Aggregating ePortfolio Discourse in Virtual Communities of Practice

Merlot 2006 Ottawa Canada 11/8/2006

Kathleen Willbanks and Gayle Burns

CSU The California State University

23 Campuses involved in the project 400000 students and some 20,000 staff but you could just about calculate it. These numbers are indicative of the size of this project.

CSU identified the need for ePortfolios as essential when the teacher accreditation requirements TPA & TPE, similar to TAA, were implemented. Typically there were some staff who resisted the move.

Development was an evolutionary process in collaboration with vendors. This provided a better outcome than just taking an off the shelf ePortfolio system.

The qualification requirements included education, technology and business training making it essential that the ePortfolio system served these needs as well. The ePortfolio requirement is driven by 3 accreditation agencies which are responsible for teaching staff having been accredited to teach.

Initially they built a website that facilitated a community of practice. The model used was quite different to other communities of practice. The new model will now be used by CSU to change the model of past communities of practice. The community of practice hold numerous resources, forums, etc. The goal is to do away with the bulky hard print portfolios traditionally used. At face to face meetings the staff are provided wireless access that permits people at distance and or disparate locations to attend. This access also allows access to chat and forums. Initially CSU commenced without forum moderators but soon learned that moderators or facilitators were required.

I am not sure what the differences were and could not find out due to the need to get to the CLOE session.

There was a hybrid model for using the ePortfolio, that is it included face to face meetings mixed with a lot of online sessions.

See hand out; it is interesting to note that they are using the Australian Flexible Learning’s Flexways to assist staff identify their skills and skill gaps.

“Work Force Learning” a new requirement by USA and Canadian Federal Governments is demanding the evidence to be produced through Portfolios and ePortfolios for the accreditation process. Work Force Learning is also demanding that the Colleges and Universities design and develop resources and courses that will assist industry and enterprise training requirements.

Collaboration through a Learning Management System for multiple Learning Object Creation

Cooperative Learnware Object Exchange (CLOE)

CLOE Manager Peter Goldsworthy ( Waterloo University)

Started 200-1

Repository in Ontario see http://cloe.on.ca/

National members, CLOE is very community organization.

CLOE has found that if one Institute creates a LO there is little opportunity of reuse. However if there is collaborative development that at least 2 Institutions involved in the development of LOs there is increased opportunity for re-use.

In 2005 Inukshuk (Inuit word describing an Inuit stone symbol for welcome) however, Inukshuk in this instance is referring to a vendor/company responsible for BB provision. The Canadian Federal Government funded their BB project with the understanding that they would fund educational projects for LO development. This was the same model Canarie and Cancore were funded on in the early 2000’s for similar BB and other educational technology projects.

Once the project was granted to CLOE they established timelines and policy. One policy was that the funding was contingent on there being a QA process which led to all LO’s being peer reviewed as a QA. This demanded that the peer review only recommend when a LO was suitable both pedagogically and technically sound.

The project management and work flow work tool was created in the University of Waterloo LMS (using Angel as an LMS the LO repository is Desire2Learn), in which they created a team discussion areas, team file areas, Gannt Chart showing time lines and milestones. They also created a Wiki . The site did not work so well for staff initially. Seem to have heard this somewhere else. Some analysis indicated that the work load both in the project and their day job was high so this had an impact. However, after some redesign minimizing the complexity and renaming some functions there seems to be increased uptake. Both students and staff were involved in the LO development project. The students had less inhibition in using the project technology.

From Peter’s perspective the work space was so vital at reporting time as most of the learning and outcomes had been captured. There was toward the end of the project an Industrial Relations issue on campus which led to academic staff striking. This impacted on the project outputs.

In the resources section there is documentation on Evaluation and Testing to ensure the LO had a positive learning impact. This is viewable at the CLOE web site.

CLOE is currently holding approximately 200 LOs’ if I heard right. The majority of these are Flash files.

