Archive for August, 2009
Aug
By Steve Lohr
Update | 11:08 p.m. Read an article by Steve Lohr on keeping abreast of innovation in the Continuing Education special section.
A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”
Noah Berger for The New York Times Tyler Kennedy, 9, searches the Web at home in California.The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.
Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.
“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,” said Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.
This hardly means that we’ll be saying good-bye to classrooms. But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.
Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools.
The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.
“We are at an inflection point in online education,” said Philip R. Regier, the dean of Arizona State University’s Online and Extended Campus program.
The biggest near-term growth, Mr. Regier predicts, will be in continuing education programs. Today, Arizona State has 5,000 students in its continuing education programs, both through in-person classes and online. In three to five years, he estimates, that number could triple, with nearly all the growth coming online.
But Mr. Regier also thinks online education will continue to make further inroads in transforming college campuses as well. Universities — and many K-12 schools — now widely use online learning management systems, like Blackboard or the open-source Moodle. But that is mostly for posting assignments, reading lists, and class schedules and hosting some Web discussion boards.
Mr. Regier sees things evolving fairly rapidly, accelerated by the increasing use of social networking technology. More and more, students will help and teach each other, he said. For example, it will be assumed that college students know the basics of calculus, and the classroom time will focus on applying the math to real-world problems — perhaps in exploring the physics of climate change or modeling trends in stock prices, he said.
“The technology will be used to create learning communities among students in new ways,” Mr. Regier said. “People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”
Original Article located at : New York Times
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Aug
History of Blackboard Inc., a robust history in education.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Meade
Blackboard Inc. was formed on the joining of two companies. CourseInfo LLC, founded by Daniel Cane and Stephen Gilfus, and Blackboard LLC, founded by Michael Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky.
CourseInfo was formed in late 1996- early 1997 via a partnership agreement between Dan Cane and Stephen Gilfus. Early on in Dan Cane had began developing web based scripts for professor Cindy Van Ness, at Cornell University, for her Statistics class. This activity was mostly driven by Dr. Van Ess’s desire for bringing technology in the classroom and Dan’s creativity with new technologies on the web. At this time there is a famous quote from Bill Gates technical assistant saying “Cornell is wired”. As one of the 5 supercomputer centers holding up ARPANET- the precursor underpinnings of the Internet – Cornell was on the bleeding edge of email, web and technology usage.
Dan Cane and Stephen Gilfus met as they attended the same undergraduate school at Cornell. In fact, Gilfus was a teacher’s administrator at the time for Cornell’s entrepreneurship studies and was assisting Professor Deborah Streeter with her business plan writing classes. Dan Cane and Stephen Gilfus met as Dan was a student in one of the classes Gilfus was administering and that year Cane won an award for a business plan call “EleFun” based on an educational website business model.
Earlier that year Gilfus had also won an award from Cornell for his work in his business planning and consulting class. During the same time Gilfus assembled an undergraduate team and launched the Cornell Entrepreneur Organization a student organization focused on connecting successful entrepreneurs and business and engineering students in order to foster new business opportunities and relationships. To this day Gilfus is an advisory member to Cornell’s entreprenuership program. Cane approached Gilfus based on his successes at Cornell and the two joined forces to develop “CourseInfo – ‘Making Education Easier’” into a platform for course based websites.
The CourseInfo Histoy is robust in its roots at Cornell University and its involvement in Cornell’s entrepreneurship program. A link to an article on the companies Cornell University roots can be found here at http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/97/10.16.97/Web_company.html
A spin-off from KPMG, Blackboard LLC. began as a consulting firm contracting to the non-profit Global Learning Consortium. Some say that Blackboard LLC. was first funded by securing a $1.5M on a contract that KPMG did not want to fulfill. The contract was to work with EDUCOM, now EDUCAUSE, on their National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, now ELI , as the primary contractor t0 the IMS Global Consortiumdeveloping elearning standards for web based learning applications. Micheal Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky where associate consultants at the firm at the time and cut a deal with then KPMG divison Vice President Greg Baroni to secure the contract and then wheel their chairs and computers out of the [www.kpmg.com KPMG] office to a local brownstone to start the company. In return Greg Baroni received stock in the company.
