Desire2Blog

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. ( CC photo by Alan "Cogdogblog" Levine ). But soon the jig will be up and we will all be safe from those crazy non-students out there. In a move that has been expected for about eighteen months now, the Senate has passed a bill (S.1642, Higher Education Amendments of 2007) that " requires an institution that offers distance education to have processes through which the institution establishes that the student who registers in a distance education course or program is the same student who participates in and completes the program and receives the academic credit ." So far, it is anyone's guess as to what methods/gadgets they might accept for the required "processes.' Informed people (like Steve Crow of the Higher Learning Commission) have told me that they probably won't dictate methodology, but that we will be required to determine our own processes, communicate them widely, and then follow them. Will...

I just spent three days in Annapolis attending my first board meeting for the Instructional Technology Council (ITC). What a great bunch of people and what a great location to spend a few days getting to know them all a bit better. We spent a fair amount of time planning for the 2008 e-Learning Conference which will be held in St. Pete Beach and hosted by St. Petersburg College. Building upon the incredible momentum of the 2007 conference, I predict that this next conference will once again break attendance records and be a huge success. I was almost chosen by the group to give my first keynote address at a national conference. Almost, but not quite. This is an opportunity that I am actively preparing for in hopes that I will someday be asked. I have about four different keynote topics in mind right now, some of which are ready for prime time, and others that still need a bit more nurturing and development. A couple of the board members were very supportive of the idea of naming me to ...

This will be my last post about the IMS Global Consortium LTAC meetings in Redmond, WA held last week. Thursday early afternoon - Panel Presentation: Standards and Best Practices for Providing Online Programs - Me, Russ Adkins of Broward CC, and John St. Clair of Tennessee Board of Regents. $ - I talked about best (or at least pretty good) practices from the perspective of both LSC and MnOnline, including the following: 1) LSC Online Student Mentors, 2) LSC Events-based Distance Learning, 3) Quality Matters at both LSC and MnOnline, 4) Noel-Levitz PSOL data gathering at LSC and MnOnline, 5) online tutoring at LSC and MnOnline, 6) Minnesota efolio, 7) Statewide electronic library services. $ - Russ talked about how BCC went from almost no e-learning five years ago to a very large e-learning operation today. BCC overall has about 23,000 FTE and about a 60,000 student headcount. In 8 years, they grew from nothing online to about 200 full-time and 350 part-time faculty teaching something o...

The best part of the IMS-LTAC meetings in Redmond was the opportunity to meet Michael Feldstein. After reading his e-Literate blog for more than a year and listening to a couple of audio interviews/presentations, I felt as though I already knew him. He has been one the most prolific writers about the Blackboard-D2L debacle , and about edu-patents in general. We spent the better part of two days engaged in conversations (and presentations) about e-Learning standards, IMS Global Consortium projects, and other things related to educational uses of learning management systems and the like. Michael is one of those deep thinkers and no-B.S.-kind-o-guys that I enjoy spending time with. We were also able to have a casual conversation at the end of the events while enjoying the halibut at the Coho Café in Redmond. I won’t even mention that he spilled his beer across the table and into my lap. I will mention that his opinion matches mine about how Blackboard is doing irreparable harm to their ...

Craig Bartholomew, general manager of the Education Products Group at Microsoft, welcomed us to the Evil Empire (his words). Example of not being evil - 60% of the MS employees donated over $72 million to charity last year (employee donations matched by company). Gates Foundation's 3-R's: Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships. Panel Presentation: Establishing Course and Content Quality Standards - Keith Hampson, Bill Evans, and Michael Feldstein. Bill Evans, Cal Sate Chico - Data warehousing and analytics have been largely ignored but they are now starting to get more attention. Anecdotes from the CSU & Beyond: 1) Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI): universal design improves courses for all students. 2) Assessing Online Facilitation (AOF): peer evaluation of facilitator skills/process, 3) Exemplary Online Instruction (EOI) Awards: faculty recognition and reward 4) Institute for Teaching and Learning (ITL): support for the highest standards of university teaching excellenc...

