’t matter though if you believe the life of commercial learning management systems are limited, or that synchronous technologies aren’t very useful. So let’s unpick these things.

First, I don’t think LMSs are going away, although they are likely to change considerably. They’re not going away because they provide a number of functions that institutions and instructors find useful, such as integration of student records between administrative and teaching functions, and a ‘lazy’ instructional design model (just load up the LMS). Although we may see a gradual move away from transmission of information to more constructivist teaching processes, there is still an argument for a web based class site that however you describe it looks very much like a learning management system.

However, I do think this move will drive even more institutions towards open source learning management systems, mainly for price reasons, but also because of their ability to adapt more to individual customer needs, and especially their ability to integrate other open source tools as they become available.

Second, what are the implications for synchronous teaching? I have to say that I can’t get worked up about synchronous online teaching, because with the technology in its current state, it tends to lead to instructor control, with most communications between instructor and students, rather than between students. However, it is useful for meetings and for delivering keynote lectures, without having to travel. My fear is that Blackboard will now attempt to do what they tried to do with Desire2Learn, and take out a generic patent for all online synchronous teaching software, but they may not be successful. I think it will be difficult for Blackboard to stop other vendors from entering the field, because synchronous conferencing tools have wider use beyond education. However, if Blackboard shuts down Elluminate and Wimba, and incorporates Adobe Connect, then we will be in trouble.

The third issue is the extent to which instructors and learners will start to design and build personal learning environments relying entirely on non-commercial or ‘free’ web 2.0 tools. Although I think this will happen gradually, it will require a level of knowledge of learning theory and new web technologies that is beyond that of many current instructors or even institutions; in other words, an end run around Blackboard won’t happen quickly without better instructor training and better institutional incentives to innovate in teaching.

On balance, then, I think these acquisitions will have an overall negative effect on the pace of innovation and change in our institutions, but it won’t stop the long-term changes that are needed. Nevertheless, it’s a sad day for e-learning, and for Canada as well as the Netherlands.

For another opinion on this, see also:

Kim, J. (2010) Initial reactions to Blackboard buying Wimba and Elluminate Blog U Inside Higher Education, July 7

In my blog on Six Priorities for Canadian e-learning in 2010 I wrote:

Canada is a leader in mobile technology (Research in Motion, Nortel’s merger with Avaya, etc.), the Canadian mobile networks have just been opened up with [...]]]> Galt, V. (2010) How to bake agility into corporate DNA Globe and Mail, May 20

In my blog on Six Priorities for Canadian e-learning in 2010 I wrote:

Canada is a leader in mobile technology (Research in Motion, Nortel’s merger with Avaya, etc.), the Canadian mobile networks have just been opened up with a new carrier (and possibly more to come) and there is a massive market in mobile communications in countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa that also have huge unmet demands for education. This represents a great opportunity for Canada to become a leader in mobile learning. The proposal then is to develop a partnership between industry and education for the development of educational applications of mobile learning.

I have also given this a fairly high probability ranking (50%), mainly because it is not dependent on (but would be facilitated by) government spending, and the market is there. My probability ranking would have been even higher if I had confidence that the right educational partner could be found in Canada. Without the right partner I fear that the initiative would be largely technologically rather than pedagogically driven.

I was pleased to see therefore the above article on Desire2Learn, a Canadian company that develops e-learning software such as its learning management system. It is one of the few commercial learning management systems to survive Blackboard’s predatory tactics. Desire2Learn’s CEO, John Baker, won the Globe and Mail’s designation of ‘the intrepid entrepreneur of the year’.

Furthermore,the Canadian company that makes Blackberry smart phones is working with Desire2Learn to develop an e-learning application for mobile devices, as I hoped for in my blog. Now do they have the third part of the equation – the right educational design and application partners – to make it successful on a global basis? We will have to wait to see. Desire2Learn is just one of many Canadian companies in the e-learning business. Both Desire2Learn and Research in Motion are based in Waterloo, Ontario, and are spin-offs from the University of Waterloo.

The University of Guelph, just down the road from Waterloo, developed one of the first online asynchronous conference systems/discussion forums, CoSy, back in the 1980s. I used this to teach online for the first time in 1988, at the British Open University, predating the WorldWideWeb.

Smart Technologies, which is the main manufacturer of Smartboard electronic whiteboards (1.6 million sold worldwide), is based in Calgary, as is Elluminate, the developer of web conferencing software.

Blackboard Inc., based in the United States, bought WebCT, developed at the University of British Columbia by Murray Goldberg, and still runs a (substantially redesigned) WebCT version.

Vancouver has one of the top video game clusters in the world, with the presence of major publishers, including Electronic Arts, Nintendo, THQ, Vivendi/Activision, Disney and Microsoft. digiBC is the latest incarnation of an industry-wide association in Vancouver that includes a consortium of media companies, post-secondary educational institutions, and corporate e-learning companies. E-learning is one of seven special interest groups in digiBC. However, we have yet to see an international ‘winner’ in e-learning emerge from this association to match the success of the other companies listed here.

Although there are pockets of excellence in Canada in the development of e-learning programming in the public sector, it has not matched the international success of Canada’s corporate e-learning companies, although there is an obvious, if indirect, synergy between the two sectors. For this reason, I would like to see more and closer partnerships between the education and corporate sector in e-learning in Canada. There are potential wins on both sides.

