Came across these videos recently, in case they have not been already discussed here:
Leveraging the Virtual Classroom for Effective Learning with
Speaker: Ruth Clark
Uploaded on Nov 3, 2008
"Based on her latest book, The New Virtual Classroom, Dr. Clark will guide you in an interactive tour of virtual classroom technology features proven to promote learning. In this interactive session, you will learn how to exploit the main features in the virtual classroom to create engaging training environments.
The Training Forum is an event, free to the community, that provides an opportunity for individuals working or interested in training, education, business, government and the non-profit sector to share ideas and dialogue on topics of importance. Part of UMBC's mission is to provide service. We take pride in our partnerships with employers and other organizations in the community, and are able to give back with events like the Training Forum. In many instances, we have panels of experts discussing topics related to business, organizational productivity and workplace learning and performance. Other topics center around issues related to human performance improvement, training and employee development, improving individual and organizational effectiveness and other related subjects."
Best Practices in Online Education
Speakers: Illysa Izenberg, Ana Oscoz, Chadia Abras
Uploaded on Oct 7, 2008
"With the emergence and fast-paced evolution of distance learning, educators arechallenged by, and seeking ways to offer effective online classes that are innovative and imaginative. During this seminar you will hear how the UMBC successfully increased student engagement and class interaction by incorporating collaborative, active learning methods into physical and virtual classrooms. These elements of collaboration include voice, social presence, chat, share (sharing applications with students and peers), video, and content. Drawing on their experience, faculty members will explore common instructional and social challenges they've encountered and share valuable lessons they've learned that can easily be implemented into your own distance learning program."
Hi Visvanath,
Thanks for sharing
I'm not familiar with Ruth Clark's work or books and don't remember having seen her cited in any of the papers or literature I've read, although I may have missed it.
I watched the 1st 50 mins of the 1st video and wasn't impressed. Perhaps it would be helpful to novice IDs but Ruth Clark's use of hugely over generalised and aggregated statistics and black and white interpretations with little or no references to caveats set off alarm bells for me. Also, she made no attempt to address establishing some kind of typology of learning or to distinguish between the different types. I fear this presentation may encourage less academic/scientifically minded IDs, who this seminar appears to be aimed at, to simply affirm their already held beliefs, whether they conform to evidence or not, and to carry on as before thereby making attending the seminar little more than "stroking" attendees and telling them that they're "professionals," e.g. Does presenting 25 or more webinars constitute being a webinar expert? Great for getting more private sector IDs to attend but not much in the way of reflective, analytical and critical thinking.
I switched off shortly after the point where she admitted that the evidence she was citing was from her colleagues immediate post test data only and that she had no idea of the medium to long term effect sizes.
If I were to sum it up in a word... "surperficial."
BTW, her website at: http://clarktraining.com/blog/ has been hacked. It's littered with hidden links to payday loanshark sites.
Hi Matt,
Could you explain some things? What is an "ID" in this context? I looked at http://clarktraining.com/blog/ but didn't see the evidence that it's "been hacked. It's littered with hidden links to payday loanshark sites."
I turned off after 15 minutes - not my style at all. (But maybe I'm biased, I prefer "paper" physical or virtual content, so I can skim to see where the meat is. Giving 50 or more minutes of my life to what just maybe useful to me... Sorry, no.)
Thanks Matt for saving me some time. I do like to know what's going on out there. However, this dates from 2007, I gather, so ...
Cheers,
Glenys
Hi Glenys,
ID = Instructional Designer. They're typically people who use Adobe Captivate, Techsmith Camtasia, Raptivity, etc. to produce demo videos, slideshows, and quizzes all wrapped up into SCORM packages.
Re: the hacked site, view the page I linked to with Javascript disabled and you'll see a paragraph of machine generated text with a bunch of links at the top of the page.
An easy way to turn various functions of Firefox on and off, among other things, is this plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/
Hi Matt
You wrote:
> ID = Instructional Designer. They're typically people who use Adobe Captivate, Techsmith Camtasia, Raptivity, etc. to produce demo videos, slideshows, and quizzes all wrapped up into SCORM packages.
That's a good one! You should submit it to an urban dictionary.
Now seriously, I can understand that the (first) lecture didn't withstand your scrutiny. My experience in online teaching is very modest in comparison. I was telling somebody the other day about a one simple luxury I appreciate every time I stand in front of the class: a big double (real) black board with chalk in multiple colours! (And the fun when they want to photograph it.) The online component was just a bonus, but that since a long time. I remember preparing HTML pages for my classes in HTML 2. Later Moodle relieved me of that work.
Only recently for something unrelated I am delving into the online world. My (random) choice of lectures reflects that. These things need time.
But there is an unexpected repercussion to this: I owe Glenys 15 precious minutes of her life. If you could post some stuff to compensate that lost time, I'll be much greatful, you seem to know the needs of others.
Dear Glenys
I'm deeply sorry for wasting your precious time. I asked Matt for a loan. If that doesn't work, would a Swiss chocolate be an equivalent? In any case, I'm thankful to you that you warned Joseph. Otherwise I need to charter a chocolate factory.
You wrote:
> ID = Instructional Designer. They're typically people who use Adobe Captivate, Techsmith Camtasia, Raptivity, etc. to produce demo videos, slideshows, and quizzes all wrapped up into SCORM packages.
That's a good one! You should submit it to an urban dictionary.
Now seriously, I can understand that the (first) lecture didn't withstand your scrutiny. My experience in online teaching is very modest in comparison. I was telling somebody the other day about a one simple luxury I appreciate every time I stand in front of the class: a big double (real) black board with chalk in multiple colours! (And the fun when they want to photograph it.) The online component was just a bonus, but that since a long time. I remember preparing HTML pages for my classes in HTML 2. Later Moodle relieved me of that work.
