Interview with Jody Hoff, Federal Reserve Bank: Innovators in E-Learning Series

With all the recent efforts by the U.S. federal government to respond to the ongoing economic challenges, the demand for understanding the role of the Federal Reserve Bank has grown dramatically. In response, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSB) has developed an informative and innovative way to help learners of all levels gain an understanding of the banking crisis of 2008, in addition to ongoing current challenges.

The materials that the FRBSF has developed are appropriate for online and hybrid courses, and would fit in well in portfolios developed for many different subjects, ranging from economics to marketing.

Welcome to an interview with Jody Hoff, Senior Manager at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

1. What is your name, your organization, and your relation to elearning?

a. Jody Hoff, Senior Manager

b. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

c. I direct our education efforts for the 12th District which includes nine western states. An important component of our educational strategy leverages elearning approaches to reach our key audiences, including students and educators.

2. What is the Federal Reserve Bank San Francisco (FRBSF) doing in the area of elearning?

a. In the Education group, we are in the process of shifting our strategy to provide content to students and teachers in an electronic format. Examples are the Crisis and Response and What is the Fed? web resources. In addition, we are rolling out a new project called DataPost that will provide a weekly chart/visualization of the economy with a brief explanation of the story behind the data, discussion questions for the classroom, and the actual data set so that students can experiment with their own visualization or chart.

3. What is the mission of the FRBSF's educational outreach? Why? What do you hope to see in the future?

a. Our education mission is to provide meaningful learning opportunities about the Federal Reserve, economics, and the economy.

b. As an institution, the Federal Reserve is charged with implementing monetary policy to promote a healthy economy, job growth, and stable prices. We are committed to providing a variety of opportunities for people to learn about the Federal Reserve and its role in the U. S. economy.

c. The explosive growth in access to technology and information is erasing the traditional split between teachers and students. I recently witnessed two teenagers utilize a YouTube video to complete their algebra homework. They were having trouble remembering the classroom lecture from earlier in the day and rather than dig through the textbook, they pulled up a video on the exact topic, watched it for about 90 seconds and then completed the problem. We view our online resources, like the Crisis & Response site, as offering a self- serve, if you will, source of information and analysis. Our strategy is to support learning in a way that gives the user some control about how to process the information. OurWhat is the Fed? resource follows this model with text, conceptual images, discussion questions, and a monetary policy game called The Fed Chairman Game.

4. You've used a combination of video, animated graphics, and an interesting schema-building instructional strategy that allows learners to move to ever increasing levels of detail and depth. Could you describe how that happens in your site, and why you took that approach?

a. The sites are organized around essential questions and bullet point answers. We wanted to provide a way for the reader to get their arms around the big picture before diving into the specifics of the content. We also wanted to provide a variety of tools for the reader to develop their own meaning about the narrative. We used compelling data and graphs to support the bullet point answers and also created a number of conceptual images to help readers understand unfamiliar terms such as ‘macro-prudential supervision’.

b. Our approach was to frame the issues around essential questions that would tell the story of the economy without completely overwhelming the reader. We wanted to experiment with an approach that didn’t just drop you in the deep end of the pool and hope you could swim. Rather, we wanted to provide an entry point to the story that you could follow to increasing levels of complexity.

5. Cause and effect plays a big role in the fundamental narrative and logic structure of your site and the approach you take. It seems extremely effective and appropriate given the economic crisis and the need to untangle the basic "why's" and "how's" of what occurred. Could you discuss how you settled on which major issues to address?

a. Because of the challenge of synthesizing the complexity of the crisis into a concise, essential question format, our most senior economists wrote the narrative. And, we spent a great deal of time thinking through the story of the crisis and how best to contextualize the issues.

6. What are your plans for the future? Do you have any plans to encourage banks to put in links in their online banking portals? If so, how do you see your role in relation to local banks and also users of banking services?

a. That’s an interesting question. A direction we are exploring for the future is the use of short, immersive video “talks” to quickly and directly pull the viewer into a look at the economy from the perspective of a research economist. Our goal is to share new understanding and insight about economic processes. These efforts are focused primarily on educators, students, and the general public.

7. Please discuss an aspect or two of your philosophy of elearning.

a. My philosophy of learning is based on the constructionist perspective that places the learner at the center of the action. We design content with a specific context and provide tools that support the learner’s efforts to understand and create meaning. Taking that perspective to the elearning environment, we’ve incorporated many of the instructional design principles outlined in Richard Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. The Crisis and Response site is really all about trying to reduce the cognitive load for the non-expert members of the public, including teachers and students, who want to understand more about the complexity of the financial crisis. Our What is the Fed? resource and upcoming new DataPost project also incorporate these design principles.

Interview with Jill Ambrose, CourseSmart: Innovators in E-Learning Series

E-textbooks and other digital assets have become extremely important in the world of textbooks. The texts are evolving quickly, in both the way that they are delivered and in the kinds of instructional activities, materials, and collaborations that are included.

Welcome to an interview with Jill Ambrose, Chief Marketing Officer at CourseSmart.

1. What is your name and your relation to e-learning?

Jill Ambrose, chief marketing officer at CourseSmart, the world’s largest provider of eTextbooks and digital course materials. CourseSmart believes in anywhere, anytime access of course materials for everyone. Therefore CourseSmart enables and supports access to e-learning.

Jill Ambrose, CourseSmart

2. What are some of the latest trends in e-learning?

I would say the two biggest trends in e-learning right now are the push towards mobile access and learning as well as interactive course materials that improve learning outcomes.

With today’s students being more tech savvy and taking their college learning experiences beyond just the classroom, mobile access to e-learning tools has become increasingly important. CourseSmart has been committed to meeting the growing mobile needs of today’s students, and just this year, we led the industry in mobile innovations by introducing the first eReader app for Android™-based devices which joined our other industry firsts – the iPhone® and iPad® apps, launched in 2009 and 2010, respectively. We also launched an HTML5 single platform reader (another industry first) allowing users to access digital course materials online, offline or on mobile devices. And earlier this summer, CourseSmart launched the industry’s first social commerce tab on Facebook, giving students unprecedented access to eTextbooks through a site where they already spend a lot of their time.

CourseSmart is the only digital course provider that offers eResources from multiple publishers. eResources are highly engaging and interactive learning products that make faculty teaching more effective and student learning more engaging by providing immediate feedback to the student to ensure comprehension of key learnings. eResources include an automated, integrated grading system that provides real-time feedback to ensure comprehension of key learnings by the user.

It’s not just about what’s “fun and interesting” in their eTextbooks, but rather, it’s what truly helps students with learning and ultimately the comprehension of that learning experience.

All eResources are not alike but many include quizzes, tutorials, interactive exercises, videos, links to other websites and the digital text.

3. How have digital textbooks changed over the last 5 years?

First off, the content has not changed. Availability and how you interact with the content is where there have been dramatic increases.