Gender and Health Collaborative Curriculum

www.genderandhealth.ca

Rupa Patel, Queen’s University, Kingston

Shayna Watson, Sympatico

Nahid Azad, University of Ottawa

The goal of this project was to improve health and health care through the development of a collaborative curriculum

It needed to be based on a web presence for accessibility reasons.

• It is a web based learning resource
• Was designed and implemented for medical students in their early training
• Instructors needed access to progressively build the site
• Curriculum designers together with the Universities Medical teaching staff were responsible for the pedagogical quality.

It was designed to be engaging for the learners whilst being evidence based. One of the keys to the outcome being engaging was the issue that students were involved right through the development phase.

One example of content was that of sexuality where there is a need to educate new students about the difference between sexuality in a professional context to that of the social context.

Some of the LO’s on the website were demonstrated. The site is designed in very lateral way. The presenters advised that they were happy for other health educators to freely use the material on the site. There would be some benefits for CS&H to evaluate this site for possible useful content.

They are also developing a self authoring tool

The site has an e-Portfolio for student use.

Objects can be viewed at this site by accessing.

http://hephaestus.tetraplex.com/

There is a need to contact the authors of the site to negotiate use of any material.

Hitchhikers Guide to Course Development

Joanne Gonzalez-Major and Amanda Albright

This site was developed to assist teachers develop eLearning by providing early support about where and how to start.

It runs on an Open Source platform that should support tentative adopters at the early stages of ICT readiness.

• Variables , student needs, amount of information being disseminated, changing technology
• The tool is a series of tutorials, references etc
• It has been designed for Life Long Learners and is designed teach them how to learn thus meeting the ever increasing need for ongoing learning.
• Constraints, limited resources, culture, accessible mentors, knowledge base vs teaching experience and finally distance.

They are using MOODLE which was very interesting as there were some connotations early in the presentations that the Open Source system had been developed in house. Obviously it was intended that the content was developed in house. There is obviously some good material here but I believe it would need to be used in conjunction with Ron Oliver’s Learning Design site and Clint Smith’s site on the Frameworks Flexiblelearning.net.au site.

Go to

http://midsolutions.org/cms

The site has a number of tutorials that on the surface look effective. The developers are looking for new users to come on board.

Learning Objects in 9 weeks

Faculty of education University Ottawa IT

Liesel Knaack and Robert Lee

Project based learning – used FLASH and Instructional Design with a focus on simplicity whilst having a strong pedagogical focus as well.

All students were provided with appropriate and licenced resources – 9 weeks equating to a total of 36 hours. Student were to develop as part of their Teacher Education training and they developed math and science LO’s. The end products were very impressive. A key to the final product quality was that each student had considerable subject expertise in regard to the LO they were required to develop.

All participants were ready in that they understood the process of building web sites. This was a case of have capable student captive for a worthy project. I believe the outcomes have contributed to the CLOE LO collection.

See slide for development process. The slides should be up on Merlot in the next 2 weeks.

The two presenters were responsible for teaching and mentoring the students.

The model for teaching them to use Flash was;

• Provide each student with a Flash text book with the need for them to complete 5 tutorials from the text book before the face to face workshops
• Students were introduced cooperative problem solving exercises which provided economies of scale to complete the project in such a short time once the students were confident in using cooperative problem solving. The students presented as well and stated that this was a very empowering experience.
• Teacher led instruction was also incorporated at pertinent times in the program
• Flash performance tests were used then to verify technical compliance.

The students were required to complete a project scope by the end of week 2. hey were then required to produced a flow chart for a graphical overview of their individual project. A flow chart was used for this which allowed both the student and staff to look critically at the sequencing and to index the content outline. Students then produced a story board in .ppt which they could test before developing in FLASH. The staff believed this process also contributed to scales of economies for both students and staff.

See beta examples that have been tested with students studying in the applicable areas.

