So, I was up on the main stage with a Canadian University President, an industry guru who has created an open software option for creation Reusable Learning Objects (RLO’s), a representative from Creative Commons, another faculty member (nobody realized that I too was a university instructor), and a few others.  Keep in mind that Pearson acquired eCollege (and me) two years ago.  I know as much about publishing as I know about toddler learning behavior.  (With my 3 year old daughter I have some on-the-job training, but nothing from experts…)

But there I was, engaged in a conversation about open resources and reusability with people who desperately wanted me to falter.  I believe they were hoping I’d make some crazy statement about the ineffectiveness of repositories or how publishers hope all of the repositories just go away.  But not only do I not believe that, nor does Pearson for that matter, I actually didn’t have to say anything negative about RLO’s at all.  Why?  Because the experts on the subject explained to the 400 person audience that of the hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of RLO’s in the world today, less than 1% were actually reusable! 

It was a wonderful, rich discussion about how incredibly hard it is to create an engaging, effective learning object – whether it’s text based, video based, a simulation, a game, etc.  However, adding in the notion that the object you create will also be reusable seems to be nearly impossible.  Think about it.  Why did you create the learning object in the first place? It was likely to teach YOUR students a specific idea / concept within the context of YOUR classroom.  It will flow into the strategic thought you have around scaffolding for YOUR class.  It will be tied to specific outcomes / objectives YOU might have.  It will probably correlate to other learning ideas and other learning objects YOU’VE also designed. 

As an example, I have a game that I use in my online classes.  It reinforces two important, nonverbal ideas around chronemics (the study of how time communicates to others).  It is a Flash-based exercise with fill in the blank trivia of sorts – the answers are cultural and fairly easy, but students see a giant clock with time slipping away as they fill out the card.  My students love it and “get it” as a result of the exercise.  But if I were to place that learning object in a repository, it would take quite a bit of contextual explanation and even more training around how I use it, how it could be used, and finally how to implement it (technically) on a page. 

And so, at the end of the day, we are left with repositories full of good intentions, but unfortunately with little to no real value other than to possibly inspire a teacher to create a similar, but different working learning object for themselves…

So what’s the answer?  Again, from the experts around me there were some answers, but they will take some real effort that isn’t likely to happen.   For example:

Tagging – A common taxonomy or even folksonomy must be created and used by EVERYONE using a repository.  That’s no easy task.  I was once on a campus where the faculty senate had been asked to standardize the term in online classes used for presenting mostly textual / pictoral information.  The word, “Lecture” had been suggested by the administration.  (Online norming of nomenclature across a program is a best practice as students always know how to navigate.)  However, in 2 hours, the faculty could not agree on an appropriate term.  Some staunch opponents wanted “Presentation” while others wanted the term, “Reading” instead.  Another department chair brought up the inclusion of YouTube videos on the pages and pandemonium ensued. 

Design – These (r)LO’s must be designed with re-use in mind.  But again, with the description above, that’s no easy task either.  I barely have enough time to create learning objects for my own class, let alone thinking about the greater good of the world as I create them.  (I realize I’m not as noble as I’d like people to think…)

Standards – After creating and tagging a learning object in ways that others can consume them, we then need to think about standardizing the platforms they are built on.  What about using FLASH?  It’s a nice medium that has been used for years by educators.  There are more and more software options to create FLASH simulations, demonstrations, or games that are easy and cheap, if not free.  So FLASH is perfect, right?  Oh, wait…the iPad.  That’s right, Steve Jobs seems to have made it his personal mission to kill that software.  Well, what if my object is in PowerPoint?  Isn’t it “universal enough” for people then?  (Sorry Open Office users…)  Ok, well how about I create my learning object using simple HTML code.  Everyone knows that these days, right?  (Sorry 90% of instructors out there who can read Latin better than HTML.)

