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!

Interview with Mac Adkins, SmarterServices: Innovators in E-Learning Series

Colleges find that they can help their students by providing support services such as tutoring and writing lab / math lab support in a distributed, online environment. The colleges and universities that are primarily online find they often need to offer a variety of courses and support services which often include links to Purdue's Online Writing Lab, the West Texas A&M Math Lab, and others including learning readiness tools, including SmarterServices.

Welcome to an interview with Mac Adkins, CEO and founder of SmarterServices, an array of services that help online students succeed.

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

My name is Mac Adkins, with SmarterServices (http://www.smarterservices.com/) We provide four web-based services that schools use primarily in their distance learning departments. Our services measure online student readiness, collect & report perceptions of course effectiveness from students, provide a searchable database of online faculty, and provide a searchable database of neutral testing proctors.Please see the information on our Products page at http://www.smarterservices.com/products.cfm

How has your vision / mission changed over the last few years?

What caused it to expand, change, become modified?SmarterServices was founded in 2002 as DECADE Consulting (Distributed Education Consulting And Development Experts). Our initial mission was to identify common problems in leading distance education programs and then develop low-cost yet robust resources. After doing that for four years, we had crafted a "tool box" of resources that many schools were using to make their distance education programs stronger. In 2006 we changed the name of the company to eLearningToolBox to denote the set of tools that we provided to distance learning leaders.

Toward the end of that decade, schools were using our tools across the enterprise and not just in their eLearning programs. At that point we recognized that the name eLearningToolBox was a limiting descriptor. In 2010 we changed the name to SmarterServices. At the same time we also changed the name of each of our four products using a consistent naming strategy with the word "smarter" as the first part of the product name.

Since 2002 over 830,000 students from over 500 colleges, universities, K-12 schools, and corporations have used our tools and services.

What do you see as the most important emerging trend of the last 18 months?

What do you see emerging right now? How will the emerging trends of today affect tomorrow's elearning environment? In the last 18 months the emerging trend has been passing the educational buck on to the students. Because of the declining budgets of most states schools have had to reduce services and/or increase prices. The cost of education, in most cases especially online learning, has substantially increased.

What often happens is that the students then finance these increased costs through student loans. Now as those students are finishing their degree programs their student loans are coming due yet the economy is not much better and many of them are experiencing problems obtaining gainful employment with their degrees. In the next 18 months I see mobile learning as being a growing trend.

Students are expecting to be able to engage in their learning experience using small segments of time as they connect through their mobile devices such as smart phones, tablet computers, etc. Most of the major learning management systems providers are not scrambling to make sure that their interfaces and communications channels are accessible through these mobile devices.

Where do you see the biggest bright spots in education for at-risk populations?

I am not sure in which sense you are using the term “at-risk populations.” So if my response does not fit your question please let me know. I consider the term “at-risk population” to mean a subset of learners who are at-risk of not doing well in an online course due to individual attributes, skill sets, or external circumstances. It is a fact that some learners are more ready to learn at a distance than others. I think the bright spot is that schools are not realizing this and doing something about it.

Very often the first thing they do about it is using the SmarterMeasure Learning Readiness Indicator to identify the students who may be at risk. Then they are providing appropriate forms of remediation and support to make them better equipped to succeed. Finally they are using forms of business intelligence such as online course participation metrics that can be harvested from learning management systems to quickly flag students who are not participating at an acceptable level then intervening with appropriate forms of communication.

Using these three steps of assessment, remediation and monitoring schools are not longer just tossing the at-risk students into the pool and hoping that they can swim.

What do you do to assure that online assessment is the best it can be?

The only assessment that I can speak for is the online assessment that we provide – the SmarterMeasure Learning Readiness Indicator. Almost monthly we make enhancements to the assessment and/or the related services.

These enhancements almost exclusively come from suggestions for improvement from the schools and students that are using the service. In addition to this constantly evolving process every other year we have a professional psychometrician conduct an item analysis to make sure the reliability and validity of the assessment remains strong.

Moodle Security: A Review

Even if you're using a third-party service for your learning management system (LMS), it is still important to be mindful of security, and to understand the ins and outs of where the vulnerabilities exist. For Moodle administrators, the issue of security is important on a number of levels. First, are privacy issues and regulations; second, are integrity issues, as you seek to keep your information and data intact; third, are authentication issues to protect users. Finally, is the issue of ongoing bot activity that can potentially hijack your server and make it perform in ways that you would prefer it not to.

Packt Publishing's Moodle Security (https://www.packtpub.com/toc/moodle-security-table-contents) addresses concerns of both administrators and users. The book provides information that can be helpful in addressing the very real legal liabilities that occur with security breaches.



