Effects of Information Distributions Strategies on Student Performance in a CMS

http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v1n1/
lohman/IJ_%20Lohman.pdf

This is one of those papers where I find myself thinking “freakin’ amazing, I can’t believe it” (yes, I really think like that) but by the end I’ve been reduced to, “ok, but a sample of 50 students? And all of them graduate students of education from 3 courses?” I’m not saying that invalidates the results, and the paper itself actually seems well written. But if you do buy into its arguments, then this SHOULD be sending shockwaves (at least shivers) through ed tech departments (and the people who fund them) across the world. Why? Because it throws into serious doubt the value of course management systems when used (predominantly, as other studies, like Morgan’s, have shown) as really expensive web filing or content management systems in support of face to face courses. This doesn’t necessarily sound the death knell for CMS; as the study concludes, instead one could draw the conclusion that if you want to see positive effects on pedagogy by using a CMS then use them, well, pedagogically, not as a glorified filing cabinet. But still, it does start to put to the test the conventional wisdom that simply giving people access to reading materials ahead of time will inevitably increase their learning. (First seen in Distance Educator.) – SWL

Patrick Masson on Lessons Learned Implementing a SOA at SUNY

http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/masson

This remarkably frank and insightful interview with Patrick Masson, the former Director of Technology for the SUNY Learning Network, is well worth the read, though by the end you would be forgiven for despairing about the future of SOA on any campus. I know I do and did. Monoliths ahoy! – SWL

So Long Bloglines…

Unlike most of the of the other cool kids, I’ve had a hard time kicking my bloglines habit for newer tools. A case of “if it ain’t broke…”

Well, sad to say, it is broke. It’s probably a familiar refrain to others who’ve made the leap, but after the umpteenth time of Bloglines acting funny, I sent yet another email to their support folks. Only to get a self-referential email from them telling me to refer to the below ‘discussion thread’ for their response, only to see my original email with another message to ‘refer to the discussion thread’ and so on…

So Google Reader, here I come baby! The basics seem pretty straightforward but there are some things I still just don’t grok. Hopefully I will get a chance at Northern Voices to query better minds than mine about this – I lament cogdog’s absence, but my friend Jason Toal (that’s dj draggin to the rest of you punks) seems to have a hnadle on it too. – SWL

Moodle Pilot Report from Idaho State University

http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/
ISU_IDUS/I061227I.pdf

Via Jim Farmer comes a link to this Pilot Report from the Instructional Technology Resource Center at Idaho State University, a current WebCT 4 customer. On the basis of this small (20 instructor) pilot, they are going expand it to 50 users. What I thought was interesting (and maybe the Moodle folks will notice this too) is that the only functionality that both students and faculty seemed not totally thrilled about were the assessment and grading capabilities in Moodle. That seems about right. Especially if you’ve used WebCT 6/Vista, which I have to admit seems pretty decent in this capacity. And you can tut-tut all you like about how those are such ‘administrative’ tools, but time and again the surveys come back that grading/gradebook management is actually one of the most used aspects of the CMS, ignored at CMS developers’ own peril. – SWL

BioDieselNow – Informal Learning, Mass Amateurization and Open Science in one tasty package

BioDieselNow – Biodiesel from Algae

It truly is not that remarkable to find examples of informal learning communities online, indeed these are the very genes on which the net has grown so explosively. What’s maybe more remarkable is that people even feel the need to remark on them. So why highlight this one? Well…

– I like the fact that in this one spot you can see the convergence not only of informal learning communities, but also the “mass amatuerization of everything” and “open source science” in one fell swoop. Take a look at the post titled “Biodiesel from Algae Reading List” where a propsective Master’s students solicits feedback from the forum’s members on a proposed reading list as he has no access to local experts on as specific a topic as “generating biodiesel from Algae. What’s even better – he not only gets feedback on specific Thesis topics that could greatly advance the field, someone in the forum actually knows about a researcher at the student’s institution that might be worth hooking up with. Awesome!

– I think it illustrates quite well how discussion forums aren’t going away and can be quite powerful for facilitating community discussion. Sometimes we need to take a step back and realize not everyone has the same problems or goals as us, and that blogs aren’t the only way.

