BohrerED - notes about academic technology

Teaching Concepts with Examples and (free) ConceptTutor

2011-12-13T20:42:00.000-06:00

I recently came across a quick article, "Six Proven Ways to Use Examples and Non-Examples" by Connie Malamed that describes a variety of techniques for effectively using examples to teach concepts.

You'll want to read the entire article, but here are Malamed's ideas for effectively teaching with examples:

Rule #1: Use examples in which the irrelevant attributes vary widely

Rule #2: Progress from simple to difficult examples

Rule #3: Present instances of a concept in rapid sequence or allow all instances to be viewed simultaneously

Rule#4: Use matched examples and non-examples for concepts with related attributes

Rule #5: Provide opportunities for learners to generate their own examples of a concept

Rule #6: Expose learners to a wide range of examples and non-examples and allow them to discover the concept

This article reminded me of a wonderfully simple yet powerful tool that can help instructors or instructional designers create learning modules centered on learning conceptual knowledge. ConceptTutor Plus, freely available from the University of Wisconsin's Engage program, is a tool that "promotes effective learning through the use of definitions, examples and non-examples contextual information, and self-check quizzes."

Example content created with ConceptTutor

ConceptTutor creates collections of html files and media that can easily be uploaded to an LMS course site or any web server.

One powerful learning exercise is for students to create their own ConceptTutor modules as a way of demonstrating their own mastery of key concepts.

"Test-enhanced learning" in LMS

2011-10-14T12:55:00.002-05:00

Is quizzing a more effective learning strategy than studying? In this short video, Univ. of Wisconsin professor Brad Postle explains his dramatic findings and the cognitive process behind this effective teaching strategy.

I wanted to incorporate a newly characterized finding in cognitive psychology research -- "test-enhanced learning" -- into how I teach my 200-student lecture course on Cognitive Psychology. We did this by assigning weekly quizzes that are administered via Learn@UW and, critically, set up to provide immediate feedback in which incorrect answers were followed by an explanation of the principle(s) underlying that question. This innovation was highly successful, resulting in doubling the number of 'A's earned in the course, a dramatic reduction in the number of students who failed the course, and an overall improvement in performance by all the students in between. --Brad Postle

Watch Postle explain this teaching strategy.

Obviously, the LMS (Desire2Learn -- Learn@UW -- in our case), was a critical component in the design, delivery, and reporting of this educational research.

I'm also proud to show off this video as it's part of the excellent work in digital narratives our department has effectively promoted and supported here in DoIT Academic Technology at UW-Madison.

Quick Thoughts on Pearson's New Free OpenClass LMS

2011-10-13T10:32:00.003-05:00

We have known for a few years that the LMS market "is shifting". Thanks to the excellent work done by groups like Delta Initiative and the Campus Computing Project, our collective eyes have been lifted up beyond our own campus to see what is happening around us.

Today, articles in the Chronicle (here) and Inside Higher Ed (here) relayed information about OpenClass, a free cloud-based LMS service (currently in beta) from Pearson in partnership with Google.

As of the writing of this post, no information is yet available via Pearson. My knowledge of the product is limited to coverage in the previously mentioned articles and my participation in a private demo of Pearson's precursor "Project Berlin" a few months ago.

(Updates: Adrian Sannier tweeted a link to a "teaser site" for OpenClass: http://www.joinopenclass.com/open/view/t1. Also, Campus Technology reveals many features of OpenClass in an interview with Pearson's Katy Kappler.)

Regarding OpenClass, I found a few interesting aspects to this new product:

Social networking & modern interfaces
Obviously any new learning platform must leverage social networking features and modern communication vehicles such as robust messaging, in addition to an improved modern interface (a strength of Instructure's Canvas LMS). Traditional LMS products are playing catch-up in these areas. OpenClass seems to place a high priority on activity streams and communication notifications. OpenClass also has some integration points with Google Apps (Calendar, Docs, and later, widgets).

Pearson's "Learning Exchange"
During the "Project Berlin" demo, Pearson reps discussed LMS integration with their forthcoming "Learning Exchange", Pearson's digital content marketplace. Learning Exchange was demonstrated as a separate system where instructors can share curriculum, content and communications while discovering other resources (cost and no-cost). Pearson also mentioned that they were talking with Merlot and other OER providers as a way of providing more learning content directly to students at no cost.

The extent to which faculty will a) find useful and relevant resources, as well as b) share out their materials and ideas certainly remains to be seen.

Leadership of Adrian Sannier at Pearson
Adrian Sannier, VP of Product at Pearson, brings a wealth of academic experience as former University Technology Officer at Arizona State (where he led the first massive higher ed conversion to Gmail) and previously as a member of the faculty at Iowa State. I will be very interested to monitor the acceleration of Pearson in the non-profit higher education market and also Pearson's LMS trajectory.

Emergence of another "instructor-choice" option
Will universities' LMS landscape evolve into a hybrid model that might include a primary centrally managed/supported LMS, secondary "niche" LMS's for specific disciplines or programs, and now instructor-choice options like OpenClass and Blackboard's free CourseSites? It is likely that instructors will increasingly be tempted to adopt learning environments provided by the publishers of their course textbooks. How will this diverse LMS landscape impact students and their desire for convenience? Where will expectations be set for university support staff?

Today's news from Pearson is just one more tremor in the current landscape shift that is occurring.

What do you think is most significant about this news from Pearson and Google? I'm quite curious to hear your thoughts and questions.

I am excited for students and instructors that their experiences with learning environments are improving -- even if that means difficult work for those of us leading and supporting the change.

Notes from "What's New in Digital Learning Environments" webinar

2011-06-29T10:52:00.005-05:00

On June 28, 2011, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) hosted presentations by Michael Feldstein (Cengage Learning) and Niall Sclater (Open University) in a webinar, "What's New in Digital Learning Environments".

I was hoping to learn more about Michael's work on the MindTap product and hear for the first time from Niall who is very well-respected in the higher ed LMS/VLE community. Turns out they didn't disappoint.

I jotted the following notes which I thought would be of interest to many. I apologize for the brevity. Please, if you have questions or comments, just post them below.

Niall's presentation discussed some future directions for the LMS/VLE.

The future is:

Interactive - This includes more advanced quizzing technologies that provide feedback and options for adaptive learning.
Mobile - Users will demand unfettered access to LMS on mobile devices and tablets. Niall said that a student "should be able to do a whole degree" via mobile device. eBooks and eReaders will continue to be important. eBooks are different than basic PDFs of articles, chapters, or books in that the student owns the book and likely views and treats it differently than an ephemeral document such as those we so frequently use online.
Social - How will learning environments interact with Facebook? Should these systems even interact with Facebook at all? A survey of Open University students revealed that more than 50% reject Facebook use for their studies. (~30% accept.) Privacy is the biggest concern; students also want to separate their personal and academic worlds. Niall also pointed out a number of other online tools such as iSpot where learners can participate socially online for specific learning activities (without integrating with Facebook).
Personal - Learners will likely want to continue to construct their own environments through tools like iGoogle. Learning environments should evolve so that they "push out bits" of the LMS for external consumption (example: course calendar, course news, other notifications). Niall thinks students would prefer to construct their own dashboard rather than use their institution's system (similar to how most of us use the Twitter service and not the Twitter web site).

Michael Feldstein, Cengage Learning, discussed the future of MindTap. MindTap is not a new LMS, rather it is a unique way to deliver content and learning activities. If I heard Michael correctly, he called MindTap "a meBook wrapped in a weReader".

He noted that the future of eBooks looks bright. In 2011 Kindle sales have surpassed paper books on Amazon.

MindTap:

Is a single purpose system (learning content that is personalizable, social)
Bidirectional with rest of Internet
Allows for the construction of "Learning Paths" (similar to table of contents), Units (chapters), and Learning Activities (readings, quizzes, flash cards)
Learning Path is not just navigation, but architecture; it allows a path to be constructed through some (but not nec. all) content; multiple Paths can be created for different groups or needs (cram session, remedial, or even personal)
The architecture is built so that future analytics can be built and leveraged
Interface: focused on doing one thing at a time well which works very well in a "post-PC world" where screen space is limited; device agnostic HTML5 eReader

MindTap's Features:

ability to highlight text
notepad
text-to-voice
integration with other services (Google Translate, Docs, blog service, perhaps EverNote, etc.)
discussions that can be added to the exact spot where you need it (back end integration with LMS)
Gradebook? No comprehensive gradebook (never will be); MindTap collects data on what/how students are learning; will eventually pass scores back to LMS gradebook
Basic LTI for AuthNZ

MindTap's relation to LMS:

Pulls aspects of LMS into MindTap…you only go to LMS for big picture management of resources
Kind of like Twitter…we use the service in a multitude of interfaces

I asked Michael how we (university IT) might first see MindTap appear on the radar of faculty. He said faculty might be exposed to MindTap when they make textbook purchasing decisions. He also added that Cengage would, obviously, love to discuss institutional approaches to leveraging MindTap. He also reiterated that the LMS landscape is in flux and is likely to change over the next few years.

Overall, I appreciated this well-coordinated webinar (thanks ALT). Niall and Michael confirmed many of the assumptions my institution has been making regarding the future of our learning systems.

It's an exciting field in which to work and learn, and I'm optimistic that the challenges we will be facing in the very near future will lead to some very interesting opportunities for students and instructors.

--
Citation:
Sclater, Niall and Feldstein, Michael (2011) What's New in Digital Learning Environments webinar recording (made in Elluminate). In: ALT/ELN webinar: What's New in Digital Learning Environments, 28 June 2011.

Growth of Non-Blackboard LMS Options

2010-12-21T13:24:00.003-06:00

Michael Feldstein has provided a very interesting analysis of the current LMS market in the U.S.:

The Evolving LMS Market, Part I
December 21, 2010

Using data from the Campus Computing Project, Feldstein illustrates how it likely is a myth to frame the LMS landscape discussion as "Blackboard vs. Open Source". The growth of not only Moodle and Sakai -- but also Desire2Learn -- signifies a measurable movement away from the Blackboard conglomerate (Bb, WebCT, and ANGEL).

I'm struck by a number of points

Desire2Learn and Moodle have made huge gains in the U.S. market and specifically within a few market segments.
Blackboard's share is slipping significantly.
Sakai's growth among public research institutions is worth following.

Here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we are using Desire2Learn as our centrally supported course management system. However, Moodle has been implemented in many of our schools and colleges for various reasons and we are collectively considering the future of Moodle on our campus.

After reading Michael's post and seeing the trends among public research universities, my fear is that my colleagues and I might be overly distracted by the emergence of Moodle and not focused enough on Sakai.

UPDATE: Recently, Delta Initiative stated that an archive of their 12/16/2010 webinar "New Choices. The State of Learning Management in Higher Education Systems" will be posted online within 10 days of the event. It will be very interesting to compare their findings with those of the Campus Computing Project and Michael Feldstein. Stay tuned.

Unanswered questions raised for D2L

2010-07-09T12:19:00.003-05:00

Like Barry Dahl, I too will not be attending next week's Desire2Learn users conference in Chicago. My reasons were more run-of-the mill: family time and coaching duties primarily.

In his latest blog post, Barry takes a principled stand (I suppose mine is based on principles too) and is actually boycotting the conference.