The organization of the book is easy to follow, and screen shots allow the user to work through the processes in a step-by-step way, and it allows both Linux and Windows users to implement security protocols for Moodle.

The first several chapters have to do with securing Linux and Windows servers. The chapters that deal with authentication, roles, and permissions include a variety of configurations, that include installation procedures.

On the side of user authentication and content assurance, the chapters are thorough and clear. Some current and ever-evolving threats -- bots, viruses, and other types of vulnerabilities are dealt with on a conceptual level as well as with step-by-step instructions.

One area that could be expanded in the Moodle Security is the underlying approach to computer forensics and historical approaches to determining crime / criminal elements.

Note: This title and other Moodle titles are available at a discount through the publisher for a limited time. (Moodle March campaign).

Reality TV and E-Learning: The Next Frontier? Three Possible Edu-Reality Shows

Are you one of the 2 million or so viewers who watched Charlie Sheen's UStream show (Sheen's Korner) within the first week of its broadcast? Are you one of his 2 million Twitter followers? If so, you may have witnessed a new form of reality television -- one that could have applicability to e-learning. There are courses that study cultural and sociological phenomena, and there are entire degree programs that focus on trying to make sense of our rapidly evolving world. Why not consider new kinds of informal learning?

Let's look at where we are. So far, reality television and live news coverage functions as an enhancement to courses, but let's think of them as the course itself. What would it look like?

The idea of streaming video and live feeds of classrooms, surgical centers, and other instructional settings is definitely not new. One could argue it's as old as television itself -- how many people remember when children gathered around the television set brought into the classroom specifically to watch lift-off of the various NASA missions, starting with Gemini, and moving on with the Apollo missions, and the various space shuttles.



Reality television is a different prospect altogether. Certainly, recorded snippets and entire episodes are often woven into online courses as examples, case studies, and discussion / debate points. Think of various intervention shows, along with family and community relations / situations.

So, to return to the idea of reality television as the course itself, how would we do it? What would it look like?

Here are a few ideas / suggestions, which could all be extremely low-cost, especially if they're done via UStream (http://www.ustream.tv). The production values could be as low as in the case of the now notorious "Sheen's Korner" -- which can be seen either as a feeble attempt to usurp Conan O'Brien, or, a way to push the boundaries of reality television, particularly the "train wreck" genre. Celebrity meltdowns, unfortunately, tend to be the gift that keeps on giving -- the more you watch, the more mesmerized you become -- it's almost like watching clips of exotic pets mauling their hapless owners in Animal Planet's "Fatal Attractions" ("My Pet Crocodile").

You don't want to watch, but once you do, you want more and more. You ask yourself why, and all you can come up with is that there is something cathartic about tragedy (not exactly a new finding -- but ranks up there with the eternal verities) -- and, the Aristotelian ideas / precepts still hold: the tragic hero is compelling because of the essentially flawed nature of his/her beingness, and hubris resides at the core.

"There but for the grace of God ..." we intone because we all have a "hubris trigger" in our heart of hearts -- we all would love to be invincible and to somehow transcend / escape angst, pain, fear of death, and death itself.

But the tragic hero tends to die -- and to die prematurely -- precisely because he / she tried to cheat death, and to grab onto all the spoils of life -- wealth, glory, fame, progeny -- and the act of grasping is what triggered the downward spiral.

In very cogent terms, we can say that we participate in our own destruction and salvation. We position ourselves psychologically on the edge of the abyss, and, depending on our mood, we push ourselves over, or, we snatch ourselves back.

USTREAM EDU-REALITY PROGRAM #1: PET SHOP CHRONICLES

Needless to say, the opening credits would need to be accompanied by a link to something by the Pet Shop Boys -- my vote would go to "You Are Always On My Mind" but of course, it's up to the pet shop owner...

People have short attention spans. Keep it short. Keep it tight, and quickly shifting scenes and situations. I'd recommend five 3-minute scenarios that are shot live, but which have been planned in advance. I'd recommend a simple flow from one place / activity to another. Each activity would bring to bear real issues "teachable moments" that have to do with the following categories:

1 -- "Yes, we eat our young" -- The tragedy of overpopulation. Talk about the gerbils, white mice, and, well, the snakes.

2 -- "Sure, we can sell you a genetically engineered Rainbow Goldfish, but is this really what you want?" The dark side of extreme breeding.

3 -- "You make me sad when you make your breed do that!" Breed rescue situations -- why / how the popular way to deal with a breed leads to tragic exploitation (look at pugs, pit bulls, exotic popular pets, and more.