Quality – I recently read a blog by a professor who was pleading for the world to give up textbooks and adopt only open source content.  He was frustrated by his textbook publisher’s edition practices.  (Luckily, it wasn’t Pearson as he called them out by name…)  But I have to say, while I’m not a publisher by any stretch of the imagination, I have come to find great respect for what my new colleagues at Pearson do.  Did you know that a textbook costs over a million of dollars to produce?  Yes, I said million… Why?   Take a marketing book.  How many pictures, slogans, and commercials are represented there?  A thousand?  Two thousand?  Do you know how much it costs to get permission to use that Tide ad or the Toyota picture?  Every time the book is produced, Pearson pays intellectual property license fees.  Add that to the author of the book who gets royalties.  Don’t forget the editors, the auditors, the fact checkers, researchers, and the list goes on and on.  And of course, don’t forget the warehouses and paper, etc.  So, that one learning object (which is likely dozens if not hundreds of learning objects) costs a bunch of money to produce in a way that is educationally beneficial to our students.  Have you ever seen an Open resource that is vetted to that caliber?  What about the MyMathLab product?  It has shown improvement in math comprehension, math retention, and math process orientation in the 20, 30, and even 50 percent quartiles.  It’s based on algorhythms that require tremendous math subject matter experts talking to expert instructional designers working in collaboration with programmers

So what’s it going to take then?  Well…quite frankly it’s going to take people smarter than me (I know, I know…easy enough) to create some innovative solutions that are easy to use, easy to catalogue, and easy to consume.  People like the CETL in the United Kingdom who have created GLO Maker (www.glomaker.org), a planning & design tool that creates learning objects that are much easier to tag, share, and reuse.  Other leaders are groups like Equella, a digital repository company that incorporates learning objects, content management, and integrated content authoring.  Then there are the content repository sites like Merlot, Orange Grove, and others. 

There are answers out there, but it’s going to take some work, some strategy, and some compromise to make it happen.   Do I believe OER will ever replace monetized assets?  No, I don’t think so.  But I do believe that the two worlds can live quite harmoniously, creating a rich tapestry of content that can be pushed and pulled as required based on learning preferences, student needs, etc.   But I think that’s a blog for another time…

Jeff D Borden, M.A.
Senior Director of Teaching & Learning

First, despite all the hullabaloo, the iPad is really not about the device. The beauty of the iPad’s design is that it’s a digital canvas that becomes and facilitates so many things. It’s a book, newspaper, game, compass, menu, recipe, calendar, calculator, communicator, encyclopedia, guitar tuner, sketch pad, research tool, conversion tool, star chart... It is what we want it to be; it is what we make it to be. The mindset is shifting from ‘this-is-what-a-device-can-do-for-you’ to ‘show-what-you-can-do-with-this-device.’ Apologies to JFK, but perhaps the best phase is: “Ask not what the iPad can do for you; ask what you can do with the iPad.”

Second, the iPad meets us where we are. Let’s face it, our lives are hybrid. We’re offline and we’re online and the line between the two has been blurred for a while. We live mobile lives and we don’t think twice about getting and receiving information day or night, no matter where we are. The days are (or soon to be) over when education is tied to location. It first moved from the campus/classroom to the home/library/coffee shop with the personal computer; now it’s moving from the computer’s location to me. Perhaps ironically, I think the iPad is to hardware as Google’s mission statement is to information. It’s a bold move in making the computer readily accessible to more people. It meets the young, the old, the savvy and the novice with ease.

iPad-like devices have just been born; we have definitely not yet seen the best of what they will be or will bring. But, to me, if one of the purposes of education is along the lines of ‘preparing younger generations for the future’, then iPads (and devices like it to come) facilitate the natural next steps from where we are today to education anywhere-anytime.

Luke Cable

Academic Trainer & Consultant

Pearson eCollege

For example, a study by Kennedy and colleagues shows that while it is true that for traditional age college students, there is near universal access to certain tools (mobile phone, computer, email), there is variability in the tasks that students are doing with these tools. For example, over 50% of students responding hadn’t built or maintained a website, used RSS feeds, created a blog or commented on one, contributed to a wiki, or used their mobile phone to access services on the web, or send or receive email (although almost 80% sent text messages daily).

Helpser and Eynon considered different types of internet activities (including shopping, entertainment, fact checking, social networking, finance, and diary) undertaken by internet users of different ages. They discuss that while age / generational differences was a convenient initial idea for Prensky to propose, the reality is more complex than that. One needs to consider gender, education, experience, and breadth of use to explore variability in internet usage by task. It is most helpful to consider a “continuum of engagement instead of being a dichotomous divide between users and non-users” (p. 515).

So what’s an educator to do? A study reported by van Amelsvoort and Shiozaki discuss success factors in helping students become more proficient in the educational use of internet technologies. These factors include: requiring the regular use of the technologies in multiple courses, providing active instructor support and engagement through all stages, and allowing sufficient time for students to do the work. Fortunately, with a little planning these shouldn’t be that hard to carry out. So don’t make any assumptions about the level of technological proficiency your students have, and design your course or curriculum to help develop the skills your students will need to be successful.