Future courses will probably include a greater focus on LO’s and there is a need to provide a template/s so the student can focus on Instructional Design.

http://education.uoit.ca/learningobjects

Managing Intellectual Property for Distance Learning

Liz Johnson, Project Manager, Advanced Learning Technologies, Board of Regents of the Universty System Georgia.

This presentation refers to the Teachers section of the USA IP&C Act. This section is similar to The Australian “Fair Use” section of our Act. The problem presented is very similar to the Institute of TAFE Tasmania in relation to Risk Managing IP&C other than them not having available to them the Copyright Kitchen as we do have. Access to the Copyright Kitchen possibly would not help due to the subtle differences in the two Acts.

The presenter gave a very clear overview of the processors they used which followed ;

Planning

• Establish a protocol
• Train the design team
• Assign a status to IP
• Assess IP

Refer to 3r^d slide for the model of their protocol.

• Determined that the works where possible were to be created on campus (this seems to be a massive task and could need some scrutiny)
• If we don’t own it establish if we can we link to it, maintenance issues prevail and staff need to be cognizant of their responsibilities
• Can you apply the teacher act? This was introduced to overcome the new millennium IP&C (Known as the Digital Amendments part of the Act in Australia) changes in the Act
• Can’t allow transmission of the works (this seemed to be a bit of overkill because with permission transmission is generally allowed)
• Can you apply the Fair Use section of the act?
• If all the above don’t comply seek and gain permission to use

This is a far more rigid and rigorous process than we apply.

The designers then needed to be trained so they can implement the protocol; the training includes

• The Instructional Designers and Teacher’s
• Consider and understand limits of time, budget, and owner prerogative
• Identifying the complete source information is needed at the outset
• Update the USG copyright policy and training on copyright.
• What are the jurisdictional issues, cross state and country legal implications.

Training to assign Status to IP

• That is what are the conditions that apply, minimal to major
• If it required sign off at higher level try and avoid using the works

Training for the assessment of the IP&C

• What are the implications of using 3^rd party IP&C

Implementation issues

• Costs
• time
• sign off within the organisation
• needed a tool help mange IP&C so developed there own.

Refer to slide for samples of the tool but appeared to be similar to out form letters and IP&C sign off documentation.

More than just a Repository: Delivering Context Rich and Value Added Information Literacy.

Mark Meng

St Johns University

Learning Objects can help students fill the knowledge gap if designed to cater for differing learning styles.

Limitations of LOs’as Mark find it.

• Objects are isolated from each other
• Overwhelming in numbers causing selection confusion
• Having no sequential organizations (this is surely a design issue)
• LOs’ depend on user ability to search and choose
• Vary significantly in size (is this an issue, surely this is dependent on the competency or curriculum)
• Descriptions are often lacking making meaningful discovery difficult (this applies to all metadata and not just the description, however, it is a general issue worthy of more consideration. and training for metadata taggers)

Design on a combination of two models; that is fixed lessons or ongoing unlimited content and lessons

Students can search this repository which I believe offers an opportunity to empower learning.

Learning Objects or Learning Frameworks: Reusing the Design of a Multimedia Anthropology Resource

Pia Marks Uni Waterloo

1. The promises of re-use vs reality
2. Re Purposing vs reuse

The reality

• Campbell wrote 2003 it is not acceptable to see data on reuse
• Gunn etal 2005 wrote that this trend still continues

Why the gap

• If it is too contextualised the less chance there is of reuse
• What are the cataloguing issues whose role is it
• Jorum is using the Institute of TAFE Tasmania model where the creator is entering the most basic metadata and then LMS staff complete the other necessary fields.
• Cultural factors are a big influence – there are no rewards and teachers will need rewards to create reusable LO’s
• How do differing teaching style/s impact on re-use-abilty, there needs to be more research in this area

Re Purposing vs Re-Use

• Where you populate the existing LO with additional resources that compliments and or re-contextualises the original LO
• Jorum ahs trialed re-purposing with Gorilla Thriller” which is designed to simulate field work for students which encourages
• Student to reflect
• Second reflection done at level 2
• Then reflection occurs over 3 phases with each phase reflecting on decisions made in each phase to learn from their progressive learning

The tool is WGO which is a flash tool allowing material/content exchange

• Allowed change of the above video being exchanged
• Created a different focus to linguistics
• Replaced the info links
• The pedagogical/learning sequence was maintained with each phase building on the learning of the previous phase.