4 -- "I will pay you $5,000 for a Rhodesian Black Mamba" and other ethical dilemmas

5 -- Pet therapy saves lives -- how pet stores can help institute pet therapy in ways that no one really thought would work; and how people's lives are materially changed / benefited

USTREAM EDU-REALITY PROGRAM #2: MATH MATTERS
Here's a way to bring together the way we use math in every day matters, but do not realize how powerful the decisions can be when they are connected to real-life situations.

1 -- Casinos R Us: the mathematics of gaming / gambling

2 -- Insurance? What, Me Worry? Delusion is not always the best mindset to maintain when you are trying to live your life in a sustainable way.

3 -- Felicific Calculus Redux: Death Panels, Hospice, and Cost-Benefit Analyses of Keeping Hope Alive -- What do Jeremy Bentham and the purveyors of health plans have in common?

4 -- Was Malthus Right? The Corn Revolution Did Not Count on Technologies of Seeds, Husbandry, and Finance

5 -- Urban Patterns: Why Urban Planning Matters, or, How So Much Crime Is Geographically Determined

USTREAM EDU-REALITY PROGRAM #3: GEN ED LIVES! A RETAIL OPERATION WHERE THE EMPLOYEES LACK BASIC GEN ED ABILITIES -- AND THE CONSEQUENCES

This would be a 40-minute show (with commercial breaks, if you can find sponsors and advertisers) with 8 minutes per segment: the goal is to look at what people are doing, and to explore in a rather depthful way, what happens when one goes with the flow rather than hanging tough and enforcing an aggressively egalitarian view of competence and inclusion (essentially a meritocracy).

1 -- Twitter Backfire: What happens when you entrust your publicity to a person who is grammatically inept; the tweets erode your brand image!

2 -- Facebook Shame: Poor grammar, inadequate communication skills; your Facebook presence is suddenly a liability rather than an asset

3 -- Geographical Netherland: We try to go global, but it's not good when our employees think that Ecuador is in Africa.

4 -- Math Phobia Is No Longer Cool: A live feed of employees caught in painful math gaffes

5 -- The Leaderless Organization: Enlightened, Evolved, or Utterly Foolish?

Ratatat! I love it -- why not pull in music from MySpace and incorporate it as the reality soundtrack for reality elearning / education ... ??

My recommendation? Ratatat!! Please suggest your own (it's up to you...)

Find more artists like RATATAT at Myspace Music

Interview with Paul Cypher, NP Training Works. E-Learning Innovator Series

Finding affordable ways for associations to provide elearning for their members can be a challenge. Professional development, lifelong learning, certification, and skills-building are important to the members. Welcome to an interview with Paul Cypher, NP Training Works, a provider of elearning services for not-for-profits.

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

I am Paul Cypher. I am President & CEO of NP Training Works. We have been in the eLearning business since August 2009. I have been a trainer and adjunct professor at Medaille College for many years and have many experiences with eLearning as both a teacher and learner.

2. What is NPTrainingworks? How did it get started? What is its goal / mission / vision?

The NP Training Works eLearning Partnership Program was designed specifically for the needs of National, State, Regional and Local associations who serve members. Our partnership model gives our partners the ability to meet their mission of providing outstanding professional development options while creating a new revenue stream. Their members have access to more than 600 courses specifically designed for them. We partner with leading content experts to offer courses in compliance, management, leadership, finance, accounting, computer programs, IT, media, design, personal development, fundraising, marketing, human resources, program development and more - all provided within a learning platform user interface that is straightforward and easy to use.

Our Learning Management System (LMS) is extremely user-friendly learning platform. Our partners’ members simply go to their home page where they manage their learning environment. Simple clicks take them to their courses and/or progress reports. Our highly interactive courses provide depth, allow for downloading of files and incorporate activities that address multiple intelligences.

Intuitive back-end management gives our partners all of the report functionality they need in a simple to navigate format. On their administrator profile page they access reports that provide them with the information they need to make great decisions as a Chief Learning Officer. All reports can be downloaded in Microsoft Excel format. And, on a quarterly basis, they receive up to 20% of the revenue from courses taken by their members. All we ask is that they promote their online learning program at conferences, on their website, and other places they promote professional development opportunities.

The NP Training Works partner process is simple. There is no initial or annual investment from our partners. They provide us with their brand elements – logo, color and images. We set up their branded LMS. Their members access the LMS through a link on our partners’ organizational website. After they register, members are provided with their own personal learning page where they access their courses and receive newsletters and other information from our partners.