The two companies met each other when they bumped into each other at a conference in Washington, DC. At the time the two organizations where seeking funding and thought that they might be able to obtain a grant for their businesses via a program that the US Government was doing in adaptive testing. Shortly after the two teams met together to discuss the opportunities in joining the teams. The combined company became known as Blackboard Inc. The CourseInfo, Ithaca team moved to Washington DC to join in on the new company located at 1111, 19th Street and Blackboard Inc. was formed.
The new companies product platform was the product CourseInfo developed. Blackboard essentially dumped all of its products, including the IMS prototype they had built with the consortium, and most of its windows based development staff shortly after the merger. The products were then branded Blackboard CourseInfo to levergage the brand awareness and success of the CourseInfo team. The CourseInfo brand was dropped in 2000 in order to further refine the Blackboard brand.
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Aug
Mitigating the confusion surrounding “Social Learning” (Download Here)
Article by Frank Ganis.
Foreword
It is our hope that by leveraging socially based technologies the education industry can shape a new educational technology paradigm that realizes the promises of true “Social Learning”.
By understanding its applications we can create a unique opportunity to improve student engagement, student retention, academic success and overall educational outcomes.
– Stephen Gilfus, Gilfus Education Group
Introduction
While on the exhibit floor at NECC 2009 (The National Education Computing Conference) in late June in Washington, DC, I overheard an intriguing conversation about “social learning.” A very distinguished looking university professor was talking with a small group of graduate students. The professor pointed out to her younger colleagues that scores of exhibitors were promoting solutions for “social learning,” but that the vendors were misappropriating a term that had been established in the education field for a very long time.
She complained that today’s technology companies were simply cobbling together social networking tools such as blogs, wikis and bookmarking tools, pawning them off as “social learning” innovation. As an
e-learning innovator with over a decade of experience in the education sector, this conversation reminded me that several core educational principles were not being thoughtfully considered.
History of Social Learning
There is a century of rich literature on social learning from the fields of education, psychology, and sociology characterizing a wide variety of practical applications such as instructional techniques, consumer behavior conditioning and determining criminal motives. Most sources credit that social learning theory is based on research by the French sociologist, Gabriel Trade who lived from 1843 to 1904.
The simplest definitions of Social Learning are:
- The acquisition of knowledge that happens within in a social group, and
- The process in which individuals observe the behavior of others and its consequences, and modify their own behavior accordingly.
As a field, social learning originated during the 1930s at Yale University. Significant contributors to social learning theory during the twentieth century listed alphabetically by last name include:
Ronald Akers, Marshall Becker, Molly Brunk, Robert Burgess, Kay Bussey, June Chance, Pricilla Coleman, Darwin Dorr, John Dollard, Leonard Doob, Kathleen Durning, Steven Fey, Robert Hale, Scott Henggeler, Christopher Hensley, William Huitt, Clark Hull, J. Hummel, Katherine Karraker, Jean Lave, Howard Liddle, Fred McDonald, Neal Miller, Walter Mischel, O. H. Mowrer, Jerry Phares, Julian Rotter, Irwin Rosenstock, Ted Rosenthal, Dale Schunk, Robert Sears, Stephen Singer, Victor Strecher, Edwin Sutherland, Richard Walters, John Whiting, Lev Vygotsky and Barry Zimmerman. The field is so vastly rich, that the list is by no means complete.
One of today’s most prominent experts on social learning theory is Albert Bandura, a psychology professor at Stanford University since 1953, who is regarded as one of the most preeminent psychologists of all time. In 1976, he published the landmark textbook, Social Learning Theory, which is still used at many colleges today.
According to Bandura, since individuals learn best by observing others, learners are tremendously influenced by the roles models who they observe. In social learning theory there are four fundamental requirements for people to learn and model behavior:
1) attention, concentrating on the topic or task, 2) retention, remembering the information for later use often by using imagery and language, 3) reproduction, translating the imagery and language back into an action, and 4) motivation, reinforcing the behavior through rewards, punishments, incentives and repeat exposures.