I appreciate the issues and questions Barry raises about D2L and their handling of the last (latest?) chapter in the Blackboard-D2L edupatent saga. He speaks for all of us when we ask collectively, WHAT THE HECK D2L?? I think we have all gone on our merry ways tending to the daily fires and to our local projects and have set aside our ~~nagging curiosity~~ stake in the issues.

I do hope that those attending the conference receive some answers to these questions.

If I were to attend the D2L conference, I would also like to ask a question related to the release of Learning Environment 9.0 that my institution launched this week. "Why didn't you do more to better accommodate the transition of the navigation bars to .NET?" Custom links, customized tool names, and many graphical elements have been hosed by the upgrade.

By not attending the conference, I will certainly miss the UNconference and the hallway conversations with D2L staff and peers from around the world. My biggest regret is missing a great chance to connect with 7 faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who are attending for the first time. For those attending, if you see them in your sessions or at lunch, do make them feel welcome!

Blackboard's Patent is Down to its Last 30 Days

2010-03-12T15:35:00.010-06:00

Last week, Ray Mosteller revived the discussion of the Blackboard-Desire2Learn saga by articulating a number of questions pertaining to the settlement between Blackboard and D2L. One of Ray's questions caught my attention. He wrote, "What ever happened to the USPTO rejection of all claims in the Blackboard ‘138 (Alcorn) patent? Or the USPTO re-examination of the ‘138 patent. Is this still ongoing? Is there a chance that the USPTO could revive the ‘138 patent?"

Last we heard, the US Patent and Trademark Office was re-examining the patent and had issued a series of "non-final" decisions that invalidated all 44 (then later all 57) of Blackboard's claims related to the '138 (aka Alcorn) patent. I assumed that Blackboard had appealed that decision, but I cannot find evidence of that.

My attempt to uncover the current status of the patent re-examination led me to the attorney, Michael Spiegel, representing the Software Freedom Law Center and its ex parte re-examination request with the USPTO. Spiegel graciously informed me that a final Right of Appeal Notice has been sent to Blackboard regarding their last opportunity to appeal the USPTOs decision to overturn all claims in the '138 Alcorn patent. Blackboard has 30 days from March 12 2010 to file their appeal. If they do not, then the re-examination is complete and the USPTO decision is mercifully declared final.

In reviewing the publicly available Right of Appeal Notice, this statement by the USPTO nicely summarizes the nature of this infamous patent:

"The claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements...The combination is an adaptation of an old idea using newer technology that is commonly available and understood in the art and thus obvious."

Note: I've posted the USPTO's Right of Appeal Notice here (PDF, 1.3 MB). The document contains a record of all the arguments made regarding the existence of prior art to invalidate Blackboard's claims.

Update:
Many thanks are also owed to SFLC's former patent attorney Richard Fontana who "did all the heavy lifting in this case", according to Spiegel.

Jon Mott: Bridging the Gap Between the PLE and the LMS

2010-02-09T15:12:00.004-06:00

Back in August 2009, Jon Mott gave this presentation at OpenEd 2009. He reports on their work at BYU to create a new learning environment based on PLE principles.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in the future of the CMS/LMS to watch this presentation. I took away the following points:

1. PLE values (student-centric, openness) more closely match the values of the institution than do the values of the CMS

2. Lack of continuity for the learners from semester to semester exists in the current CMS. We typically turn off access to course sites at the end of the course. It’s the “chief demerit of the course management system” Mott says.

3. Stand-alone gradebook. This is a highly important progression in the future of the course management system. Integration with various systems will be key, but de-coupling this critical tool is the first step.

4. Get rid of the dropbox? He says that instructors can now tell students, “Don’t upload your paper, just give me the URL for where your paper lives on the web”. Furthermore, he says, "Maybe one of the requirements for being digitally literate in 2009 is being able to publish a web viewable document”. Bingo. How many institutions offer easy ways for students to publish on the web? However, I do know that many instructors value the ability to zip and download all the submitted papers for an assignment in order to more efficiently read and grade (likely after printing!) — something the digital dropbox currently offers.

Good stuff! I’ll be following Jon Mott and his work at BYU more closely these days. Some of my colleagues saw him speak at ELI 2010 recently and posted their summary and comments here.

"Live" updating of active Desire2Learn course sites

2009-09-01T15:18:00.002-05:00

Thanks to a great idea from Alan Levine (aka CogDogBlog), here is a live look at the number of Learn@UW/Desire2Learn course sites activated for this fall semester:

This is a chart published from a Google spreadsheet. I'll be updating the spreadsheet periodically and this chart should dynamically reflect the changes I make. Very cool.

"If we're disconnected, we can't Twitter. If we can't Twitter we don't exist"

2009-08-06T12:42:00.005-05:00

Today's attacks on Twitter and a reported slowdown of Facebook changed the day for many.

Today reminded me of this video I had seen earlier:

It's a good reminder to keep our social connections real and pay attention to how true friendships are formed and maintained.

Oh, and if anyone wants to follow me, I'm @jbohreruw.

;-)

The Spinmeisters

2009-07-27T23:38:00.003-05:00

You gotta love the quotes in Campus Technology's coverage of the federal appellate court's decision in favor of Desire2Learn.

From Blackboard's Matthew Small:
"...we believe they are infringing multiple patents of ours, and we will continue to pursue what we believe is a fair result in the appropriate venues. This is really just a blip in the overall intellectual property dispute between Blackboard and Desire2Learn. I don't think it changes their prospects as a company one bit."

And from D2L's John Baker:
"It is a definitive win. We are celebrating this victory for Desire2Learn and education as a whole. We are incredibly appreciative of the support we have received from the educational community. We look forward to the day that Blackboard will return the judgment paid."

Hmmm.

Great news for Desire2Learn

2009-07-27T15:09:00.004-05:00

Desire2Learn just announced:

"We are pleased to announce that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled on the appeals that resulted from the trial in Texas. The Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of Desire2Learn across the board and confirmed that all 38 patent claims asserted by Blackboard are invalid."

D2L CEO John Baker proclaimed via Twitter:

"We won our federal circuit appeal! Posted on #Desire2Learn patent blog at http://tinyurl.com/kro8vn Thanks to all of you for your support!!"

This could be the first in a series of victories for D2L in their litigation saga with Blackboard that began in 2006.

The findings from the appeals court apparently will be useful to future patent applications in their construction of "means plus functions" claims.

Self-proclaimed as "The Nation's Leading Patent Law Blog" states:

"Defendant Desire2Learn wins a complete victory (after a few million in attorney fees)."

Update: D2L files complaint against Blackboard

2009-07-08T15:03:00.002-05:00

Update: The complaint filed by Desire2Learn on July 6 2009 reveals a lot of interesting information including the fact that Blackboard has just been issued another patent (#7,558,853) -- another extension to its two previous LMS patents ('138 and '396) which are not only controversial, but also currently being contested in the courts.

D2L posted their explanation of filing for this "Declaratory Judgment" against Blackboard. This action is an attempt to prevent Blackboard from further lawsuits against D2L under their latest patent ('853). D2L is formally appealing to the courts for protection due to "the existence of substantive, actual controversy".

From D2L's complaint:

This history of Blackboard’s strategy of litigation and intimidation creates a substantial controversy between D2L and Blackboard of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment as to the noninfringement and invalidity of the ’853 patent.

Desire2Learn files lawsuit against Blackboard

2009-07-08T07:33:00.002-05:00

It appears that D2L has filed suit against Blackboard in a Maryland District Court on Monday July 6, 2009.

I don't have any details other than what is publicly posted here, so I'm not sure yet if this is related to other filings such as the one with the US International Trade Commission or if this is new litigation.

This is the first time in this saga, I believe, that D2L has filed a lawsuit or complaint against Blackboard.

D2L provides litigation updates

2009-06-29T13:19:00.002-05:00

Desire2Learn just posted some quick updates, as well as some legal documents, regarding the ongoing litigation with Blackboard.

Blogs? Yes! Just don't forget the value of the CMS

2009-06-02T16:00:00.004-05:00

Jeffrey Young at The Chronicle continues his coverage of the course management system landscape by highlighting discussions about using blogs as a substitute for the traditional CMS.

Open course blogs offer lots of interesting possibilities: convenient dialog among students, feeds (why haven't our CMSs incorporated these by now?), serendipitous participation by "outside" experts, simple interfaces, flexibility, etc.

At UW-Madison, I've seen a number of faculty use blogs as the centerpiece for their courses. Greg Downey's courses provide excellent examples of engaging students through course blogs.

However, blogs themselves will not overthrow the traditional CMS. There will always be the need to provide online exams, drop boxes, gradebooks, secure feedback, and all the complex integrations with various campus systems.

As the article above noted:

But despite a slew of jokes about Blackboard throughout the day, many attendees admitted that when the course-management system works, it offers easy-to-use features that students and professors have come to rely on. Even those speakers who encouraged professors to use blogs instead of Blackboard said that universities should probably support both.

Blogs have their place. The next generation of course/learning management systems will need to take cues from tools such as these in order to be relevant and provide useful user- (and especially learner-) centric environments.

Waiting for ITC decision to investigate Blackboard's complaint vs. D2L

2009-05-27T12:42:00.004-05:00

On April 20, 2009, Blackboard filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (Docket #2661) against Desire2Learn regarding its importing of a patent-infringing product. I've been interested in this particular action because it seems that an outcome here could arise more quickly than with the other lawsuits and the patent review process.

According to Bryan Farney's overview of Section 337 Actions in the ITC, we should be expecting a decision now from the ITC on whether they will launch an investigation into the complaint:

Within 30 days after a prospective complainant files its complaint with the ITC, the Commission determines whether or not it will institute an investigation. If the Commission decides that it will do so, it then refers the investigation to an Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") who sets the ground rules and discovery schedule for the investigation, as well as a target date for the final determination. The hearing, during which the parties present evidence, cross-examine witnesses and present arguments, takes place approximately three months before the initial determination due date. The ALJ then issues its initial determination, which the Commission may review at its discretion. Finally the Commission issues its final determination by the date set by the ALJ. The Commission's final determination then stands unless the President disapproves it.

According to the docket above, the current status is "Pending Institution" which I believe means "pending the start of an investigation". Obviously, I'm not a legal expert, so I could use some help translating this phrase.

On a related note, D2L announced that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation of Blackboard's acquisition of ANGEL two weeks ago.

Finally, some Bb customers are perceiving what looks like an incongruity between Bb staff and the actions of their highest officers.

Update June 4 2009The Washington Post reports that the ITC will indeed launch an investigation into the Section 337 complaint filed by Blackboard against D2L.

Blackboard acquires ANGEL

2009-05-06T15:36:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Stephen Downes for alerting us to this major announcement today.

I like this key statement from Bb's press release: "Assuming the merger closes in May 2009..."

I assume that the Department of Justice will have to approve this merger. We will have to watch to see if/how Bb identifies Desire2Learn as a competitor.

So if anyone is keeping score, the CMS/LMS landscape now includes Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, and Sakai. There are many other homegrown solutions, small open source options like Bodington, and new products such as TimeCruiser's CourseCruiser. But for now, we are left with the Big 4.

ComETS: A vibrant ed tech community at Wisconsin

2009-04-30T14:47:00.007-05:00

With the launch of their new site this week, I wanted to share a very cool thing about UW.

The instructional technology community here at UW-Madison is comprised of staff from both our central IT division and local departments, schools, and colleges -- a large and dispersed group of talented people.