I’m wondering if others have views on this – and have I inadvertently missed any other globally operating e-learning companies in Canada?

This book is essentially a collection of essays by mainly Canadian authors, although there are also authors from the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Spain.

Chapters

The book is organized as follows:

Foreword: Alan Tait [...]]]> Cleveland-Innes, M. and Garrison, R. (eds.) 2010 An Introduction to Distance Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era New York/Abingdon UK: Routledge

This book is essentially a collection of essays by mainly Canadian authors, although there are also authors from the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Spain.

Chapters

The book is organized as follows:

Foreword: Alan Tait (UK Open University)

1. ‘Teaching and learning in distance education: enter a new era’: Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University, Canada), which is a short introduction to the chapters in the book.

Part I: The Industrial Era

2. ‘Foundations of Distance Education’: Randy Garrison (University of Calgary) and Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University). They argue that the foundations of distance education were established in an industrial era, but we are now entering a post-industrial era that ‘is not fully understood or adequately addressed by scholars in the field.’

3. ‘Organization and technology of distance education’: Gary Miller (Penn State University.) He summarises the main developments in organization and technology from the early correspondence schools through to television and teleconferencing consortia.

4. ‘Teaching and learning before the digital age’: Margaret Haughey (Athabasca University.) This chapter focuses primarily on the way that the British Open University changed the basis of teaching and learning in distance education through a systems approach.

Part II: A New Era

5. ‘Distance education in a post-Fordist time’: Heather Kanuka and Charmaine Brooks (University of Alberta). In this chapter, the authors relate constructivist teaching and learning to the concepts and philosophy of post-Fordism, and argue that in a post-Fordist era, distance education cannot achieve flexible access, quality learning, and cost-effectiveness, but only any two of the three.

6. ‘Beyond boundaries; the evolution of distance education’: Doug Shale (University of Calgary). This chapter is another spin on the same themes in Chapter 3.

7. ‘Teaching and learning in post-industrial distance education’: Karen Swan (University of Illinois Springfield). This chapter argues that the new technologies associated with online learning lead to pedagogical approaches, such as constructivism and communities of inquiry, that are fundamentally different from those associated with industrial-age distance education.

Part III: A Unified Approach

8. ‘The future of learning technologies’: Phil Ice (American Public University System).’Paralleling a review of where we have been and where we are going is a discussion of the underlying pedagogical possibilities of technologies that increasingly tie together physical worlds.’

9. ‘Blended learning’: Norman Vaughan (Mount Royal University, Alberta). This chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with blended learning environments in higher education.

10. ‘The future of distance education: reformed, scrapped or recycled’: Terry Evans (Deakin University, Australia) and Brian Pauling (New Zealand). This chapter looks to the future possibilities for distance education and argues that distance education does have a future so long as ‘it adapts creatively to the changing technology, and the diversity and capacities of digital learners.’

Part IV: Summary and conclusion

11. ‘Leadership in a new era of higher distance education’: Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University) and Albert Sangra (Open University of Catalonia, Spain). This chapter ‘outlines the challenges in the current situation of higher education, the leadership issues and requirements for a new era in higher education, and the strategic planning that will support this process of transformation’.

12. ‘Conclusion’: Randy Garrison (University of Calgary) and Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University).

Other features

There are two other interesting features of this book. Each chapter includes a recognition a ’significant contributor’ to distance education related to the topic of each chapter, with a photo and short bio, presumably chosen by the chapter author. The significant ‘contributors to distance education’ include:

• Sarah Guri-Rosenblit
• Desmond Keegan
• Otto Peters
• Diana Laurillard
• Michael G. Moore
• Sir John Daniel
• Robbie McClintock
• Terry Anderson
• Randy Garrison
• Ron Oliver
• Andrew Feenberg

Each chapter also contains a glossary of terms and definitions; and questions for review and discussion.

Preliminary Review

The cover of the book states that this is ‘A perfect textbook for Educational Technology doctorate, Masters and certificate programs’. The book is certainly timely and useful, because there have been major developments in online learning and distance education in the last ten years, and this book does cover the main developments. It should certainly provoke a lot of discussion – indeed it needs to, because as I will demonstrate in later posts, some of the content is highly contentious.

Secondly, as is bound to be the case where most chapters are thoughtful essays on the historical development of distance education, there is a heavy focus on theory rather than practice. Now I have to say that I have always been uninterested to the point of hostility at attempts to create grand theories around distance education. For me, distance education is nothing more than a delivery method. It can be very good or very bad, objectivist or constructivist, open or closed, democratic or elite, and it can and does accommodate a very wide range of teaching methods and technologies. None of these dimensions (except perhaps the technological and organizational ones, and they keep shifting) are ‘intrinsic’ to or defining characteristics of distance education.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not hostile to theories of teaching and learning, to social and political theories, to epistemological and ethical issues in teaching and learning, and all these can be found in the way distance education has been applied, it’s just I struggle with the idea of distance education becoming (or needing to become) ‘post-Fordist’ in nature for example. I’d like to see some widespread evidence for this, rather than just a few examples. In other words, there is a lot of rhetoric in this book.