Social Learning in Practice
In 2001, I joined eSylvan, an early effort to create an online learning environment that deliberately incorporated Bandura’s four steps. eSylvan, focused on transforming the classic Sylvan Learning Center tutoring curriculum for reading, writing and math, into an online offering available via the Internet.
At a scheduled time, a group of three or more students logged into a tutoring session from their individual schools or homes, while a teacher would log in to lead the session. The teacher and students would interact with each other via their individual PCs connected to the Internet. Each participant wore a headset for voice-over-IP technology and each used a digital pencil (stylus) and writing pad (tablet) to solve problems within an online “virtual classroom environment;” most notably a shared online whiteboard and voice conferencing.
The session was automatically populated with the proper individualized lesson for each student. Many of the problems were of a repetitive nature so that a student could master a particular skill, before moving to the next level.
At the beginning and end of each session, students could interact with each other in an informal manner. Sometimes they discussed the current subject matter; other times they played an educational game as a group. During their interaction, the students would often end up teaching each other either something new about the current topic or about the way the eSylvan learning environment worked.
As the session continued, the teacher session from their individual schools or homes, while a teacher would log in to lead the session. The teacher and students would interact with each other via their individual PCs connected to the Internet. Each participant wore a headset for voice-over-IP technology and each used a digital pencil (stylus) and writing pad (tablet) to solve problems within an online “virtual classroom environment;” most notably a shared online whiteboard and voice conferencing.
The session was automatically populated with the proper individualized lesson for each student. Many of the problems were of a repetitive nature so that a student could master a particular skill, before moving to the next level.
At the beginning and end of each session, students could interact with each other in an informal manner. Sometimes they discussed the current subject matter; other times they played an educational game as a group. During their interaction, the students would often end up teaching each other either something new about the current topic or about the way the eSylvan learning environment worked.
As the session continued, the teacher………………….
For the rest of this article download the white paper here: Social Learning Dimensions – Gilfus Education Group
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Aug
Every year the Gilfus Education Group assists dozens of academic institutions in evaluating their existing LMS. In addition, many academic institutions embark on their own LMS Evaluation projects to understand which LMS is the best for them. For various reasons each academic institution selects a specific application, be it open source or proprietary or because of ease of use, costs or, functional and pedagogical reasons. The following are a few examples of independent evaluations done by academic institutions and gathered from their appropriate sites in order to make it easier to compare and contrast each process and the identified results.
The Gilfus Education Group will be releasing a white paper shortly providing various insights for the LMS Evaluation and Selection Process.
A Gilfus Education Group Consultant can be reached for discussion at 888-861-3375 or by requesting a call through the follow request form.
As more resources and examples become available we will add them to this posting as a reference.
University of North Carolina – Charlotte
Executive Summary: This report describes the results of an evaluative comparison of the Moodle Learning Management System with the University’s current Blackboard system (Vista); Recommends, on the basis of that evaluation, that the University adopt Moodle as its sole Learning Management System; and Outlines the consequences of doing so in conjunction with a plan for making the transition from Blackboard to Moodle.
LMS Evaluation Resources:
- Student Moodle Survey – Spring 2009
- Faculty Moodle Evaluation – Spring 2009
- Final 2009 Report of the LMS Evaluation Committee
- PowerPoint presentation given by Lorraine Stanton at the March 28th LMS Evaluation Committee meeting
Duration: November of 2008 – June 2009
Conclusion: The conclusion of the Committee is that Moodle offers a number of potential benefits,
particularly with respect to adaptability, ease of learning and use, and relevance to UNC Charlotte’s current and projected instructional mission. Consequently, a trial of Moodle is desirable and should be initiated in a timely manner during the 2008-2009 academic year.
