Pathways to Philosophy Distance Learning Program

http://www.shef.ac.uk/~ptpdlp/index.html

The home page for this ‘open education’ program had a number of elements that made me take note. One is the ‘Letters to my former students‘ in which the instructor has constructed a kind of FAQ section based on the responses he’s written to student emails over the past 6 years of teaching the course. Another is the archive of student essays, exhibiting exemplary work from past years. While there may be some privacy issues at stake regarding the publishing student work, it would seem that the work of previous classes is one obvious source of materials in building up both a program’s knowledge base, as well as its set of examples of how people have come to learn the materials previously. – SWL

The Changing Landscape and the New Academy

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0353.pdf

This article from the latest educause journal describes nine patterns in the changing educational landscape, the first of which is “Learning and teaching have changed, as has cognition” (emphasis mine.)  It goes on in greater detail to explain that:

 A growing number of today’s students, whose cognition was formed in the digital age, take access to the Internet for granted; access is simply an essential aspect of daily life. These students display an “Information-Age Mindset”: they expect to try things rather than hear about things; and they tend to learn visually and socially. Today’s students are accustomed to using technology to organize and integrate knowledge. These students are polite, but also bewildered at first, later disappointed, and often finally disillusioned and dispirited by passive learning experiences.

Is it in fact ‘cognition,’ the act through which we ‘come to know,’ that is changing? Well … maybe. But I couldn’t just let this statement slip by, as it is uttered with apparent certainty and yet the amount of contention surrounding this one issue can, and indeed has, filled up more than a few books. – SWL

– via [OLDaily]

Paper on evaluating Open Source software against other options

http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_eval.html

This paper describes a general process for evaluating software, but has a specific focus on how to evaluate Open Source software against proprietary packages. It is useful in that it highlights key areas outside of straightahead functionality to pay attention to, things like cost, support, maintenance, reliability, and license issues. – SWL

– via [OpenSector.org]

Koha – open source library/OPAC software

http://www.koha.org/

“Koha is the first open source integrated library system … the Koha system is a full catalogue, OPAC, circulation and acquisitions system.”

I’m not an expert in OPAC systems, so I leave it to the librarians to judge how full-featured this software is, though on the surface it seems fairly mature. I’m posting this, though, as just another example of how wide the range of open source projects has become. It wasn’t that long ago that people (usually in an attempt to maginalize their effects as part of a FUD campaign) would characterize open source projects as focusing on only those types of programs of interest to the geeks who could build them. There’s probably always going to be a bit of that at play, but a quick glance at, for instance, sourceforge projects by intended audience shows just how broadly the phenomenom has spread. – SWL

– via [OpenSector.org]

Skype – Free P2P Voice over IP

http://www.skype.com/

I work all day on a project based out of Colorado but am physically located in Victoria, Canada, and my colleague Bruce Landon is outside of Vancouver. So we’re forever trying various voice over IP and instant messaging solutions in an attempt to find a cheap, easy and effective way to stay in touch, but so far either they’ve seemed flaky or at times ran into problems with firewalls.

Not so this new one called Skype – just tried it out with my colleague in the U.S. and it was pretty close to phone call quality, with only the slightest drop out once or twice in the conversation. It’s from the makers of Kazaa, so who knows, maybe it installed some nefarious spyware on machine. In any case, it worked great and I now have an easy way to stay in touch via voice, for free. Will have to check out if it handles multi-party conversations. – SWL 

Assessment of 5 leading open source CMS from Commonwealth of Learning

http://www.developmentgateway.org/
download/201768/COL_LMS_Open_Source_-_July_2003.pdf

Not sure how this one got past me, must have been the summer doldrums, but back in June this report commissioned by the Commonwealth of Learning evaluating the field of current open source course management systems was released. It provides a fairly extensive analysis of the 5 shortlisted products (Moodle, LON-CAPA, ILIAS, dotLRN and ATutor) and ends up recommending ATutor for adoption with ILIAS coming in second.

It’s an interesting recommendation. One could contrast it with the recent piece from Rob Reynolds at xplana that looked at some of the same products, but with a very different evaluation framework. It’s also a bit unfortunate that it wasn’t able to assess Stanford’s Coursework, which was only then being released. I guess the other small fault I would find with it is that it takes a naive view of product selection based on feature assessment, as it simply provides a total of the various assessments, thus considering all features as being of equal weight, though it does separate out systemic issues from functional features. And if I was the Moodle guy, I think I might cry foul over a few of their ‘subjective assessments.’ Still, a very worthwhile resource and reference. – SWL

Faculty Development: The Hammer in Search of a Nail

http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1067

This article in the latest Technology Source asks some good questions about the ends to which many faculty development efforts focused on technology are directed. Rather than simply having ‘faculty adoption of technology’ as an end, the article suggests that such projects need to align with a more overarching goal, improved student learning, and points to an excellent document from George Mason University that outlines 10 IT Goals for Liberal Arts students.  – SWL 

– via [Online Learning Update]

Glance Networks – Remote desktop viewing through a web browser

http://www.glance.net/site/home.asp

There are lots of desktop sharing programs out there. I came across this one today in search of a program that would allow me to have many remote users view my desktop(and pretty well do *only* that) and not require them to have anything but a web browser, e.g. no other client software required.

There’s a tiny app to download on my end; the service runs in an ASP-model, so they give you an unique URL on their server, and then sharing you desktop is as easy as starting the program and then passing the URL to anyone you want to see it. Pretty close to real-time viewing of your desktop in your guest’s web browser. Their pricing model is not ‘bad’ ($400/year for unlimited one-to-many sessions, and they have monthly plans as well) but could maybe use some tweaking if it were to appeal to higher ed users as a potential low cost/low threshold application. – SWL  

LESTER: Learning Science and Technology Repository

http://lester.rice.edu/DesktopDefault.aspx

New to me, this directory out of Rice University provides “an online community and database focused on innovations in learning science and technology (LST), [and] profiles innovative research projects and researchers.” To jump start the project, LESTER has actively collected records for over 250 projects, 260 researchers, and 130 research organizations, and invites new users (you have to sign up for a free account) to contribute resources. Vast. – SWL