Regarding availability, digital course materials and eTextbooks are now available through multiple channels; online, through some Publishers and the campus bookstore. The sheer volume of the CourseSmart catalog of eTextbooks continues to grow everyday and currently includes more than 20,000 eTextbooks which represents 90% of all core higher education textbooks in use today.

How you interact with the content has also changed. Mobile access is a big shift in the last few years with the increase of smartphone and tablet usage as well as emerging mobile app technology. At CourseSmart alone, almost one third of all users (faculty and students alike) prefer to read their materials on a tablet rather than on a computer. Product features have also improved significantly, as CourseSmart has continued to listen to consumer feedback, adapting our features to meet the changing needs of students. This includes improved highlighting and note-taking functionality, the ability to cut and paste sections of text, email select content to classmates, etc.

4. What do you see as some of the main trends in cloud-based digital texts?

An important element that CourseSmart recognizes in the use of digital texts is the ability to access texts when needed, without limiting storage to only one device or access through multiple devices, as well as creating the ability to synchronize notes and highlights when you are working between computers and devices. This is where the case for cloud-based digital textbooks becomes especially relevant to our customers. The availability and portability of cloud-based applications, such as CourseSmart’s library of eTextbooks and digital course materials, means that students and faculty can access the texts and course materials anytime, anywhere. Access is available from any web-enabled device or through one of CourseSmart’s downloadable apps. Our cloud-based model perfectly fits with the on-the-go lifestyle and need for portability without the burden of carrying around heavy textbooks. Even notes on the texts, if entered within CourseSmart’s interface, are portable!

The cloud-based nature of eTextbooks and digital resources also eliminates the need for costly investments in storage and infrastructure by schools and students to store loads of downloaded materials. While CourseSmart eTextbooks and digital course materials can be accessed offline, they remain stored on the cloud, taking advantage of the efficiency of cloud storage.

5. How well do CourseSmart texts integrate with learning management systems?

They integrate extremely well. CourseSmart is dedicated to providing a streamlined teaching and learning experience for faculty and students. CourseSmart Solutions for instructors and institutions can be fully integrated with various learning management systems like Pearson LearningStudio, Blackboard® and Desire2Learn, allowing instructors and students to access their course materials in their current daily workflow. Current solutions may be found at Arizona State University, University of Michigan and Western Governors University to name a few.

6. (Revised) What kinds of multimedia do you typically bundle with an e-text? Do you have standalone audio (mp3 format) that students can download to their portable devices, or do they have to access the e-text through the CourseSmart portal each time they want to watch a video or listen to an audio podcast?

Publishers determine the content that should be offered as an eTextbook or an eResource. The publisher also determines appropriate content that should be bundled with eTextbooks. There are various forms of multimedia used with titles offered by the publishers. Again, these are determined by the publisher. The types of multimedia selected are based on how well they support the concepts being taught.

All of CourseSmart’s eTextbooks are stored within the cloud and are accessible to students and faculty anytime, anywhere via a Web-enabled device connected to the Internet. At this time, only CourseSmart’s non-multimedia content can be accessed offline.

© 2011 CourseSmart, LLC. All rights reserved. CourseSmart® is a registered trademark of CourseSmart, LLC. All other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Interview with Joe Landsberger, Website Study Guides and Strategies

Welcome to an interview with Joe Landsberger, who has put together extensive online study guides and study tools to meet the needs of students everywhere. While courses can be relatively easy to find and OpenCourseWare more prevalent, it is often difficult to find effective study tools, particularly in different languages.

Joe Landsberger:

For the past 16 years, I have researched and authored content, as well as developed and financially supported its Website Study Guides and Strategies. This stemmed from my professional and educational background in assisting learners and developing training modules in a university setting, as well as discovering the educational potential of the Internet back in the early 1990’s. In a chance encounter with an academic support professional at a conference, I discovered that a Website should be a useful tool delivering study strategies in a learning center environment. With publication of those first pages in a Website, I immediately began to receive appreciation from developing countries. A cadre of dedicated volunteer translators and collaborations also emerged to where its resources are translated in 39 languages.

Joe Landsberger

Study Guides and Strategies

Over 250 topics in content have been developed. Some have been developed as part of a logical sequence, some by chance encounters identifying a need, and even a few by request. They include options in learning as types, in the classroom, with others, online; time and project management; test preparation and taking; reading and writing guides. Each Webpage adheres to a similarly bulleted style and format in a consistent design and navigation template, which is of course reversed for right-to-left text as Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian.

Initially the content was verbal without images, but as capabilities progressed more were illustrated. In 2003 Flash was deployed in order to facilitating engagement with content, and over 100 interactive exercises are now online as well. Aside from developing these exercises, another effort toward enhancing the effectiveness of the resource has been made to group, and even sequence topics. One limit to the singular nature of the Website, is that there is no institutional affiliation, which impedes research into determining effectiveness or in terms of outcomes, and also limits my opportunities for funding (while a public service, the organization is not non-profit, just without profit!). However, over 60,000 (educational) institutions link to the site worldwide, and traffic has continued to grow each of its 16 years, currently increasing at 23% in 2011 to over nine million visitors.

Due to the anonymous nature of the Internet, it has been difficult to gauge characteristics of visitors, whether student, teacher, support professional or parent. Alexa.com however presented this profile (December 2010): "Compared with internet averages the site's audience tends to be aged under 25 and 55-65; they are also disproportionately low-income, moderately educated, childless women browsing from school and home." English accounts for about 80% of pages accessed. Interestingly, only about 5% of visitors use handheld/mobile devices.

Approximately 51% of traffic originates in the US, 6% the Philippines, 4% Canada, 3.6% Mexico, 3.5% India. Over the years the international traffic has increased as more guides are translated. One curious source of traffic originated in a developing country. When I inquired from a researcher the reason, he stated that the guides seemed research-based, freely accessible, and that his country did not have the resources either to develop them, or to provide academic support in school settings.

Aside from adding topics, translations, and exercises future projects will respond to advances in technology. Recognizing the limitations of Flash and evolving standards and specifications for web-based e-learning (SCORM), I eagerly await HTML5, as well as other applications and developments in promoting interactivity for the topics and content of the Website.

Currently all 1500 pages of content are being migrated into CSS, with 20 of 39 languages completed. This effort has magnified the limitations of myself as developer. I had to dedicate several months of time not only to assess the next iteration, but also, lacking any collegial environment, teach myself the development and implementation. This last has involved a line-by-line review of not only code, but also the content itself. Foreign languages presented a unique challenge that was remedied by machine translators and Internet searches to verify and optimize text!

Interview with Allen Partridge, Adobe Systems: E-Learning Innovators Series

The iPad is becoming increasingly friendly for any time / any place learning, ranging from K-12 to graduate programs. Welcome to an interview with Dr. Allen Partridge, the eLearning Evangelist for Adobe Systems, who discusses some of the new technologies that make it possible to convert different formats to play on the iPad, including HTML5 and HTML5-enabled Captivate.