Open Source Collaborative – North Carolina Community College System (NCCS)
Executive Summary: In May 2008, the State Board of Community Colleges approved a contract with the University of North Carolina General Administration (UNC-GA) to establish the joint Systems Open Source Collaborative Moodle Assessment. Open source collaboration was attractive to both the NCCCS and the UNC-GA. Moodle was selected as the first CMS software for pilot use by institutions in both Systems. Emphasis was placed on assessment of Moodle to discover if “Moodle is a viable open source alternative to Blackboard,” the proprietary online CMS used by the vast majority of all North Carolina public institutions of higher education. Open source describes software distributed under licenses guaranteeing anyone the rights to freely use, modify and redistribute the source code.
LMS Evaluation Resources:
- Moodle Assessment Report Executive Summary
- Open Source Collaborative Full Report v.12
- Blackboard Response to Open Source Collaborative Report
- Moodle Moot :OSC Moodle Report Presentation (PDF)
Duration: May 2008 – October 2009
Conclusion: The end-of-term student and instructor surveys showed that Blackboard and Moodle are not that different. The real difference is found in student perception of their teachers’ comfort level with the application. There exists a significant correlation between student survey scores of North Carolina Community College System both Blackboard and Moodle with the perceived comfort level of instructors using either application. Thus, student perceptions of both CMSs were influenced by instructor experience, training, and skills. The Assessment Team concludes that this study has only addressed the academic considerations of Moodle as a viable alternative to Blackboard. This study did not fully address the issues of technology and funding as framed in compatibility and interoperability of all learning technology applications.
University of Notre Dame
Executive Summary: The University Council for Academic Technologies (UCAT) requested the Course Management System Subcommittee initiate a thorough review of CMS alternatives for the University of Notre Dame and provide a recommended strategy and course of action for UCAT by the end of the 2007-8 academic year. With the assistance of faculty from a variety of academic disciplines, students, staff from the Office of Information Technologies, and Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning, the study was conducted from May 2007 – February 2008.
LMS Evaluation Resources:
Duration: May 2007 – February 2008
Conclusion: The University of Notre Dame continue to use Blackboard Vista as the institutionally supported Course Management System at least through Spring Semester 2011. The University plan to review CMS options again in three years (beginning in 2010). The review process illustrated that each CMS evaluated had strengths and weaknesses and that the course management system “space” is rapidly changing along with the overall online learning system landscape. The committee felt that staying with the current system another three years offered a commitment to faculty that their investment in learning the CMS will not be short-changed by switching in the near future to a new system. The three year period was also influenced by information presented by Blackboard of its intent to develop a “next generation” learning management system which will replace its existing CMS offerings, with a projected rollout of 2010. The Blackboard Vista product line will cease to be upgraded and enhanced once the next generation product is released, thus requiring Notre Dame to switch from Vista to a new product as early as 2011.
University of Northern Texas
Executive Summary: Between March 13, 2007 and April 30, 2008 the University of North Texas conducted a systematic evaluation of learning management systems in planning for its future. The Learning Enhancement Planning Group (LEPG) was charged with carrying out the evaluation project and making a final recommendation to the Provost by April 30, 2008.
LMS Evaluation Resources:
- EDUTools Comparison
- Committee Meeting Minutes
- Edutech: Evaluation of Open Source Systems * 2005
- So You Want to Switch Course Management Systems? We Have! Come Find Out What We’ve Learned
- How to Select an e-Learning, LMS or LCMS System
Duration:March 13, 2007 – April 30th, 2008
Conclusion:The recommendation followed the conclusion of an extensive learning management system evaluation process conducted by a committee made up of stakeholders representing all of the colleges and schools as well as campus administrative groups that provide technical and end-user support. During the research and testing phases of the evaluation project, the LEPG found that Blackboard Vista1:
- has all of the features to perform functions desired by stakeholder groups (faculty, students, and support personnel) and ranks highest in the number of features available
- is the easiest system to use for UNT course designers, faculty, and students
- integrates with current third-party tools and can be integrated with the SIS (PeopleSoft)
- along with Angel, worked best with screen readers during accessibility testing
- is the least expensive in terms of annual license and support costs
- offers 24/7 technical support options with an acceptable service level agreement for response times, number of contacts, and number of incidents per month
- rates highly among other clients in terms of satisfaction with stability, scalability, and quality of product support
McMaster University
Executive Summary:The Learning Technologies Resource Centre has embarked on a multi-stage evaluation of next-generation Learning Management Systems to find a replacement for WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 as it reaches end-of-life status when the current licence agreement expires in 2008.. Given the fact that it will take approximately 1 year to migrate to a new system it is crucial that we start the process now. The various and diverse prespectives at this institution (academic, administrative, technical) necessitate that this process be as inclusive as possible. This website will be used to update the community on our activities, events and progress
LMS Evaluation Resources:
- Currently Unavailable
Duration: November 2006 – April 2008
Conclusion: The Learning Technologies Resource Centre (LTRC) has completed an extensive multi-year project to find the best possible replacement for WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 (currently in use). The LTRC along with the LMS Selection Committee and Senior Administration chose the Blackboard Learning System after extensive analysis of twelve potential products and the teaching and learning needs of the community.
