The Boggs e-Learning Chronicle

Instructor-Focused Online Learning Implementation Guidelines

The Course is Online: Why Aren’t the Students Learning? by Tim S. Roberts and Joanne M. McInnerney

Editor's Note: "This article is a distillation of principles and best practices to ensure effective online learning. It recognizes the changing roles and responsibilities of administrators, teachers and learners and provides simple taxonomies to guide the change process."

Abstract: "......One common thread throughout is the major importance of good communication to the success of any online course. The authors distil the essence of good practice to present ten guidelines for effective online learning, in the hope that some of the more prominent pitfalls and disasters can be avoided."

Below are the 10 Guidelines Offered In the Article:

1. Ensure academics (instructors) are fully conversant with potential problems.
2. Consider the use of synchronous communication where feasible.
3. Ensure instructors have the appropriate communication skills.
4. Use a system such as W.R.I.T.E. as a basis for good communication.  W.R.I.T.E. stands for (W)arm, (R)esponsive, (I)nquisitive, (T)entative, and (E)mpathetic
5. Stress the importance of all online participants (instructors, technical staff, students) treating each other with respect.
6. Ensure that academics (instructors) are aware of the problem of student isolation.
7. Provide as much flexibility in schedules and procedures as possible.
8. Recognize the importance of prompt feedback and unambiguous communication.
9. Provide a well resourced permanently available Help Desk facility.
10. Implement appropriate feedback mechanisms to enable continuous improvement.

While these would seem like they would go with out saying and that any instructor worth their salts should know these things inherently, its still good to pull them together for  training purposes.

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Google Adds More Web Services To Compete With Microsoft Office

And so the web 2.0/online services saga churns along......the Wednesday, October 11th edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an article about Google's free web services by Kevin Delaney and Robert A. Guth, that include Google Writely, Spreadsheets, and file sharing services.  All of these are designed to be tightly knit applications that one can access from a browser, just as Microsoft is poised to launch Microsoft office 2007 & Vista.

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Another Article That Looks At How Learning Is Changing.....

From the George Lucas Educational Foundation, October 6, 2006....The New Face of Learning,
What happens to time-worn concepts of  classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and  learn anything, anywhere, anytime? By Will  Richardson

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Interactive Decision Making Tutorial

Here is an interactive decision making tutorial for instructors to help them "select teaching strategies that align with their instructional objectives." 

Its from Technology and Teaching Strategies: A Decision Making Model  Created by Karen Work Richardson and Robert Hanny  as part of the Virginia Initiative  for Technology and Administrative Leadership.

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Online Learner Socialization & Its Impact On Instructors...

Here's a research paper I thought you might find interesting........Socialization in the Online Classroom  by Christopher Irwin and Zane Berge of University of Maryland Baltimore County

Abstract:".....The purpose of this paper is to look at the different ways in which socialization has been conceived and studied; examine the underlying theoretical structure of online learning that is affected by socialization in the online classroom and consider effects of teachers upon the online classroom."

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Another Online To-Do List Widget

Found this on Jane Knight's blog,  iPrioritize .......Its free for your own personal account.

Here is what they are saying from their site, "The efficient way to get organized. Simple to-do lists that anyone can use. Make a list to organize your tasks. Drag tasks up and down as your priorities change. Mark items complete when you finish. It's that easy!"

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Some types of training are not appropriate for e-Learning...online training used in medical education

The Impact of E-Learning in Medical Education by Jorge G. Ruiz, MD, Michael J. Mintzer, MD, and Rosanne M. Leipzig, MD, PhD

Abstract: "......In diverse medical education contexts, e-learning appears to be at least as effective as traditional instructor-led methods such as lectures. Students do not see e-learning as replacing traditional instructor-led training but as a complement to it, forming part of a blended-learning strategy.............."

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

e-Learning Assessment Best Practices

Looking for some background on e-Learning assessment.......here is an article from the Journal of Information Technology Education Volume 5, 2006, called 'Best Practices in e-Assessment' by Nicole A. Buzzetto-More and Ayodele Julius Alade of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, MD, USA

Executive Summary: "...The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the origins, evolution, and key concepts of assessment as well as illustrate some of the ways in which technology and e-Learning serve as the most promising mechanisms for satisfying assessment goals and objectives..."

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Using Mobile Agents For e-Learning Assessment

MOBILE AGENT BASED SOLUTIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE ASSESSMENT IN eLEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract: "E-learning is nowadays one of the most interesting of the ”e-“ domains available through the Internet. The main problem to create a Web-based, virtual environment is to model the traditional domain and to implement the model using the most suitable technologies. We analyzed the distance learning domain and investigated the possibility to implement some e-learning services using mobile agent technologies. This paper presents a model of the Student Assessment Service (SAS) and an agent-based framework developed to be used for implementing specific applications. A specific Student Assessment application that relies on the framework was developed."

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks

Primer On Asynchronous/Synchronous Learning and Web Conferencing as techniques in e-Learning

Here is a recent article about the impact of web conferencing in the e-Learning space....Beyond the Virtual Meeting by Darin Hartley which is on the Learning Circuits site .

The article looks at key definitions, the differences between asynchronous and synchronous learning, potential uses for web conferencing, and the web conferencing marketplace.

Over the course the e-Learning industry's growth, there are many technologies that have say converged, and are now part of many learning management systems out there in the market place.  There are many many other web conferencing technologies out there in the market and because the industry is matured, a majority of them  have very close to the same amount and kinds of functionality as the examples mentioned in the article [of course, the other two web conferencing vendors mentioned would argue differently] but if you do a search on Google and sit through a bunch demonstrations from different companies, you will see what I am saying.

Integrated web conferencing has been one of the many features available in the SyberWorks Learning Management System for a few years now as it has been for other lms vendors. 

Dave Boggs
SyberWorks