This would be a good model for the designing of courses such as CS&H, Advanced Building, Business Management

• This model was addressing educational issues as the teacher could contextualize for their students needs
• Unresolved issues as a result of this trial
• Sometimes repurposing will challenge the cultural factors such as lack of incentives for staff to do so.
• It is evident that the re-purposed model still belonged to the originator of the model when the repurposing teacher has invested considerable time and effort This is overcome with multiple rights allocations and yes it does become more complex as the number of assigned rights increases as a result of ongoing re-contextualisation.

For the FLASH re-purposing tool contact Steve Bond s.bond@lse.ac.uk

A shift from e-learning to e-teaching

KOICHI Nakajima & Masumi Hori Tezukayama University

Defining e teaching

• Is for teacher s to teach effectively
• eTeaching should motivate and direct teachers to teach willingly

TIES supports system

• Runs 24 hours
• Ran by 4 full time students
• Teacher relationship/ and culture has a big impact on the learning. TIES has a support role in this area
• Technology support 24 X 7 results
• Supplement class room with outside experts (this could be industry experts)
• This supports e-learning for students
• TIES works across many Japanese Universities
• TIES hosts 10382 content items
• Some material is made available to public users
• TIES is free but is written in Japanese however, the presenters are inviting partners to further enhance its capability
• Seeking translation to English which would be useful.

My comments; it probably suits Japanese culture may not suit our culture but the underpinning support is what is critical to e-learning/teaching regardless.

Visual Routes to Knowledge and Action

Visual Realisation - Object Recognition - Dr Mel Goodale

People are complicated when it comes to visualizing. Vision demands different actions for different visions. As such this impacts on the required interaction with any LO determined by the visual presentation of that LO. The outcome could lead to a poor learning experience. Our visions are categorized as visual systems for perception and visual systems for action.

The motor system needs to identify orientation for correct actions to occur. Perception may then impact on the correct action to align with orientation.

Double Dissociation can impact differently on different people. That is, in one person it can effect the perception or the action sectors of the brain but not both.

The Ventral Perception stream recognises objects in different sections of the ventral system.

There are 2 visual systems, the ventral stream and the dorsal stream, that have the task of rendering objects in different orientations again a critical factor for LO design.

Ventral Stream	Dorsal stream
Scene parsing	Visual control
Scene based frame reference	Effector based frames
Relational metric	Absolute metrics
Proportional	Isomorphic
	Moment to moment calculations

Computer rendering delays effect the real time use of the motor system so this is also a critical design issue for consideration.

There is a difference between the dorsal and ventral streams actions and perceptions in that the brain interprets the differences in differing ways having adverse effects on perception and action outcomes.

Online instruction can benefit from understanding the difference between perception and action.

A very interesting presentation but I felt it would take more than one session for designers to come to grips with the implications.

Mechanical Engineering

Timothy Philpot, University Missouri-Rolla. Merlot Classic Editors Choice award

An engineering simulation program see, http://web.umr.edu/~mecmovie/index.html

An extensive FLASH movie program for teaching Engineering calculations and theories. It outlines in a very clear and hands on process typical Engineering calculations and concept theories for students to test them selves on.

• Includes concept checkpoints to provide student feedback
• Many of the concepts are randomly generated providing students with meaningful learning.
• Has a Centroids game to reinforce learning in this field. There are many other games based on other engineering calculations including Mohr’s Circle
• Much of the questioning is based on Blooms taxonomy meaning that it commences at the lower end of Blooms taxonomy. Then as the student masters problems at the lower end the following problems posed increase the level of complexity to ensure learning is progressing according to Blooms Taxonomy.
• The games section allows student feedback so that games can be improved.
• Many of the games and calculations are based on discovery learning
• The overall concept of this LO is based on Intelligent Visualisation to nurture higher order learning.
• The MechMovies LO is also used for pre training preparation which provides many bonuses for students when they first attend.
• Timothy is quite happy to provide this free just email him for a .zip file. Collaboartive ongoing development would be appreciated.

