Desire2Blog

I am normally the interviewer for the Desire2Pod series, but this time Valerie Beyer of Desire2Learn interviews me about the Online Student Mentor program at Lake Superior College. The Online Student Mentor program ( PDF description ) was selected to receive one of the three Desire2Excel awards at FUSION 2008 held last July in Memphis. We are now in our sixth year of this program. Some of the best outcomes have been related to the number of students who decided to choose a career in education after their involvement in the student mentor program. The slides below are about three years old now, but can give you a good idea about some of the features of the program. LSC Online Student Mentors from Barry Dahl >

I've been looking at the math involved in trying to meet the Governor's goal for Minnesota Online. By 2015 he would like to see 25% of our enrollments delivered online. First, let's look at the most recent completed year - FY08. Classroom (01) = 114,364 FYE = 81.8% Internet (03) = 12,806 FYE = 9.2% Web Enhanced (09) = 3,718 FYE = 2.7% Web Supplied (10) = 7,631 FYE = 5.5% Other (01, 02, 04, 06, 08) = 1,361 FYE = 1% Total (all media codes) = 139,880 FYE = 100% For those of you not familiar with our coding system, let me try to explain. In MnSCU we use media codes to identify different delivery methods. Media code 01 is the traditional classroom face-to-face learning arrangement. Media code 03 is for online learning, although it is possible to have up to two required time and place events - such as campus/proctored exams, labs, and the like ( see another post of how different states define distance education). Media code 09 is called "web-enhanced" learning wh...

Last week I attended meetings with the Southern Regional Education Board. I spoke about Web 2.0 usage in higher education and there were several other presentations related to teaching with technology and online learning. One interesting session was led by John Opper of the Florida Distance Learning Consortium. I'm working on another post about some of the things that are happening in Florida, but this post will focus on some of the info that is available at the website related to a legislature-mandated task force regarding distance learning in the Sunshine State. They are looking at special fees for distance courses, which begs the question about how to determine whether a course is a distance course that should have the fees applied. We deal with very similar issues here in Minnesota where a per credit fee is charged for distance courses (but not hybrid or web-enhanced courses) and also where most schools charge a higher tuition rate for online/distance courses. What they found ...

This will be cross-posted at my Online Student Satisfaction blog . I have been analyzing some of the data (again) from the 2008 PSOL survey. This is the fourth year that we have used this Noel-Levitz survey at Lake Superior College. The embedded slides explain a bit more about the survey, including the four sets of data that are compared for online student ratings of both importance and satisfaction. 2008 PSOL Data Charts View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: psol online ) There are 26 items that are included in all PSOL submissions. You can add other items but only the first 26 can be compared across other populations since these are the only items answered by all students. In order of descending importance, here are the top eleven items for LSC students on the 2008 PSOL (survey item number is indicated at beginning of each line). 1. (20) The quality of online instruction is excellent. 2. (25) Faculty are responsive to student needs. 3. (11) Student assignments ar...

I really don't know what to make of the latest posting on the D2L Patent Blog . The title is Blackboard sues U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. There's a link to a PDF of the suit filed by Blackboard. D2L says the following: "A new development: Blackboard has taken its attempts to stop the reexam to another level. It has now sued the Patent and Trademark Office , asking the Court for a ruling that the PTO's refusal to suspend or terminate the reexam was improper. Blackboard filed its case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where the PTO is located. The Complaint makes for an interesting read, and has at least one surprising omission: Blackboard somehow forgot to mention that on March 25, in a non-final action, the PTO rejected each of the 44 claims of the patent ." I'm about ready to board a plane for Atlanta, so the PDF should make for good reading on the plane.

Here is the 10-minute video compilation of the highlights of Governor Pawlenty's visit to Lake Superior College on November 20, 2008 ( previous post here ). This video was produced by Gary Kruchowski and team from the Public Information office at LSC. Then we have the footage (about 1:30) below which was swept up from the cutting-room floor of yours truly stepping up the podium (unexpectedly) at the end of the press conference.

