E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Three weeks ago I attended the SURF Challenge Day. This day was organised to let suppliers show how their solution fitted with the SURF framework for flexible and personalised learning environment (in Dutch). 15 suppliers presented their solutions.
This framework is based on Educause Next Generation Digital Learning Environment. Both models use the metaphor of LEGO.

Personally I think that metaphor oversimplifies the process of a learner and it doesn’t help to solve the challenges that many universities face regarding their educational technology. A couple of reasons why it is flawed:

• Not all educational technology tools that are used as part of the learning experience are created equally, there is much more variety in the ‘bricks".
• Just sticking bricks together doesn’t make it a learning experience. The flow and interactive design are important.
• Accessibility is much harder to guarantee, especially if instructors can add their own bricks via LTI.
• Learning is much more complex.

We need to intelligently orchestrate all these different “bricks” to serve the student. In some situation it can just be as simple as IFTTT: if student has passed this quiz, he can go to the next chapter. But in many cases this process is far more complex than an IFTTT recipe of course, especially if you connect it to all the context. It is more like a central nervous system.

Photo Credit: CC-BY-SA Joe Miserendino

In september SURF heeft een nieuw rapport gepresenteerd over de flexibele en persoonlijke leeromgeving. Dit rapport beschrijft de kaders en componenten voor een flexibele en persoonlijke leeromgeving en mogelijkheden om deze componenten te integreren:

De digitale leeromgeving van de toekomst is flexibel en persoonlijk. De leeromgeving sluit aan bij behoefte en wensen van studenten en docenten, die los van tijd en locatie, snel en gemakkelijk toegang tot informatie en materialen willen hebben. Dit vraagt veel van de ICT-infrastructuur van instellingen, en stelt hoge eisen aan archivering, beveiliging en beheersbaar- heid. Een digitale leeromgeving van de toekomst is een samenhangend geheel van diensten en applicaties die studenten en docenten ondersteunen bij het leerproces en het onderwijs. Dit vraagt ook om nieuwe architecturen waarbij integratie van deze losse onderdelen een grote uitdaging vormt.

Het rapport is gericht op de ICT-kant van de digitale leeromgeving. Het gaat niet om de implementatie, zoals hoeveel vrijheid geef je de gebruikers, rolverdeling tussen actoren, mogelijkheden tot personalisatie. Pierre Gorissen ging hier ook al op in zijn blog.

Het rapport is voor iedereen die zich binnen het onderwijs bezig houdt met de digitale leeromgeving een aanrader om te lezen. Het rapport kan je hier downloaden.

Educause has written an interesting report about the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE). The report explored the gaps between current learning management tools and a digital learning environment that could meet the changing needs of higher education. According to the report the principal functional domains are:

• Interoperability
  Interoperability is the linchpin of the NGDLE. The ability to integrate tools and exchange content and learning data enables everything else.
• Personalization
  Personalization is the most important user-facing functional domain of the NGDLE.
• Analytics, Advising, and Learning Assessment
  The analysis of all forms of learning data — resulting in actionable information — is a vital component of the NGDLE and must include support for new learning assessment approaches, especially in the area of competency - based education.
• Collaboration
  The NGDLE must support collabor ation at multiple levels and make it easy to move between private and public digital spaces.
• Accessibility and Universal Design
  Efforts to realize the NGDLE should include working toward ensuring that all learners and instructors are able to participate, with access to conten t and the ability to create accessible learning artifacts. We should strive to address issues of accessibility from the start , based on a universal design approach.

The auteurs say that these features can not be found in a single system. They see it as an ecosystem:

• At the built layer, it will be a confederation of IT systems , including content repositories, analytics engines, and a wide variety of applications and digital services.
• One ke y to making such a confederation work will be full adherence to standards for interoperability, as well as for data and content exchange.
• Instead of uniformity and centrality, it will need to support personalization as an option at all levels of the instit ution. The NGDLE will not be exactly the same for any two learners, instructors, or institutions.
• For users, it will be a cloud-like space to aggregate and connect content and functionality, similar to a smartphone, where users fashion their environments d irectly with self - selected apps.
• If the paradigm for the NGDLE is a digital confederation of components, the model for the NGDLE architecture may be the mash-up. A mash - up is a web page or application that “uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface.” Hence it uses a heterogeneity of components to produce a homogeneity of function. The confederation - based NGDLE will be mashed up at both the individual and the institutional levels, as oppo sed to consortia forming to create open enterprise applications.

The report very much aligns with our thinking about our Collaborative Learning Environment, the name we gave our NGDLE.

