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Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category

IRRODL- Openness and the Future of Higher Education

Posted in Articles, OCW, OER on November 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here are the articles from this special issue:

Editorial


Research Articles

If you don’t believe in Open Educational Resources (OER), OpenCourseWare (OCW), and openness, perhaps these articles above will change your views about that.


The future of higher education and openness?

No clue, except that we can learn:

  • Whatever We want
  • Whenever We want
  • Wherever We want
  • On any device We want

Yes, most of it will not cost anything except our time. Our time is precious, so if it ain’t of quality, forget it. That applies to any programme or course, too. Yes, increasingly the public will be enlightened, so we better wake up to a new world order of learning beyond any classroom wall 🙂

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Medpedia – A New Medical Knowledge Sharing Model

Posted in Articles, Health, Juice, Medical, Tools on October 28, 2009| 2 Comments »

“The mission of Medpedia is to openly share and advance medical knowledge…“

Medpedia

The Medpedia Project is a long term, worldwide project to evolve a new model for sharing and advancing knowledge about health, medicine and the body among medical professionals and the general public. The Project provides a free online technology platform to any individual or organization that can benefit from its use.

Users of the platform include medical and scientific journals, medical schools, research institutes, medical associations, physicians, hospitals, for-profit and non-profit organizations, companies, expert patients, policy makers, students, non-professionals taking care of loved ones, individual medical professionals, scientists, etc …more

WOW! This is it 🙂

P.S. You might also want to check out this King Kong list for medical online resources

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MedWorm – The Ultimate Medical Resource Search Engine?

Posted in Articles, Health, Medical, Search on October 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »

MedWorm is a medical RSS feed provider as well as a search engine built on data collected from RSS feeds. It collects updates from over 6000 authoritative data sources (growing each day) via RSS feeds. From the data collected, MedWorm provides new outgoing RSS feeds on various medical categories that you can subscribe to, via the free MedWorm online service, or another RSS reader of your choice, such as Bloglines, Newsgator, Google Reader or FeedDemon.

You can easily customize or tailor your search query to specific types of content (and categories), such as news, journals, blogs, podcasts, etc. Also, MedWorm has already indexed a wonderful collection of categories (e.g. Swine Flu), which can assist you to find what you want, as fast as you want (Not sure about that one, yet!). Cool!

If you think you can do better, why not create your own specialized search engine using Google Custom Search Engine. I heard recently that they have updated it with some cool new features, including more templates to personalize and tailor the look-and-feel (to what you want!). Why not 🙂

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Top Tips on E-Learning From Kineo

Posted in Articles, corporate, e-Learning on October 22, 2009| 1 Comment »

Via Cammy Bean

Not only is Kineo a great e-learning company, it is also a company that shares a lot of swoosh delicious e-learning stuff on their website. Besides their E-Learning top tips series, they also share case studies, reports, articles, audio interviews, etc., which could surely swoosh some relevant and useful ideas on how we can spice up our e-learning worlds (for free, except our time!).

How to become a great e-learning company? Share your swoosh delicious juice, and people will discover you, and if you are really good… They have seen your work, they trust your excellence, and obviously they want to invest in your services and products! The rules have changed from the old ‘(Hoarding) Knowledge is Power!‘ to ‘Sharing Knowledge is Power!‘

Wake up to the new world sharing order 🙂

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24 Swoosh Delicious Articles From Clive Shepherd!

Posted in Articles, corporate, e-Learning, Learning on October 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Via Clive Shepherd

24 swoosh delicious articles from Clive Shepherd’s columns on e-learning and blended learning, originally published between 2007 and 2009 in IT Training and e-learning age magazines.

Clive’s Columns Volume 2 (447KB, PDF)


If you are looking for Volume 1 (or a Dummies Guide to E-Learning), click here for writing out loud! We can always learn something from this experienced dude. I have already printed out Volume 2. Sorry about the wood (and trees used), but with some articles you just want to enjoy reflecting in printed form 🙂

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Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

Posted in Articles, e-Learning, Juice on October 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Via Clive Shepherd & Donald Clark

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning (819KB, PDF)

You might die from boredom reading this report from the US Department of Education. Please get Steve Jobs involved for the next report. I suppose it could have been simplified and presented in a more creative, visual, and mind (or eye) stimulating way.