I only have one thing on my Christmas list for Santa. I want one of these.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty visited Lake Superior College today as part of his statewide sweep to announce his goal of having 25% of all MnSCU credits earned online by the year 2015. During the '07-08 academic year, the system of 32 two-year colleges and state universities had an online enrollment rate of 9.2% of the total registered credits. (Photo by Janet Blixt) "We live in an iPod world but much of our education system is dominated by whiteboards and lecture halls. We have students with different learning styles, different backgrounds, different capabilities, and exploding interest in online opportunities and services. We need to modernize the way college courses are delivered and put Minnesota on the cutting edge of online education." Some of the talking points of his address: Improve student access and support for online courses. Required online learning experience prior to high school graduation. (Possibly, but necessarily an online college course) $150 bonus t...

As best as I can tell, students using the new GI Bill to take online courses or other types of distance education offerings will be getting the short straw as far as benefits go. Apparently, if a student on the GI Bill is taking online courses, (s)he will not quality for the housing stipend that other "traditional" students would get: Monthly Housing Stipend If you are enrolled in a traditional college program as a half-time to full-time student, you will be paid a monthly housing stipend equal to the monthly Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) for an E-5 with dependents. The average housing stipend will be approximately $1,100 a month. However, if you attend distance learning programs such as correspondence courses and online you will not qualify for this stipend. This language can be found here . This is clearly a bad thing, but not nearly as bad as what we first heard at the ITC Board meeting last week in DC. The rumor then was that the GI Bill couldn't be used AT ALL ...

I'll be heading to Phoenix this week for the annual WCET conference (at the Tapatio Cliffs, right). I have a presentation on Thursday with Al Essa from the MnSCU Office of the Chancellor which should be great fun. Al will be taking the pro side and I will be taking the con side in a debate about Second Life in higher ed. (Flickr CC photo by thorinside ) Immediately after that presentation late Thursday afternoon, I'll be heading to the airport to fly back to Minneapolis so that I can drive down to Mankato for their Teaching with Technology Conference on Friday morning. Missing the WCET sessions on Friday is most unfortunate since they will be having a panel discussion about the distance education provisions in the Higher Ed Act recently passed and signed into law. I feel a very great need to be in that room on Friday to argue against the position that WCET seems to be taking in this whole debacle. I've already written extensively about the clarifying language in the HE...

D2L created some new buttons for giveaways at Educause. Sadly, the button company appears to have made a typo on one of them. Can you spot it?

This story is almost too much to believe. I guess that is why the blog post at the D2L patent site has a title of: "Grab yourself a cup of coffee and get comfortable - we have a story for you!" Many of us who attended D2L's 2008 User Conference (FUSION) in Memphis were distracted by the court proceedings that were occurring simultaneously in Texas. This was the proceeding where the court found that D2L version 8.3 does NOT infringe on Blackboard's bogus patent. From the blog entry: "Blackboard convinced the Court that it should be permitted to have a representative at FUSION, Dr. Mark Jones (who served as Blackboard's expert witness) and the Court agreed. Counsel for Blackboard further requested: We would ask the court and ask D2L not to disclose that Dr. Jones is an expert for Blackboard or is connected with Blackboard at the conference. The court, I'm sure from its past statements, has read some of the blogs and some of the Internet traffic on this. And...

D2L Users Conference at St. Paul RiverCentre in July 2009 This from MnSCU CIO Ken Niemi: "St. Paul’s RiverCentre will be the site of the 2009 D2L Users Conference. MnSCU will co-host the event with Desire2Learn. The event kicks off on Sunday evening, July 12. The main conference will be July 13-15, with post-conference sessions July 16-17. This is a great opportunity for MnSCU faculty, administrators and technical staff to attend an international conference within driving distance. The 2008 conference was held in Memphis, Tennessee, where an all-day Executive Session was offered for the first time. Given the success of that session, it will be offered again at the 2009 conference in St. Paul. The session will be geared toward an audience of high level planners and administrators, including CAOs, CIOs, presidents, and other executives involved in planning and administering enterprise system technology and learning management systems. We look forward to c...