1. What is your name and your relation to e-learning?

Dr. Allen Partridge is the eLearning Evangelist for Adobe Systems Inc. In addition to his work for Adobe Systems, he continues to serve on the doctoral faculty in the Communications Media and Instructional Technology program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Allen has written several books and a host of articles on topics ranging from 3D game development to Instructional Design for new technologies. He is active in explorations of Immersive Learning as well as traditional multimedia enhanced eLearning and rapid eLearning. Allen works closely with the eLearning Suite and Captivate teams at Adobe, providing a channel to customer needs and concerns and helping facilitate communication among team members.

2. What are some of the exciting new directions you've observed in elearning?

Most of the movement lately has been in the expansion / ease of access to creating great content with limited experience working with software. We’ve been focusing a lot of attention over the past couple of cycles on modernizing Adobe Captivate and the Adobe eLearning Suite to modern standards. Most eLearning online uses Adobe Flash to deliver the content in a web browser played back using the Adobe Flash plugin. About five years ago Adobe made dramatic improvements to Flash technology and adopted a new programming language commonly called AS3 (ActionScript 3). All of Adobe’s eLearning software is now fully AS3 compliant so it all runs better, smoother, and much much faster using the full strength of Flash.

In more recent months we’ve been extending Captivate’s reach on mobile devices. Captivate users can already publish content to Apple iOS using the App Packager that comes with eLearning Suite, but we wanted to add the option to produce HTML5 compatible content easily from a Captivate SWF.

3. Where do you see some of the most innovative uses of tablets (iPad, etc.) in elearning?

We’re offering the HTML5 converter free to the public on Adobe Labs while it is still in development. We feel strongly that this open forum will provide users with a relevant voice as we rollout new features and seek to meet the needs of users for this rapidly growing platform. While for a long time, we saw little statistical evidence that eLearning content was being created for mobile platforms, the introduction of mobile tablets had dramatically altered the playing field for educational content developers. This does a number of things. 1. It creates a strong need for touch based interactions that anticipate the differences between clicking a mouse and touching an application with your fingers. We addressed a lot of those issues with the release of Captivate 5.5 – most notably adding special interactions to quizzes that made it much easier to deliver successful quizzes on mobile devices.

The addition of another export format (HTML5) further extends Captivate’s reach as the industry leader in eLearning authoring. This thing is really pretty cool. You just feed it a Captivate SWF – like an application capture demo, and it spits out HTML5. Then post the HTML file.

4. In the past, the fact that some technologies do not run on iPad operating systems has been a problem. What is being done to address that?

We’ve seen a variety of approaches from various companies. Some rely on third party technologies, others have developed proprietary solutions and some of the companies who had traditionally used older technologies like HTML, found that they could easily support HTML5. Adobe was among the first to offer a robust solution, and was the first to create a Flash to App converter which was released with Adobe Flash Professional CS5. There were however some difficulties, because Apple altered the terms of their developer’s license shortly before the CS5 software was released, and that alteration prevented authors from using the Application Packager from Adobe. Shortly afterward, Apple reversed course, and re-enabled the use of the Packager. So people can use it now, and many do. In fact many large games for iOS devices are Flash games, converted with the App Packager.

5. What is HTML5?

Well that depends on who you ask. Some will tell you it’s a clever marketing campaign. HTML is Hyper Text Markup Language. It’s the standard used by web browsers for the past 20 years to display text and graphics (and sometimes other stuff) on web pages. The number 5 is the version number. HTML5 is not yet complete, none of the browser companies display the content in the same way, or use the same technologies to display that content. So think of it as the next version of the web language. The excitement comes because it will be able to do a lot of interactions and animations, video etc. that weren’t possible before. That said, it’s not at all a silver bullet. It has a lot of limitations, and won’t really effectively replace the kinds of things we see in eLearning today, but we feel it goes far enough that we can do a good job of converting most of the features of Captivate and making it much easier to get rich interactive content created for iOS devices.

6. What are some of the Captivate products, and what are they used for?

Adobe Captivate is a super simple to use eLearning authoring platform. It’s used by more eLearning developer than any other eLearning authoring tool and people love it for creating all kinds of eLearning content. It’s famous for interactive screen / application captures. It also does a great job with PowerPoint conversion, allows authors to easily create custom interactions without any programming, and makes branched projects –like scenario based training simple to pull off.

7. Specifically, what does it mean that Captivate products can now be converted to HTML5?

The converter is an Air Application that takes an Adobe Captivate SWF and exports a web page (HTML) that complies with the HTML5 standard. It has been optimized to perform best on Apple iOS devices including Apple iPhone, iPad & iPod. Especially on iPad, this will give eLearning authors the ability to quickly and effortlessly convert their content into a format that will play in the browser of an iOS device and will not require them to duplicate their efforts, building a separate version from scratch just to accommodate users on iOS devices.

OpenPlan for Film/Literature: Sample Lesson

Incorporating media in an online course is extremely useful, whether it be for a film / literature course, or a course (undergraduate or graduate) that uses movies, television, and other media to illustrate aspects of the content (leadership, business ethics, and history come to ind).

In this post, we look at film and consider it as a part of the OpenPlan series for teaching different topics, subjects, and disciplines online. This OpenPlan is for developing strategis for viewng film.

OpenPlan for Film: Where the Truth Lies (dir. Atom Egoyan, 2005)

Overview / Analysis

If you take the plot alone, or simply analyze the various subplots, you're likely to be very disappointed in Where the Truth Lies (Dir. Atom Egoyan, 2005) about a 1950s comedy duo, Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), who broke up at the pinnacle of their success. (Spoiler Alert! This article contains information about the plot.)


However, Egoyan uses the plot to create a complex rendering of perception in the same manner as in his utterly brilliant Exotica (1994).

In Where the Truth Lies, the action begins fifteen years after the duo's breakup when a writer, Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman), wishes to chronicle their story. We come to find out that the reason for the breakup was the attempt by a young journalism student, Maureen O'Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard), to blackmail them when, during an encounter in a hotel room involving the three of them, the "straight man" of the duo reveals he has been physically attracted to his partner and begins to act on it, only to be rebuffed. Seizing on the information as a way to pay for her future, the budding extortionist stays in their suite that night, just to turn up dead the next morning.


There are many ways to develop the plot, and Egoyan's process is slow and sometimes painful as he unveils each character's defining weaknesses, fears, and desires, which are jarringly discordant with their smooth, polished, often ethereally beautiful surfaces. This is metafictive noir at is finest (and most agonizing for some viewers).

Egoyan is never simply cerebral, and his mise-en-scene suggests perceptions of time present and time past are relentlessly mediated by a body that bridges fantasy and reality. The film moves back and forth from 1957 and 1972, both are gorgeously, impeccably true to the times and the feeling of privilege and glamour. There are noir elements in Egoyan's film, with edgy ambivalence about women and women's physicality: one can be drawn to them, but they will inevitably lead one to one's demise.


