Tag: adoption

Academic Use of Digital Resources: Disciplinary Differences and the Issue of Progression

http://www.shef.ac.uk/nlc2004/Proceedings/Symposia/
Symposium9/Jones_et_al.htm

Paper by Chris Jones, Maria Zenios and Jill Griffiths which looks at the differences between disciplines in their uptake of digital technologies in a UK post-secondary setting. The paper is part of the proceeedings of the recent Networked Learning Conference 2004 held at Lancaster University.

This is important for those of us involved in institution-wide (or multi-institution-wide, as it were) initiatives to remember. In my own practice, it was actually looking at DSpace and a number of the other repository-like packages that work on the metaphor of discipline-specific ‘collections’ that made me include the ability of the repository software to also serve individual disciplines as one requirement in our ongoing BCcampus LOR project. – SWL

Where are open source course management systems being used?

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

WebFolio: A TOOL FOR VISUALIZING LEARNERS’ BEHAVIORS

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

Camp CLOE blog

http://learnware.uwaterloo.ca/projects/cloe/bulletin/

CLOE is the Co-operative Learning Object Exchange, an Ontario-wide LOR. Camp CLOE was a 5 day workshop they ran last spring for representatives from the 17 partner institutions. They’ve set this ‘blog’ up in support of the cohort from that session. I say ‘blog’ in quotes as it seems a bit sporadic and not overly personal, but the terminology isn’t important – it seemed like a nice albeit small attempt to keep some of the momentum going for a group of learners after the flush of the f2f workshops had passed. – SWL

Institutional Studies of the Educational Uses of Web Course Management Systems

http://www.tltgroup.org/WCMS/
LitReview/Abstracts.htm

This resource isn’t particularly new but there’s a reference to it in the last article that reminded me of it. It’s a combination of studies on institutional uses of CMS and resources to choose and implement CMS, and highlights a number of articles by some old friends at Mount Royal College. – 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]