One of the most significant challenges over the years has been to coordinate and collaborate with each other. In the past 5 years, we have made great strides in increasing the amount of interaction and collegiality between central and local instructional technology staff. This has occurred primarily through a grass-roots organization we created called ComETS (Community of Educational Technology Support.

ComETS is made up of instructional technologists, system administrators, IT managers, librarians, and some faculty. We host events such as brown bags, presentations, discussions, and webinars. Special interest groups with specific interests in open source, clickers, sims/games, and media production shops have emerged.

Most of all, I have appreciated how the success of ComETS has laid the groundwork for successful collaborations between central and local instructional technology staff. Together we have been able to jointly tackle challenges such as IT strategic planning and emergency planning for our course management system. We have been able to make more informed decisions with input from diverse pockets of campus.

Our colleagues at Iowa State have recently started their own ComETS organization, and we wish them the best of success.

Do others have examples of such communities on their campus?

Blackboard files lawsuit against D2L in Canada

2009-04-29T10:31:00.000-05:00

Blackboard followed through on its statement to The Chronicle and filed a patent infringement lawsuit on April 24 against Desire2Learn through the Ottawa office of Canada's Federal Court (see court records T-655-09).

To summarize, here are the active proceedings in this complicated story listed in chronological order:

- Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn (US Federal Court)
- US Patent Office review of Blackboard's "'138" patent
- Blackboard vs. US Patent Office (US Federal Court)
- Blackboard complaint aginst Desire2Learn to US International Trade Commission
- Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn (Canada Federal Court)

Keep up if you can.

UPDATE:
As in the U.S., Blackboard has been awarded a number of educational technology-related patents in Canada. The above lawsuit is based on Canadian patent 2378200. Here's the entire list.

I wonder if Blackboard will now be applying for patents in whatever country is producing learning technology products.

Blackboard to take war against D2L to Canada

2009-04-23T19:36:00.000-05:00

The Chronicle's Jeffrey Young reports:

Blackboard’s general counsel, Matthew Small, said that the company also plans to file a patent-infringement lawsuit against Desire2Learn in a Canadian court today or tomorrow.

Seriously. I cannot imagine how Bb can fund so many simultaneous lawsuits, complaints, and appeals...not to mention host their annual "Bb World" that has brought in keynote speakers such as Cal Ripken, Robert Reich, and Steve Wozniak (before he was a true star on Dancing with Stars).

I would love to be a fly on the wall at Blackboard's annual meeting with shareholders in June.

Blackboard files complaint with ITC against D2L

2009-04-22T21:18:00.000-05:00

While many were celebrating Earth Day, a new front has emerged in the Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn saga.

Just when we thought it could not get any more complex, Blackboard pulls out another dagger. According to Eric Schweibenz's article on the "ITC 337 Blog", Blackboard has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against D2L stating that D2L has imported an infringing product (based on the original '138 patent which has recently been invalidated by the USPTO).

Bryan Farney provides an excellent introduction to the world of Section 337 violations:

Section 337(a)(1)(B) of the Tariff Act of 1930 declares unlawful "importation into the Untied States, the sale for importation, or the sale within the United States after importation by the owner, importer, or consignee, of articles that - (i) infringe a valid and enforceable United States patent . . . or (ii) are made, produced, processed, or mined under, or by means of, a process covered by the claims of a valid and enforceable United States patent."

Farney goes on to explain:

The key distinctions between an infringement action in the ITC and in federal district court are that the ITC may not award damages, and the time frame for ITC proceedings is more expeditious than in many district courts. Furthermore, ITC complainants may in some situations secure temporary and permanent exclusion orders that can be different, and better, in scope than comparable district court preliminary or permanent injunctions.

Another difference between an ITC proceeding and a federal court proceeding is that the filing of a complaint with the ITC does not guarantee that an investigation will occur. The ITC has discretion to determine whether an investigation should take place, and, if it does so, the ITC itself conducts the investigation, with its staff attorneys acting as an independent party in the proceeding.

It appears that this complaint might or might not amount to anything. At worse, it could mean that a quick action by the ITC could lead to a comparatively quick and potentially significant consequence.

Hang on. Here we go yet again.

Want details on the Blackboard v. Desire2Learn drama?

2009-04-22T10:38:00.001-05:00

Michael Feldstein, IT-consultant-turned-investigative-reporter, has unpacked the latest events of the Blackboard vs. D2L edupatent saga.

The bottom line is that this drama has two plots: A) The Bb vs. D2L federal lawsuit that is now based on a patent that has been invalidated (non-final, of course), and B) Bb vs. the U.S. Patent Office patent invalidation process and lawsuit. (Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!)

...and all this will take a very long time - and a lot of money - to resolve.

As I commented on Michael's post above, I have a few lingering questions in all of this:

1) How long can Bb attempt to put D2L out of business, especially considering D2L’s viability as a competitor was used to support Bb’s case when acquiring WebCT? At what point does the Dept. of Justice enter the picture?

2) How can the USPTO issue a second patent to Blackboard that is very very similar to the original one that the USPTO has now invalidated?

3) For how long will Blackboard customers accept Bb’s litigious nature? When will their customers see the effects of the costs associated with Bb’s lawsuits?

--
Thanks to stuartpilbrow for the apropos image.

US Patent Office rejects entire Blackboard patent

2009-04-17T13:32:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Steve Krogull for pointing out that Desire2Learn posted information that shows the US Patent Office has rejected all claims in Blackboard's first eLearning patent. We've seen this before ("non-final" is the key term), and now there is another very similar Blackboard patent on the books, but this is more promising news for the educational technology community.

Meanwhile, I am wondering what Blackboard customers think about the estimated $25 million Blackboard has spent on their patents and litigation.

Million$Mission: Desire2Learn challenges Blackboard to drop lawsuits

2009-03-26T13:07:00.001-05:00

Wow. I don't have much time to comment, but this is refreshing to see:

Desire2Learn Million$Mission - a letter to Blackboard's President and CEO

Also, on D2L's Patent Info blog:

Today, in a letter from John Baker to Blackboard President and CEO, Michael Chasen, we invited Blackboard to join us in putting education first and to drop needless litigation. During the last 3 years, we learned that the only winners in litigation are law firms. Education suffers.

Briefly, here is our proposal:

* Blackboard drop its recently-filed suit in a timely manner.
* In return, Desire2Learn will donate $1,000,000 to non-profit schools and educational organizations.
* Blackboard is invited to join us with its own donation.
* Up to 50% of the Desire2Learn donation will be directed toward schools in need in and around Washington, D.C., the home of Blackboard.
full post...

Great example: Student research, their blog, and inviting community

2009-03-25T13:11:00.000-05:00

Now THIS gets me excited!

I stumbled upon this news article from our UW Communications group:

Researcher uses GPS to find asthma causes
March 24, 2009

The juxtaposition of "GPS" and "asthma" first caught my attention, but the following statement led me to a wonderful gem:

"Current students enrolled in BME 201 are working on a low-cost spirometer, a device that measures lung function and is used in diagnosing asthma and other lung diseases...The project is set up as an “open source” endeavor on the Internet, allowing anyone access to their designs."

Turns out that David Van Sickle, a post-doc fellow, is working with the undergrad students in their applied design course -- bringing them into his research work. Van Sickle created a WordPress site OpenSpirometry.org for the project.

I assume that Van Sickle is the author of the project's "About" page. On it, he (presumably) describes how open and collaborative this course and research project will be.

"We hope you will help us develop a tool that could dramatically improve global respiratory health. We intend to grow an online community for the project, and, hopefully, to interact with other interested designers, engineers, respiratory physicians, and scientists around the world.

Please participate however you can or donate to help us defray the costs of the project.

We will post updates and all of our materials on the blog, wiki and forum."

Note the phrases he used:

help us
grow an online community
interact with other interested [people] around the world
please participate
we will post...

THIS is how we learn. By doing. By connecting with others. By engaging in dialog. By sharing.

Kudos to Mr. Van Sickle for modeling how to teach and learn using today's tools of technology and collaboration.

Blackboard suing Desire2Learn again?

2009-03-20T19:01:00.000-05:00

SouthEastTexasRecord.com, an online news site focused on legal news, is reporting that Blackboard filed another patent infringement lawsuit against D2L in Lufkin, TX. According to the news site:

Lufkin Division

March 16

Blackboard Inc. vs. Desire2Learn Inc.

Plaintiff Blackboard claims it owns the rights to U.S. Patent No. 7,493,396 issued Feb. 17 for an Internet-Based Education Support System and Method.

The complaint states that the '396 Patent is a continuation of U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138, of which "Desire2Learn is an adjudicated infringer."

Blackboard alleges Desire2Learn infringes the '396 Patent through products and services including the Desire2Learn eLearning Enterprise Suite, Desire2Learn Learning Environment, Learning Environment, ePortfolio, LiveRoom, Essentials, the Holding Tank and all services supporting the products.

The plaintiff also alleges that the infringements have been willful and deliberate, and will continue unless enjoined by the court.

Blackboard is seeking compensatory damages, treble damages, attorneys' fees, interest, costs and other relief as the court deems just and proper.

J. Thad Heartfield of the Heartfield Law Firm in Beaumont and attorneys from McDermott Will & Emery LLP offices in Houston, Irvine, Calif., and Washington, D.C., are representing the plaintiff.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Ron Clark.

Case No. 9:09-cv-040-RC

I'm sure court documents will be available soon. Then we'll know what issues are at the core of this one.

Blackboard awarded another new patent

2009-03-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

I learned that Blackboard was granted a new patent (#7,493,396) on February 17, 2009. According to the patent, this is a continuation of their controversial "Internet-based education support system and methods" patent (#6,988,138) upon which their much-publicized lawsuit against Desire2Learn was based.

Can anyone explain the differences in these two patents?

Choose a new LMS using integrated multi-criteria decision making approach

2009-03-20T13:10:00.000-05:00

Imagine you're tasked with selecting a new course/learning management system for your institution. Obviously you will want to involve the various stakeholders (a group that is growing in diversity each year, by the way) and identify a laundry list of criteria. But how do you develop an objective method for evaluating various systems?

I just came across the following paper that describes "an integrated multiple criteria decision making approach, which combines the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and quality function deployment (QFD), to evaluate and select the best system. The evaluating criteria are derived from the requirements of those who use the system."

Measuring performance of virtual learning environment system in higher education
William Ho, Helen E. Higson, Prasanta K. Dey, Xiaowei Xu, Rami Bahsoon
Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 17 No. 1, 2009 pp. 6-29

Article URL for subscribers:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/09684880910929908

I admit that I had no idea what AHP meant. (According to the QFD Institute: The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a mathematically rigorous, proven process for prioritization and decision-making. By reducing complex decisions to a series of pair-wise comparisons, then synthesizing the results, decision-makers arrive at the best decision with a clear rationale for that decision.) OK...that sounds useful and relevant to the process of selecting a C/LMS in my mind.

Oh, "QFD is a comprehensive quality system that systematically links the needs of the customer with various business functions and organizational processes", according to the QFD Institute.

The article elaborates on this analytical process. Skimming to the conclusion, I find that the authors explain the value in this approach for institutions with existing VLEs:

"...the proposed approach can support the decision makers of universities in reviewing their existing VLE systems and determining whether it is necessary to replace the existing systems by a better one...[T]he proposed approach can [also] support the VLE system developers in analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, and also identifying the opportunities and threats against the competing systems."