It's not too surprising that the tree planted by the mother of the the young femme fatale extortionist who was murdered in the hotel room turns out to be an apple tree, its limbs hanging heavy with bright red apples, ready for Eve's temptations. When the duo attempt to re-enact the "badger game" and pressure the writer to stop writing the memoir by taking photos of her in a compromising situation with a female (supplied by the duo), the effort backfires. Vince commits suicide (in a poetic way) after Karen tells him how she knows he had something to do with the murder.

Egoyan's approach to cinematography is very structural, and all his core shots and scenes are repeated and echoed often in four or five separate scenes in order to build interpretative possibilities that are both complex and undeniable.

The scenes are not perfect echoes of each other, however, and the disconnects and incongruities can frustrate the viewer who craves verisimilitude, while they delight those who welcome a hallucinatory bending of reality in order to tease out the underlying fears and psychological archeoliths -- the "truth" embedded in the lies one tells oneself.

Even texts do not truly represent: while Karen seeks to write the definitive story of the duo, they themselves are writing a "tell all" memoir. Instead of staying together as a full, cohesive text, Karen receives chapters. It is not clear who wrote the chapters, who sent them to her, or even if they are complete. But, even the "truth" in the text they are writing cannot be trusted, and it is never quite clear who is responsible for the writing of it, and then the sending / delivery of it. In a similar way, beingness itself breaks apart, along with attempts at a linear unfolding and narrative denouement. In the fragmented reality, the only remaining touchpoints are emotions and ambition.

In this case, the lies involve the nature of Lanny and Vince's friendship, and their vexed relationship with females, which is masked by their aggressive womanizing. It does not seem too coincidental that all three seducing women (Karen, Maureen, and "Alice") in the film are femmes fatales who physically resemble each other. It is also not too surprising that Karen, who claimed to have overcome polio through force of mind demonstrates a no-holds-barred will to power in her dealings with Lanny and Vince.

Perhaps the most poignant potential message in the film is embodied in Kevin Bacon's performance: all the strength, passion, anger, loyalty, and good fortune in the world do not knit reality into a seamless, understandable fabric.

To use another image to represent Egoyan's approach to narrative, reality, and perception: think of a big, rotating, mirrored ball, where all is fragmented, infinitely repeating and reflecting, but not ever quite knowable, slowly, slowly revolving.

Personal Viewpoint: While this film is not the brilliant Exotica, it contains the elements that made me love Egoyan's directorial vision, and it is well worth watching.

WORKSHEET QUESTIONS (for discussion board and reflective journal)

How to practice "active viewing" while watching films for courses:

1. Camera Work: What types of establishing shots are used? When are they used? What are they followed by?

2. Are there any tight-angle shots? How are they used? Any strange angles?

3. What is the narrative structure? What does it do to the film?

4. When do you see two-shots and tight close-ups? How do they make suggestions about the relationships of the people in the film?

5. How are different times, worlds, or emotional landscapes differentiated from each other? Are there differentiating sets? lighting? colors? How, when, and where? List at least two scenes.

6. What is the basic narrative flow? Jump cuts? Different narrators? Unreliable narrators telling their stories?

7. What do the spaces look like where the protagonists spend their time? Are they open? claustrophobic? elegant? down at the heels?

8. How does the cinematography emphasize certain behaviors that the protagonists engage in. How does the approach suggest a moral value judgement?

9. How do the costumes, soundtrack, and sets contribute to the idea that reality is often nothing more than a hallucination; that the truth is not in the appearance of things or unfolding of events, but in the fears, desires, and taboo attachments that one might have.?

10. Discuss the nature of the memoir that is being written. Who is writing it? Who is sending the chapters? Where? When? To whom? If anything, by fragmenting the text, it suggest fragmentation in the narrative, the lives, and also the explanations...

Moodle 2.0 Multimedia Cookbook: A Review

Packt Publishing's Moodle 2.0 Multimedia Cookbook solves a number of problems that Moodle users often encounter, especially online programs (graduate and undergraduate) that foreground collaborative, interactive learning environments.

The multimedia cookbook addresses two core challenges. The first challenge is that of creating relevent, effective, nicely-sized and ready-to-use multimedia. The other has to do with the integratability of the learning objects.

To step back a moment, let's take a look at Moodle's core contributions to the learning management arena. Moodle's discussion-based approach to learning fosters a dynamic, interactive elearning space, which is one of Moodle's huge drawing points. Another is the fact that it is a friendly environment for incorporating other Open Source embeds and elements. This means that you can plug in, for example, elements you've built with Wordle or smooth slide presentations from Xerte. There are also opportunities to incorporate multimedia elements -- providing, of course, you're able to build the multimedia elements.

One of the frustrating things about using Open Source software is that it often feels that you're constrained to a single template or approach, and it's all too easy to break the template when you try to make alterations. To overcome the limitations, it's tempting to become a template collector, but that is often like hammering pieces from five different jigsaw puzzles together to make a single puzzle.

What is needed is an object-oriented approach that allows you to build and customize objects that fit together seemlessly.

The nice thing about the cookbook approach is that it's completely seamless and it allows you to develop reusable components and building blocks that are unique, customizable, and imminently functional.

Here are my responses to a few of the chapters and their contents.

Chapter 1: Creating Interactive User eXperiences

I like the fact that there are opportunities to learn how to create True and False quizzes and integrate them in Moodle. I'm not a big fan of T-F quizzes, but I suppose they do have their place. There are also mazes and ways to match activities with scenes and opportunities to link external 2D and 3D interactive activities. These are, in essence, mashups (integrated apps). Like all mashups, if one app dies, the whole thing dies, so you might need to proceed with caution.

Chapter 2: Working with 2D and 3D Maps

This chapter gives you a way to use resources like Google maps in a very interactive and meaningful way (far beyond simply linking to a location or embedding a screenshot). Using Google maps to locate European bridges is one example that makes one think of military applications and/or emergency preparedness courses. At any rate, what I like about this chapter is that it encourages the designer to think of ways learners can situate their learning / knowledge.

Chapter 4: Integrating Interactive Documents

The heavy reliance of this chapter on Open Office documents creates a very big caveat in my mind, since Open Office is not always the easiest, most compatible solution for all users. The other caveat I have is that using Google Docs is great for collaboration (and is often used in conjunction with LMS's like the University of Delaware is using Google Docs with Sakai). That said, there are inherent security risks, so be sure to talk to your IT team before jumping into this solution.

Chapter 5: Working with Audio, Sound, Music, and Podcasts

This chapter has great tips for building mp3 files using open source software and also incorporating existing audio. It's a great tool and very useful for people who want to have material they can play on multiple devices and to have a truly mobile solution.

Chapter 6: Creating and Integrating Screencasts and Videos

In the last two years, YouTube has become an incredibly robust solution for creating educational videos which are also compliant with regulations that ask for subtitles and annotations. I'm not sure I'm as convinced about using Dailymotion videos -- I'm not sure how permanent the files are. Like any solution, the more you rely on outside websites, the more likely it is that you'll have to update content and links on a regular basis. That said, these "recipes" are easy to use.