I'm just passing along the following questions and answers from the D2L Patent Blog . Q. Does Learning Environment 8.3 infringe Blackboard's Patent? A. No. Q. Didn't Blackboard try to get the court to say LE 8.3 infringed? A. Yes, but the court ruled against Blackboard. Q. Why did the court rule against Blackboard? A. Because the court found (1) that the design of the system was in Canada; (2) that the steps of the method patent were not performed in the US for clients who were hosted on Desire2Learn servers in Canada; and (3) that the installation step of the method patent was not performed in the US for clients that are self hosted in the US. Q. Does that mean Desire2Learn is a safe choice? A. Yes. The safest choice, in fact. Only Desire2Learn performs steps of the patent outside of the United States. No other Blackboard competitor that we know of can say that. Q. Does the patent affect any non-US clients? A. No, not now, not ever. Q. What about ...

This is a free conference . Friday, November 7, 2008 at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Some of the e-learning sessions listed in the program include: Care to Moodle? Description: Overview and demonstration of the open source online course platform, Moodle. Matching Practice to Outcome . Description: An Examination of Online Teaching from Multiple Perspectives-- students, interns and professor. Presentation of information from a research project that systematically examined the practice of online teaching to discover what works, what is challenging and the relationship between practices and outcomes. My Online Course Speaks to Every Student--Does Yours? Description: Discussion of accessibility issues surrounding D2L (and/or other learning management systems). Part 1-Becoming aware of the various barriers to learning for many students in courses delivered with D2L and developing awareness of work arounds to these barriers. Part 2-Tips and tools for developing accessibl...

The annual ITC eLearning 2009 Conference planning committee is in full gear. Every year that I have attended this conference has been better than the previous year, and I expect this year to be no exception. As a board member of the Instructional Technology Council, you would likely expect that I am biased in that respect, which is probably true. However, it is because of the quality of the conference and the people involved that I even wanted to join the board in the first place. The conference is scheduled for February 21-24 at the Portland Hilton and Executive Tower in Portland, Oregon. Pre-conference workshops will be held on Saturday, February 21 with the main conference kicking off Sunday, Feb. 22. I'll be hosting two pre-conference workshops : The Basics of Blogs, Wikis, and RSS - morning session Using Web 2.0 Tools inside your Virtual Learning Environment - afternoon The proposal deadline is Friday, October 10, 2008. Because we use a Moodle installation for the ITC websit...

Only four slides embedded below. The results are shown from a clicker question I posed during two different speaking engagements in front of K-12 audiences. I just think it's interesting, but not terribly surprising. About Virtual High Schools View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: onlineeducation elearning )

I love goofy generators like this . Thanks to John Krutsch  for the heads up on Twitter and for the very creative tool that he just whipped up one day. Wow!

For several years now I have railed against the use of ed2go courses when they are affiliated with a college or university. During my time on the Minnesota Online Council I was especially adamant against the listing of the ed2go courses at the MnOnline website as though they were endorsed courses from a member institution. There is no way that I think the brand should be diluted by including courses like this in our offerings. Why not? Glad you asked. NOTE: most of this post was written after I discovered that my own school had recently signed on with ed2go. This saddens me to no end since I spent the past five y ears railing against the use of ed2go in Minnesota Online and our colleges. Our VP in that division assures me that they will do what they can to not harm our reputation for quality online offerings - and I believe that, I'm just not sure how much of that we can actually control. I waited a couple of weeks before posting this to see whether my opinion would be changed by...