Download report (PDF)

D'Arcy Norman started an interesting discussion about the false binary of LMS vs. Open. Here are some interesting responses:

• Sheila MacNeill: Living with the VLE dictator
• Peter Reed: The VLE vs 'Whatever'
• Amber Thomas: Why VLEs aren’t evil
• Mike Caulfield: Reply to D’Arcy
• Phill Hill: LMS and Open: The false binary is based on past, not future markets
• George Kroner: The Nuances of LMS vs. Open

In the past I used to be responsible for the Blackboard system of our university. Since a couple of years I'm responsible for the Open Education activities of the university. So this is an discussion that interests me. So here my two cents.

First of all I strongly agree with D'Arcy about the false framing of VLE versus Open. I also think that this frame doesn't benefit either side.

Secondly, I agree that most LMSs (aka VLE) look the same and users have the same objections against them. Some of theme will always complain about the institutional systems their university offers. As Goerge Kroner writes "LMSs remain the most important components of online learning technology for the vast majority of higher education institutions, and LMSs are more open today than they’ve ever been (of course as long as institutions don’t lock them down)."

Thirdly, the educational world is changing. As Phill Hill has posted in his slides there are 4 reasons to consider:

1. The world around the LMS has changed
2. The concept of interoperability has changed
3. Open Education and MOOCs
4. Just now getting broad LMS adoption

According to Phil we are just now moving into new concept of Learning Platform. I agree with that and see this happening at my own university.

Fourthly, there isn't any Learning Platform out there. So as a university we have to a three options:

1. Stick with Blackboard
2. Switch over to another system that might become the Learning Platform we need
3. Build it ourselves.

I don't believe in option 3 for a single university and I have seen many failures in doing this with multiple universities. So there are two options left. And that is what we are investigating at this moment.

An interesting blogpost of Edutechnica. Based on open data they created a dataset of all universities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia including their enrollment numbers, geographical coordinates, and URLs. That was not all, they went further. With a combination of Google’s search API, Microsoft’s Bing search API, and a number of open source software libraries they crawled each university’s web site to identify the primary LMS (or in more than 200 cases, multiple primary LMSs) in use. After some clean up, they came with interesting numbers:

More information and details on their blog.

This week Blackboard announced the CourseSites MOOC Catalog:

Empowering Learning Through Community

Blackboard is pleased to support open education opportunities and massive open online courses (MOOCs) through CourseSites by Blackboard, a free, hosted and scalable online learning platform. Explore and enroll in courses below or start your own now.

In 2011 Blackboard launched Coursesites. This platform is free for teachers to create course and offer them to students. The CourseSites platform is based on the full Blackboard Learn platform including Collaborate and Mobile Learn. They are running the newest version (SP10), so it is also a good way to get to know the new version.

From the beginning Blackboard showed in this platform their commitment to support standards and to be more open. This year they also started to promote the platform for MOOCs. In this video they show what they offer:

If you are not familiar with Blackboard Learn, this video gives a good overview of the newest features in 9.1.SP10:

At the Online Educa Berlin I got a preview of the new Blackboard product xpLor. xpLor is a Learning Object Repository in the cloud which is fully integrated in Blackboard Learn, but also in Moodle and Sakai:

Over the past 15 years the Learning Management System has transformed education enabling you to create rich interactive learning materials, effective online assessments, and interactive discussion.
But the LMS can build walls between educators, making it difficult to share content they create or use content other have shared.
XpLor implements modern software standards and removes the restrictions of LMS-based software allowing you to use the same learning materials in various LMS environments wint unprecendented ease.

Blackboard has now made an infographics to explain what xpLor is supposed to do.

The impression I got from the demo is that it is something that can really help the OER movement. It makes it much easier for instructors to share and re-use open content. Especially because they are not only integrating it with Blackboard, but also with Moodle and Sakai.

Vandaag werd bekend dat de Michael Chasen, CEO van Blackboard, Blackboard gaat verlaten. Na het vertrek van Matt Pittinsky betekend dit dat beide oprichters nu niet meer verbonden zijn aan Blackboard.

De opvolger van Chasen is Jay Bhatt, oud CEO van Progress Software. Ik ken hem niet, maar vind het wel jammer dat het niet iemand is met een onderwijs achtergrond. Gelukkig blijft Ray Henderson in de directie.

In een blog gaat Michael zelf in op zijn vertrek. Ray heeft ook een mooie blog geschreven over het vertrek.

Chrome is op dit moment duidelijk de favoriete browser van de gebruikers van de TU Delft blackboard-omgeving met bijna de helft van de bezoeken. En dat is wel opvallend want de standaard TU-omgeving is niet voorzien van Chrome. Daar staan alleen Internet Explorer en Firefox op.

De dalende trend van IE blijft doorgaan en dat is natuurlijk goed met de recente bug.

Hieronder het overzicht.