Unfortunately, I don't have time now to dive deeper into this topic or mentally apply it to my own institution's environment. (It does make me wonder what analytical process was used 6+ years ago when UW switched from WebCT to Desire2Learn.)

I will, however, be saving this article for future reference.

Wiki-based Text: Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning

2009-03-19T14:29:00.000-05:00

George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger have led the effort to create a great online text at the University of Manitoba titled "Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning".

The handbook is delivered through UM's MediaWiki platform. Not only is it an excellent and evolving resource for practitioners in our field, but it is a fine example of how a modern text resource can be constructed and used for a course or series of courses.

Google, Moodle, Lurking Instructors, and other Tidbits

2009-03-05T09:11:00.000-06:00

There have been a number of interesting news items appearing recently.

--
Moodlerooms announced that it is offering single sign-on integration with Google Applications Education Edition.

No doubt that students, faculty, and staff need modern collaborative productivity tools and all universities should be currently working to find an adequate solution to this pressing need. However, announcing a single sign-on integration is not quite as groundbreaking as press releases lead readers to believe. I would expect any new collaborative app that a university acquires to provide single sign-on through the campus's primary authentication system.

It will be interesting to track the growth of Moodlerooms. Universities can now completely outsource both their learning management and collaborative productivity systems...assuming they can reach agreements with the vendors over intellectual property issues.

--
Add Embanet to the growing assortment of open source ePortfolio systems available. Abilene Christian University, who does not shy away from launching innovative learning technology initiatives (or press releases), outsources their distance education delivery management to Embanet. ACU's vision of "mLearning" and the future of their campus is a very interesting read.

--
Students at the University of South Dakota, my alma mater, are discussing the issue of instructors tracking their activity within Desire2Learn.

This is 2009 -- don't they realize that they should assume all their web activity is likely to be tracked in some way or another? My hope is that instructors realize that a student's LMS usage data is only one small window into understanding the extent to which the student is learning.

--
I am very excited to be working with the faculty and staff who are delivering "American Foreign Policy: A History of U.S. Grand Strategy from 1901 to the Present" to both local UW students as well as a contingent of deployed military officers.

Instructors are planning to leverage a combination of Desire2Learn, iTunes U, and possibly our homegrown open-source media/presentation aggregator eTEACH to deliver the course.

And they're all integrated with single sign-on authentication.

--
Here is a great tutorial on setting up all sorts of privacy features in Facebook.

Struggling with centrally-offered tools

2009-02-27T13:31:00.000-06:00

Hitting the target, but missing the bullseye?

I have to admit that lately I've been having a hard time feeling enthused about the suite of IT tools that are available from and supported by our central IT unit on campus...particularly when these tools are examined through the lens of teaching and learning. (Disclaimer here: I am gratefully and happily employed by the same central IT division so my goal here is not to rail on anyone or any group. Rather, I hope to articulate something I have felt but not coherently realized till rather recently.)

Earlier this week, a colleague and I were invited by an instructor to come to his graduate class and "give a demo of the collaborative tools that are available at UW". I thought this should not be that hard of a request to fulfill.

As my colleague and I prepped for the demo, we put together a list of likely tools to demo:
- Xythos, our campus file storage and web space system
- Desire2Learn Learning Environment, our primary learning management system
- WiscChat, our Jabber-based instant messaging system
- WiscCal, our Oracle-based shared calendar system
- Adobe Connect, our live meeting system

I felt a dilemma when I considered the nature of the course. The course happens to be a GIS/urban planning course on mapping mashups. The two instructors and their students are already participating fully in today's online world...or they will be very soon. The instructor had a Wordpress blog created for the course. He was discussing the merits of open source GIS software. In class, he was extolling Google Earth, Google Maps, and KML. I realized that these folks are not cutting-edge techno-pioneers...they are typical professionals (or professionals-to-be) wanting to stay current in their field.

The centrally-available tools above do have their strengths and have been enlisted to meet certain needs of the past.

For collaboration, Xythos provides a secure and robust file and web storage space. D2L gives students a group space for sharing files and a traditional discussion board for asynchronous communication. WiscChat and WiscCal, like the other tools, are available to all students and staff through a single campus ID.

However, as soon as I began thinking about what the students really need, I became rather disheartened. For their group projects in this course, students need to be able create mashups and share them with others. Students need to be able to share resources they discovered with others. Students need to be able to show their finished product to each other and to future or current employers not associated with UW.

The aforementioned campus tools seemed to fall short of what the students really needed.

One tool was different. Adobe Connect raised our enthusiasm levels...but why? It meets their need to connect with each other while the instructor is out of state a few times during the course. Additionally, it's a very cool tool: multiple live video feeds, ability to share presentations or even desktops, and it's available at no cost to the instructor or students.

We also briefly mentioned that they might consider using Google Docs to collaboratively create documents and presentations. We also mentioned that they might find pbwiki easy to use.

When these topics were raised, a number of people nodded their heads in agreement. Many of the students have already used these modern web apps and know how well they work.

Unlike when I gave virtually the same demo to a similar course 2+ years earlier, students' expectations have been affected by the proliferation of Web 2.0 tools. Our campus tools feel clunky and outdated by comparison.

In the end, I'm optimistic that the students will find tools to meet their group work needs. I just won't wager that those tools will be found in the current UW tool set.

"bulls eye" photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/loungerie/36796446/

Desire2Learn usage at UW-Madison

2009-02-02T12:52:00.001-06:00

Now that the fall semester has ended (yikes, January and the Super Bowl have passed too!), I checked in on the data regarding D2L (Learn@UW) use here at UW. My hunch is that the trends we are seeing here reflect trends in other North American universities.

Active Course Sites
This is the stat most commonly referenced on campus, probably because it is the easiest to understand...at first. This is the number of course sites that were activated by instructors over the course of a semester. This data includes "non-timetable" courses such as used for non-credit outreach courses and internal administration. The trend shows a general increase but not at as dramatic a pace as in previous years. Obviously, there is a natural limit that will be reached for official timetable courses. The last time I compared this data with total number of courses offered, we were at approximately 30%.

Unique Users in Activated Course Sites
How many different people are we serving through our central course management system? Again, this measure is trending upward towards a logical upper limit. I am amazed that we are serving over 30,000 different people each semester. At UW, there are approximately 42,000 students and 2,000 faculty (not including the plethora of TA's and lecturers who are big users of the CMS).

Total Enrollments in Active Course Sites
This is where, I think, things get interesting. This is one stat that seems to still show linear upward growth. "Total Enrollments" is the sum of every course's total number of members, instructors + students. This data shows that the typical user has more courses in Learn@UW now than in the past. I wonder when we will hit the point where courses that do not have an online component are in the minority.

Help Desk Cases
Although not yet updated with Fall 2008 data, this too is quite interesting and satisfying. Although we are seeing a general increase in use of Learn@UW, use of the Help Desk for Learn@UW is not increasing proportionally. In fact, there's evidence that it might be decreasing.

This data does not show the total amount of support provided for Learn@UW across campus, just those official cases coming through the campus Help Desk. Hopefully, this data shows that more people are using Learn@UW without the need for support. Fewer bugs exist in the software than ever before. Performance and up-time have been outstanding for the past 6 months, at least. And indeed, there is something to be said for users' familiarity with a complex system.

Obviously, numbers are only part of the story. The real story lies within each course and in the value derived by the instructors and students. That's why I still love to be involved with faculty at workshops, brown bags, and 1-1 consultations. I enjoy hearing directly from them what is working, what needs improving, and ideas on how we can help.

Piloting D2L's ePortfolio system

2009-01-07T14:06:00.001-06:00

We are in the very early stages of piloting Desire2Learn's new ePortfolio system. The University of Wisconsin System will be running the pilot in 2009 (and possibly 2010) with many UW campuses including UW-Madison participating.

I saw a very early demo of this system in 2006 or 2007 and came away with the impression that D2L had done its homework regarding the need for ePortfolios to be flexible, support reflection and feedback, and support the publishing of modern-looking public versions of individual online portfolios.

Thankfully, there is a lot of diverse and expert knowledge on campus regarding portfolios in learning and career development. I'm not sure what we'll find in the end, but I'm looking forward to this new journey.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

2009-01-07T12:54:00.000-06:00

Temple University's Media Education Lab posted this informative and easy-to-read brochure/article (PDF), Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. It is titled a bit towards those using popular media for media literacy education, but after a quick scan, I think it would be helpful for consumption by faculty and instructional staff.

The publication interestingly explains the difference between media in education and media literacy education:

Teachers have always used texts, now including audiovisual and digital material, to convey facts and information. From time to time, the school is also a venue for entertainment, as when a film is screened to reward the class. These activities, however, are not media literacy education. Rather than transforming the media material in question, they use that content for essentially the same purposes for which it originally was intended— to instruct or to entertain. In many or even
most cases, of course, these uses of media will not have significant copyright implications, either because the content in question has been licensed or because it is covered by one of the specific exemptions for teachers in Sections 110(1) and (2) of the Copyright Act (for “face-to-face” in the classroom and equivalent distance practices in distance education).

Teachers involved in media literacy education may, of course, sometimes make use of
licensed materials or take advantage of the provisions of Section 110. But this guide
addresses another set of issues: the transformative uses of copyright materials in media literacy education that can flourish only with a robust understanding of fair use.

Perhaps this resource is a bit lengthier than I would like, but really, is there anyone who can break down the fair use doctrine of copyright law in less than a few pages?

More interaction

2008-12-29T14:13:00.000-06:00

Real quick...I'm giving Twitter a try, so feel free to follow me at jbohreruw. Another way to get in touch is via AIM: jeffszanyworld.

MN Governor wants 25% of credits online

2008-11-22T09:57:00.000-06:00

This is certainly an interesting report. [Also see the Governor's press release and a Chronicle article.]

If all goes as their governor hopes, our colleagues who support learning technologies (including Desire2Learn and Moodle) in Minnesota are headed for an exciting and challenging future.

Minnesota's governor Tim Pawlenty is calling for students in the Minnesota State Colleges and University system to receive 25% of their credits online by 2015. The report states that currently, 9% of all MnSCU credits are received online.

The governor's initiative also calls for increased online offerings by the University of Minnesota which is not part of MnSCU. His plan also impacts secondary education, reportedly changing high school graduation requirements "to require every student to participate in online education."

As for the obvious question about funding, the report states

Pawlenty offered no information on the money such an effort would cost or save.

The governor did say he’ll expect to see progress on online education in the future when MnSCU and the U of M ask for bonding and general fund dollars.

“As we think about funding and bonding decisions … we’re going to be asking how MnSCU and the university are meeting this goal that we are outlining today,” Pawlenty said.

From a Wisconsin/UW-Madison/UW System perspective, I wonder how our neighbor's initiative might influence our own governor Jim Doyle and our state legislature. Might they be tempted to legislate online education as a cost-saving measure? As excited as I am about an administrative investment in learning technology and online education, I am skeptical about rigid degree requirements. Does this mean that students will be scouring for courses based on their delivery mechanism rather than their content? How will statewide sharing of online courses be made easier, or even possible? What investment in infrastructure (both technical and faculty development) will be needed?

I'm optimistic that Minnesota can get this right. Pawlenty's rhetoric, at least, is an encouraging start.

