Technologies for Learning, Thinking and Collaborating
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/files/VLE_comparison.pdf
Stumbled across this through a tangential google search. Another comparison of 3 open source CMS, Moodle, Claroline and Atutor, this time by a European training firm. As in the case of the other main comaprison of late, Atutor seems to come out on top. – SWL
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
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/
story/wallst/33409.html
More on the upcoming Blackboard IPO. This article is actually pretty good in that it is written for a more general audience and so the writer offers decent background on the CMS industry as a whole and an interesting perspective on Blackboard as an unlikely leader for a new tech stock IPO revival. – SWL
http://www.elearningresults.com/
If anyone has a few extra thousand dollars laying around and wants to spend it to send me to the Portofino Coast in Italy to attend this conference in May on their behalf, just let me know 😉 – SWL
More proof of open source’s burgeoning effects in the field of course management systems – this Belgian company has taken the open source CMS Claroline and run with it in a value-added hosting/development/services/support model. News to me was that they have made strides developing a SCORM import tool, for which the lack of widespread support amongst many of the open source CMS has at times been used for an excuse not to adopt or investigate them. No longer! (see also Atutor in this regard). And for North American users, particularly those in the West, a small note that at least one of their customers, Washington State Community College, is nearby. – SWL
Other than the subscription-protected piece at the Chronicle of Higher Ed (and Charlie’s reference to it at Kairosnews) this is the only thing public I can find on this so far, but yes, the rumours seem to have been well founded, and Blackboard is going ahead with it’s IPO. Congratulations to them and good luck. – SWL
One of the big “Fear Uncertainty and Doubt” questions I often get asked as someone who spends a fair bit of time looking at the course management system landscape is “But are open source systems really ready for use as enterprise systems?” (Up until recently one might have done well to ask the same questions of the commercial systems that alleged to be ‘enteprise ready’!)
I don’t know what better way to respond than to simply point to where these systems are being used, so as some initial examples:
There are lots of fears held by Directors of IT, EdTech and others (some justified, others extremely unfounded) that need to be addressed before it becomes easy to adopt open source for ‘enterprise’ needs. This should be an easy one, though – any open source project that seriously wants to be adopted and that doesn’t actively solicit information on who is using it and share this back with potential users is clearly overworked or missing something. Better yet, segment your responses (k-12/colleges/universities/corporate training” might be a start for the education sector) so that people can point to a peer group and say ‘look who else has adopted this software!’ You’d be amazed how effective an argument this can be, especially as we move along the famous curve of innovation adopters (e.g. early and late majorities are like that for a reason.) – SWL
http://www.formatex.org/jdc/219.pdf
From the latest Journal of Digital Contents in its Special issue on “Digital Learning-Teaching Environments and Contents” comes this fascinating article on a tool developed in Japan. “Webfolio’s” purpose is to “collect, store and visualize learners’ behaviors in Web-based learning.” In the myriad debates about the effects (and effectiveness) of various media on learning, I am surprised by how often aspect of computers/web-based learning is overlooked. To me one of the critical attributes that differentiates it as a medium is the fact that every action within that environment can be recorded (tracked/played back) as it is performed, providing a vast store of data on which people can base future design decisions or in fact which can serve as data for the system to alter its own course. To me, it’s this kind of use that actually starts to employ computers for what they are good at instead of using them as hugely expensive textbooks or lecture rooms. Adding visualization of this data is a natural – if you have ever looked at the usage stats produced by most course management systems, you’ll know that they are fairly limited in use, and typically fall far below what even a low end web stats analysis package can provide concerning generic website usage. It’s not that the data’s not there, its just not a feature that has been much capitalized on. Which is maybe not surprising – even in the world of ‘enterprise’ web site development, there seems to me to be a surprising reluctance to dig deeply into what usage analysis tells us about how people are using the materials and how it correlates (if at all) with desired behaviours. And that’s in cases where there is often a tangible financial incentive and ability to do so. – SWL
There’s been a fair bit of buzz, and rightly so, for a few of the open source CMS systems out there; both Moodle and ATutor have come a long way and are increasingly looking like viable options for those wanting to go the open source route.
There’s another open source CMS that has been around for a little while now that hasn’t received as much press, but seems to me to also be an increasingly viable choice. The .LRN system is based on a fairly ‘old’ (by Internet standards) platform, the OpenACS portal server. It has been developed by folks at MIT (Sloan School of Management) and the University of Heidelberg and has been taken up by a number of major adopters.
They recently reached a major milestone with the release of version 2.0. One feature of particular note to this audience is support for student blogging tools – that’s right, unlike attempts to re-purpose sole-purpose blogging tools as ‘course management systems’ (which I think gives seriously short shrift to the breadth of functionality offered in ‘real’ CMS) this is instead a fairly full featured CMS that offers individual student blogging support.
The current system is a little light on assessment functionality, but there are plans to rectify that in the near future. These folks are clearly aware of existing instructional standards and already support IMS Enterprise 1.1 for exchanging student data, with Content Packaging and SCORM support on the horizon. And given the relatively long history of development around OpenACS, there is already a fairly broad development community built up around this platform.
We just finished our draft review at Edutools – the review should be visible here in the next day or so. – SWL
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/portole/index.htm
Site for the “Providing Online Resources To Online Learning Environments (PORTOLE)” project, which ended July 2003. This UK-based project aimed to help incorporate more library resources and tools into ‘virtual learning environments.’ Of particular interest to me was the CROSsearch prototype, which provides a single search interface to a number of library catalogues, learning object repositories AND, optionally, Google. Is this the way forward? I don’t know, but it is invaluable to have prototypes like this to examine in more depth and take this out of the abstract realm.
Additionally, you can read the project’s final report, and the latest issue of ARIADNE (out today) contains an article summarizing some of the project’s key findings. – SWL