Chapter 9: Designing and Integrating E-portfolios

This chapter brings together many of the learning objects and integrates them under the umbrella of the e-portfolio. I have just one quibble here. While I really like the idea of using Googld Docs for the portfolio, I'm not sure about using a Box.net portfolio. Box.net is not open source, and while there is a free version, it's very light and I'm not sure it's good for the purposes intended. How is it different than, say, adrive.com and other cloud storage options? Rackspace is one that's not free, but trusted.

Interview with Bryce Bertola, Park City Independent; Innovative Education Providers Series

Welcome to an interview with Bryce Bertola, of Park City Independent, an accredited online high school which provides online courses to students who wish to take courses not offered by their local high school. It also offers middle school courses and courses for adults who would like to complete their high school diploma rather than obtaining a GED. One of the benefits of having a bona fide high school diploma is that it enables individuals to go on for a bachelors and then graduate programs.

1. What is your name and your relation to e-learning?

My name is Bryce Bertola and I'm the webmaster for Park City Independent, an accredited online high school. I'm completing my bachelors degree in Information Systems at the University of Utah with a mix of online and traditional classes. I've used a variety of high school and college level e-learning solutions, and have done very well within the virtual classroom setting.

2. What are the new directions in elearning that interest you most?

What interests me most is the increasing access to specialized topics through e-learning, as well as the convenience of a self-paced course schedule. You don't have to have a topic expert within your school district in order to learn about something, instead you can turn to an online provider and it can then be reflected on your transcripts.

Bryce Bertola, Park City Independent

During high school, I desperately wanted to learn about web publishing and design, but there wasn't a teacher on staff that was qualified to teach such a program. Instead I had to learn things the hard way, by myself, through a variety of web based instructional sites. I'm excited at the prospect of a wide array of specialized courses that high school students could earn credit for taking.

3. What are some of the problems in today's world that e-learning can address?

One of the major problems today is the rising cost of higher education. As tuition rates continue to rise, students are getting priced out of the market: Many of them opting to discontinue their education entirely. In addition to an increasingly expensive education, limited access to advanced courses also creates significant barriers. e-Learning is a much more cost-effective method of delivering course content, and there is no limit to the course material an instructor might choose to provide.

4. How has e-learning changed in the last 5 years? How has it improved and where?

People are waking up to the idea that e-learning is a legitimate source of knowledge. 5 years ago, what I saw as the perception of e-learning really downplayed its effectiveness in favor of a hands-on instruction. Since then the vehicles for delivering quality content have improved, and as people gain more exposure to online learning, and more web based educational services come about, that perception has faded away.

5. How are e-learners changing? What are their emerging needs?

It's a tough economy, and many people have a lot on their plate. Todays e-learners are seeking flexibility above and beyond what the traditional classroom can offer, otherwise they wouldn't be able to fit everything into a normal week. With a years-long recovery ahead of us, I think that funding for public education will remain low, and schools are going to be forced to explore more affordable options.

6. What do you think e-learning will look like in 5 years?

I think that in 5 years, e-learning will be a necessary part of a standard high school curriculum, and that colleges will rely on e-learning tools for much of their standardized courses. Not only that, but individual topic experts will start providing their own specialized courses, either through public or private outlets.

Maximizing Your Training and Professional Development Return on Investment

How do you value training when your core business is, in essence, built on and around new products and services that involve ongoing training? For example, what do you do if you provide hosting services, cloud hosting, webinars, or learning management systems?

It requires an entirely new way of looking at education in the organization. Training and education used to be the first budget items to be cut in an organization’s budget, particularly among companies that tended to look at education and training as a reward, perk, or worse, a junket. However, the old notions are moving aside as the pace of technological advancement accelerates and training / education become an integral component of the products and services that an enterprise or an individual offers.

For example, if your company has expanded its exploration and development operations and has decided to enter the wild and woolly world of resource plays, it’s imperative that the geology and geophysics staff gain a solid understanding of horizontal drilling, image logs, 3D seismic, pore pressure, and hydraulic fracturing. Without a good working knowledge of those areas, it will be very difficult to make good decisions or to evaluate opportunities.

Your Company’s Ever-Evolving Products and Services: When Training and New Product Development Are More or Less the Same Thing

Training and education on specific topics related to the company’s core business are mission-critical to the general operations of a company. However, the idea that the company offers products and services that it is continually creating and implementing on the fly is rather revolutionary. It’s a characteristic of today’s climate that we are constantly learning / evolving; and clearly the risks are perhaps as high as the rewards.

If your line of products and services is evolving quickly, and you’re counting on innovation to fuel sales and build market share, where and how does the knowledge transfer take place? The flow of information can be trickier than it first appears, especially when the new lines evolve quickly, and may be in the mind of an individual / creator, who may not be particularly adept at communicating his/her vision in a way that is accessible -- either physically or cognitively.

Training and Professional Development Result in Cost Savings

Reducing waste and cutting unnecessary expenditures are time-tested ways to have a positive impact your company’s bottom line. However, cutting costs should not be a “slash and burn” operation. You may be cutting core capabilities or reducing capacity in areas where you need to be building capacity. But, how do you make prudent cost-cutting decisions? Often, it’s a matter of having sufficient knowledge and insight -- insight that can be gained by successfully completing training and education. An investment of $20,000 in providing training to a group of decision-makers in the company could result in $100,000 or more of cost savings in operations.

Training and Education to Avoid Accidents and Mistakes

Further, you could avoid million-dollar mistakes. The challenge is to legitimately measure the cost savings directly attributable to the training. Companies that are concerned with their “education ROI” look at the company’s organization-wide spending / cost reduction decisions, and then they match the areas of training with the areas where the cost decisions have taken place.

Example -- Hydraulic Fracturing: Skimping on Training Could Result In Environmental, Political Nightmares

Many European countries are considering promoting exploration for shale oil and gas, which will necessitate large hydraulic fracs when the time comes to produce. Horizontal drilling will also require large volumes of drilling fluid. What this means is that there is a possibility of accidents, spills, and contamination due to poor decisions and human error. Thus, training / education -- of the service companies, the operators, and the regulatory agents are mission critical.

Compliance

The area of compliance gets into the issue of what happens if you fail to provide evidence that your crew and your professionals have secured the necessary licenses to demonstrate competence in areas that required specialized skill and knowledge. You put yourself and your company at risk if personnel do not have adequate training. Further, you may not be able to obtain licenses or permits.

For example, in order to obtain drilling permits it is often required to demonstrate that the personnel involved have successfully completed training in certain areas, which could include HAZMAT, safety, environment, confined spaces, and corrosion control training.

Cause and Effect: When There’s a Success, How Much Credit Should Training Get?

When a program is successful, there is no shortage of people eager to take credit. Likewise, when a new product or service is profitable, everyone likes to be the originator of it. However, there are often multiple factors and more than one origin of success, several of which are often overlooked. Training is one of those. For example, a creative problem solving course, combined with training on the use of micro-seis and 3D seismic might lead to new ways to envision a reservoir, with the result of more prolific wells.

