INFORMATION NOW

Link to article (by Ryann Ellis)

"In Michael Allens (CEO of Allen Interactions) book, Michael Allen?s Guide to e-Learning: Building Interactive, Fun, and Effective Learning Programs for Any Company, Allen speaks out about his frustrations with today?s e-learning and brings fundamental issues to light. He also shares specific, commonsense guidelines that reliably produce effective and practical learning solutions.

What is the most misunderstood concept about e-learning?both in its current state and ideal state?

(Michael Allen) There are so very many misunderstood concepts, it?s hard to decide which is the most misunderstood. I guess it depends on one?s perspective. Let me give you a short list from several perspectives:

Business:

• Effective e-learning is expensive. Actually, it?s poor e-learning that?s expensive. Effective e-learning can bring amazing returns and pay for itself quickly over and over again.
• Boring e-learning is all we can afford. Actually, you can?t afford boring e-learning because it?s a total waste of time and money. You can?t learn people, they have to do the learning themselves. If they are bored, learning ceases. Your costs rise every time another learner wastes time in it.

Management:

• Its all about content: Get all the needed information out to people. Actually, it?s all about achieving desired performance levels, and that often means narrowing content down so that you can focus on creating meaningful, memorable, motivating learning experiences.
• Well be successful if the e-learning is developed on time and within budget. Actually, although these measures are important, quality matters. It?s critical to measure whether the training results in needed performance change and improvement. Otherwise, you really know nothing of importance.

Design:

• You need to start with the simplest concepts and tasks. Actually, the simplest concepts are often really boring. Learners prefer jumping into interesting tasks, then breaking them down into their components as it becomes understandably necessary.
• Before you can challenge learners with tasks, you need to ?teach? (read ?tell?) learners how to do them. Actually, it?s much more effective, for most of the American culture at least, to present challenges first. If learners can meet the challenge, you won?t have bored them by telling them things they already know. If learners can?t meet the challenge, they can ask for help. In asking for help, learners will value the information you give them and see its relevance immediately.
• You should give learners immediate feedback. Actually, delaying feedback as learners work through multi-step tasks is often much more effective. It entices learners to monitor their work more closely and make corrections without relying on external assessment and guidance."
  

Get Michael Allen?s Guide to e-Learning: Building Interactive, Fun, and Effective Learning Programs for Any Company, it is an interesting and useful guide to e-learning . Also, read this interview with Michael Allen, as he is one of the leading Gurus of e-Learning. We can all benefit from his experiences, practices, ideas and thoughts.

Link to article (By Chris Dede)
"Shifts in students? learning style will prompt a shift to active construction of knowledge through mediated immersion"
Rapid advances in information technology are reshaping the learning styles of many students in higher education...Over the next decade, three complementary interfaces to information technology will shape how people learn:

• The familiar world to the desktop interface, providing access to distant experts and archives and enabling collaborations, mentoring relationships, and virtual communities of practice. This interface is evolving through initiatives such as Internet2.
• Alice-in-Wonderland multiuser virtual environment (MUVE) interfaces, in which participants? avatars interact with computer-based agents and digital artifacts in virtual contexts. The initial stages of studies on shared virtual environments are characterized by advances in Internet games and work in virtual reality.
• Interfaces for ubiquitous computing, in which mobile wireless devices infuse virtual resources as we move through the real world. The early stages of augmented reality interfaces are characterized by research on the role of smart objects and intelligent contexts in learning and doing.

Based on mediated immersion, these emerging learning styles include:

• Fluency in multiple media and in simulation-based virtual settings Communal learning involving diverse, tacit, situated experience, with knowledge distributed across a community and a context as well as within an individual
• A balance among experiential learning, guided mentoring, and collective reflection
• Expression through nonlinear, associational webs of representations
• Co-design of learning experiences personalized to individual needs and preferences

Many faculty will find such a shift in instruction difficult, but through professional development they can accommodate neomillennial learning styles to continue teaching effectively as the nature of students evolves..."

Yes, this is another explosive article promoting multiuser virtual environments (MUVE) in education, which we should digest to the fullest. Utilizing MUVE can facilitate a more experiential, interactive, and dynamic e-learning environment, enabling us to interact and collectively learn and construct knowledge with people (avatars) or experts from every corner of the earth. For me, I would first like to discuss some issues with Chris Dede (author of this article) or his avatar, so I can learn from his research about MUVE (beyond this article). Then I will go after Bill Gates and ask him point-blank, "why dont you participate more in the open source evolution, and make your Microsoft Office products open source and free (at least to all schools, colleges, and universities around the world), etc.

Yes, I am already getting immersed! Lets research this area collectively and make Malaysian higher education truely immersive!