What’s been scratching away under my skin as I’ve been reading this book is that so much of what is written here doesn’t quite fit my experience of the development of distance education; it’s too neat and over-simplified, and yes, too theoretical, whereas distance education as it is practiced is rough, often very pragmatic to the point of being totally unreflecting, very diverse, and at the same time has been very much embedded in millions of students’ personal life experiences. None of this comes through very strongly in the book.

I also have to say that much of the writing in this book is not just Canadian, not even Western Canadian, but specifically from Alberta. There is nothing wrong with that per se, and indeed, I am pleased to see Canadian writers featured so prominently, but I would prefer in an introduction to distance education a much wider range of views and experience in distance education. What about distance education in developing countries, for instance, which is totally ignored in this book?

Yet despite my initial reactions, this is still a book well worth reading by anyone interested in distance education. There are many excellent chapters, as well as some exasperating ones. For this reason, I feel I need more space to discuss individual chapters, which I will do in subsequent postings.

I guess then in summary that it’s the title I’m bothered by. I would much prefer this to have been called: ‘Some interesting and provocative ideas about the nature of distance education and its development’, which is what the book is really about. By all means read it if you are studying distance education – but make sure you have some other books on the topic, as well.

This article describes how three small colleges migrated to either Sakai or Moodle from WebCT.

I was involved in developing a post-graduate certificate in technology-based distributed learning which later morphed into a full Master in Educational Technology at UBC. Both [...]]]> I believe that we will see no real innovation, no fundamental change, in post-secondary education, at least from within, unless all instructors have basic training in teaching at a post-secondary level.

I was involved in developing a post-graduate certificate in technology-based distributed learning which later morphed into a full Master in Educational Technology at UBC. Both of these though were optional programs – you don’t need these qualifications to teach in post-secondary education. And as a result, most of the students in these programs are not tenured faculty in post-secondary education.

However, let’s suppose we had a benevolent dictatorship (some would argue we have that already in Canada) and he/she mandated that all post-secondary instructors must be qualified before they can teach in universities or colleges. What would such a program look like? Here are my thoughts on this.

Any training program is a balance between the minimum that a learner needs to know to operate effectively and the time available for training. A full one year master’s program will obviously cover much more ground than an eight week part-time program. Initial training does not have to be perfect and satisfy all requirements, because I see professional development as a continuous process throughout one’s career. I will concentrate here on what I consider the minimum that an instructor needs to know to teach effectively in post-secondary education (assuming that they already have a good knowledge base in the subject area):

• epistemology: understanding different kinds of knowledge, for instance the difference between objectivism (often reflected in the teaching of science and engineering) and the social construction of knowledge; a discussion of the nature of networked knowledge. Recognizing that there are differences in beliefs in how knowledge is validated and an understanding that there are different perspectives on this will provide a foundation for choosing appropriate teaching strategies in different domains of knowledge (science or arts, for instance);
• the biological basis of learning: a basic introduction to how the brain works, particularly regarding memory, cognition, and emotions (especially motivation); this will become important in interpreting the emerging field of brain research and learning
• learning theories (linked to epistemology), such as behaviourism, cognitivism, the social construction of knowledge, and possibly connectivism
• the design of teaching: applying theory to practice: this would include needs assessments related to learner differences, an introduction to instructional design, defining learning outcomes and objectives, learner activities (especially around the social construction of knowledge) and the link between learning outcomes, knowledge representation (see below), and assessment; using open content; course evaluation methods; different types of courses (face-to-face, blended, distance); and an introduction to course and program planning
• learning technologies: this would start with an assessment of the instructor’s current IT skills and up-skilling where necessary; the relationship between technology and knowledge representation; functions and structures of learning management systems and web 2.0 tools; relationship between different technologies and theories of learning; strategies for media and technology selection
• project work: designing, delivering and evaluating a course

Each of these areas would be worth the equivalent of three credits except the project, which would be worth six credits, and together would lead to a post-graduate certificate or diploma in post-secondary teaching (21 credits in all). Thus the program would be completed in under a year of full-time study, preferably as part of a graduate program.

To obtain a master degree in post-secondary teaching, the learner would need to add three elective courses (making 30 credits) as follows:

• electives: these might include a course on research in teaching and learning; on emerging technologies; on cultural and international issues in teaching and learning; on planning and managing courses; on the application of a particular technology tool; on teaching strategies for a particular subject discipline; or other topics of choice by the learner as independent study.

All programs would be available online, or face-to-face, or in a blended mode. There would be at least one institution in every state or province licensed to offer the program, and the program would be nationally recognised and a condition of employment as an instructor in post-secondary education.

So over to you. What would you include? Do you disagree with what I have included? Could you think of a more imaginative way to provide training?

And yes, I realise that this will never happen: who needs training in teaching anyway? Can’t anyone do this?

It’s now seven years since I resigned as Director of Distance Education and Technology at UBC, and my motto has always been ‘Never look back.’ However, two things came together to bring me back to UBC last week with a ‘formal’ invitation for [...]]]> The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (home of OLT)

It’s now seven years since I resigned as Director of Distance Education and Technology at UBC, and my motto has always been ‘Never look back.’ However, two things came together to bring me back to UBC last week with a ‘formal’ invitation for the first time since I left (I have of course been in informal, regular contact with former colleagues still working at UBC).

Teaching business studies

I had been invited to give a lunch-time presentation to about 50 faculty in the Sauder School of Business, entitled ‘Rising to the Top: Why Business Teaching Must Change’. (I was going to call it: ‘If university teaching was a business, it would have gone bankrupt long ago’, but I thought that might be too provocative.)