Training and education clearly played a role, but that role is often overlooked in favor of the technologies, the new products used, and human capital (the technical team, along with leadership). However, it’s easy to leave it out of the equation. The tricky thing about not acknowledging training’s positive role is that when it is cut out, it’s not always obvious that part of the reason for a company’s lackluster performance has to do with the loss of training.

Making a Case for Innovative Training Approaches

It is tempting to think of training as a place where you fight back the urge to sleep as you passively watch a person behind a podium mumble in a monotone as he/she advances all-text slides in a PowerPoint presentation. The most effective training, however, is situated and it is collaborative.

Using Virtual Libraries

What that means in operational terms is that you’re most likely to remember and apply knowledge you’ve learned on the job, in the real-life situation. Further, you’re more likely to be able to synthesize and problem-solve if you’ve learned the material while interacting with others. Share ideas, listen to theirs, and work on problems together. The team approach works in the training space as well as in the work space.

As you consider training, think of it as mobile and on-demand. Seek out online educational solutions, and see how much you can do with your mobile device(s).

Then, above all, as you or your company approach training, look at it from a revenue center approach (rather than a cost center). How can you leverage training so that it actually translates into a revenue stream? Be creative, and be unafraid of unusual combinations.

This column first appeared in AAPG's Division of Professional Affairs newsletter, The Correlator.

History Teaching with Moodle

History Teaching with Moodle offers instructors, instructional designers, and SMEs a clear, step-by-step guide to building a medieval history course which can be used as a point of departure for online college classes, online history degree programs, in addition to secondary-level courses such as advanced placement for history. Author John Mannion uses attention-getting and engaging content including photos and diagrams of real castles to work through building a course in Moodle.

Mannion does a very nice job providing examples, screenshots, and step-by-step instructions. It is not really within the scope of the book to discuss learning theory or to address philosophical questions about why one studies history.

However, it is useful to bear in mind that cognitive skills such as identification, classification, comparison, evaluation, and analysis are at the core of history. Students need to know how to identify significant dates, activities, technological developments, political movements, as well as the people and places of history. At the same time, they need to be able to synthesize information and to be willing to “reprocess” – not simply deconstruct motives and reasons that lie behind events.

History Teaching with Moodle does a very nice job of guiding instructors and instructional designers through the process of creating content and building meaningful activities. He’s also included tips on incorporating audio using opensource software (Audacity) as well as a tool for making beautiful presentation screens (Xerte).

While Mannion does not cover every possible activity or assessment possible in an effective online course, he provides the basics in a very clear way. For the best possible use of Moodle for teaching history, subject matter experts and instructional designers can combine Mannion's approach with content available through shared repositories (MERLOT, etc.), or in conjunction with textbook-provided digital content.

Enhancing Science Courses: New Series! OpenPlans for Enhancing E-Learning

E-Learning Queen is excited to launch a new series of course plans, E-Learning Queen OpenPlans, that can be used / adapted / adopted for your use in creating e-learning and m-learning courses. A core goal is to facilitate continual process / quality improvement of elearning courses, programs, and content. For that reason, E-Learning Queen OpenPlans are most likely to be of interest to course developers, curriculum directors, subject matter experts, instructional designers, as well as instructors.

E-Learning Queen OpenPlans are not designed to be an entire course, but are plans for enhancing existing courses, and developing new ones that incorporate an open architecture mindset, with continuous improvement / quality enhancement, that adaptively respond to new technologies, curriculum needs, learner intent, and more.

Key emphasis is on materials that are accessible via handhelds and tablets, which encourage social networking and collaboration, and which allow for cloud-based deployment in an LMS or CMS.

E-Learning Queen OpenPlan: Enhancing Science E-Learning

DESCRIPTION

The goal of the course is to help support sciences and math, namely earth sciences, in the school by giving educators powerful new tools and techniques. This course provides educators with an overview of effective strategies for creating engaging, experiential, standards-based learning experiences for (elementary, mid-level, secondary) students which the educators can implement in the classroom, in guided field trips, in the student's home or community.

The course offers a review of tools that help align standards with the components used in planning lessons, which include instructional materials, in-class or field activities, laboratory activities, repositories of media resources, lesson plan libraries, and assessment instruments. It also makes connections between current events and the underlying science that helps provide explanations and analyses.

In addition, the course will examine where and how the reach can extend beyond the classroom to have a positive impact on families and communities as they deepen their knowledge of the earth and earth processes. The course emphasizes making connections between theory and practice, and encourages applying knowledge to current events and natural phenomena.

This course is offered as an online course for 100% online delivery or as a hybrid course.

OpenPlan Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of the course, the learner will be able to

1. Identify resources that align standards with the main concepts found in an earth science course;

2. List standards that must be incorporated in a course;

3. Identify activities that align with standards

4. Identify instructional material that aligns with standards

5. Create lesson plans that successfully deliver engaging content or activities while aligning with standards

6. Identify high-quality earth science media resources that can be used in the classroom or for at-home study

7. Evaluate cost-effective earth-science related laboratory or hands-on in-class activities

8. Develop alternative assessments that determine if students have achieved learning goals

OpenPlan Architecture

Part I: Earth Science Now

What makes earth science exciting?

How do high-impact earth science lessons help achieve standards-based testing goals?

Part II: Exciting and Effective Hands-On Activities

What makes an activity effective?

Matching activity to standards

Evaluating activities

Examples of activities

Designing / planning your own activity (workshop activity)

Part III: Effective & Dynamic Content -- Maps and Printed / Online Materials

What makes instructional materials effective?

Matching materials to standards

Evaluating and selecting materials

Examples of using materials in lessons

Designing a lesson with materials you've found (workshop activity)

Part IV: The Earth Comes Alive through After-School “Earthwork”? Team and Community Learning

Encouraging curiosity outside the classroom

Going home with eyes open

Home work / at-home assignments

Earth Clubs

Part V: Assessment Strategies / Demonstrating Knowledge

Part VI: TeacherShare Network: Lesson Plan Repositories

Teacher-Share

Ways to Network

Earth Clubs

Resources and Repositories

(Lists / Websites)

Tie-In with OpenCourseWare?

OpenPlans encourage integration with OpenCourseWare initiatives, OpenSource software, and easily shared repositories of learning objects.

AAPG OpenCourseWare in Petroleum Geology

http://zenzebra.net/aapg-opencourseware/

Giant Oil and Gas Fields
Introduction to Shale Gas
Unconventional Resources

Introduction to Carbon Sequestration
Geological Sequestration
Carbon Capture, Transportation and Operations
CCS Supply, Demand, Legal and Regulatory Issues

Science Teaching with Moodle 2.0: A Review

Science Teaching with Moodle 2.0 addresses an urgent need. Teaching science as well as health courses can be a challenge in the average online course, due to specialized vocabulary, symbols and annotations, applied math, flow charts, graphics, and charts. For example, courses on organic chemistry, environmental science, earth sciences, zoology, anatomy, teen health, and more can be very dynamic in Moodle. Moodle's basic structure, which is built around interactions and discussion forums, may be a challenge for instructional designers and instructors due to the fact that the organization may not align with the sequence that may be best for learning science. For that reason, it's often useful to take advantage of Moodle's flexibility with plug-ins and outside programs. Further, Moodle's structure encourages collaboration and interaction, which means that online labs with lab partners and peers.