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Director of Academic Training & Consulting

Helpser, EJ and R Eynon. 2010. Digital natives: where is the evidence? British Educational Research Journal 36(3): 503-520.

Kennedy, GE, TS Judd, A Churchward, K Gray, K-L Krause. 2008. First year student’s experiences with technology: are they really digital natives? Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 24(1): 108-122.

van Amelsvoort, M and Y Shiozaki. 2009. Developing digital natives at a junior college in Japan. Proceedings of the Third International Wireless Ready Symposium. Accessed here: http://opinion.nucba.ac.jp/~thomas/vanamelsvoort2009.pdf

Having attended the Sloan-C Blended Learning Conference and Workshop in April, I was able to attend sessions and network with colleagues who have been at that starting point of where do I begin? It seems like a great place to start is a blended or hybrid approach. When planning for a blended course, you decide what will work best F2F and what will work best online. This allows you to examine your content and evaluate each lab and activity to determine what is the best way to learn this concept?

If you are going fully online with your science lab course, you obviously will not have the luxury of deciding which labs you want to do F2F and which you want to do online. So plans need to be made for full online integration. From that perspective I think the best option is collaboration with colleagues. In addition to the contacts I made at the conference above, after further conversations outside of the conference I have a list of other science professors willing to talk to me about what they are doing.

So what if your institution doesn’t have the funds to send you to a variety of conferences (does any institution have the funds right now)? No problem! If you’re scrappy you can find the contacts you need to start the conversations. It is easy to find conference Websites online. Look around for the list of presentations or in the case of the conference above, look for the link to the presentations post conference. If you find someone who might have information you seek, contact that person. I tried it with two people and in addition to their insight, they provided me with names and email addresses of other colleagues as well. So a little digging and you’ll be able to build your own network of colleagues with whom you can collaborate and generate ideas for bringing your science course fully online based on what others have done.

If you are not that adventurous, the other option is to find listservs that focus on teaching science courses. The group of collaborators will already be assembled for you, waiting for you to ask your questions. Some great resources I found are listed below. Just sign up (sometimes the tricky part) and send your questions out or search the archives for previous posts.

Also, any of these resources or tactics will work for any content areas. If you are taking your curriculum online, find others who have gone ahead of you and build on their ideas and experience. You don’t have to do it alone.

ITeach Listservs – resource page for instructors associated with Minnesota State Colleges & Universities. There are a variety quality of sites and listservs for all content areas.

AdjunctNation – a comprehensive resource for adjunct professors of all curriculum areas

 Clemson University Biolab listserv – you have to dig a bit on this one; scroll down to the Visit header and click on BioLab. There are directions for joining the listserv which is described as: a great place to discuss college biology teaching with colleagues.  

Catalist – a fully comprehensive search engine for listservs. You can find a listserv on any topic you can dream up. It led me to the last one:

ISEN-ASTC-L - which links informal science professionals from around the world.

- Pamela Kachka, M.A.Ed. –
Academic Trainer & Consultant

I found support for that idea from an interesting source... Jim Collins’ book: Good to Great. Last fall I saw Jim Collins speak at Educause and I was intrigued by his research on what makes a successful company. In reading his book, Good to Great, there’s a chapter on technology and how people expect technology to make them successful. Jim’s argument is that technology alone can’t make you successful, and it is sound practices and “the pioneering application of carefully selected technologies” (Collins, p. 148) that contributes to success. Technology becomes the “accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it” (Collins, p. 152).

Here is his summary about the use of technology as an accelerator for greatness: “Technology Accelerators. Good to great companies think differently about the role of technology. They never use technology as the primary means of igniting a transformation. Yet, paradoxically, they are the pioneers in the application of carefully selected technologies. We learned that technology by itself is never a primary, root cause of either greatness or decline” (Collins, p. 13-14).

The same is true of success in online teaching. Being a successful online teacher is not about finding the newest technology, but it is instead about carefully applying that technology in a way that enhances student learning in the class. Used correctly, technology can help accelerate the momentum of a good teacher… whether online or on ground.

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –

Director of Academic Training & Consulting

Collins, J. 2001. Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. New York: Harper Business.

“Jeff, know that we’re all praying for you.  Please call us when you can, but know you’re in our thoughts.  LOL.”

