Harmoni PHP Project

http://sourceforge.net/projects/harmoni

Also from the NITLE site, a reference to this OKI-related open source project, which consists of three major components:
1) A PHP application framework and architecture, offering, e.g. authentication, DBC, file storage
2) PHP OKI OSID (service definitions) conversion system
3) PHP implementations of those OSIDs

This is the result of a collaboration of two projects we’ve heard a little bit about in the past, Segue (which has been referred to at times as the ‘blogging-based CMS’) and a LMS from the Associated Colleges of the South Tech Centre. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this project to OKI – originally all of the OKI castings were in Java which, for all of the sense it may have made, to me was also a serious impediment to many non-institutional developers (read ‘individual instructors’) being able to build in it/on it. Having the OKI OSIDs implemented in PHP suddenly opens the door to the potentially much vaster legion of people who are developing systems and individual learning apps in that language. – SWL

Introduction to Latent Semantic Indexing

http://javelina.cet.middlebury.edu/lsa/out/cover_page.htm

This paper, titled “Patterns in Unstructured Data: Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization” is offered by the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education as a “layman’s introduction to latent semantic indexing.” It does start to go into the specifics of how LSI works, but fortunately at an introductory enough level that most of us can grasp. This paper has it all: metadata…ontologies…visualization … what more could you ask for! A helpful introduction to an overlooked technology. See also the NITLE’s LSI project page for pointers to PERL-based LSI software. (Thanks to Bruce Landon for the tip.)- SWL

FEDORA Wiki – FedoraImplementations

http://www.fedora.info/wiki/bin/
view/Fedora/FedoraImplementations

According to this list on the Fedora Wiki site, last updated October 26, 2003, there were only 2 known FEDORA installations. FEDORA’s own website lists around a dozen ‘registered deployment partners’ which would seem to indicate more actual deployments, but I was hard pressed to find URLs for working ones when going through that list. If anyone knows of a more complete list of working FEDORA implementations I’d be interested to hear about it. – SWL

CMU LSAL Paper on “LO-Tec” Tools (and Toys) for Creating Learning Objects

http://www.lsal.cmu.edu/lsal/expertise/
papers/notes/lotec05052003/lotec05052003.html

This paper, from Dan Rehak and others at the renowned Learning Systems Architecture Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University (which now has a new RSS feed), asks how authors actually create learning objects, and whether the current tools are supporting these actual processes or instead getting in the way. To investigate this they take the sensible step back from the technology and look at a number of low or no tech paper-based techniques for developing learning objects, with the “objective [is] to help create learning, and hide technology and standards” and thus “understand how learning technology standards can be applied in the creation of learning objects and content.”

You can draw your own conclusions – I think the process they outline is a useful one for tool builders to go through if they want to build tools that support the way people actually work. But my cursory reading didn’t reveal any huge lessons learnt from the paper-based modelling and many of the criticisms levelled at the one example tool (ReLoad) they cite could seemingly be levelled at the paper-based model as well (e.g. use of jargon for one). – SWL

More RSS feeds from Repositories

It seems like the idea of using RSS as a means to syndicate new items in learning object repositories is steadily catching on. The page I’ve set up to aggregate a number of these feeds now has three more, two of them thanks to Ian Winship from Northumbria University.

The new feeds are:
– latest additions to the EEVL repository, a UK-based guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing
– latest additions to the Learning and Teaching Support Network Centre for Economics’ collection of resources
– a ‘by subject’ feed from Chalkface, a UK-based publisher of K-12 online courses and photocopy-master lesson plans

University of Denver Portfolio Community

https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/about

While I expect it is not news to folks thoroughly immersed in ‘eportfolio’ projects, I found this site from the University of Denver to be very helpful in illustrating some of what one can accomplish through these systems. As a member of the public one can get a free account which opens up some searches not otherwise available (like the Rubric and Element libraries) but, as one would expect, the portfolios of students and staff are browse-able by anyone. – SWL

LionShareWiki

http://lionshare.its.psu.edu//cgi-bin/twiki/view

Announced with no little fanfare at the end of last year, the Lionshare project has since been quietly chugging along. In addition to the above Wiki pages, which give some insight into what they are actually working on, you can follow the project’s latest news through their RSS feed (another one to add to the list of LOR projects with RSS feeds). – SWL

Updated “Framework for the Pedagogical Evaluation of eLearning Environments”

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/
VLEFullReport08.doc

Presented as an ‘update’ to an earlier 1999 report of the same title, it seems actually both an update and a re-working, and in my opinion greatly improved.

After an overview of the current (2003) state of affairs in VLE adoption in the UK (interesting in it’s own right) the authors gone on to explicate their framework. They base it on two theoretical models of teaching and learning – Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (coming from a cybernetic perspective) and Diane Laurillard’s conversational framework. The explication is a bit of a slog but worth the read, and critical if you were going to buy into their framework.

They then go on to establish a set of evaluative questions built around the structural or recursive levels of “The Module,” “The Learner” and “The Programme.” Finally they look at a number of current systems in the light of this framework, including WebCT Vista, Blackboard Academic Suite
Granada Learnwise, FirstClass, LAMS, COSE and Moodle. These last three are particularly interesting as all have been heralded for the ways in which they challenge conventional VLE/CMS models. As a credit to the report, if not the framework, it manages to recognize the innovations in these systems and the value they bring without forsaking the important developments in dealing with enterprise level problems that the larger commercial CMS have been focusing on.

Finally, they sum up their findings and point to some of the key developments in VLEs since their 1999 report, including: increased programme level support, a greater level of flexibility, more thought given to supporting pedagogical innovation, a greater variety of student tools, more “Open systems” and some improvement in accessibility. All of which seems about right. – SWL

Goodbye C2T2

http://www.c2t2.ca/

Not exactly news as around these parts we had known for a while it was going to happen, but it was with a heavy heart that I came upon this updated homepage for the Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology, or C2T2, my former employer. The Centre officially closed March 31, but as you can see many of its useful resources and services are being transitioned to other partners in the BC post-secondary system, and a good portion of the work C2T2 had started of late is now going ahead under the new banner of BCcampus.

So hopefully this marks just a transition to a new phase in BC rather than the end of an era – I know while I was at the Centre, as I travelled to various events in Canada I was met with something approaching envy by other provinces who longed for the kind of cooperation we seemed to be able to get happening in BC. No doubt it was the cooperative nature of West Coast folks in general that led to this, but I’d like to think that C2T2, and some key people in particular that I was fortunate to work with and learn from, had a little something to do with it as well. – SWL