Our staff has more than 90 years combined experience serving the nonprofit sector. Paul Cypher, President and CEO of NP Training Works, knows the challenges our partners face. As Vice President for Advancement at the Rochester Museum & Science Center (RMSC) he faced the challenge of trying to provide training opportunities for 20+ staff members on an annual training budget of less than $6,000. In 2001 he saw the same challenge magnified, when, as Executive Director of the Baltimore Museum of Industry (BMI), Cypher was tasked with providing training opportunities for 62 employees with an annual training budget of $25,000. As a consultant to nonprofit organizations he saw that many others faced the same challenges. It was very frustrating for him to see the immense need for training among a very dedicated staff and not have the resources to address that need.

As he discussed his frustration with hundreds of colleagues he quickly realized he was not alone. He spent years, researching a solution and came to the conclusion that the answer was available through affordable and available online training. In 2009 Paul started the business using his savings and investment from three partners with an affinity for the nonprofit sector. From 2009 until 2011 we built the LMS and tested the system with two initial clients, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the YMCA of Greater Rochester. The goal of NP Training Works is to provide the highest quality, latest and greatest learning opportunities at costs that are affordable to professionals in the nonprofit field. Below are our mission and vision.

3. What makes the LMS different than others? I noticed that your LMS has a special program for not-for-profits and associations. Could you explain?

I combined your number 3 & 4 questions because they are related in our mind. NP Training Works exists to meet the needs of nonprofit associations who want top-notch eLearning programs, but lack the staff expertise or financial resources to develop a system in-house. We are focused on a very specific market sector.

As you know, to develop an eLearning program institutions need to purchase an LMS (or implement an open source solution), then they need to pay for content development, and often they have to pay fees per user. In addition, they need staff to support the system or they need to pay for annual licensing/support fees. Often their customers are not comfortable navigating through the more complicated LMS systems that were primarily designed for instructor-led courses in a University setting.

According to a 2009 report by American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) most smaller businesses and nonprofits reported they would like a low-cost, easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain system. The LMS systems that were developed for Colleges and Universities are not offering what the small business and association clients need.

The learner interface needs, time and attention for a business and/or association is drastically different than it is for a University. Learners in a business/association environment want straightforward, easy access to their information in one central area. They don’t have time for extensive training on how to use the LMS or to search through a number of modules to get to information as the University Learner does. Systems designed with instructors and for the contact hours required for a 3-6 credit University course are far different from systems designed for the learning needs of someone who is trying to find and retain information for use in a business environment. In addition, the costs of a typical LMS is prohibitive for the association/business customer. According to the Association Learning Management Report the average three-year cost of implementation and maintenance of a traditional LMS is $59,450 for 500 users. For unlimited users the three-year cost average sky-rockets to $435,500. These systems require set up costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, and per-user fees that range from $8 - $64/user. While this cost structure is okay if you are charging a student $1,500-$5,000 per credit hour, it doesn’t work for associations and businesses who are trying to provide professional development opportunities for their employees and members at a reasonable cost.

There are no companies offering the partnership program model that NP Training Works offers. This model was created based on the knowledge and experience in the industry of our President & CEO, Paul Cypher, who has spent his entire career in the nonprofit sector. Our target markets are nonprofit associations and companies/organizations that serve nonprofit or for-profit businesses. Examples include Realtor Associations, payroll companies, nonprofit membership associations (i.e. Association of Zoos and Aquariums) and professional associations (i.e. American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). In addition to our LMS with an established course catalog we develop custom eLearning courses for our partners who have a need for specialized training. Our rapid development model offers a low-cost development option for our partners with the opportunity to earn revenue if the coursework can be added to our catalog and offered to others.

As stated previously, our model is simple. We have an established catalog of courses. Our partners receive a branded LMS at no cost. They promote the courses to their members. Our partner receives quarterly payments for their percentage of revenue from their members who take courses.

Here is a chart of our client process:

At our initial meetings we explain the NP Training Works partnership model and gain a thorough understanding of your professional development goals and objectives. You decide which path you want to follow; Partnership Program, Custom Instructional Design or a combination of both. We then present you with a project proposal.

When the proposal is approved we follow one, or both, of the project paths below.

Branded Marketing Partner

NP Training Works has developed a catalog of courses for nonprofit professionals. We take on all costs associated with course design and development, web hosting, eCommerce and customer support. There is no front-end cost or investment by you. The process is simple:

1. You list our courses and provide a link on your website or anywhere else you promote professional development opportunities.

2. You promote the courses to your membership and/or customers. We will attend your annual conferences to promote as well.