Only recently for something unrelated I am delving into the online world. My (random) choice of lectures reflects that. These things need time.
But there is an unexpected repercussion to this: I owe Glenys 15 precious minutes of her life. If you could post some stuff to compensate that lost time, I'll be much greatful, you seem to know the needs of others.
Dear Glenys
I'm deeply sorry for wasting your precious time. I asked Matt for a loan. If that doesn't work, would a Swiss chocolate be an equivalent? In any case, I'm thankful to you that you warned Joseph. Otherwise I need to charter a chocolate factory.
Glenys "I turned off after 15 minutes - not my style at all. (But maybe I'm biased, I prefer "paper" physical or virtual content, so I can skim to see where the meat is. Giving 50 or more minutes of my life to what just maybe useful to me... Sorry, no.)"
Hi Glenys, thanks for helping me save those precious 50 minutes of the rest of my life.
Joseph
Hi Visvaneth & Joseph,
Of course I didn't wish to rate your posts as "Cool" but as as "Lol".
Hi Matt,
I wanted to rate yours as both "Useful" & "Lol".
I do have Web Developer and I've activated "Disable all JavaScript" but I still don't know how to see what you see.
Cheers,
Glenys
PS: Eek! but now I no longer have a WYSIWYG interface here on this forum. However, I do know how to use basic HTML tags...
Hi Matt,
Disregard my previous post: my old eyes just couldn't see all that dark stuff at the top. Now I've seen on that site:
Conversely a complication in a payday loan ...
Why did you suspect this? Or do you always have JavaScript turned off?
Cheers,
Glenys
(Edited by Helen Foster to remove spam links - original submission Monday, 8 April 2013, 12:44 AM)
Hi Glenys,
I use the NoScript plugin in Firefox so any new Javascript is turned off by default. You start with no JS and gradually add to your "white list" all the script sources that you trust. JS is at the top of most web security threat lists (and some people complain about Flash being insecure - Flash is more secure than Apple Quicktime but you don't hear many complaints about that one... and don't get me started on iOS and Android apps!) so it's a good idea to have it turned off by default and not to put any personal information on your iOS or Android device.
To all,
If you have a few hours to spare (27 X 10 minutes = 270 minutes), Dr. Curt Bonk at Indiana University recorded a series of lectures on general elearning course design and management and released them under a Creative Commons licence. I copied them and put them into a Moodle course and at some point, I intend to use them as part of an introductory elearning course: http://moodle.matbury.com/course/view.php?id=39
Still, I don't think there's any substitute for reading the research and being particularly careful not to over extend generalisations from findings. The more I learn about elearning, the more I think that it's a lot more specific, context based, and interdependent on highly unpredictable factors than most people seem to think, i.e. not very generalisable. This has lead me into the murky waters of Complexity Theory and Activity Theory (learning as a complex adaptive system).
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_theory and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system for an overview.
Hi Matt
I checked the "theory" first:
> See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_theory and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system for an overview.
and was not sure I could follow an "introductory" elearning course based on them. I simply don't have the vocabulary!
Yet peeked into your course http://moodle.matbury.com/course/view.php?id=39 and already through three topics. They are clear and practical.
If you plan to conduct a part of it online, you have one candidate already. I say "a part" because with 27 topics it is quite a chunk. And a course like that should run in parallel to one's own practice.
Disclaimer: If anyone takes my (second) suggestion, do it at your own risk! I can't take responsibility for the precious time of your life.
P.S. Is the "time factor" that critical in the Lounge, where it says, "An open forum for social chat with other Moodlers"?
I checked the "theory" first:
> See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_theory and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system for an overview.
and was not sure I could follow an "introductory" elearning course based on them. I simply don't have the vocabulary!
Yet peeked into your course http://moodle.matbury.com/course/view.php?id=39 and already through three topics. They are clear and practical.
If you plan to conduct a part of it online, you have one candidate already. I say "a part" because with 27 topics it is quite a chunk. And a course like that should run in parallel to one's own practice.
Disclaimer: If anyone takes my (second) suggestion, do it at your own risk! I can't take responsibility for the precious time of your life.
P.S. Is the "time factor" that critical in the Lounge, where it says, "An open forum for social chat with other Moodlers"?
Hi Glenys
About the P.S.
> Eek! but now I no longer have a WYSIWYG interface here on this forum.
Funny. I go eaks, when these "many icons to assist the user in entering content" (http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Text_editor ) appear! Apparently I'm not alone. Listen to Phil Hawksworth, "I can smell your CMS" . (Found in "Re: Dear Moodle, can we drop tinymce yet?" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=223125&parent=985484. Also related, 'What is a "text editor"' https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=226174. )
> However, I do know how to use basic HTML tags...
What kind of HTML tags were needed? It you use "Moodle auto-format" you get a decent formatting without any HTML. See the screen-shot.
About the P.S.
> Eek! but now I no longer have a WYSIWYG interface here on this forum.
Funny. I go eaks, when these "many icons to assist the user in entering content" (http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Text_editor ) appear! Apparently I'm not alone. Listen to Phil Hawksworth, "I can smell your CMS" . (Found in "Re: Dear Moodle, can we drop tinymce yet?" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=223125&parent=985484. Also related, 'What is a "text editor"' https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=226174. )
> However, I do know how to use basic HTML tags...
What kind of HTML tags were needed? It you use "Moodle auto-format" you get a decent formatting without any HTML. See the screen-shot.