Email Phil at philpott@umr.edu

Merlot 2006 GLOBE - Will it make a difference

Gerry Hanley Cal State University &Merlot, Tsuneo Yamada National Institute of MM Education Japan, Erik Duval Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium & Ariadne Foundation, Gilbert Paquette Tele Universitie Canada & LORnet appears to be Merlot’s equivalent of a network of repositories made up of Ariadne, EdNA, LORNET, Merlot and NIME

The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) is an international consortium that strives to make shared online learning resources available to educators and students around the world. The consortium provides a distributed network of learning objects that meet quality standards.

GLOBE aims to connect the world and unlock the ‘deep web’ of quality online educational resources through brokering relationships with content providers.

The URL is; http://globe.edna.edu.au/globe/go

Principles for GLOBE

• Needs to be open and low barriers
• Provide open specs – openly share amongst members
• Use standards and contribute back to GLOBE
• New collections are welcome to complete a automated certification process
• 5 initila bodies

Near Term and Goals

• V1 Federated search
• Simple communications
• Shared governance
• Move from and inkind contributions to externally funded and managed project

Gilbert Paquette

Install an eRIB which is a package that is provided to enable people/organisatons to create their LOR and join.

Gilbert spoke of the future for Globe which is clearly going to some degree where%%

Merlot 2006 Key Note - Working with and Learning from Pedagogical Expertise

Merlot 2006

Opening General Session, Diana Laurillard, Chair of Learning with Digital Technologies, London Knowledge Lab.

“Faculty who want to re-use shared digital resources for innovative learning and teaching are often working in an environment with limited pedagogical support. They need practical assistance in how to best use such resources in activities for their learners, given the intended outcomes, defined in terms of the curriculum skills, knowledge and expected progression; the student body, defined in terms of learners’ needs, prior experience, expectations, skills and competencies; and the learning environment, defined in terms of human, physical and digital resources, tools and services.”

This presentation explored the Learning design issues practitioners are confronted with in their transition from traditional teaching and learning to e-Learning.

Some of the principles underpinning the UK experience are

• There is a need to personalize teaching & learning
• All teaching and learning needs to be inclusive
• Flexibility is critical but there also needs to be room for blended learning models
• Improve productivity can result if effort and commitment are recognized and rewarded

The principles were developed and applied to all sectors of education in the UK. It was to be totally inclusive. At the same time it challenged

• low ICT skills in staff and students
• weak content that had evolved early but now provides valuable lessons for needed transitional pedagogy and cultural changes.
• Lack of infrastructure, infrastructure management and infrastructure support.

This enable 6 key developments

• Needed integrated online e-Iearning resources
• Online personalal support for learners
• Collaboration of all practitioners and support staff
• ICT training for all
• Leadership to enable people to do their best work
• Common digital infrastructure and digital resources that enable interoperability

eLearning begins and ends with strong innovative educational leadership in all speres; that is pedagogy, infrastructure, support and Professional Development.

Drivers

• Plans
• Funding
• Learner needs
• Stakeholders
• Career opportunities that reward effort
• Curriculum that supports a variety of options options.
• Curriculum requirements demanded by eLearning

Enablers

• Training & Development
• Information guidance
• Shareable resources/designs that can be re-contextualised or re-purposed
• Online communities to support peers.