– in writing about this specific forum, I’m outing myself as a closet biodiesel fan. If I’m still writing EdTechPosts 10 years from now, please givem me a kick in the #@@. ‘Cos secretly (well, I guess not so secretly anymore) all I want to do is homebrew! – SWL

Hamachi and Unyte – Two Indispensible Virtual Office Tools

http://www.hamachi.cc/ and http://www.unyte.net/

I work at home. I almost never get to see my colleagues face to face. And when I do, I have my laptop with me, a different computer than the one I use at home. These two FREE technologies have become indispensible in helping me work with others at a distance as well as stay connected while I’m on the road.

The first, Unyte by Webdialogs, is a screen sharing app that integrates with Skype. It allows me to display any number of apps running on my machine to any of my skype contacts. The beauty is that they don’t require anything to view the shared screen, only a web browser. And it’s free.

I work with developers in Australia, designers in Vancouver, researchers in Colorado – all of whom are on my skype contact list. Now, when the need arises (“look, it really is a bug,” “no, I meant put the logo THERE”) I can share what I am looking at with them in 2 clicks. It works beautifully. There is a pay-for version which allows you to share with more than one person at a time, but if you are looking for a fast and easy way to share a screen with anyone out there, Unyte has a lot going for it. I had tried Glance in the past, and while I quite liked it, the lack of a free version turned me off.

On to the second piece (really the reason I am writing this up, so I can send this to some colleagues), Hamachi. Hamachi bills itself as “zero-configuration virtual private networking” and true to its word, the setup and configuration of the software on my desktop and laptop took about 2 minutes, after which I was able to grab any file off my desktop when I was travelling. You are not limited to just your own computers in this virtual network and can create ad hoc private networks with anyone you trust and want to share with. There are clients for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (though the later has suffered in the past from requiring some command line tinkering, something I believe has largely been overcome).

If you’re an ubergeek you’ll probably look down your nose at this – why wouldn’t anyone simply use OpenVPN, and how about UltraVNC or TightVNC for that matter, which can largely accomplish both of these ends in one app. Well, great, if they work for you. I’ve tried all of these with varying degrees of success. What excites me about both of these apps is their absolute ease of use and their singlemindedness; they do one thing and one thing well. So if you need to be able to access yor home computer from work, or your work computer from home, or if you need to be able to quickly share something on your desktop with a remote user, I highly recommend both as additions to your virtual office tool box. – SWL

Ohloh comparison of Sakai and Moodle

http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/
GENERAL/SAKAI_US/S070109F.pdf

Jim Farmer points to a comparison of the Sakai and Moodle projects done by Ohloh, a very cool site that provides objective information about open source projects. Instead of looking at Jim’s PDF file, you can check out the Sakai and Moodle reports directly on the Ohloh site. Ohloh’s reports are produced by looking at the source code repository (either Subversion, CVS or Git are currently supported) and it’s value is in creating human readable (and very attractive) reports on empirical data that such repositories capture. The sparklines depicting developer activity make it really obvious how many regular contributors there are to a project, and the Project Cost estimator provides a cute way to scare your pointy headed boss out of thinking you could accomplish the same thing in-house in a few evenings and a couple of cases of Red Bull. – SWL

Blackboard’s Social Bookmarking Service

http://www.scholar.com/

This looks to be a new social bookmarking service launched by Blackboard. The difference from existing services like del.icio.us? Well, not much, as far as I can tell, except that it is aimed solely at Blackboard and WebCT customers (non-customers can search the site and find links, but not contribute). So why would you use this? Presumably Blackboard had enough existing customers ask them for a social bookmarking facility that was integrated with their Blackboard accounts which they could “safely” use with their students.