Instead I concentrated on changes in the demographics of Canadian post-secondary education students, in technology, and in desired learning outcomes (more emphasis on business skills and competencies), how the teaching of these skills needed to be embedded within the teaching of content, and how courses could be designed using web 2.0 technology to teach such skills, encourage learner-generated content, and provide greater flexibility for the changing market of learners. There were excellent questions from and discussion with the faculty. A copy of the presentation can be downloaded as a pdf file from here.

The UBC e-learning Open House 2010

Visitors to the Open House

On the same afternoon, about an hour later, the UBC e-learning Open House 2010 began, to which I had also been invited. This is a ‘fair’ of posters on different e-learning projects that have been started or have been active during 2009. There was a total of 25 different exhibits. I didn’t have time to visit them all, but here are some of those of most interest to me:

Doing research online: Online Master in Rehabilitation Science. This was a project on which I had been working with the department to develop just before I left. I was delighted to learn that the whole master program is now fully online, has 57 students from all over North America, and is self-funded from tuition fees (following a business model I had suggested). I was very pleased to meet again the two ‘champions’ of this program, Sue Stanton and Mary Clark, and to learn that they have developed a fully online way of supporting students conducting a research project online as a requirement of the master’s program, and how students defend their research online.

Using video in online teaching: Master of Social Work. This was another project I had been working on, but it was at a more tentative stage than Rehab Sciences when I left. The Master of Social Work is a mix of face-to-face courses and online courses. Professor Mary Russell and her colleagues, working with UBC’s Office of Learning Technologies, have developed a series of video clips on the dynamics of family violence which are incorporated into the lessons for online student discussions and assignments.

Using audio and video in online courses: Faculty of Education Some of you will be familiar with Natasha Boskic, who provides invaluable material for this web site on educational games and virtual worlds. She and colleagues in the Faculty of Education have developed a variety of ways to incorporate audio and video into their online courses. As Natasha pointed out, recent innovations in telecommunications technologies have lowered equipment and transmission costs, enabling audio and video to be easily integrated into the curriculum.

Open content:Faculty of Land and Wood Systems Dr. Les Lavkulich  and colleagues from the faculty, with Chris Crowley from the Office of Learning Technologies, have developed a really neat online teaching tool on Land Use Impacts, that includes text, graphics and video clips. Although it is used as part of two courses on sustainable soil management, it is also available to the public at: http://soilweb.landfood.ubc.ca/luitool/ This is an excellent example of well-designed open content that was also developed to support courses.

Designing effective learning in distance education: Office of Learning Technology. This year will be the 60th anniversary of distance education at UBC (more on this in a later blog). Several former colleagues, under the leadership of Jeff Miller, have worked with the faculties to develop over 125 fully online undergraduate and graduate courses. There are now almost 1,000 FTEs (about 10,000 course enrolments) in distance education courses, and this year enrolments grew by 20% compared with last year. OLT uses a variety of designs resulting in high quality, effective interactive online learning environments.

Open content: Preserving student scholarship: UBC Library This is another really interesting project led by Hilde Colenbrander and Julia Thompson. Using a Teaching and Learning Enhancement grant, they have employed a graduate student to track down non-thesis student online content and to educate students about copyright, scholarly publishing and open access. Students can showcase their work via UBC-authenticated e-portfolios, blogs, social networking sites and resumes and the content will be preserved by the Library in perpetuity.

Hilde Colenbrander (left) and colleague

I did not have time (and there isn’t space) to go into the other 19 projects. However, there is likely to be a more comprehensive and official report later in the next UBC e-Strategy Newsletter.

Gossip and speculation

Now we come to the interesting bit. Here is some of the gossip I picked up.

1. UBC is likely to look at the re-design of large first year lecture classes, to improve the first year learning experience. (This is not really gossip, as it as highlighted in the last e-Strategy Newsletter). This project will be led by Ted Dodds, the Vice-Provost, Information Technology. As Ted Dodds himself put it:

How do we use technology more effectively to take over and perform some of the more mundane aspects of the teaching and learning process by using technology in creative ways, to free up people’s time for both the student and the instructor for more direct engagement? We don’t do that well right now….We’re saying that our first year experience in teaching and learning is broken at UBC, and we need to think creatively as to how we can make it better — and make it the best there is.

Brave words but also right on the money, from my perspective.

2. UBC is the home of WebCT. However, UBC is also a key partner in Kuali, an open source consortium developing administrative software. UBC’s licence renewal for WebCT Vista comes up shortly, and I would not be surprised if the university decides to move to an open source learning management system, such as Sakai, although I understand no decision has yet been made.

3. A new strategy for e-learning? UBC went through a comprehensive set of plans and reports around 2000 to encourage and strengthen the use of technology for teaching. Since then, it has created the central Office of Learning Technologies, which supports the LMS, provides instructional design and educational technology support for the faculties, and manages much of the distance education programs developed with faculties. Also the Faculty of Medicine has in partnership with the Universities of Victoria and Northern British Columbia developed a unique distributed learning undergraduate medical program that is doubling the number of doctors trained in BC. Several of the faculties have also set up their own learning technology support units. As we have seen, fully online distance education programs are expanding rapidly, and the university uses clickers, lecture capture and other classroom technologies. Being on the outside, there are many more e-learning developments within UBC that I don’t know about.