“We believe this is just a change in the way the service is delivered. Faculty will be as engaged, perhaps more so, in this type of delivery of services than they would be in the traditional program,” Pawlenty said.

Student rips Learn@UW (D2L)....or does he?

2008-10-27T15:33:00.000-05:00

Last week, one of UW's student newspapers ran an op-ed from a student titled "Learn@UW Unworthy of a Learned Man".

It included the following zingers that caused me to simultaneously wince and chuckle (in agreement):

"The profile section tries to emulate Facebook, and it's almost creepy."

"For me, I know I want to sign off Learn@UW as soon as I log in."

"...every time I sign on Learn@UW a piece of me dies."

"I would rather spend more time learning at UW and less time Learn@UW-ing."

But when I really listened to what the student was saying, he was lamenting instructors' lack of use or ineffective use of the system. Some of his comments mirror what we have heard from students through surveys and focus groups:

"I only have three out of my six classes that make use of the would-be wonderful online grade and announcement portal."

"The program would be infinitely more effective if all classes were mandated to use it..."

Three out of six classes use Learn@UW? Generally, that's at or above average--something people like me celebrate! If this student is typical, then our students have high expectations for their instructors.

I was able to glean a few useful nuggets from this article: students could really use the course widget that shows updates (we've been told to disable it for performance reasons) and we might not be able to expect students to complete their profile (photo, interests, etc.).

I'm also heartened to know that for one student at least, this learning tool has the potential to be so much more valuable. That's something we can work on.

Questions about Schools on Facebook

2008-09-16T12:22:00.000-05:00

Last week, a number of our central IT staff and a few key campus administrators met over a brownbag to watch Inigral's demo video of their Schools product. Afterwards, we discussed positive aspects of the product and our concerns about it.

In the end, I was very pleased that such a diverse and influential group came to discuss the notion of integrating with a third-party product.

I made note of a number of questions that arose and grouped them into a few broad categories:

Legal

For how long is our institutional data kept at third-party host?
What are the intellectual property (of students) considerations?

Features

How often would our enrollment data be updated at third-party host?
Will advertising be served? How?
Is there a difference between a person's regular Facebook profile and their Schools profile?
Can any members of a class get to other classmates regular profiles without being a friend?
How would FERPA exceptions be handled in the application?

Instructional and Business Process

What is our process for choosing which "cool new" tool/service to try or adopt?
What are the implications if instructors participate? What if they do not?
Could our institutional participation in Schools somehow help teach students how to best manage their "public face" (online profiles and info)?
Should we consider this a student-only tool? Just at first or for how long? Do we let instructors or TA's in?

In the end, we and any potential vendor, will have to address questions like these -- and many more -- prior to our adoption of an outside vendor-hosted application. I'm quite optimistic that our university is asking the right questions and has people open to discussing this new model.

Two Issues Regarding Schools on Facebook (FERPA and Creepy Treehouse)

2008-09-10T11:22:00.000-05:00

Two areas of concern arise quickly when we begin to discuss the idea of leveraging third-party technology by integrating university enrollment data: FERPA and the "Creepy Treehouse Effect".

Inigral's Michael Staton, a former teacher who is now involved with the release of Schools on Facebook, addresses these two issues in recent posts.

FERPA, Facebook and The Social Web
"...The immediate reaction to the thought of activating a campus-wide Facebook application can make any decision-maker nervous. Information is shared all over Facebook, and a campus’ interest to keep student data private and secure is not only an obligation but is also upheld by the law....At Inigral, we’ve worked with our pilot school and our lawyers to assure that all features of our application are FERPA compliant and uphold the strongest standards of security and privacy. I don’t want to go into the exact feature set that makes it such a comfortable thing for institutional adoption, but it is proof that venturing into the wide world of the Social Web is highly possible with a little care."

Debunking the Creepy Treehouse: the Functional Mall
...We don’t need to give educators an excuse to not be using these technologies, we need to be getting them to understand how best to use these technologies. We need to keep in mind the “creepy treehouse” to guide us, but let us not point to everything on Facebook and Myspace, Twitter and Flickr and start accusing. As long as everyone is using their privacy settings and limits contact with those that might be of a “transcendant” age group or have a “careful” boundary (e.g. teacher/student, parent/child) to transactional interactions."

Schools on Facebook (app by Inigral)

2008-08-21T15:22:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I discovered this new Facebook app that attempts to leverage university enrollment data (eek, I know, hang with me) and create a secure social network space inside Facebook for students/instructors/courses/organizations.

Called Schools on Facebook, this app does look promising in that it facilitates connections among classmates in a way that our current course management system cannot on a platform that virtually everyone is using.

The first step in determining whether this has any educational value is running it by some students. (We sure would not want to build any type of creepy treehouse, you know.)

[Note: I initially forgot to add that Michael Feldstein invited Inigral's Michael Staton to describe the application here. It's worth reading his article and the comments.]

Here are some comments from two students after watching Inigral's demo video:

"At first I was a little skeptical; however, I think this application has a TON of potential, especially for allowing students to network with their classmates, specifically other students in their major. The uses are more numerous than I can count--from organizing study groups, to leaning what student orgs your classmates are in, to learning more about the students/staff/professors in your department. I also think that it is still "fairly" (loose term) secure, since each individual user still has the ability to limit who sees their profile, and all the class discussion boards are public forms (more or less)....I think it is definitely worth looking into for Facebook users on our campus (the majority of students). It has huge potential to get a promote our University--not only as a step up as a tech savy institution, but also to promote the University to new students (via current students using this application)."

and

"There are so many applications and different features on Facebook now that I can't keep up with what is changing and what is still the same. It's overwhelming actually :D. But I think this application is very useful for meeting people who is in your class. I've had so many classmates who have e-mailed the whole class list asking a question about an assignment or getting lecture notes and I've had some professors who tell us that the class list is for their use only. So I think this application will be very useful for students to communicate with each other without actually adding them as "Friends" on Facebook. There are so many applications on it right now that are sooooo pointless but people still use it so I think something as useful as this has good potential."

I pinged Inigral's Michael Staton for more information, and the other day he called me up. We discussed at length the difficulty (policy-wise) in getting our university to send enrollment data to a third-party. However, I must admit that I have yet to even broach the subject with our enrollment management staff. I was impressed by Michael's understanding of the issues involved with this type of data integration. He also emphasized their goal of making integration as simple as possible for university technologists.

Michael told me that the future direction of this application would veer more towards student life than learning, as he was leery of trying to compete against the traditional learning management systems.

He also said that other features would include things like gifting, a name game (for putting names with faces--instructors would love this), a message wall, and instructor-managed controls for what is or is not displayed on a course page.

So...what do YOU think about this new app? Is it worth investigating at UW? Do let me know.

Google's new Knol service

2008-07-25T11:24:00.000-05:00

This is something I want to check out: Google Knol. Not sure of it's place in education, perhaps something akin to Wikipedia without the crowdsourcing? We'll see...

From Google's official blog announcing the public launch of Knol:

The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!

Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

Everyone knows something. See what people are writing about, then tell the world what you know: knol.google.com

I do think this type of service would be cool in our huge university. Right now, you need to author a traditional web page, hosted within a traditional organizational structure. So, as an IT employee, I don't have a place to post my specialized knowledge about 14th century eating utensils. Our current institutional repository was somewhat designed for this purpose, but it's so 1999ish.

Learning and Technology Blogs list by George Siemens

2008-07-21T10:45:00.000-05:00

George has compiled a very useful list of key learning and technology blogs. This list is great: not too long; not too short. There always is concern that a particular list will not be kept current. However, with blogs that is less of a concern. Just use this list to find new blogs and subscribe to their feeds.

http://elearnspace.org/edutechblogs.htm

Help build a girls dorm in Kenya

2008-07-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

My friend and colleague, Renee Schuh, is working to raise funds to build a new girls dorm at Terry's Orphanage in Machakos, Kenya where Renee volunteered last year. They need to raise $15,000 by November 2008. You can help in a number of ways, including attending a benefit concert this Sunday in Madison WI. Check out the project's site or The Machakos Project cause in Facebook for more information.

I wouldn't promote a cause I did not believe in.

Blackboard-Sakai Connector: Blackboard as Academic Hub??

2008-07-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

Here's a report about a new Blackboard add-on in the works that will integrate Sakai and Blackboard via Bb's "Building Blocks" extension program.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/15/sakai

In general, Syracuse is on the right track, figuring out how best to integrate multiple learning systems. However, the following quote by Bb's CEO reveals Bb's world view: Blackboard as the center of the academic universe.

“Students should not have to worry about whether different technology is powering their online learning environments for different classes,” said Michael L. Chasen, Blackboard’s president and CEO, in a prepared statement. “With a single login users should have access to all of their courses and course material. There should be one place they can go to get all of their course information.”

At Wisconsin, we agree in principle with Chasen. However, we have chosen to have our campus portal be that hub for course information. We have built an "Academics" tab within our portal where students can find links to their Desire2Learn courses, their e-Reserves, and even their Moodle courses. These systems send their data to our portal's "Resource Bridge" that connects the various system's data to the students and presents it in a single coherent module within the "Academics" tab.

Constructing a campus academic hub that is Blackboard-centric, increases complexity and risk during this era of CMS turbulence. However, like I've mentioned before, Blackboard deserves credit for playing in the open-source field.

Why aren't faculty using a Course Management System?

2008-07-14T13:18:00.000-05:00

I just uncovered a previously unreported piece of data from a 2007 survey conducted by the University of Wisconsin System. In our 2008 Milestone Review of Desire2Learn at UW-Madison, I included much data from the "2007 UW System Web-based Teaching and Learning Survey". Somehow, I managed to overlook this particular item.

Over 500 UW-Madison faculty responded to that 2007 survey, and 138 of them responded to the question:

If you are not using any type of course management system (CMS) or learning management system (LMS), what are your reasons?

28.3% Not necessary / Not applicable
25.4% Not familiar with them / Don't know about them
21.0% Use other tools or my own website
11.6% No time to learn how to use
7.2% Not convinced enough about their usefulness
2.9% Disagree with their use
2.2% Lack of support
1.4% Will use in the future

The second-most common reason ("not familiar/don't know") jumps out at me. These respondents account for 7% of all faculty responses to the '07 survey. It seems reasonable to believe that our efforts to raise awareness of the course management system still seem prudent.

What fraction of our faculty will never use a CMS? A conservative approach would be to combine all these respondents less those who stated "not familiar/don't know" and "will use in future" and divide by the total respondents (517). This exercise shows that approximately 20% of our faculty might never be inclined to use a course management system at UW-Madison.

I very much hope that UW System continues to deliver this survey in the future. The 20% figure is one I want to track over time.

The Current Drama of Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn

2008-05-30T12:09:00.000-05:00

Michael Feldstein has done an incredible job of not only elaborating on the battle going on between Blackboard and D2L, but also in providing very informative insights from interviews and his research. In his latest dramatic post, Feldstein:

Shares the response from Bb's general counsel, Matt Small, to Feldstein's earlier report that Blackboard had been contacting D2L clients.
Includes comments from a legal advisor to one of D2L's clients explaining his version of the call he received from Matt Small.
Accurately characterizes the current state of anxiousness that D2L's U.S. clients feel.
Adds a potentially fascinating angle on how statewide university systems might have constitutional grounds for fighting Blackboard directly.

Phew!