Notes from the LTAC Summit, July 19, 2007 at Microsoft. John Falchi : IMS GLC Overview and Role of LTAC : Formal project charters are developed when they are attempting to address a challenge. We started to develop a charter yesterday around the standards for Distance (Flexible) Learning. They focus on the use and accessibility of work product. Practical application: (Challenge) usable, quality digital content availability; (Outcomes) increase faculty productivity, reduce costs, etc.; Possible solutions: IMS Common Cartridge , IMS Tool Interoperability . Kevin Riley (IMS Senior Strategist for New Activities): Common Cartridge - Benefits: lower integration costs (hooking together tools, content, etc.), greater choice of content, reduces vendor/platform lock-in, greater assessment options, increase flexibility, sharing and reuse. Why will it succeed? 10 years experience in interoperability work, based on the most widely used standards, widely supported even by the platform vendors, eas...

Wednesday at the IMS Global Consortium Meetings, I attended a workshop on Standards for Distance Learning. This is an attempt to develop the definitive list of best practices for e-Learning programs. Starting with definitions. What are we talking about? Are they standards or best practices or something else? Is this targeted at higher ed, K-12, corporate learning, all, or what? Is "distance learning " the correct term? Probably not, but what is? Scope? Level of education Course or program? Distance? Type of technologies What else? What do we call it? Michael Feldstein asks what the outcome will be. Who will use this information and why? Why the IMS guidelines rather than Sloan-C or others? Possibly because the IMS is a more international organization and not just focused on U.S. higher ed which is not true of several of the other organizations working on similar issues. He wants to make things "less odious," which came up many times throughout the day...

I'm in Seattle (Bellevue/Redmond actually) for the IMS Global Learning Consortium Quarterly Meetings and Learning Technology Advisory Council (LTAC) Summit. I think it will be more interesting than the name implies. It's my first time here, both in Seattle and at Microsoft. I've been completely turned around since arriving yesterday afternoon. North seems south and east seems west. Not sure how that happened. Of course it's raining this morning. Not that I expected anything else. First impression? This is another one of those places where it is next to impossible to find a Diet Dew. What is up with that? I went into a RiteAid (like Walgreens, if that helps) and they don't even have shelf space for Diet Dew, not in the cooler and not on the shelves of 12-packs. I'm heading for the Microsoft campus in about five minutes and hope to report out on the activities of the Summit as they progress. But I need to find a Diet Dew.

The D2L User Conference is over so it's time to start concentrating on the next big conference event. As a newly-elected board member, I will be promoting the ITC's e-Learning 2008 conference far and wide to any and all who will listen. ITC ( Instructional Technology Council ) is a great organization of leaders in e-learning and other uses of educational technology. There is a great mix of single stand-alone institutions as well as multi-campus districts; community colleges and technical colleges; four-year institutions and graduate schools; non-profit organizations along with a few for-profit organizations. The common thread that runs throughout is that they are all interested or involved in instructional technology. There are two reasons why I know that this is going to be a fabulous conference. First is that it is being hosted by St. Petersburg College . At the last e-Learning conference in Albuquerque I had the privilege of getting to know some great people from the Web an...

Elvis has left the building (and gone to Memphis for the 2008 D2L conference). The last post-conference workshops have just finished and everything is packed up and moved out. The verbal feedback on the concentrated training sessions was very good. I attended a session on Rubrics and Competencies and learned a great deal. I have several ideas floating around in my head about how we can use that tool to capture data about college-wide outcomes as well as program outcomes. Now the hard part will be in making a good plan and executing it. Of course we also have to convince MnSCU to actually flip the switch and let us use the tool. Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