However, as with most universities, it has not moved away from either the traditional technology-enhanced classroom or fully online courses. There are problems at UBC with large lecture classes, overcrowding, students not being able to complete on time because courses are full, and often lack of interaction between undergraduate students and research professors. There is very little hybrid learning, where courses are designed with less face-to-face time and careful choice of what to do online and what to do face-to-face.

The move to re-design first year courses, and the growing confidence and expertise of the central and faculty learning technology groups, are signs that perhaps the university is ready for another way of innovation. However, this will still require leadership and a willingness from mainstream faculty to change.

Conclusion

I’ve never regretted my decision to leave UBC (I was coming up to mandatory retirement anyway) and to start a new career as a consultant. However, I left behind some very good colleagues and some interesting projects. It was good to re-connect with both, and I was a bit overwhelmed at the kind welcome I received.

UBC has been a leader in the use of technology in research universities. Faculty and staff created the .ca domain, WebCT, BCNet, and the distributed medical program. It has several fully online masters programs, a large number of online undergraduate courses, and has developed new business models for online programs aimed at lifelong learners.

It has over the last 10 years solidified its use of technology, though, rather than looking at institution-wide change in teaching and learning. With the right management, growing student numbers, a tight financial context, and experience and skill in using technology, we may see some really interesting developments at UBC over the next few years.

]]> http://www.tonybates.ca/2010/01/31/a-personal-view-of-e-learning-at-the-university-of-british-columbia/feed/ 2 http://www.tonybates.ca/2010/01/05/journal-of-educational-technology-and-society-vol-10-no-4/ http://www.tonybates.ca/2010/01/05/journal-of-educational-technology-and-society-vol-10-no-4/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:45:25 +0000 Tony Bates http://www.tonybates.ca/?p=3071 The latest issue of “Journal of Educational Technology & Society” is now available on the ETS Journal Web Site.

This issue contains 12 selected papers from the International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, in the areas of personalized educational systems, computer supported collaborative and social learning and the new generation of educational technologies. In addition there [...]]]> The latest issue of “Journal of Educational Technology & Society” is now available on the ETS Journal Web Site.

This issue contains 12 selected papers from the International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, in the areas of personalized educational systems, computer supported collaborative and social learning and the new generation of educational technologies. In addition there are 18 more full length articles. However, the order of the articles does not appeared to be structured around the three themes.

It seems we are getting more and more publications, and less and less organization, in e-learning journals. Why can’t articles be more easily categorized and arranged so that when we do searches on a particular topic, we can find easily what we are looking for?

Despite my grumble, there are some very interesting papers in this edition. I just don’t have time though to read them all!

© Wikipedia

Summary of my priorities

1. A requirement for all newly appointed full-time instructors in public Canadian post-secondary educational institutions to have a formal certification in teaching in post-secondary education, to be in place by September 2012. This would include both pedagogical and technological content. Probability: <1%

2. Establishment of at least one hybrid [...]]]>

© Wikipedia

Summary of my priorities

1. A requirement for all newly appointed full-time instructors in public Canadian post-secondary educational institutions to have a formal certification in teaching in post-secondary education, to be in place by September 2012. This would include both pedagogical and technological content. Probability: <1%

2. Establishment of at least one hybrid digital university. Probability: 20-30%

3. Establishment of a Canadian open content consortium. Probability: 60-70%

4. Development of educational apps for mobile learning. Probability: 50%

5. Establish a national centre for digital learning, with responsibility for policy development, research, and industry-university liaison. Probability: 20-30%

6. Shared provincial software and services for administration and teaching: Probability (in at least one province): 70%

Introduction

I was going to do a simple post about trends for 2010, but then found myself (thanks to an idea prompted by a discussion with Maxim Jean-Louis, President of Contact North/Nord Contact, Ontario) drifting into priorities as well as trends. So here is the first, focused on priorities for Canadian e-learning, to be followed by a second posting on international trends in e-learning, for 2010.

For readers outside Canada, please be aware that there is no national educational policy, framework or department – all educational activities except university research and some forms of student financial aid are the sole responsibility of the provinces.

My priorities are driven by my belief that the post-secondary education system as a whole (internationally) is failing to provide the high quality undergraduate or college education that will fully meet the learning requirements of the 21st century. Each of these priorities is meant to address this situation in some way.

1. Certification for post-secondary teaching.

This would be a priority targeted at the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada. The argument for the training of faculty in teaching in universities is now so strong that it probably doesn’t need to be repeated. Just let me point out though that there will be no significant change in universities in Canada (or anywhere else) until instructors and eventually senior management have an understanding of modern educational teaching methods and an understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and potential of technology for teaching. Because of the pressure to be excellent in research, any voluntary scheme for training in teaching is doomed to failure or to be insufficent.

Second this is a systemic problem. No one institution or even province can change on its own, because this will make it impossible to hire top quality graduates who will go to those institutions and jurisdictions that allow them to focus on research. (It will be argued that this will still not work, because top graduates will go the the USA instead. However, maybe we should be looking for allies in individual US states and the federal Department of Education, which is about to start pouring millions of dollars into educational technology as part of the stimulus package).