From a current D2L client's perspective, this is turning out to be one heckuva roller coaster ride.

(This photo, as perfect as it is for this post, belongs to someone else. Let me know if it is yours and I'll act accordingly.)

gRSShopper released by Stephen Downes

2008-05-29T15:40:00.001-05:00

As many of you know, Stephen Downes creates and shares information about learning and technologies at a prolific rate. His newsletter has been one of the most useful sources of current news that I've received for years. He has built and used his own custom system for aggregating and publishing material, and now he's released it to the public as gRSShopper.

I'm not sure that I'll be installing it anytime soon, though anyone interested in writing or gathering content and sharing it in multiple modes (site, RSS, newsletter) might want to give this tool serious consideration.

Here's what Stephen wrote when announcing the code's availability:

OK, here it is: the release, under GPL, of my RSS aggregation and personal content management software, gRSShopper. This release is numbered 0.1 and readers should take into account this there is still a lot that could be added to the software. That said, it's the tool I use to run all my web sites (it supports multiple sites with the same installation). I have created a demonstration site where you can go in and play with the site administration tool. I will be adding some examples of the system's functionality over the weekend. The source code is available on SourceForge and also on the gRSShopper site. I don't expect massive numbers of downloads or WordPress-like popularity. Rather, I view it as one prong in my overall research effort, a demonstration, in code, of the concepts I talk about in writing. But I will help people who are trying to install it (within reason) and I will continue to develop and improve the software - and will welcome contributions.

Thanks Stephen for this contribution!

20 New Features in Desire2Learn 8.3

2008-05-23T09:30:00.000-05:00

This weekend, Learn@UW (our Desire2Learn system), is down for an upgrade from D2L LE 8.1 to 8.3. Of course, such a big outage means there is absolutely nothing to do around here (kidding of course).

In preparation, I put together some of the key changes that our instructors will face when the system comes up. This isn't a perfect list. I'm sure I missed some other changes along the way. Some of the new features are a result of our tweaking permissions rather than a new feature that the vendor added. Some changes are due to the fact we are getting both 8.2 and 8.3 in this upgrade.

Here's a PDF of the full presentation with screen shots or screen captures.

What's New in Learn@UW? 20 Changes in (Approximately) 20 Minutes

1. Improved browser support. D2L now supports Firefox 2.0 on both Windows & Mac, Safari 2.0 and 1.3, and IE 6/7. (Someone in my presentation asked about Firefox 3 support (he said, "but it's Release Candidate 1"). Seriously.

2. Inactive course indicator. D2L now displays a little gray icon with an exclamation mark for courses that are not active for student access. This will help cut down calls to the help desk, but I'd still prefer to see a loud red X or something more visible.

3. New icon set. Experienced D2L users might get a bit disorientated with the new look, but overall, it's an improvement.

4. New navigational elements. D2L now has a much more consistent navigational interface. Across almost all tools, buttons and menus are located in consistent places. I haven't measured this, but the navigational improvements seem to cut down on the number of clicks needed to do something.

5. Instructors can toggle the role of users in their course. This was something we implemented by adjusting permissions slightly.

6. Instructors can remove TA's and instructors for their course. Again, this was a UW-Madison permissions tweak to cut down on support cases.

7. New Groups tool on course navigation bar. To leverage the enhanced groups functionality, you need to put the Groups tool in the nav bar. I think the prominence of this tool will get people thinking more about how to consider groups in their course.

8. Groups - very easy setup. By simply selecting a few checkboxes, instructors can create workspaces for their groups that include group discussions, group dropboxes, and group file lockers.

9. Improved HTML Editor. This was a big deal for D2L. I believe they implemented the TinyMCE HTML editor. The editing area is expandable, the buttons are clear, and it should work well across supported platforms and browsers.

10. HTML editor is everywhere. We decided to enable the HTML editor for all tools. The result is that the editor appears in places we didn't expect. Many surprises here, but no red flags yet.

11. Grades - easier interface. Again, navigational improvements make the plethora of options/settings a bit easier to wade through.

12. Grades - setup wizard. This is cool. When an instructor first clicks their Grades tool, a screen appears that lists the current gradebook settings. It's called a wizard, but (unless I'm mistaken), it doesn't walk an instructor through each setting or option.

13. Grades - spreadsheet view. This is even cooler. Instructors have been wanting the gradebook to "act more like Excel". I think this new ability to click on gradebook cells and enter scores will appease many frustrated instructors.

14. Dropbox - ability to multi-edit. Instructors can now edit multiple dropbox folder names and settings on a single screen.

15. Improved accessibility. We haven't done our own testing (and probably won't), but D2L's documentation purports to many improvements aligning with W3C standards. Some stated enhancements include: proper image alt/null text, proper headers/titles for tables/frames, hidden skip links for navigation bars and widgets, and the overall improved interface standardization.

16. Content - expand and collapse modules.

17. Content - multi-edit. See #14.

18. Content - learner statistics. This feature provides content item-level stats such as number of users visited and average time spent on item. The value here is not in analyzing the minutia of data, but rather, giving the instructor a feel for who is using the material (and who is not).

19. Discussions - linked to gradebook. Like quizzes, discussion postings can now be graded and automatically connected to gradebook columns.

20. Discussions - ratings. Interesting. Instructors can optionally enable ratings so that students can rate each other's posts on a 5-star scale. Average ratings are calculated. I'm sure that instructors opinions on this feature will vary greatly.

Like I said, I know there are more changes than what I've noted here. Over time, I'm sure this list would change considerably once we get more experience in 8.3.x.

Funny Videos: Blackboard...Bollywood Style

2008-05-22T15:21:00.000-05:00

I'm glad I peruse blogs. Michael Feldstein uncovered this beauty: a collection of Bollywood-style videos depicting Blackboard in key business moments.

One of my favorites:

Blackboard's Facebook App (My Frustrations with D2L Grow)

2008-05-14T14:49:00.000-05:00

The Chronicle reported on Blackboard's new Facebook application that sends a notification to students when a course has been updated with new material. It also somehow munges together a Blackboard course roster with Facebook friends or profiles (correct me if I'm wrong here) to better connect with classmates. Institutions can disable this if they want, but I don't understand any security or privacy concern when all Facebook is receiving is a notification message.

This development makes me frustrated with the Desire2Learn Learning Environment for a few reasons:

1. D2L does offer users an Updates widget for their My Home page and course home pages which is very useful...theoretically. Our institution has been advised to disable our Updates widgets due to the load it puts on our system (frequent queries to various tables), potentially degrading overall performance. Right now, UW students cannot even benefit from this handy notification system that already exists within the course management system, let alone in a prominent third-party app that's not going away any time soon.

2. D2L's lack of play in the open architecture field is becoming more apparent. Sure, D2L is releasing some type of SDK soon, but it is literally years behind Blackboard in this area. Blackboard's Building Blocks program has opened many doors for custom development by not only their partner vendors, but also educational institutions.

3. D2L's lack of social learning tools is a growing wart on the system. I hear an increasing number of faculty wanting things like blogs and wikis for collaboration purposes, but D2L is sorely lacking in this area as well. The current blog tool in D2L is for personal blogs (not course-based blogs) and has an interface that will turn people away if they've ever used some of the common blogs available today.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for the course management system to be an increasingly larger beast. Its enormous and complex architecture is costly and fragile. We all would benefit from an opening up of the CMS so that we can hook in our other tools and services, not to mention push out its data when necessary and appropriate.

Well, I'm sorry for the semi-rant here. I guess hearing of this Blackboard advancement touched a nerve of mine! As always, I'm curious to hear of your thoughts and new ideas.

What Good are Informal Assessments?

2008-05-07T13:34:00.000-05:00

The College of Engineering here at UW-Madison has launched an online newsletter, "Teaching and Learning Insights" as part of their 2010 Initiative.

They have been publishing a series of brief articles ("What Good are Informal Assessments?") spotlighting a variety of informal assessment methods. Some topics include clickers, wikis and blogs, and daily quizzes. Obviously, instructional technologies play a key role in these assessments.

The articles are short, well-written, and highlight the teaching efforts of local faculty. I highly recommend it not only for my colleagues here at UW, but elsewhere.

Now, if they could only provide a feed of their content!

Microsoft's attempt at e-Learning development

2008-05-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

I typically do not follow Microsoft news closely, however this caught my eye yesterday. Microsoft has released their "Learning Content Development System".

According to Microsoft:

The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a tool that enables you to create high quality, interactive, online courses. Virtually anyone can publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactivities, quizzes, games, and assessments—as well as Silverlight-based animations, demos, and other multimedia. Register to download the free LCDS release, then start creating your own e-learning courses today!

I found that Jan Van Belle downloaded and installed the LCDS last night. He offers a few reactions here.

From what I can surmise, it seems like this is an offline tool. Instructors (or e-Learning developers) need to publish the material somewhere. I also cannot tell if a gradebook tool is included.

Given that this product is for Windows-only, a downloadable application, and instructors must go through a publish step, I don't think this version of the product will take hold in higher ed or even make more waves than a brief mention like this.

Let me know if you've tried out this new tool and what you think about it.

Instructional Innovations with Drupal

2008-05-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

I'm very excited to see the services recently launched by Learning Support Services (UW-Madison College of Letters & Science).

LSS has leveraged Drupal to build a few template-based instructional systems: LessonShare and Collaborative Sites. LessonShare is a collaborative lesson-building system for instructors and teaching assistants. Collaborative Sites offers a streamlined course website that provides a wiki-based platform for student-generated content.

I love the innovation behind LessonShare -- create a system that addresses an unmet instructional need (lesson plan building and sharing) -- and I equally love the efficiencies of the Collaborative Sites project. I'm sure it addresses LSS's growing demand for wiki-based course sites.

In an upcoming WisconsinWeek article about Collaborative Sites, Doug Worsham and Sue Weier of LSS answer the question, "How does Collaborative Sites differ from the campus course management system (Learn@UW/D2L)?" Their response:

"We're really not creating an all-encompassing solution meant to support both course administration and student interaction. We're focused on online interaction and collaboration....We're not trying to make the Swiss Army knife, we're making the corkscrew."

Bingo.

Follow-up notes
I see that Doug has posted an online guide to setting up collaborative sites in Drupal at http://opensig.comets.wisc.edu/?q=collaboration

More data from UW-Platteville students

2008-04-25T14:03:00.001-05:00

I previously mentioned that the UW-Platteville student senate will be urging their faculty senate to mandate gradebook use of Desire2Learn by their instructors.

Their resolution was based on a 2008 online survey done of UW-P students, the results of which the current vice-president of the student senate generously shared with me. 346 of the 5837 students responded to the survey.

Two questions and results jumped out at me:

1) "Would you be in favor of a mandate that would require ALL UW-Platteville Faculty Members to post Student Exam & Homework grades on D2L?"
YES: 79%
NO: 21%

2) "Do you feel having the chance to view your grades online would increase your motivation in the classroom?"
YES: 80%
NO: 20%

I like the fact that this survey connected use of the online gradebook with motivation in the classroom. It is noteworthy that 80% responded affirmatively to the question.

I can't envision a faculty senate voting in favor of any such mandate, but at the very least, this action by the student senate will heighten the awareness of what students desire in their learning environment.

Learn@UW/D2L usage at UW-Madison

2008-04-25T12:52:00.000-05:00

I've always found it a challenge to answer the question "What percentage of courses (or sections depending on who's asking) use Learn@UW?"