To go along with our other TV and Internet advertisements, we put together a little riff on the green aspects of e-Learning. Very well done. My thanks to Gary K and Dave K. The other videos? Lake Superior Connect - Why Us? and also Lake Superior Connect - Talking e-Campus

Since I first started teaching online (back in the day), it has always struck me how many of the students are in a different place in their lives than most of the students that I taught in the traditional classroom. I realize that's not a news flash, but the whole aspect of providing access to higher education to some of those who otherwise wouldn't have it is still the number one reason why I get out of bed in the morning and make my way to the office. A few years ago I started a scholarship fund just for students completing one of our online programs at Lake Superior College. The scholarship fund balance has grown to more than $10,000 and we typically give 2 or 3 awards to deserving students each year. The scholarships for FY09 were handed out at the end of the spring term and sometime after that I received the following thank you note: "Dear Virtual Campus Contributors, I have been yearning to return to college for several years and the generosity of this scholarship is...

Okay, I'm back. Nine days of being disconnected was an interesting experiment - but I'm really glad to be back online again. As I previously reported ( also here ), those of us who are in the distance education business will not be required to start treating our students as criminals. We now have the final clarifying language (actually called the Statement of the Managers ) regarding the Higher Ed Act especially as it relates to distance education. Contrary to some of the original fears (including my own), this Congressional act will NOT have the effect of making us put ankle bracelets on all online students - nor will we have to install webcams throughout their houses to watch their every move. Instead, we have to make sure that they authenticate (with username and password) each and every time that they login to our online courses - something that most of us are already doing. A great deal of work was done to get this clarifying language into place. Leading the charge was Fr...

I threw together the following video rather quickly, so it doesn't have the highest production value. Photos from FUSION08D2L as well as some video clips of speakers and musical groups from Beale Street and Graceland. No sound except during the videos. Still rather bummed that I decided to leave my camera in the hotel room (I had thrice walked away from it during this trip) rather than tote it along for the final night on Beale Street with John Baker, Shonagh, McLeod, Matt, and lots of other D2Lers; plus Terri, Dany, Dawn, and several others including Stephen Downes. Suffice it to say that I really wish I could have included shots of most of this crew singing karaoke and dancing (and yes, that includes Stephen who the karaoke jockey introduced as David Crosby). It was over the top.

Andrea Foster's recent Chronicle article titled " New Systems Keep a Close Eye on Online Students at Home " is intended to get attention, but not intended to accurately tell you what is going to happen regarding the Higher Ed Act language about distance learning. After reading it more carefully, I can see now that there is nothing new being reported in this article. All of this doom and gloom about distance student authentication has been talked about for over a year now. I've used the Troy University Big Brother device several times in presentations and here in the blog to point out how completely absurd all of this is. This post from Nov. 2006 basically provides much of the same info that is in the Chronicle article. A second post in July 2007 looks at the first blush of the language that was written into the higher ed act. A few days ago I posted the clarifying language that is currently attached to the bill. Right after that Foster's article was posted at t...

I'll use CoveritLive for Jason's closing keynote in Memphis for the Desire2Learn User Conference - FUSION 2008 (FUSION08D2L)

I just like using that title - Blackboard Loses! I might use it at the beginning of every post, even if the post has nothing to do with Blackboard. Just finished reading an informative article in Campus Technology today that paints a picture of the contempt hearing that is colorably different from what most people are thinking. David Nagel talked with Matthew Small on Monday night after news spread about the contempt charges being thrown out by the Texas judge. Small, the chief legal dude for the evil empire, tells Nagel the following - (excerpted from CT article) Small recounted that the judge in the case in reviewing the contempt motion seemed to have agreed with that, saying that version 8.3 is not, in fact, colorably different from version 8.2.2; nevertheless, the judge did not issue sanctions against Desire2Learn, leaving it up to Blackboard to meet the burden of proof that the new version does infringe. Does this mean a new trial? That isn't quite clear either. But Blackboa...