My plan would be to get CMEC to agree that funding for public post-secondary institutions will be dependent on each institution having adopted a provincially recognised 15 credit program of training for all intending new faculty by September 2012. Most of the programs (there would be several to choose from) would be provided online and would run in parallel for instance with research activities for a Ph.D. The programs would be open on a voluntary basis to all existing tenured and and adjunct faculty as well. Some provinces already have professional development programs for two year college instructors. These will need to be reviewed and in some cases re-designed to take account of developments in digital learning.

I have given this priority a probability of less than 1%, because the universities – particularly the large, prestigious research universities – and the faculty unions will mount an unstoppable campaign against this proposal (interference with academic freedom, government control, and ‘managerialism’), and because we have only one or two provincial premiers at the moment with the guts to take this on. Nevertheless, this is by far and away my first priority in terms of importance for improving undergraduate teaching in universities.

2. Establishment of (at least one) hybrid digital university.

We need more experimentation, more new organizational models, to find the right balances between digital and face-to-face learning. My proposal then to provincial governments anticipating increased post-secondary education enrolments (and most Canadian provinces with reduced budgets face this challenge over the next few years) is to ask for proposals from existing institutions to take on extra enrolments with extra funding, but using hybrid delivery methods (i.e. at least 50% of the program will be delivered online).

From the government perspective this would mean using funding that otherwise would have gone into extra buildings and facilities to support increased digital learning activities. To ensure applications, a government could limit all increases in institutional funding in a particular financial year to such a project. (There is a precedence for this – over 1993 and 1994, the BC government withheld  a total of 2.5% of universities’ operating budgets for an innovation fund. Institutions got their ’share’ by developing innovation project plans.)

The most likely candidates are second-tier suburban or regional universities looking to enhance their status through being innovative and leading edge. It may also enable them to widen their ‘natural’ catchment area.

I give this a slightly higher probability – 20-30% – because the scope for expansion of the post-secondary system will be limited due to the tight finances of provinces over the next few years, and this proposal would enable a province to push for innovation within existing budgets, without directly interfering with the autonomy of universities. (‘If you want more money, you have to do something different. You decide.’)

3. Establishment of a Canadian open content consortium

This would have two main purposes. One would be to help increase the development of shareable high quality digital resources. The second would be to develop design strategies for open educational resources. This would include how best to create open content so that it is more likely to be re-used; and models for how best to apply existing open content in teaching. This consortium would cover the whole range of education, from k-12 to lifelong learning. It would address the problem of poor uptake and poor quality (in terms of re-usability) of existing open educational resources. It might also focus on innovative assessment strategies, such as the use of e-portfolios based on at least partial use of open educational resources.

The consortium’s activities would be partly research, partly developmental (most open content would be developed as part of the partner institutions’ normal activities, but working to agreed or emerging design standards.) The consortium would seek some research funding from national research agencies and the Hewlett Foundation, but would be mainly self-financing though institutional membership fees.

Athabasca University would be a natural partner, as would other members of the Canadian Virtual University, but membership would be widened through a co-operative association model to bring in conventional universities, colleges and school systems. The consortium would have close links with other open educational resources agencies in other countries.

I give this a higher probability rating (60-70%), because there is already a potential core base in place, and already there have been contacts between various Canadian institutions at conferences regarding collaboration on open educational resources. The new part of this proposal would be greater focus on the design and application of OERs, and some earmarked funding for this activity.

4. The development of educational apps for mobile learning

Canada is a leader in mobile technology (Research in Motion, Nortel’s merger with Avaya, etc.), the Canadian mobile networks have just been opened up with a new carrier (and possibly more to come) and there is a massive market in mobile communications in countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa that also have huge unmet demands for education. This represents a great opportunity for Canada to become a leader in mobile learning. The proposal then is to develop a partnership between industry and education for the development of educational applications of mobile learning.

I have also given this a fairly high probability ranking (50%), mainly because it is not dependent on (but would be facilitated by) government spending, and the market is there. My probability ranking would have been even higher if I had confidence that the right educational partner could be found in Canada. Without the right partner I fear that the initiative would be largely technologically rather than pedagogically driven.

5. A national centre for digital learning.

The USA has the educational technology division in the Federal Department of Education, the United Kingdom has JISC, the European Commission has the DG Education and Culture, Lifelong Learning, Australia has the Flexible Learning Network – and what does Canada have in the way of national strategies, research or evaluation of e-learning? Nada, nothing, zilch. The Canadian Council on Learning has already disqualified itself from this possible role as a result of its shameful report on e-learning. So we need a new initiative, but one that builds on existing centres of excellence in e-learning.

I am picking up on an idea first proposed by David Ticoll. The proposed centre would focus on policy development, leadership training, educational software development, building relationships between industry and education, innovation, and evaluation of e-learning. It would be a virtual centre, linking e-learning experts, government agencies and industry across the country. It might take leadership responsibility for some of the other priorities already listed.

This could be an initiative funded by at least Industry Canada and/or HRDC, although it should have an independent board. If there is no stomach for a national centre, perhaps a province will take leadership on this, as it could get a big bang for little cost (most of the people working on initiatives will be doing so part-time, being employed full-time elsewhere). And I would hope that the Director would be from and located somewhere where e-learning is actually being done in a systematic and consistent manner, which would take it out of Ottawa (with all due respect to the excellent work being done by the University of Ottawa), i.e. somewhere in the west, although this would not be a deal breaker for me.