First of all, at UW-Madison, we are a ginormous institution with a lot of instruction taking place in every shape and mode imaginable. Defining "course" and "section" is a tough task.

Recently, I attempted to figure this out with the help of staff that work with our student information system. I limited stats-gathering to official/timetable courses, including the professional schools, including independent study courses, excluding study abroad and excluding any bogus courses that the registrar's office creates. Also all members of cross-listed courses are counted as separate courses. All combined sections are counted separately, not aggregated. Phew.

Here are our results:

	Fall 2007	Spring 2008
Total Official Courses	4384	4405
Total Official Courses w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites	1292 (29.5%)	1474 (33.5%)
Total Official Sections	14960	14550
Total Official Sections w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites	4598 (30.7%)	5062 (34.8%)
Total Enrollments in Official Courses w/ Activated Learn@UW Sites	68696	73224
Unique People Using Learn@UW	30658	29449

My director, Kathy Christoph summarized it nicely: Learn@UW is being used in about 1/3 of the courses by nearly 3/4 of the students for an average of about 2.5 courses each.

At this large R1 university, I'm personally pleased with 33% usage of the central course management system. Also on our campus, there is a number of local schools and departments using other course management systems such as Moodle or their homegrown solution which raises the overall saturation numbers. But that's another story for another day...

Wisconsin-Platteville students want faculty mandated to use D2L gradebook

2008-04-22T13:35:00.000-05:00

In a move similar to that at Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville students senate voted to recommend to their faculty senate a mandate that would require all instructors to use the Desire2Learn gradebook for each course.

Marquette students want faculty to be required to attend one D2L training session and post the course syllabus in D2L. UW-P students want their instructors to be required to use the gradebook at minimum.

Neither resolution has much chance of passing their faculty senates (a previous and broader student resolution at UW-P requiring faculty use of D2L failed to pass through the faculty senate), but these moves indicate that today's students value the use of the course management system--particularly the posting of course materials and use of the online gradebook.

I'm curious as to the extent faculty and instructors are required to use a course management system or attend training, particularly in a hybrid environment (Obviously, many fully-online programs require this.) Of what examples are you aware?

5-Year Review of Desire2Learn at University of Wisconsin-Madison

2008-04-16T14:48:00.001-05:00

After 5 years of using D2L as the central course management system (branded "Learn@UW") at UW-Madison, our Academic Technology department asked me to lead a milestone review process. Naively, I said OK to what turned out to be a 10 month project culminating in a 25 page report.

The executive summary and full report are posted at the DoIT Academic Technology site.

Some of the key findings include:

30,000 people use Learn@UW each semester at UW-Madison
77% of students report a positive experience
73% of instructors report a positive experience
Instructors primarily use Learn@UW for course administration
Students most value convenience and the gradebook
Instructors report problems with the interface in general and specifically with the quiz and gradebook tools

If you scan the report, do you find anything in it surprising?
Has anyone conducted, or read, a similar report from a university?

D2L's list of court documents

2008-03-13T13:55:00.000-05:00

I just realized that Desire2Learn has been posting quite a collection of court documents in a user-friendly page on their patent info site.

Desire2Learn to revise flagship software

2008-03-13T13:35:00.000-05:00

D2L's hometown newspaper, The Record (Kitchener/Waterloo, ON), reported today about D2L's strategy for bringing its U.S. customers into a non-infringing status. D2L wants to get as many self-hosted U.S. customers into the soon-to-be-released Learning Environment 8.3.

The tricky part is ensuring that 8.3 is not infringing on Blackboard's controversial patent. D2L sounds confident that its redesigned code will be blessed by all parties. D2L CEO John Baker was quoted:

"We're very confident that 8.3 will be a good workaround," he said. "We're just waiting on the final legal stamp of approval."

The "final legal stamp of approval" is the key point. Blackboard will be allowed to review the new code, and ultimately it would seem that Judge Ron Cook has to find the software to be non-infringing.

The eventual challenge will be for campus technologists to implement a plan that not only complies with the vendor's wishes, but more importantly, ensures for its thousands of faculty and student users a smooth transition to a new version of the software, whenever a transition happens.

Baker, and the rest of us, are still anxiously awaiting developments on a review of the original patent:

"The patent should never have been issued in the first place. We're going to push the courts to recognize that."

Following the Blackboard patent & Desire2Learn issues

2008-03-12T11:14:00.000-05:00

Now that an initial verdict has come down against D2L for infringing on Blackboard's patent, a number of issues remain up in the air including the practical implications of the injunction against D2L, a review of the original Blackboard patent, and an appeal to the verdict by D2L.

Here are the best resources I have found for following these developments:

Desire2Learn's patent blog
http://desire2learn.com/patentinfo/
* D2L has provided a great deal of information throughout the process. Obviously, their comments must be constrained by their legal counsel.

Barry Dahl's Desire2Blog
http://desire2blog.blogspot.com/
* Barry is the Vice President of Technology & the Virtual Campus at Lake Superior College which is a D2L customer. Barry seems to have the ear of D2L and their CEO John Baker which makes for interesting content on his site that is frequently updated.

e-Literate by Michael Feldstein
http://mfeldstein.com
* Michael is a product manager for Oracle and former online learning leader at SUNY Learning Network. In addition to his insightful commentary and useful links, he recently hosted an eye-witness account of the Bb-D2L trial on his blog.

The NOSE by Alfred Essa
http://tatler.typepad.com/nose/
* Al is the Associate Vice Chancellor and Deputy CIO at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. He frequently writes about e-learning, open source, and specifically the Bb-D2L patent issue. MNSCU is also a D2L customer.

Let me know if you recommend other similar resources.

UPDATE: OK, in all fairness, I should also link to Blackboard's patent site:
http://blackboard.com/patent/
Just compare it's content with that of D2L's patent info site. The recent letter to the "Blackboard Community" has been loosely translated by Barry Dahl. Enjoy.

What's with Wisconsin and Desire2Learn??

2008-02-25T14:36:00.000-06:00

Within a span of 3 months, the Marquette (WI) University Student Senate reportedly

"passed legislation last November unanimously recommending that all
Marquette instructors be required to attend a D2L training session
and at the very least post the syllabus on the course site"

while the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater faculty senate

"formally expresses its dissatisfaction with the performance of the
current implementation, infrastructure, and management of
Desire2Learn and request that the University of Wisconsin System
Administration investigate the systemic nature of the problem and
resolve it."

And then a few days ago in the wake of the Blackboard-Desire2Learn verdict (where D2L was found to have infringed on Bb's controversial patent), the University of Wisconsin System is quoted in Waterloo's (ON) The Record:

"Our university system really loves Desire2Learn as a course-management system, and we've had relatively good luck with it," he said. "So this is a problem."

Hmmm. Sounds like students want instructors to use it more (and more effectively), instructors want it to run well, and administrators...well...we're trying to figure it all out.

Desire2Learn ePortfolio

2008-02-14T13:56:00.000-06:00

Desire2Learn just announced that their ePortfolio system will be available to clients for installations beginning February 28.

Today's announcement reminded me that I saw D2L's Ken Chapman give a presentation of their ePortfolio system back in July 2007. Though I have not followed the trends and issues of ePortfolios over time (and I'm not even sure where my own institution currently stands on this idea), I came away with a number of impressions.

If some of these notes are vague, it's because my memory has deteriorated since last July. I'm also hoping that what I saw back then is actually still a part of the product set to be released.

The learner is at the center of their model. Not only can artifacts be added and grouped, but the learner can reflect on these artifacts and collections. Depending on the configuration, instructors, peers and the learner can assess the artifacts.
A new kind of inline help was developed by D2L for their ePortfolio system. I'm hoping this will eventually show up in the Learning Environment system.
Feedback, alerts, and comments were incorporated.
Tagging of artifacts was incorporated. Again, let's hope this appears in the LE at some point.
"Presentations" allows the learner to select from a number of different views of his/her ePortfolio according to the intended audience. The template designs seemed very modern (similar to Blogger or WordPress-style designs).

Feel free to leave comments if I've erred in my notes.

Also, D2L has scheduled a slew of webinars as part of their Desire2Learn ePortfolio Webinar Series.

Blogger now supports Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian

2008-01-25T12:55:00.001-06:00

Blogger recently announced that they now support these three Asian languages. It's a significant step for an online tool to support right-to-left writing. As Blogger states on their blog:

Supporting these languages is a huge milestone for us because — unlike the other 37 languages Blogger is translated into — Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew are written from right to left. As you can see from the above screenshot (image), we had to flip the whole interface around.

Besides localizing the Blogger interface into these three languages, we have right-to-left templates and have added new toolbar buttons for bi-directional text editing in the post editor.

This is something the learning technology community has been wanting in our learning systems for years. Moodle appears to have the best support currently with their language translation packs. Blackboard 7 also offers numerous language packs (including the highly requested "Pirate Arrrr (High Seas)" language--really?) and both purport to be flexible enough for institutions to modify and develop their own language packs. Desire2Learn is not even close, though it does offer a few options such as French and UK English. I'm somewhat relieved to hear that it took Blogger this long to support bi-directional text editing and localized interfaces. Indeed, it's a complicated but worthy endeavor.

eLearn Mag's Predictions for 2008

2008-01-23T12:38:00.000-06:00

eLearn Magazine has assembled an impressive collection of predictions from many prominent thinkers in the field of learning technology including Stephen Downes, Jay Cross, Michael Feldstein, Patti Shank, Curt Bonk and others. It's worth a look.

A number of similar themes emerged:

more attention to serious games and virtual worlds
use of social networking for learning (rather than just a trendy thing to do)
loosening grip on the market by proprietary vendors
warnings about avoiding hype

Regular Online Quizzing Increases Preparation for Class

2008-01-22T11:47:00.000-06:00

This article from the January 2008 edition of the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning describes how the use of regular online quizzes can improve class participation and preparation.

Effectiveness of Regular Online Quizzing in Increasing Class Participation and Preparation

Abstract: Research suggests that frequent, regularly scheduled quizzing is associated with pedagogically desirable outcomes such as higher performance on exams. It was hypothesized that requiring students to complete brief scheduled online quizzes on assigned reading material before class would also result in increases in both the number of in-class questions and comments and the number of students who read the material prior to class. For each of 3 semesters, students in 1 section of introductory psychology who took time- limited, out-of-class, “open-book” WebCT quizzes on daily readings were compared to students in another section who did not take quizzes during that unit. Because each section participated in quizzing during 2 units and no quizzing during 2 units, within-section comparisons were also made. Analyses indicated that quizzing was associated with increases in both the number of student questions and comments made at the beginning of class and the number of students who reported that they came to class having read the assigned material. It was suggested that the immediate feedback provided by quizzes is particularly efficient in identifying areas of misunderstanding and in challenging students’ “illusion of knowing” the material. Spontaneous, anonymous comments on end-of-unit surveys also suggested that a primary value of online quizzing is in helping students maintain a regular reading and study schedule.

Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources

2007-10-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of mashable.com, here's an amazing collection of tools related to online video. They're organized into the following categories:

Live video communications
Online video how-to
Online video editors
Online video converters
Video sharing
Video hosting
Video organization and management
Vidcasts and vlogging
Video mashups
Mobile video apps
Online video search
Online video downloading services
Miscellaneous tools
Online TV

The mashable.com site has too much advertising and is geared towards the myspace/facebook crowd, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more exhaustive list of online video tools.