Luckily, Donald Clark has swooshed out some of the juice, which is replicated right here…

  • “Online better than face-to-face
    “The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving traditional face-to-face instruction.”

  • Jury out on blended
    “Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction.

  • Online and on-task
    “Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning.”

  • Online is all good
    “Most of the variations in the way in which different studies implemented online learning did not affect student learning outcomes significantly.”

  • Blended no better than online
    Blended and purely online learning conditions implemented within a single study generally result in similar student learning outcomes.”

  • Junk video & quizzes
    “Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes.”
  • Let learners learn
    “Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection.”

  • Online good for everyone
    “The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types.”

  • Get them doing things
    “Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection.”

  • Groups not way forward
    “Providing guidance for learning for groups of students appears less successful than does using such mechanisms with individual learners.”

…”One should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face”. In other words it’s better at getting learners to continue learning after the event. What more can you ask for?”


MY TAKE!
If you ask me, I would argue that all this whoa about delivery methods is not the real essence to effective learning, instead we should focus more on the actual actors in the learning events: Educators and Students.

If your educator or learning facilitator is crap, it does not matter what method you use, the outcome is probably going to be crap. But then again, if you are a die-hard learner, it does not really matter what method you use, because you are going to learn anyway. But let’s face it, would you rather wait for a whole semester to learn something, or learn-it-yourself right now.

In short, today with all the free online resources, communities, communication/collaboration/learning tools available to us, we can practically learn whatever we want, whenever we want, and no crappy lecturer is going to distract us with outdated rubbish, or silly scheduled course is going to slow us down in the process.

Did I just say that? But, sadly in many instances it is a reality. I know, I have been there 😦

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Insidious Pedagogy: How Course Management Systems Affect Teaching

Posted in Articles, e-Learning, Facilitation, Juice, LMS, Pedagogy on October 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Via Stephen Downes

“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.” — Henry David Thoreau

AUTHOR:
Lisa M. Lane

ABSTRACT:
“Course management systems (CMS), like any other technology, have an inherent purpose implied in their design, and therefore a built–in pedagogy. Although these pedagogies are based on instructivist principles, today’s large CMSs have many features suitable for applying more constructivist pedagogies. Yet few faculty use these features, or even adapt their CMS very much, despite the several customization options. This is because most college instructors do not work or play much on the Web, and thus utilize Web–based systems primarily at their basic level. The defaults of the CMS therefore tend to determine the way Web–novice faculty teach online, encouraging methods based on posting of material and engendering usage that focuses on administrative tasks. A solution to this underutilization of the CMS is to focus on pedagogy for Web–novice faculty and allow a choice of CMS.”


Insidious Pedagogy: How Course Management Systems Affect Teaching

Flush Blackboard down the toilet, and use Moodle instead (until a better one comes around!) for online facilitation and learning!

But, I don’t have a server or an IT team to support me? Use Moodlerooms then (or other hosting alternatives)!

But I am a stingy goat, and don’t want to invest a single cent (Except my time!). Please, show me an excellent free CMS alternative that includes a web-conferencing tool? Try Sclipo!

Don’t complexify simple problems 🙂

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How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education

Posted in Articles, Juice on September 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Via Jay Cross

“... MIT’s courseware may be free, yet an MIT degree still costs upward of $189,000…”If universities can’t find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them,” professor David Wiley of Brigham Young University has written, “universities will be irrelevant by 2020….Today, “open content” is the biggest front of innovation in higher education. The movement that started at MIT has spread to more than 200 institutions in 32 countries that have posted courses online at the OpenCourseWare Consortium…”

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education

Free learning content? Hm, where to start?

“And one item that comes to the top a lot is ZaidLearn’s post University Learning – OCW – OER – Free – worth checking out.“
– Tony Karrer

Oh man! ZaidLearn again! ZaidSwoosh’s time will come 🙂

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