I am sure they will get demonized for this. Me, sure I’d love to see systems that instead of creating additional silos and enclaves allowed users to move in an authenticated form from the institution’s systems to ones out on the general web, you know, have my cake and eat it too. But the customers (that’s you, right) have got to demand this, not expect vendors whose whole business model is ‘lock in’ to simply just provide it. And the sad fact of the matter is that none of the internet-wide identity plays seem really up to this. Yet. This is one place where Open Source could make a huge difference, as introducing new features there does not have to be limited solely by the focus on profits. You’d think. Yet for some reason I still can’t get a simple OpenID plugin for WordPress. The pundits are right, identity will be big in 2007. But without the move of some major market shaker towards one of the ‘open’ approaches, don’t be surprised if it’s a continuation of the silo arms race between the bigs (read Google, Yahoo and MSN, not Blackboard) instead of a signle sign on paradise that results. – SWL

UPDATE: Blackboard have updated their blog with more details on this initiative, some of which is reminiscent of the EduGlu conversation. Does this mean we can sue them now 😉

Comparison of CMS, Course Materials Life Cycle, and Related Costs

http://web.mit.edu/emcc/www/
MIT-WCET-C-LMS-Final-Report-07-19-06.pdf

My colleagues Bruce Landon and Russ Poulin were commissioned last year by MIT to produce a report which compared the CMS practices and costs, as well as the life cycle of course materials, at ‘peer’ institutions in an effort to provide a benchmark for future decision making. I was just informed that MIT has generously made the report more widely available online at the above location. In addition to MIT itself, the peer institutions surveyed included Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, Harvard (College of Arts and Sciences), University of Chicago, Middlebury, University of Texas at Austin, Princeton and Yale.

So while you might not consider your institution a “peer” (but hey, why not, in this global,online economy) I expect there will be something of interest to anyone involved with the management of institution-wide CMSes. It’s a lengthy report (90 pages) but in it you’ll find such things as costing and support information from a wide variety of scenarios, though one of the findings was that

most of the institutions did not have a better handle on cost data and that (for many of the respondents) costs were not a principle driver in decision-making.

It should also not be surprising to anyone having to deal with higher ed content management practices that the survey shows them to be all over the place and largely still a matter left up to the whims of the individual instructor. Which might seem fine to many except consider that “the annual costs of course materials can exceed the cost of the C/LMS by millions” and we all know at some point, something is going to give. – SWL

My holiday gifts to you….

You already know what I want for Christmas. So in the spirit of the season, here are my (non-denominational holiday) gifts for ….

WebCT and Blackboard – I’d say a lump of coal, except they’d probably just claim to have patented ‘mining’ and sue me. So instead, how about “Courage,” the courage to adopt a strategy that keeps customers not by locking down their content in difficult to export ways but instead by creating a product people can easily leave but want to stay with; the courage to grow as a company not through intimidation and pathetic legal challenges but again, by continuing to develop a product that people simply want to buy (oh, and did I mention I believe in Santa Claus too!)

ELGG – continued success, and for some funder to acknowledge the blood, sweat and tears of these guys to build one of the best social learning platforms around today. As open source.

D’Arcy – some plane tickets to Hawaii so I can finally stop seeing all the links to Hawaiian hotels in his del.icio.us feed 😉

Alan – what do you get the guy with a great new job and seemingly unlimited talent? How about some well earned time at his cabin soaking in that unused hottub!

Stephen – A Patent. On Everything. Just Kidding.

Brian – his own radio show. I know, I know, who un-Web 2.0 of me. But I’d listen to it. You probably would too if you’d seen his record collection.

All the Edubloggers who felt it necessary to acknowledge an “award” from a link troll – some more self-esteem. Come on folks – “top 100 Edublogs”? What you’ve got there is exactly equivalent to someone’s blogroll. You’re all great. We love you very much. Remember, in the inimitable words of Dave Winer – it doesn’t matter if only 2 people read you, as long as they’re the RIGHT 2 people.

Michael (and all the other tireless folks working to expose the evils of software patents for education) – Math You Can’t Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software. Actually, no. Just a well deserved break. (And to Michael, great success next year in the new job).

the Moodle, Sakai, Atutor, .LRN projects and all the other open source CMS folks – continued success in the new year. Even if you are not an open source CMS adopter, be glad for what these folks are doing for you. Because you benefit from their work and efforts too, in more ways than you likely realize.

And finally…

To the readers of EdTechPost – thanks. And a promise – to re-launch this site early in the new year with comments back on. So you can talk back to nonsense like this post. That’s gone unrectified for far too long.

Hope you all get a break over the next few days, I look forward to learning and creating with you all in the New Year! Cheers, Scott.