I put the probability of this happening at 20-30%, based mainly on the likelihood of at least one province taking some kind of initiative on this, and ‘upward’ pressure from those working in Canadian e-learning. It would be higher if the financial context was not so difficult.

6. Sharing of networked services across a province or inter-provincially

Cloud computing – the location of services on servers outside a particular organization – offers major opportunities for cost savings and efficiencies. For instance, small colleges within a province could each have their own Moodle-based courses (which each college would design and manage), but a larger university or college running its own Moodle service would also be paid to maintain and update the centralised software and provide technical training and support for the smaller colleges. The same rationale could be used for commercial administrative software, such as financial systems, student information services, etc. (i.e. a province wide licence and service). An alternative would be for institutions to join Kuali, a consortium of universities providing open source administrative systems.

Why would a provincial government want such sharing of services to be managed by a provincial institution or agency, rather than a cloud computing company such as Google? Quite apart from cost (the money stays in the educational system), one major reason is security and privacy issues. Canada has different privacy laws to the USA, and the U.S. Patriot Act does not provide the privacy guarantees that are covered under Canadian law. (In other words, the US government can demand access to data on servers located in the USA and can access any data on Canadian students held on that server.)

Security and privacy of student information is a growing concern (for more on this see the next blog on trends in 2010). When data is located on servers outside the institution or province, there are concerns over who has access to the data. This will grow as digital information on individual students grows, through identity management, one-password log-ins, etc. It will be difficult for many small or even medium sized post-secondary educational institutions to provide the level of security now being demanded. Providing fewer and more centralised software facilities to higher provincial-wide security standards could save buckets of money while providing a higher technical standard of service, especially for the smaller colleges.

And although this does touch on institutional autonomy, it does not impinge directly on academic issues. Cost pressures on provinces and institutions over the next few years though are likely to win out over ensuring that each institution ‘owns’ its data, which is why I give this a probability ranking of 70% for at least one province moving in this direction in 2010.

Conclusions

Obviously, this is a very personal list of priorities. I am sure you have different priorities. I’d be really interested to know what your priorities would be for e-learning in 2010, and what issues those priorities would address. If you are getting this as a Twitter or e-mail message, please go to the blog post at http://www.tonybates.ca/2009/12/20/six-priorities-for-canadian-e-learning-in-2010/ to comment.

I will post the blog on international trends in e-learning in the next day or so.

Anyone for hybrid learning?

What I did

This year I worked in Alberta, Cuba, Mexico, Germany, and Saudi Arabia, [...]]]> It’s that time of year again. Here’s a personal look back at e-learning in 2009 (I will do another blog on priorities for Canadian e-learning in 2010, and a third blog on international trends to watch in 2010).

What I did

This year I worked in Alberta, Cuba, Mexico, Germany, and Saudi Arabia, and taught online briefly (but twice) for the University of Maryland/Oldenburg University’s joint Masters in Distance Education. I also visited UBC several times to see what they were doing, which included attending the excellent Canadian e-learning conference in June.

Meeting with the Distance Education people, University of Havana

My major work was for the Government of Alberta, helping them develop strategic directions for the use of information and communications technologies for the whole post-secondary system. This will eventually see the light of day next year.

I’m currently writing a book (with Albert Sangra) on the governance and management of information and communications technologies in post-secondary educational institutions, to be published at the end of 2010 by Jossey-Bass/John Wiley. I also have another book in the pipeline, a (third) complete re-write of Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education, due in 2011.

2008

In my blog, the State of e-Learning, 2008, I argued that although e-learning continues to grow and expand, there was a lack of innovation and change, with efforts concentrated on using technology to re-inforce the classroom teaching model, while I on the other hand believe that e-learning should be used to re-design teaching and learning for the digital age.

I have very mixed feelings about e-learning in 2009.

Good developments in 2009

The technology gets better

First, the developments in technology are very exciting. In particular, the developments in mobile technology are moving forward in ways that are really valuable for education: greater bandwidth, greater functionality, improved user interfaces, many more apps, greater access, lower costs (especially for Canada in 2010). Social media such as Twitter and Facebook are beginning to penetrate even formal education, if only in limited ways. The uptake of e-portfolios is increasing. The first steps in open source administrative systems, with the launch of the Kuali Project, offers potentially huge savings for universities and colleges. Cloud computing also offers potentially large savings and greater flexibility for educational applications. Technology continues its rapid development, ever more interesting and exciting, with huge potential for education.

E-learning outside ‘the system’

Outside of the formal education system, great things are happening in e-learning. Communities of practice, sharing of experiences, and self-learning are growing rapidly. For instance, Supercool School, which uses Facebook to link those who want to learn with those who want to teach, is taking off in a big way, with contracts with some of the larger IT corporations, such as Google, for in-house training. Open publishing now enables many people who want to share ideas in a limited market that traditional publishers wouldn’t touch can now get their ideas out. More importantly for the formal educational system, open publishing is dramatically cutting the costs of textbooks for students. For the general public, and especially for small Internet-based companies, ranging from advice on beauty spas to advising parents on how deal with their children’s difficulties at school to independent advice on banking services, e-learning is taking off around the world.