To get the most of Moodle and to develop an effective science course, one can turn to guidebooks, one of which has been published by Packt Publishing. Science Teaching with Moodle 2.0 provides guidance for those who are new to Moodle, as well as ideas for experienced Moodle users. A sample chapter is available online (Monitoring Your Students' Progress) and can help develop strategies for improving student success rates.

Scientific terms and definitions: Moodle's capacity to incorporate wikis and glossaries is a good starting point for science courses that require the mastery of terms and concepts. Chapter 6 covers this point.

Math equations, with the incorporation of symbols and specific characters, are often sticking points in all learning management systems. This text provides a step-by-step guide for incorporating science-specific tools, embedding graphics and molecular models. Chapter 7 is a good "go-to" chapter for tips and tricks.

Virtual Labs Partners: The text is very thorough when it comes to inspiring learner engagement and also incorporating many applications and tools (many of which are open-source, some of which are probably destined to be fairly ephemeral). However, it does not address the issue of what makes science classes unique, and how and why they require a unique approach to learning. The core idea of testing hypotheses in order to model reality, and to create logical structures that explain how phenomena work in our world is absolutely mission-critical. Science is all about empirical evidence or mathematical formulae to provide support for a model; as such, science is a discourse of explanation that is constantly in transition as technology and methods of investigation advance.

The Scientific Method: Science Teaching with Moodle 2.0 really should provide underpinnings, and the fact that it does not represents an opportunity for those who like to develop courses and incorporate original content. As they do so, teachers and instructional designers who are willing to include scientific mindsets and epistemologies have the opportunity to help motivate online teachers to think of themselves as in the vanguard, rather than lagging behind the traditional classroom.

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Podcast! Listen to an interview with Susan Smith Nash on OnTeachingOnline.com

OpenSource Webinar Software: Updated List of Platforms and Software/Plugins

Are you outgrowing your webinar capacity? Do you need more flexibility, lower cost, and more control? Open source may be a great solution for you, particularly as solutions evolve and popular opensource learning solutions such as Moodle offer convenient and relatively easy-to-implement plug-ins. There are open source solutions for many organizational needs (college, university, association, business, school), and there are also services that will host for you.

One of E-Learning Queen's most popular posts in the past detailed open source webinar solutions. You may still visit that post. Times change quickly, though, and many of the solutions listed there are no longer viable.

So, as a service to readers, E-Learning Queen is publishing an updated list. Please feel free to share your experiences with the solutions. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Moodle Solutions

Moodle Plugin from Sclipo

http://sclipo.com/plugins/moodle

Download from SourceForge

http://sourceforge.net/projects/moodlewebclass/

Step-by-step Install Guide Moodle on Linux with Sclipo Live Web Class on Linux v1.4

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17658143/Stepbystep-Install-Guide-Moodle-on-Linux-with-Sclipo-Live-Web-Class-on-Linux-v14

Free PHP Code: http://phpkode.com/source/p/moodle-live-classes-and-webinar-plugin/sclipowebclass/index.php

Video Tutorials: How to install Sclipo

http://wn.com/sclipo

Bundled Open Source Solutions

BigBlueButton

http://bigbluebutton.org/

Uses all open-source components (http://bigbluebutton.org/components)

Colloquium

http://sourceforge.net/projects/colloquium/

Colloquium is a pedagogical tool for presenting online webcasts with supplementary materials. Streaming video is combined with a rich set of support materials - live chat, threaded discussion, and links.

Webcasting Plus

DCAST

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dcast/

EasyCast

http://easycast.sourceforge.net/

Easy in use system of scripts to organize webcast from conferences and other such events. Allows maintaining video stream and presentation viewing together with asking questions from internet.

Desktop Sharing

Apreta

http://sourceforge.net/projects/apreta/

Apreta is about sharing information in real-time meetings. It provides desktop sharing, presentation sharing, a shared whiteboard, and audio conferencing.

Desktop Share - Class Room Integration (CRI)

http://cri.sourceforge.net/

This is a web application that enables integration between the teacher and student in a virtual classroom. The application gives users the ability to share a desktop with Teacher/Coordinator/Admin and Student can share his her desktop with Teacher/Coordinator/Admin.

Wedatoo

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wedatoo/

Wedatoo is an open source point to point realtime collaboration application like google talk which features text chat, file transfers, audio/video conferencing, whiteboard, image sharing and desktop sharing/control modeled on google talk.

DimDim

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dimdim/

http://www.dimdim.com

DimDim has an opensource webinar solution which is, at this point, free. DimDim has been acquired by Salesforce.com. We will see what happens.

Webmeeting

http://sourceforge.net/projects/webmeeting/

Web Conferencing system allow you to conduct the web conference around the globe. The system allow to share the desktop , application, dashboard, voice chatting and video conferencing.

ILIAS LMS

http://www.ilias.de/docu/

A full-featured opensource learning management system. Not apparent whether or not it has a plugin that allows webinars / webcasting with chat / whiteboard.

Webcasting

UStream

http://www.ustream.tv

Streaming and webcasting do not have the interactivity of a packaged solution of WebEx, Omnovia, or GoToMeeting. However, you can piggyback services, and use UStream in conjunction with messaging / doc sharing

DVLabs

http://www.dvlabs.com/services.php

Stripped-down basic functionality?

Sofia-SIP

http://sofia-sip.sourceforge.net/

Session Initiation Protocol software

Moodle 2.0 for Business: Review

Moodle for business? It may seem far-fetched, but if you have Moodle in your organization, chances are, you're using it as your learning management system for 100% online or hybrid courses and you have the capacity and experience to use it for more. Moodle has the power and flexibility to be used for multiple purposes within the organization, and a recent publication by Packt Publishing, Moodle 2.0 for Business Beginner's Guide, by Gaven Henrick, Jeanne Cole, and Jason Cole is filled with good ideas.

For example, one can use Moodle in the hiring and interviewing process as a way to manage content and to collaborate with the search committee.

Perhaps one of the most compelling uses of Moodle is to use it for compliance training. Depending on the amount of instructional material readily available, Moodle can be set up very quickly and can accommodate a wide variety of roles and users. You can customize content and can track learning very easily. The interactive elements and collaborative tools are perfect for answering questions and role-playing.

If you have in-house Moodle support staff, an open-source solution can make a lot of sense as opposed to an off-the-shelf solution where you and your users essentially rent digits from the content provider / publisher. Moodle allows you to purchase (or buy a license) to use the instructional material, so you'll still work with the publisher. In this case, however, at the end of the day, you still have control over the way the material is presented, the way that assessment is administered, and how records are maintained.