• Higher Education institutions that are succeeding in Internet-supported Learning have strong motivations to do so.
• Institutions successful with Internet-supported learning have a strong commitment to the initiative.
• Successful institutions measure themselves in a variety of ways depending on what is important to them; quality is at least or more important than growth (atudent outcomes, student satisfaction, growth in enrollments, and faculty satisfaction).
• Students and faculty are well-supported at successful institutions through a set of well established capabilities that are being constantly improved.
• The secret sauce of achieving success in Internet-supported learning varies from institution to institution, however, a programmatic approach with a commitment to fully online programs seems to be most critical.
• Institutions successful in Internet-supported learning have gone beyond the technical issues and are much more focused on achieving a better educational product.
• The greatest challenges by far concerned the development and delivery of effective online learning materials and environments.
• The successful institutions are addressing strategic, cultural and process issues that will help them perform their mission more effectively in the future no matter what direction technology takes."

Please find some time to at least read section one (Executive Summary of Findings), and then perhaps select what you find is most useful for your area of specialization or work. If you ask me what you should focus on (if not all) I would recommend you to read or browse through the following sections (in other words all , except the introduction sections):

• Motivations for Moving Online (Section VII)
• The Role of Leadership (Section VIII)
• Measures of Success and Expectations (Section IX)
• Student and Faculty Support (Section X)
• Delivery Format (Section XI)
• Best Practices and Innovations (Section XII)
• Challenges (Section XIII)
• Future Priorities and Expectations (Section XIV)
• Action Recommendations: Where Do You Go From Here? (Section XV)
• Perspectives on Adoption: Some Ideas to Consider (Section XVI)

Although this research is mostly based on higher education in the USA (21 institutions), it is of great value to us (or anyone involved with education), as they are still the benchmark when it comes to online learning or e-learning. Also, this paper was published on February 1st 2005, which makes it really hot; "straight out of the oven".

Link to article
"Learning objects make it unnecessary to have thousands of iterations of the same teaching point. Metadata makes it possible to select and integrate relevant learning experiences from a relatively small library of learning objects. Reusable learning objects permit lessons to be generated and customized for specific groups or even for individuals. Extensive research and development has led to a vocabulary of specialized terms to define learning objects. Rory McGreal provides a rationale to relate variations in terminology into a single practical definition of Learning Objects.

"(Conclusion) As course developers gain experience and as the number of online resources grows, the importance and necessity of LOs and the metadata standards that support them becomes more apparent. Efficient learning using the ever-expanding multimedia resources of the Internet will require the creation of LOs and the metadata to describe them. From anything and everything to specific digital learning resources, the future of learning is inextricably linked to the development of quality LOs."

Link to article (By Kelly Bruning)
"The role of critical thinking and reflective learning in the online environment is paramount. Critical thinking is the process of taking learned theory and applying them in practice. This requires cognitive skills that require the learner to think of ways to take the concepts learned and apply them.

Critical thinking assignments provide an opportunity for learners to apply knowledge to practical application. Online instructors have the responsibility of providing this opportunity for educational growth to learners and must become creative in developing assignments and projects that foster that growth (extracted highlights jumbled together)."

"Northwestern Michigan College has a campus-wide movement incorporate five core general education learning outcomes in all classes. They are summarized as follows:

• The ability to problem solve.
• The ability to communicate to with other learners.
• The ability to use the English language in communication.
• The ability to read and summarize.
• The ability to apply critical thinking concepts to course concepts."

Overall, this article focuses on the importance of embedding reflection, interaction (student-student, student-instructor, learning communities), problem-solving activities, and feedback into the online learning environment to raise learning to higher levels of critical reflective thinking, and to enhance the quality and effectiveness of online learning.

The real question is how much critical thinking and reflective learning do you apply to your studies?

Although, the lecturer or online instructor has the responsibility of providing such a conducive environment, dont depend on it, and instead be proactive and apply it to everything you learn. With a bit of spice and creativity you can apply these two core elements to your studies, and become a true problem-solver and thinker, which Malaysia increasingly needs .

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• Mission to Learn Blog

1. Establishing and supporting a culture of evidence
2. Demonstrating improvement of learning
3. Translating learning research into practice
4. Selecting appropriate models and strategies for e-learning
5. Providing tools to meet growing student expectations
6. Providing professional development and support to new audiences
7. Sharing content, applications, and application development
8. Protecting institutional data
9. Addressing emerging ethical challenges
10. Understanding the evolving role of academic technologists"

There is little doubt that technology can play an important role in facilitating the teaching and learning process, but it can also cause mental havoc to the educators and students on the way. In short, show me the evidence of learning outcomes (or improvement) and you will get the support. Easier said than done :)

"If it aint fixed, dont be afraid to explore new ways!" I suppose that sums up the current state of higher education around the world :)