Very brief message at the D2L Patent Blog . Court Denies Blackboard's Motion for Contempt "We just received word from Texas. The Court denied Blackboard's Motion for Contempt. We anticipate we will receive the Court's written Order in a few days and will post it when we receive it. " Stay tuned for more. Party tonight at Graceland.

There has been a tremendous amount of angst (much of it generated by me) about the distance education language that is expected to be included in the Higher Education Act whenever that finally gets approved (probably by September). I'm at the ITC Board Meeting in Reno this week along with a colleague who has an inside track to information about the work being done on the clarifying language that will be attached to the bill. The ITC, and Fred Lokken in particular, has been instrumental in bringing attention to the many concerns related to the authentication of distance learner language that is currently included in the bill. Most of those arguments center around concerns about cost and availability of the technologies to accomplish this task. Much of that angst was based on speculation about what it means to authenticate who the distance learner is. The latest language in the bill goes something like this: "requires an institution that offers distance education to have process...

The next battle in the D2L-Blackbeard war begins on Monday in Texas. Blackbeard will once again try to leverage their home court advantage against their combatant from north of the border. I've read a great deal of the proceedings from the earlier skirmishes, and I believe that the judge has a definite bias against Desire2Learn and in favor of Blackbeard. Last week I had a conversation with John Baker, CEO of Desire2Learn, in which he told me that the D2L team is extremely confident that they will prevail and be found to not be in contempt regarding their patent work-around version 8.3. I wish I could share in John's optimism, but I've not seen, heard, or read anything that makes me believe they will get a fair hearing in East Texas. Furthermore, there are several people who I've talked to who believe that D2L has been way too optimistic throughout this whole affair. Not that there's anything wrong with optimism (I wouldn’t know, but I've heard that), but that m...

Who are you? Who, who, who who? I really want to know. "Distance learning promises anytime, anywhere learning. But that convenience for students comes with a potential risk for educators – finding a way to make sure the registered student is really the person doing the work." That is the party line from Acxiom , one of the market leaders in using personal information from their massive database to authenticate learners. I've been invited to attend a discussion about this service at the upcoming D2L User Conference in Memphis. I'm undecided whether I'll attend at this point, but I just might do so given the U.S. government's meddling into the whole authentication "issue." I'm not convinced that there is a real issue here, just a perceived one. Although if Congress finishes their work-in-progress that makes it into an issue, then it is an issue, at least for those of us in the U.S. There is an interesting tidbit on their page titled: Identity Veri...

The annual Desire2Learn User Conference - FUSION 08 , starts Sunday night, July 20 with a reception at the Pink Palace in Memphis . The photo at right is John Baker addressing the crowd in 2007 at the opening reception at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, Minnesota. Sessions get started Monday morning with an opening keynote address by George Siemens . For those who might like a preview of the keynotes, I posted podcasts last month with conference lead-off Siemens and closing keynote Jason Ohler . For bloggers, photographers, or anyone else using any sort of social software tools, please use the following tag: FUSION08D2L (no difference between upper and lowercase). By tagging your content from the conference it makes it so much easier for all of us to find it. For example, if you Google for the tag for last year ( FUSION07D2L ), you find the following artifacts: A Flickr photo group with 238 photos from 5 people About a dozen blog posts from several different people A couple of ...

The Instructional Technology Council is reviving their member service of quick polls. Today they posted the results from the latest poll dealing with schools that are switching or have switched from one VLE to another, and also some questions related to the popularity of hybrid/blended courses. 44 member schools replied to the survey. Of those respondents, 25 schools, or 55%, have either switched platforms within the past year (11) or are planning to within the next year (14). Poll question: If you have migrated or are planning to migrate, please list the course management systems your institution could have used, or had a license to use, at your college - before the move. (You can select more than one) Those 25 schools responded with a total of 47 VLE that they were using or were licensed to use, or an average of nearly 2 platforms per school. Of particular interest to me was that 33 of those 47 responses indicated that they were migrating away from one (or more) of the Blackboard pl...