2007 First Year Conference

2007-10-11T15:10:00.000-05:00

Today I attended UW-Madison's 9th annual conference on first-year students.

I came away impressed by the variety of people committed to making students' first year a good one and the depth to which many have thought and worked in this area.

I took three themes away from the event:

1. It is critical that students be exposed to the big picture, big questions, big problems of a given field in order to draw them in and provide useful context for studying the details of a problem/course/discipline. Many instructors are redesigning their courses (and in one case, creating a new textbook) around this concept.

2. Institutional learning outcomes, such as those described by LEAP, must permeate down to the course level and not just left to the end of a career.

3. Portfolios. Academic Technology could be a significant part of the discussion on the practical side of students showing they have met the outcomes.

e-Portfolios allow:

students to make connections across multiple experiences
students to reflect upon their experiences
students to share their collections/reflections with others (including advisors, job interviewers, family)
faculty, advisors, administrators to provide evidence of achieving LEAP outcomes
graduates to provide evidence to future employers
graduates to track their own learning over time

Here is my full collection of notes from the conference.

"Community Hubs" at Penn State

2007-09-25T15:01:00.001-05:00

I just heard Cole Camplese from Penn State discuss PSU's use of Community Hubs to support new major learning technology initiatives. Peers support peers, and he said that the help desk is reporting a drop in support calls.

One example is a community hub for their course management system, Angel. The Angel Community Hub has lots of faculty and staff participation, Cole mentioned.

I'm wondering what platform supports these community hubs.

Faculty Peer Community to meet Instructional Technology Support Crunch

2007-09-12T16:04:00.000-05:00

Over lunch today, I was pondering faculty development as I read an article from Educause Review, "Faculty 2.0" .

It starts out with the tired stuff about how faculty are under a change crunch (though it's enlightening to see all the change issues listed). It also points out that as we approach the time when faculty adoption reaches the voluminous majority on Rogers' curve, our support resources will be highly taxed--scaling up support under our current models will be a problem. Many are already calling it an instructional technology support crisis.

To some extent on my campus, we are seeing this with our course management system right now. Early adopters have long been using the system and innovating with it, and now the middle majority is propelling usage to all-time highs.

Most interestingly, the article ends with a call for campus support units to not just throw more people and money at the challenge, but to design systems that scale for enterprise-wide delivery. Our excellent campus help desk knowledge base is one of those where we are seeing significant ROI.

The article's best nugget:

"Real-time professional development puts increasing pressure on faculty-development centers to be much less place-centric. The centers may evolve into clearinghouses where faculty members can share with each other on a peer-to-peer basis....Just as academic libraries are moving away from being the atomistic centers of their colleges or universities, faculty members need to become the critical component in a broader network of peer-to-peer professional development."

Basically, peer support is the way to meet this growing need. (And faculty most prefer this method of IT learning as Carl Berger, Cheryl Diermyer and I shared last year.)

In "Social Networking Technologies: A Poke for Campus Services", Christoph, Berg and Berquam stated the need for campus IT staff to engage with their campus and work to enhance services by learning from social networking technologies.

If we mash-up the problems and solution presented in the "Faculty 2.0" article with the methodology recommended in the "Poke" article, we can envision a system for faculty peer support focused on best teaching practices.

Call it Facebook meets the campus Teaching and Learning Center.

If I were to add a new row to the matrix outlined in the "Poke" article, it might look something like:

Core Campus Activity:
- Faculty Development (Teaching w/ Technology)

Connecting on Ideas:
- Teaching profiles (discipline, area of expertise, course topics, course demographics-large/small/online/etc)
- Tags or categories that link to matches in other profiles
- Messaging
- Best practice repository

Making Connections:
- Academic Technology
- Teaching Center
- Faculty
- Portal services
- Deans' offices

I would love to see some type of a faculty/staff social network (not to mention a student learning network) wrapped around, or within, our course management system.

ELGG might be a way to make this a reality. The University of Manitoba's Virtual Learning Commons is the only example I have seen that has implemented such a system, but theirs is a network for students.

Have you ever seen a social network for instructors? What types of instructors would even use such a system? What would motivate them?

Univ of Manitoba Adopts Web 2.0 Approach to Learning

2006-12-15T15:19:00.000-06:00

Right on.

This would be a great component to wrap around a course management system. I would love to see something like an ELGG network ("ELGG Spaces") that encompasses the CMS.

The University of Manitoba is trying out a new approach to education that borrows from popular social networking and information sites such as MySpace and Wikipedia.

The school's Virtual Learning Commons website lets staff and students create academic and personal profile pages they can use to share information or make new contacts.

The site, launched in September, was designed to take advantage of so-called Web 2.0 technologies commonly used to build online communities.

The approach is meant to foster learning through social collaboration and openness, Peter Tittenberger, the acting director of the university's learning technology centre said.

"The VLC allows students and staff an opportunity to connect, discuss, share and create content online as an entire university community — not at a course level," he said in a written statement. "It also allows students to define what they want to talk about, what's important to them and gives them a platform to discuss those concerns." Read Entire Article.....

UPDATE:
The U of Manitoba's Virtual Learning Commons also contains:

an assignment manager (" The Assignment Manager will create a step-by-step schedule for you so you can successfully complete your assignments.")
online writing center
calendar ("The Calendar pulls together all items from the Assignment Manager and your To Do's.")

Those sound like CMS tasks to me....

Google=Next Generation Course Management System

2006-12-08T17:23:00.000-06:00

The course management system as we know it is at a crossroads in its short history as an enterprise-level web-based learning tool. Even before the acquisition of WebCT by Blackboard, "CMS 1.0" users were often lamenting its shortcomings.

At the same time enthusiasm about the viability of CMS 1.0 has waned (though use of it by instructors and students is still increasing), many advancements and changes have occurred with Internet tools and services. The proliferation of portals, feeds and Ajax techniques--combined with consumers' love for creating, sharing, and storing personalized media and text (often at no or low-cost)--have ushered in a new wave of user-friendly web applications dubbed Web 2.0.

When Arizona State University announced they partnered with Google to provide university email service through the "Google Apps for Education" program, it wasn't the fact that they essentially outsourced a key function of their institution's central IT unit (though that in itself should have registered on the Richter scale) that is significant. More profound is what they will be able to accomplish in the (very near?) future. ASU's Chief Technology Officer, Adrian Sannier, describes the new technical development track ASU has jumped upon:

"At ASU we have recognized that the accelerated pace of technological change is outstripping the development capacity of internal university IT organizations. The cottage industry phase of the information revolution is rapidly approaching its end.

ASU recognizes that if we are to realize the full potential of this rapidly evolving technology, our internal IT organizations must somehow leave behind the provisioning of individual services and climb the value chain to focus on the application and integration of rapidly emerging capabilities to continuously improve the university’s core activities.

Which is why we are so excited by our alliance with Google — because the Google alliance not only provides a vastly superior capability for our students on the day we unwrap the box it places ASU on Google’s exponential technology development trajectory."

This is precisely why I look to Google for producing what we have all been waiting for...CMS 2.0, aka The Next Generation CMS.

Take a look at the current slate of Google's tools and how they compare with current CMS 1.0 tools:

Google Groups -- Course sites
Google Calendar -- CMS calendar
Gmail -- campus mail or CMS message system
Google start page -- My Home or CMS portal page

Can you see the similarities? Can you imagine the improvements a Google-based CMS might offer?

Take the next step and look at some of Google's other tools:

Google Search Appliance (UW is already using this. Does our current CMS offer a search mechanism?)
Google Images, Google Video, Google Scholar (Global leader in search and storage capabilities. Institutional repository?)
Blogger, JotSpot, and Google Page Creator (Leading tools for anyone to publish and collaborate. Our collaboration tools? Paralyzed in committees.)

How hard would it be for Google's rather large team of developers to integrate these into a coherent system? Hmmm...

There's a lot more to come on this topic, but for now, please leave your comments.

Businesses are slow to adopt Web 2.0 concepts

2006-12-05T15:55:00.000-06:00

"Web 2.0 technologies are penetrating companies at a very low rate because most business leaders have a meager understanding of the basic concepts."

From Wisconsin Technology Network newsletter....Good article with links to a few Madison examples of business-based blogs.

Testing out Podcasting

2006-02-01T09:21:00.000-06:00

Here's my first podcast.

[link removed]

Mac OS X 10.4 and MyWebSpace

2005-05-04T16:07:00.000-05:00

You can use the Mac's Finder to connect to your MyWebSpace account. I
have this running in OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and have not tested it in
other versions of OS X.

Here's how:

Finder > Go > Connect to Server

Type https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/accountname (use your account name)

A Web Dav login box should appear where you should enter your (UW)
NetID and password.

A new volume will be mounted to your system and you can drag and drop
just like any other network storage volume! Yea!!

Funny shirt of the day

2005-05-04T10:28:00.000-05:00

Just saw this...
I can't say that I recommend shopping this site, but this is indeed a funny one.

Moodle links

2005-04-20T15:01:00.000-05:00

Some related sites to check out:

moodle.org

moodle.org/sites

opensourcecms.com

Lingering questions about Moodle:

Does it scale for enterprise-level use (10,000s of users and/or large courses of 100s of students)?
Can courses be imported from WebCT and Blackboard?
How well does it support non-Western languages?

The next steps for me are to play around with our local installation of Moodle here and determine the robustness of the tools/features. Also, I'll start looking for actual cases, particularly of large-scale academic implementations.

Moodle introduction

2005-04-20T11:49:00.000-05:00

I've heard of Moodle for some time now, but I have not yet made the time to investigate this course management system. I'm heading off to a Moodle demo here at UW-Madison later today, so I'm sure my understanding of the tool will increase quickly.

Here are some of the most interesting aspects of Moodle at first glance:

1. it's based upon "social constructionist pedagogy" (http://moodle.org/doc/?frame=philosophy.html)

2. if offers 3 course template formats: weekly, topics or social formats. This should be a great feature because it immediately prompts the instructor to think about the structure of the course site. Should it be arranged by date (weekly format)? Topics covered in class regardless of dates (topics format)? Or should it be centered on collaborative participation of the course members (social format)?

When I was training faculty in the use of Blackboard, this was one of the initial stumbling blocks. Many instructors didn't have a strong sense of how to organize their material. Often I'd turn the discussion towards something like "describe your syllabus to me" in order to get their thought processes firing in the right direction. I'm not sure yet if Moodle requires instructors to set this format setting or if not, what the default format is.

3. A strong focus on activities. Instructors add activities modules (assignments, discussion forum, choice-a quick poll, resources, quizzes, more...) to the course site. This in contrast to Blackboard which operates from a content delivery perspective. Activities are often buried inside of communication tools menus.

At this moment, I'm not sure of Moodle's robustness for an enterprise-level course management system. However, my first look at sample course sites shows that it's an interesting "light-weight" tool worthy of further exploration.

For starters...

2005-04-20T10:42:00.000-05:00

Glad you stumbled into this site. Although familiar with blogs for a while now, and experienced with using them for posting family photos and news, this is my first foray into the world of blogging for professional purposes.

Right now, I plan to use this site as a repository for my reflections on various aspects of educational technology. I'm not sure how useful this site will be to others, but at least I'll be able to track and search my previous thoughts and notes.

-Jeff