3. Your members are taken to a branded site with your logo where they enroll in a course.

4. We provide you with a quarterly report and check for 5-20% of the course fees from your members/customers.

Custom Instructional Design

1. We begin the Custom Instructional Design Process with a Discovery Meeting on your premises.

2. We utilize the ADDIE model of Instructional design—Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation—as a guideline for building effective training and performance support tools.

Our typical client process includes the following steps:

a. Project history, overview, and introductions

b. Purpose and objectives of the project

c. Audience Issues

d. Look and Feel - Functional / Branding Specs

e. Resource Analysis

f. Detailed Content Analysis

g. Review of Project Scope

h. Detailed Project Management Plan and Schedule developed

3. Implementation of Project Plan and Schedule

5. Many associations provide professional development and certification for their members. After students complete training, do you send the information to the association in a form that they can use for generating certificates and keeping track?

We have the ability to incorporate certificates for download in courses after the learner completes assignments. Our SCORM/AICC compliant LMS tracks learner information from the course, such as time spent, information viewed, and test/quiz results. These are stored within the reporting area of the LMS. Administrators from our partner organizations have the ability to view their reports in chart and table formats and download the information in Excel spreadsheets. Our system also offers an association to set up groups and allow group managers access only to the reports for the members of their groups, with the association administrator having access to reports for all learners in all groups. For instance, the administrator for the AZA has access to all learner reports for all zoos and aquariums groups under the AZA.

6. Do you maintain a talent management system? Do you have plans to do so? Can you work with associations to help them develop lifelong learning tracking for their members?

We are in the process of developing a talent-management system at this time. It will be released in the new version of the LMS within the next 18 months.

7. What is your philosophy of learning? How do you view your product and how does it reinforce what you consider to be the most effective way to develop one's professional skills and credentials?

NP Training Works’ learning approach and educational philosophy are grounded in the conviction that learning happens every day and everywhere, and you learn best by doing. We utilize sound learning techniques in a constructivist learning environment. Constructivism is a theory -- based on observation and scientific study -- about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through active experiences and reflecting on those experiences. We provide tools such as problem-solving and inquiry-based learning activities with which you formulate and test your ideas, draw conclusions and inferences, and then put your conclusions into practice and share your findings with peers. Our educational philosophy transforms you from a passive recipient of information to an active participant in the learning process.i

To accomplish these learning objectives we immerse you in an active learning environment that incorporates cutting-edge technologies and interactive experiences, with a goal of improving your knowledge and confidence. We complete the process by connecting you with peers in our Social Network.

Our approach makes learning available anytime from anywhere in an effort to reduce travel, time, space and other barriers that get in the way of learning and restrict access. Our approach works best with learners who are motivated, have self-discipline and are actively engaged in your own learning outcomes as a means to your own personal and professional development.

NP Training Works educational philosophy views learning as a process and understands that learners have different needs. Therefore, our courses incorporate a variety of learning styles to accommodate the various learning preferences of each learner. We know that well-designed learning environments offer individualized learning experiences. To this end we utilize Bloom’s Taxonomy Learning Model when constructing our courses. Bloom demonstrated decades ago that most teaching tends to be too focused on fact-transfer and information recall - the lowest level of training - rather than true meaningful personal development. ii

NP Training Works instructional design incorporates interactive experiences to make learning powerful and fun. We create a learning environment that encourages exploration of new avenues of learning and allows you to better yourself and your organization. To do this we employ these strategies:

 We bring the most knowledgeable experts to the learner. Our course instructors are consultants, professors and professionals with many years of experience and knowledge.

 We build on your current knowledge. Our courses give you an edge by building on base courses and prior knowledge to help you expand your horizons and find new areas of learning.

 We provide instruction that addresses multiple learning styles. We utilize exercises, hands-on practice, case studies, simulations, games, and discussion opportunities to diversify the learning experience and incorporate your learning preferences.

 We encourage interaction and information sharing. Our Learning Connection site gives you the opportunity to share your own ideas, information, experiences and solutions with their peers.

 We help you put your new learning into action. Our courses provide exercises and examples that encourage you, the learner, to put what you are learning into use immediately in your daily work life and in your organization.

8. Please share the name of a book you recently enjoyed.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I have always been fascinated by Abraham Lincoln as a leader and person. This book delves into the strategy he used to bring his rivals into his cabinet and accomplish great things by working with other strong leaders who challenged his thinking. I really enjoyed the book because it encapsulated my view of the essence of a learning leader - to constantly stretch yourself and your modalities and learn from those around you, especially if they challenge you.