Teachers needs, see Diana Laurillard’s slides at http://www.merlot.org/ on the teachers needs and challenges

• Which Included IP&C support as teachers are ore vulnerable in the new environment
• Career opportunities
• Information advice and economic modeling to support investment in development

JISC role – a pedagogy planner

• Offers assistance for eLearning quality and re-use
• Blended learning options beyond eLearning options
• Iterative design will be ongoing
• Enabling collaboration
• Implementation environment for testing
• User organizing test environment and practicing here before release

Lecturers needs

• Give me ideas
• Help me design
• Make it easy
• Help me plan my work
• Need flexibility to start small or large
• Link activities to resources
• Try one objective per week
• Mind manager and module genie are planning tools used

LD Information flow – see slides

• Think about the basic information they already have
• Decide study hours for balancing - could be very challenging but it is focusing on student to ensure teachers manage expectations and curriculum needs; that is don’t over or underestimate students study time to achieve the learning.
• Assign learning activities – see the planner on slides
• Then develop calendar to inform students of the course expectations.

The pedagogy planning

• Work on an objective (2 Student Contact Hours) per week, this equates to perhaps a competency or element of the competency per week in our Training Package framework.
• Refine learning objectives to enable student understanding of what is to be learned
• Define learner difficulties with this objective
• Pedagogical Patterns site http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/ is worth looking at
• Seek out reusable LO’s
• Sequence the deign – UK using LAMS for this
• Adapt a related learning activity sequence
• Scaffold the sequence
• Ask, how then is this assessed, and plan appropriate assessment
• Finally publish the model knowing and encouraging taht it can be changed
• This model could then be adapted for other areas of study/construct promoting re-use of learning design
• Start at the specific and then adapt for generalization of a learning sequence

Will this meet the drivers

• This is tested in the http://www.lamscommunity.org/ as a published learning sequence (action research) that can lead to career opportunities for the teacher by being innovative teacher which equates to action research – publishing in The Learning Edge provide this opportunity

See Diana Laurillard’s References slide for useful links

Summary

• Education planning and strategies are critical
• Practitioners (teachers and technical) need support if they are to succeed
• eLearning demands flexibility whilst using blended methodologies
• Innovation in teaching is action research and must be recognized as research
• Learning design must support the action research but the learning design will be an iterative process
• eLearning must capture relevant pedagogy
• There is no alternative to effective exploitation of technology.

Covespot Introduction

Covespot has been created to cater for my diverse interests that range from wooden boats (preferably working boats) to educational technology. Todays focus will be educatiional technology and the Merlot Conference I am attending in Ottawa Canada. Today I have attended a workshop conducted by Liesel Knaack of the University of Ontario.

The workshop was titled "Choosing, using, and assessing learning objects in the classroom". Liesels approach to this difficult topic which followed the 3 themes of choosing, using and assessing'was to have staff and students answer critical questions about their choices before use.

The worshop was very timely for my own research as I encounter these quetions from teaching staff in the Austrálian VTE sector whenever we introduce learning objects to staff udertaking professional development. Generally teachers and faculty are confronted with a very diverse range of learning objects. This makes the task of deciding on suitable learning object/s difficult. An added complexity has been observed in my own research and experiences, that being, teachers and faculty have very little available time to make this very important decision.

This has become the major challenge to staff who design or re-contextualise learning objects. Key strategies to assist the design of useful learning objects are;

• there needs to be a clear instruction or objective stating the learning expected to be gleaned from the learning object.
• there needs to be engaging and interactive activities that enable learning in reference to the objective.
  
• the activities should also encourage collaboration between student as well as student and teacher.
• finally the learning object needs to have some form of assessment so that the student and teacher can measure the learning.

Liesel also spoke of the term "Instructional Wrap" which she uses to introduce and sometimes to conclude on a short learning sequence or experience. I tend to call this "contextualising". That is palcing one or two web pages before the learning object to provide instruction about the context in which the teacher prefers the student to consider their learning. By then placing a page following the learning object the teacher can summarise the learning experience and ask students to post discussions about their learning experience. This would support stsudent collaborative learning.

Liesel has provided some excellent tools to assit teachers and faculty to choose use and assess learning objects.