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Executive Summary: Due to the merger with the Christchurch College of Education in January 2007 the University now has two supported Learning Management Systems (LMSs), Blackboard and Interact (known in the College as StudentNet). At the time of the merger it was agreed to support both systems until a review could be undertaken in 2008, with a view to moving to a single platform for 2009/2010.
It was agreed that the review should consist of:
1. an analysis of the University’s online learning needs, followed by
2. evaluation of the best LMS to meet these needs.
LMS Evaluation Resources:
Duration: October 2007 – October 2008
Conclusion: An outcome of this process was a decision to trial Moodle during Semester 2. This took place with approximately 30 courses using the system. The Final Report of the Steering Group gives detail on the process followed, the evaluation of the trial, further information collected, and the reasons for the decision to adopt Moodle.
Australian National University
Executive Summary:
LMS Evaluation Resources:
Duration: October 2007 – October 2008
Conclusion:
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Aug
Stephen Gilfus, a former founder of Blackboard inc, and a well known figure in the eLearning industry announced today, that the Gilfus Education Group is sponsoring the “Social Technology and Education Conference“,
August 14th @ Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
“The use of social technology in education can be very promising towards student engagement”, said Stephen, “Facebook and LinkedIn have had a dramatic effect on our ability to engage both personally and professionally. Implementing similar technologies in the education industry presents a unique opportunity to improve student engagement, student retention, academic success and overall educational outcomes.”
The Social Technology and Education Conference at Harvard is a one-day event where educators (high school and college) can learn about how social technologies can be used to create and support communities of learning.
Areas of interest for the conference include:
- Social networking tools
- Blogging and Microblogging
- Chat and Instant Messaging
- Course/Learning management systems
- Virtual Worlds
The event is also sponsored by Elgg, an open-source social networking engine which powers all kinds of environments. Directly following the Social Technology and Education is Elgg “Base Camp” for those educators that are interested in the application of Elgg to education and have greater interest in its technology. Over two dozen academic institutions use Elgg to build community and extend their current educational environments.
“Over the next few months and through the end of the year we expect to hear about many new advances in educational software as they look to incorporate more and more social technologies”, said Frank Ganis, a General Partner of Gilfus Education Group. “by capitalizing on social networking capabilities the industry can shape a new educational technology paradigm with the promise of “Social Learning”.”
Through each one of its internal practices the Gilfus Education Group provides critical capabilities to its clients for effective decision making, strategic planning and successful implementations. Working with the Gilfus Education Group educational organizations can experience dramatic transformation across the entire organization. The group partners to help organizations become better positioned to achieve strategic goals, compete for scarce resources, and plan for the future.
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Aug
August 2nd, 2009
NACUBO and ACE are hosting a higher education policy webinar at 2 pm EDT on Friday, August 7, 2009. Featured guests include Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Under Secretary Martha Kanter, and Deputy Under Secretary Robert Shireman. The group plans to focus on the Obama Administration’s higher education agenda, and will allow for a Q&A session. If you are interested in participating in this special opportunity, you must register for the event beforehand.
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