In my post a few days ago , I mentioned that I would be posting a link to the resources used in Podcasting without Fruit workshop delivered at the D2L User Conference on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. "Podcasting without Fruit" resources . (Sorry, link fixed 7/13) Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

I thought all three keynote speakers were fabulous. Each very different from the others and with different messages to convey in different ways. Nancy White just finished about 45 minutes ago. Nancy is very engaging, very animated on stage, and you get a sense that she clearly has the personality to develop a sense of community among distributed learners, which was a central part of her presentation and about her daily work in the field. She was a great contrast to the other speakers and has been an important contributor to the conference with her attendance throughout the three days. ( Her presentation wik i.) Will Richardson on Tuesday has a powerful message that is not always well received by educators. Will's appearance was my special request as conference planning committee co-chair, and I think he delivers every time at the plate. There are plenty of educators who don't like to be told that they are going 10 miles per hour in a 100 mph world .... but those people tend to ...

The most reasonable explanation for winning the vote for the People's Choice at the Desire2Excel Awards. Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

This is my first attempt at using VoiceThread . Very easy to use and allows audio comments rather than just text comments (free, of course). I would have used this in my Web 2.0 presentation this morning but I only learned about it at 10:30 PM today from Alan's blog . I uploaded today's photos to Flickr , and in about 15 minutes I had my first VoiceThread. Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

The opening reception at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth went very well Sunday night. Overall I think almost everyone enjoyed the venue, with the possible exception of the shy otters who chose not to make an appearance. The highlight for me was the chance to meet Stephen Downes, here seen petting the rays in one of the hands-on exhibits at the aquarium. For the uninitiated, Stephen ( bio here ) is a senior researcher for the National Research Council in Canada and viewed by many (including me) as one of the brighest minds in e-learning, educational technology, and just about anything else he puts his mind to. His news recap and commentary on OLDaily is mandatory reading for me and is one of those things in my blog reader that I never let build up too much without reading through the posts. I was surprised to see him here and then disappointed to realize that he is not scheduled to make a presentation. Wait 'til next year! Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

A few shots of the conference set-up on Sunday morning. Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

I am the most fickle conference session attendee you will ever find. I change my mind about 50 times about which session I will attend, sometimes even after the session has started. ;) As it stands today, this is my plan for attending sessions at Fusion 2007 in Duluth : Monday 9:00-10:00 Keynote Address - Dr. Ruth Clark : "Learning Faster, Better" Monday 10:15-11:15 Accessibility: Birds of a Feather, Janna Cameron of D2L Monday 11:30-12:30 Web 2.0 Whirlwind Inside Desire2Learn (yours truly) Monday 1:30-2:30 New Student Orientation-Going Online! Melanie Morgan-Jackson, Mike Van Dyke, Cindy Mersereau Monday 2:45-3:45 Leveraging the New Virtual Classroom, Ruth Colvin Clark Monday 4:00–5:00 Product Update: John Baker & Kenneth Chapman, Desire2Learn Tuesday 8:00-9:00 Integrating iTunes U Access Into Desire2Learn, David Delgado Tuesday 9:15-10:15 Have We As Teachers Changed As Learners? Will Richardson & Nancy White Tuesday 10:30-11:30 Podcasting Without Fruit...

Tuesday morning (11:30) at the D2L conference I will be making a presentation titled "Podcasting without Fruit." Huh? Why? What does that mean? The title is reflective on my own frustration with about 98% of the conference presentations that I have seen in the past three years that have had anything to do with podcasting. These presenters talk about podcasting as if you "HAVE" to have an Apple Computer and use Apple-only software in order to be a podcaster. In fact many of the presentations have been given by Apple employees, which is clearly a good strategy for the Apple Company but not necessarily a helpful solution for the 90% of the computing public who are Windows-users. The last thing I want is to start buying Apple computers for employees who want to start creating podcasts. So, this session will look at free tools that are available for Windows users who would like to create, edit, and publish podcasts. I have created a Google Notebook with the presentatio...