Disappointments in 2009

Then we look at the public sector, and in particular the big research universities, and what do we see? Clickers, lecture capture, multiple screens in the classroom, learning management systems with Powerpoint slides and pdf files loaded, and a total lack of recognition that the current formal higher education system is failing, and a total lack of vision of what is needed for the future, and the role that information and communications technologies can play in formal learning.

As always, I will bracket my comments by noting that many individual lecturers and instructors are doing great work, being innovative and doing great things. Also, there are a lot of colleges and universities with excellent support units and staff, who are doing great work in helping instructors and faculty do the best they can with new technologies. Fully online learning, i.e. online distance learning, continues to grow at a rapid pace – but not as fast as market demand, and often institutions or instructors moving into fully online courses are often not applying best practices so the quality is not always as high as it should be.

Open educational resources

First, some specifics. My biggest disappointment this year (apart from the disastrous Canadian Council of Learning report on e-learning, which in any case is an irrelevance) has been with open educational resources. Yes, we have seen more initiatives, not just in North America but also in Europe and Africa. But what are we getting? Digitally recorded 50 minute classroom lectures and digital textbooks. What we are not getting are materials designed from scratch for multiple use, with learning objectives, contextual materials (such as links to other open source materials and possible assessment questions), student activities, and guides for instructors. There is one exception to this statement and that is Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, which I welcome, but which I fear is too much in the other direction of whole packaged courses.

And there is still so little of it. What I would like to see are many thousands of short modules with contextual materials that allow instructors to mix and mash – yes, remashing for education. So when a new course is being planned, thought needs to be given at the design stage not only to the ‘in-course’ design of materials for students enrolled in the course, but to how the materials could best be used as open source materials. We also need some educational design models for using open source materials that would help both in their development and their application.

Mobile learning

Now mobile learning. Although the technology is rapidly developing, and some of the existing apps could be (and are being) adapted for educational purposes (such as RSS feeds), we need specifically educational apps for mobile learning that make it easy to organise and create learning materials, and integrate them with materials located elsewhere, without having to come out of the mobile environment. However, this is just a matter of time. What we then will need will be again appropriate design models for mobile learning that make full use of mobility, audio-visual collection and analysis of data, and geo-spatial location.

Virtual worlds

Educational applications of virtual worlds also seem to have been on hold this year. The reality is that creating educational virtual worlds is expensive. Again, it is also necessary to develop appropriate design models as well as creating the virtual environment, so that the skills and competencies afforded by virtual worlds are achieved. I wouldn’t write them off, but I had hoped for more developments in 2009.

Institutional vision and the management of e-learning

This is the area of greatest disappointment for me in 2009. Where are the exciting new developments in hybrid learning in universities? What institutions are making the break with traditional classroom and laboratory-based teaching and looking to develop a digital learning environment where face-to-face teaching has a specific but limited role? How are institutions responding to the fact that they have more students now who are over 24, in reality working at least part-time, with families, and many returning for a second or third degree, than they have young, full-time students? I look at UBC’s latest strategic plan (Place and Promise) and there is nothing in it that refers to the the needs of learners in a post-industrial society, the changing profiles of our students, or the role of technology (even though UBC has probably more innovative e-learning projects than most institutions in North America).

The problem is that there cannot be real change in our post-secondary institutions without strong leadership and vision, but it seems that for the leadership of most North American post-secondary education systems, technology is so 1990s – been there, done that. The funding crisis doesn’t help, at least in the short term (more on that in my future trends blog).

However, our public post-secondary institutions are far too complacent about the current classroom-based teaching model, which is not serving our students well, in terms of giving them personal interaction with highly qualified and expert teachers and developing the skills and competencies needed in the 21st century. Too many institutions pay lip service to the use of technology for teaching, (‘a cutting edge university in the use of technology for teaching’ referring to the introduction of clickers, for instance), seeing it as a marketing tool or a way of winning government funding, rather than addressing the needs of learners in fundamentally different ways. There are no real incentives for change, especially with respect to the essential need for instructors to be properly trained to teach, which would include pedagogy as well as training in the use of technologies.

Conclusions

So in summary, the technology continues to develop and improve, e-learning is developing incredibly well outside the public system, there are many individuals and units working very hard within formal education to make e-learning succeed, but there are still deep systemic issues in the public post-secondary system that are severely limiting the application and usefulness of e-learning.

Your comments

However, I am now on the outside of the system looking in, which of course is both a strength and a weakness. What is the reaction of those of you inside the system to my review of 2009? What excited or disappointed you? Have you got examples that contradict my very subjective conclusions?

The three-and-a-half-year court battle between learning management system (LMS) giant Blackboard Inc. and competitor Desire2Learn ended Dec. 15 when the companies agreed to license each other’s patents and drop long-standing lawsuits.

So does this mean that LMS wars are over? Not really. Both companies have lost [...]]]> Carter, D. (2009) Blackboard, D2L declare truce eSchool News, December 17

The three-and-a-half-year court battle between learning management system (LMS) giant Blackboard Inc. and competitor Desire2Learn ended Dec. 15 when the companies agreed to license each other’s patents and drop long-standing lawsuits.

So does this mean that LMS wars are over? Not really. Both companies have lost out over this battle, driving decision-makers more and more towards open source solutions such as Moodle and Sakai, which also incorporate more easily new web 2.0 tools. Since the two companies have also agreed to swap licenses, they are still open to sue other commercial vendors of LMSs, although they may have learned something from this experience.