Now, for those of you not in the know, it’s the LOL that really threw me.  So, about a week later, I was going back through my messages and I found it again.  So I asked my sister why Dad would sign a text that way.  She said that she had gotten a similar one.  Her little girl was having some dental problems and needed a root canal.  Dad sent her a text the ended the same way.  “Hope she does great…LOL”

So I called my dad and asked him why he was signing his texts that way.  He told me, “I was so moved by a text from your sister a few months back that I’ve adopted it!  She wrote me a text saying she had just seen my book on the shelf in Barnes & Noble and that I was the man…then she signed it, LOL.”  He went on to explain that the comment, “Lots of Love” was so moving, he almost cried and had been using it ever since…

The following five minutes of conversation led my father to hang up and spend two days calling and apologizing to people for “laughing out loud” at their deeply troubling problems.  My uncle’s divorce was met with LOL, a roommate from college who just lost his own father was followed up with LOL…essentially my dad had offended about 20 people in 2 months via text message!

As much as that story makes me smile, and while I hope it also makes you smile, it’s the formula for that story that is important.  I teach speech and rhetoric – I have for years.  And throughout my years, I ask students to include plenty of narrative in their speeches.  Stories make a profound difference to an audience when told right. 

But there is a problem…often they are NOT told right.  I partially blame the news.  Your local news or the newspaper has always been filled with stories, right?  WRONG!  The bastardization of that term has caused people to believe that a “report” is the same thing as a “story” – when it’s not.  Let me explain.

Typically, an article or report is about time.  It is a chronological, step by step explanation of what happened.  Can it be engaging?  Sure – but more often it’s just informational.  But a “story” is different. 

Coming from “mythos”, the idea of story is really all about plot.  And the idea is simple – the plot should create tension, keep tension, and release tension!  Let me share a quick, but simple (and effective) recipe for a story that my students try to use.

Step one is to provide an attention getter.  In my story above, my first sentence was designed to be a bit engaging.  Nothing Earth shattering, but unusual.  A hook to keep you listening.  This was followed by a very important step two – the creation of tension!  My statement about an odd text message hopefully had you wondering what exactly was odd about it.  Step three is actually the majority of the adventure.  The purpose of step three is to keep the tension building.  Hopefully you were wondering with me why in the world my dad would write such a calloused message and why he would perpetuate that message over and over.  Finally, in step four, I released you from the tension.  I explained the behavior and concluded the story. 

The formula for a good story.

If you think about it, almost every good story today follows this formula.  This recipe can be found in prime time dramas, late night sitcoms, or blockbuster movies.  If you look at a legal show like Boston Legal, the only difference is that they use this formula five or six times per show, often leaving the tension for a few storylines so as to bring you back next week.

So, as you consider creating content for your course…heck, as you consider your course in general!  Think about this formula.  Do you tell stories that create tension, hold tension, and release tension?  On a bigger scale, does your course grab students from week one and build the tension until week 15 when they say, “A-ha!”  Of course there are mini-gestalt moments along the way, but if you use this formula correctly…your students will be clamoring for more week after week! 

So, whether it’s an individual narrative, a discussion illustration, a lecture, or an entire course, think about this “recipe for success” the next time you want to really engage your students.  I think you’ll like the results.

Good luck and good teaching.
Jeff D Borden, M.A.
Senior Director of Teaching & Learning

In reading Drive, listening to Pink and watching some of his interviews, I think one can see that Pink's assertions, if true, are calling for strong paradigm and culture change. They're saying that: rewards and consequences are insufficient motivators for creating a environment where the complex, creative and often counter-intuitive problems of our day can be solved; but the combination of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose (AMP) does produce an environment of motivation mojo where people perform at their highest levels.

Luke Cable | Pearson eCollege | Academic Trainer & Consultant

Now, how many lessons have we forgotten in our lifetime? Would you guess more or less than we’ve learned? Common sense suggests that more is not only likely, it’s almost impossible to deny by anyone, even the smartest genius. So how do we remember better? That’s what educators have been trying to tackle for years. We research, we study, we come up with theory upon theory…and we make predictions.

What are the theories that we hold to today? As an Education doctoral student, I hear the current theories first hand from researchers and experts. If we want students to learn and remember, we must give them context. We must give them practical application. And we should never, ever use rote memorization, right? It must be true when both education scholars and Wikipedia agree! Here is part of the definition from Wikipedia on the topic of rote learning: “Rote learning, by definition, eschews comprehension, however, and consequently, it is an ineffective tool in mastering any complex subject at an advanced level.”