I've been wanting to try out Poll Everywhere , so let's do a little experiment to see how this works. Here is the embedded poll. After each vote is cast, you'll be able to see an update on this page. It took about seven seconds for my response to appear after I submitted my vote via text message on my cell. You can also send people to a webpage where they can vote with their computers, but I'm interested to see how many votes we can accumulate only by using cell phones. Each cell phone can only be used once to vote, so people can't stuff the ballot box with multiple votes. The free version is limited to 30 responses for each poll, although you can have as many different polls as you like. Paying a monthly fee will allow you to collect more reponses per poll. According to their website: "It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere." We'll be the judge of that. Let...

The LSC Public Information office and a local artist recently developed the following 60-second promotional video about Lake Superior Connect, the e-Campus at Lake Superior College. We will be using these spots to try to raise awareness of our new name and of the leadership role that we have played in bringing e-learning to Minnesotans. We also have two separate 30-second spots using the same content for TV ads and other online placements.

I returned Saturday night from the Tennessee Board of Regents e-Learning Summer Institute on Web 2.0 and now I'll be heading back to Memphis in 3 weeks for the Desire2Learn User Conference - FUSION 2008. I had a great time in Memphis and met some really great people, many of whom will also be at the D2L conference. On my last night I went to Corky's BBQ and definitely Put Some South in My Mouth. After returning home I was catching up on some email and RSS feeds when a couple of things caught my eye about the D2L conference: According to the D2L Patent Info Blog , the judge will be hearing Blackboard's Motion for Contempt against D2L's proposed workaround (version 8.3) on Monday July 21 and Tuesday July 22 which are the first two days of the conference. This is pretty amazing timing. I'm sure that it's pure coincidence, but some of those Blackbeard conspiracy theorists out there (you know who you are) are probably thinking that Bb somehow influenced the judge t...

This podcast episode is an interview with Jeannette Brewer of Desire2Learn. Jeannette told me about many of the new features of Desire2Learn version 8.3.  The word Blackboard (or even Blackbeard) didn't come up once (until now). The title is a "Birds-Eye View of Version 8.3." We discuss several things including:  1) The look of the new My Courses widget,  2) Some of the other homepage management features,  3) New widgets,  4) How can 8.3 help me to manage my Schedule better? and  5) What are some of the lesser known features of 8.3?  Jeannette Brewer is the developer of Desire2Learn’s ePortfolio training programs. Prior to joining Desire2Learn two years ago, Jeannette completed her MSc at the University of York in the UK. She travels to clients across North America and the UK to help them set up their sites and train their staff. One thing that we didn't get around to in the (20 min.) interview was the HTML editor, which has seen a few changes. It i...

Today I made a brief post at OLDaily (brief, because that's the way OLDaily rolls) about a relatively new research report about Inter Partes Reexaminations by the USPTO. This will be a bit longer post about more of the info contained in the report from the Institute for Progress . Patent attorney Michael C. Smith sent me a link to this information, but it took me a month to pay attention due to all kinds of lousy reasons. Here are a few quotes from the report: "Despite a mandate for "special dispatch", the time required to complete an inter partes re-examination is much longer than commonly believed." "Reexamination, particularly inter partes reexamination is not simply used as an alternative to litigation, but an integral part of litigation strategy – more than half (52%) of patents in inter partes reexams are known to be in litigation during their reexamination" "Without appeal, the average pendency period for inter partes re-exam is 43.5 mont...

Wow. It's kind of hard to come up with anything else to say about the letter D2L sent out today and also posted on their Patent Info Blog . Needless to say, D2L isn't taking Blackboard's press assault last week laying down. In particular, they refute several of the public and private comments made by Blackboard's Chief Legal Officer Matthew Small about Blackboard's Motion for Contempt against D2L. D2L's legal response will be filed next week. In the meantime they respond on their blog to some of the comments made last week. As I tend to say about this stuff, it will probably get more interesting before it gets more dull.