Using Moodle for compliance training is specifically addressed in Chapter Four, a download of which is available here:

Chapter Four: Managing Compliance Training (http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/4200OS-Chapter-4-Moodle-for-Managing-Compliance-Training.pdf?utm_source=packtpub&utm_medium=free&utm_campaign=pdf)

Moodle is a flexible and powerful platform for knowledge management and transfer. It is interesting to see how it might be used training your personnel on new products and on rollouts. It can also be used as a talent management system in the sense that you can make it your "go to" place for training, and you can track the progress and completion of courses by employees and/or students.

Some of the applications in this book may seem a bit far-fetched on the face of it. However, these are usually accompanied by case studies, which help demonstrate how the task was organized and executed.

Perhaps one of the biggest potential money-savers / revenue generators could be to use Moodle for web conferencing. There are a few open source plug-ins that work with Moodle. One is BigBlueButton, which is an open source solution which has been constructed of other open-source components. Moodle 2.0 for Business includes step-by-step instructions for using it.

One powerful open source webinar plugin that this book does not mention is Sclipo's Moodle plugin. Moodle Live Classes and Webinar Plug-in by Sclipo can be downloaded free at Sourceforge, and it will enable live classes and webinars through Moodle.

Moodle 2.0 for Business discusses the enterprise itself and enterprise solutions. The text covers ways to integrate Moodle with other systems -- it may be a bit challenging, but the information is available, and the possibilities have been suggested. As in the case of all open-source solutions, a pro-active approach and a willingness to experiment (and to continue experimenting) are almost always rewarded.

Interview with Emad Rizkalla, Bluedrop Performance Learning: Innovators in E-Learning Series

Finding cost-effective ways to provide e-learning to small users and to online institutions offering online education has been a challenge from the very beginning of e-learning, and many attempts have been made to provide "on-demand" repositories of courses, some with instruction, some without. Many of the solutions provided a cloud-based solution, with hosting of the entire process, while others simply provided the content (along with cartridges that would fit in the most commonly used LMS solutions). Many have had middling success, but found they could not sustain their model, either due to high overhead or undercapitalization, or both. Coursepark, developed by Bluedrop Performance, is taking an approach that pares down the LMS features and focuses primarily on the e-learning process rather than the technologies that facilitate it.

What is your name and your connection to e-learning?

My name is Emad Rizkalla and I am the President and CEO of Bluedrop Performance Learning. And I am also the President of our CoursePark Division. I began this company as a student in Mechanical Engineering to commercialize a class design project in 1992. I have been involved in e-learning since 1996 when we fell into the space while working with a French Pharmaceutical company. In 2000, I was profiled in TIME Magazine as one of 10 “Young Dynamic Entrepreneurs Who Will Create The 21st Century”.

For the past 15 years, Bluedrop has been a pioneer in the eLearning space, mostly by developing customized courseware for clients. In 7 different industries Bluedrop counts the global leader as its client. We have about 100 employees in five offices in Canada and the US and that is growing very quickly.

2. What is CoursePark? What is the underlying concept? What are CoursePark's functions? Who can use it? When? How? Why?

CoursePark aims to become the world’s Learning site where individuals and companies can select from thousands of courses by top publishers and experts. Companies can select or build courses to assign to employees, customers and partners…then track the results. Individuals can create their Lifelong Learning Profile and connect to others. All types of users can build, sell, share or rate courses. In the past few months alone, 25,000 new users from 50 countries have registered for CoursePark.

For companies, CoursePark provides a strong alternative to the traditional LMS. Simply put, CoursePark is where people go to build, buy, take, administer and schedule training. The underlying concept is that CoursePark is built from the “learner up”… not the “company down”. CoursePark delivers value to individuals in managing their lifelong Learning Profile and sharing it with colleagues or employers. This value to individual employees also makes it a logical choice for companies to manage their corporate learning.

Anyone can use CoursePark—in seconds.

3. What are some of the gaps you see in course management / learning management systems today?

Traditional LMSs are overloaded with many unnecessary features that have been put in place to compete against each other in the “LMS War”. They are pricy and complicated... and mostly geared towards larger organizations. Most companies need technical people to implement and use them and sometimes corporations take years to evaluate, select, implement and populate an LMS. More importantly traditional LMS’ have ignored a key ingredient... focus on the learner! Learning management systems, in the traditional sense, cater overwhelmingly to corporate interests and offer little for the employee which results in minimal employee engagement.

The “corporate university” is a dinosaur that no one buys into anymore. Alternately, CoursePark is the true embodiment of individual learning and empowerment. It combines individual learning autonomy, corporate training structure and a dash of the virtual water cooler. Simply put, it contains all the elements for individuals and corporations to build a true learning culture. And there is no “IT guy” required!

4. Please explain how you see elearning evolving over the next few years.

Loaded Question. First of all, content is becoming more difficult to source due to the proliferation of options. Learners tell us overwhelmingly they want to go to one place for courseware – it doesn’t matter if it is company mandated training, professional development or personal development. Banking has been “person centered” for decades. Health information is moving towards “patient centered” models…. Likewise, we believe that learning histories will also become “person centered” so individuals can control and share this date and don’t find themselves chasing this data all over the web.

As the new generation of workers cycle through workplaces eLearning will evolve accordingly. These groups of younger workers tend to combine learning, working and entertainment—and their optimum learning curve will become a mix of the three. eLearning platforms will encompass more social learning features and will become “smarter”, help identify learning styles and recommend appropriate courses. In addition, with the increasing use of iPads and mobile devices, eLearning delivery platforms will expand into these spaces. We constantly monitor how eLearning requirements progress and will continue to add features to keep CoursePark on the cutting edge of technology and delivery.

5. What do you think are the key determinants in student success, including retention and graduation rates?

In the corporate world, we look for performance and behavioral changes that occur as a result of the training that we develop for clients. Has the number of safety incidents decreased? Are people faster and more efficient in the operation or repair of a particular piece of machinery? Is time to competency for a particular action reduced?

From an individual learner perspective, we look to ensure first of all that content is being “pulled” by eager learners versus being “pushed” by desperate employers. Then we also look to see if the employee is achieving their particular learning needs.

We believe that by empowering the learners this will increase individual success. CoursePark allows learners to take charge of their learning futures at their convenience and at their own pace. We also aim to let every learner become their own learning institution by contributing to discussions, rating courses and even building their courses with our CourseBuilder tool. Many studies link successful uptake in a corporate learning environment to A) a great platform B) great courses C) having a communication plan, D) tying e-learning into performance reviews E) recognizing learning achievement in the organization and F) calling or contacting users within the first 2 weeks of them registering for a new course (to see how they are doing).

Our success for clients—is ultimately measured by our impact on employee turnover, increased employee morale, a reduction in corporate training costs and an overall return on investment. Not easy to measure—but critical to focus on!