However, psychological research would suggest something very different. Rote memorization as we know it today is ineffective. This is hard to dispute. However, there is a significantly better way to use it, which actually helps the process of both learning and retention. It’s called the Spacing Effect and it works. (If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who works for Rosetta Stone. They have based their multimillion dollar product sales on it.)

The Spacing Effect was identified by Hermann Ebbinghaus in the late 1800’s. He proved that it was possible to significantly improve learning by effectively “spacing” practice sessions. This is more than just telling students about the ineffective nature of cramming. From its inception, psychological researchers have pleaded with educators to use this effect to accelerate our ability to learn. In fact, in the late 1980’s, Dempster published an article in American Psychologist called: “The Spacing Effect: A Case Study In The Failure To Apply Psychological Research.” He expresses that this concept is one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in human cognition. Yet how many teachers do you know who have ever even heard of it?

Piotr Wozniak took this concept and ran with it. He is the creator of Super Memo (www.supermemo.com) and he believes he can help you remember 95% of everything you learn. It’s all based on when you try to remember it. Try too soon and it ends up in short term memory, only to dissipate and wane later. Try too late, and you will have forgotten what you had to remember in the first place. So, there is a sweet spot. And Wozniak found a way to let computers create an algorithm that tells you exactly when that time is. (Hint: it’s different for everyone.)

I go to 20 conferences a year. I would guess that 19 out of 20 have at least one speaker who talks of the evils of repetition and practice in terms of rote learning. Even though we all do it foundationally (who learned to read without first learning the alphabet?). The key is not just the concept of rote memorization for foundational concepts. The key is how we teach and how our students practice these concepts. Of course context is important. I’m as big a proponent of application as any educator alive. But I’m also a lifelong learner. And I’ve learned something about learning recently. Holistic learning is much more than any one theory. Retention is deeper than practicality in assessment. Authentic tasks are only one side of the educational dice. There is much more to learning most of us realize. And by understanding one more piece of the learning puzzle…I’m a better learner today than I was yesterday.

(Thanks to Gary Wolf and Wired magazine for this amazing article on Piotr Wozniak that inspired this blog. You have GOT to get this magazine!)

Being the eportfolio specialist on our Academic Training & Consulting team for Pearson eCollege, I obviously had a vested interest in seeing how prevalent (or not) eportfolios would be. As it turns out, I was impressed with the variety and quality of ways that eportfolios were being created and used: WordPress, Foliotek, Google Sites, Epsilen, impressive home-grown solutions to name a few. No matter what tool was used or whether or not the eportfolio was being used for assessment only or personal/presentation use only, they all were much more than just a digital dossier; they were very purposeful, refined. Yet, I still had the lingering feeling that eportfolio use is a smaller fish in a big-fish pond.

Do you agree? Do eportfolios have a solid, common place in our world of education and educational technology or not? How about a very quick, four question survey.  (We'll post the results in a future blog post.)

It seems to me that there are so many times in life that we are weighed, measured and found ... wanting ... competent ... or even excellent. I think we need something more than being measured; we need something more ... compelling. Is it not the compelling nature of a good story told that draws us to movies, novels, sports and even our friendships? Eportfolios give that opportunity for a good story to be told in a way that rubrics cannot.

I'm sure that EDUCAUSE could give us all kinds of statistics about this year's ELI conference and the wonderful things seen and done there, but the thing that struck me most about it was that  all the attendees got to be co-authors of the story of the experience. A story that you can see in the Twitter lists, Educause Google Waves, forums and videos ... and it's pretty compelling.

If you’re looking for some inspiration, here’s a neat website to introduce you to 50+ Web 2.0 tools to help with digital story telling. Alan Levine created an initial story about his dog Dominoe, and then decided to try telling the same story with a variety of Web 2.0 tools. The site gives a link to the 50+ Dominoe stories (actually up to 64 now) so you can see what the same story looks like when presented with the different tools. Some tools have audio, some don’t, and some aren’t what you’d initially think of for digital storytelling ... like Wayfaring (#36, a map site). The site also gives a short blurb about each tool and lists whether the resulting piece can be linked or embedded in a website (or, hopefully for my ideal purposes, a course management system). The site also lists tools that ended up on the “cutting room floor” in that they didn’t work well for his purposes, or were sites that disappeared, which can definitely happen with Web 2.0 tools. Unfortunately, some of the links don’t work (so it’s possibly time to retire some more to the cutting room floor), but nonetheless it should give you some creative inspiration to get started with some new tools.

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D. –
Director of Academic Training & Consulting

Levine, Alan.  http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/Dominoe+50+Ways