November 9, Monday Morning Session

Elliott Masie’s E-Learning 2009 Conference

This conference of e-Learning practitioners started on Sunday, November 8 and ended on Wednesday, November 11. The following is my recollection of the various presentations made by guests that I attended.

November 9, Monday Presentations:

Laura Fitton:

There needs to be a special skill set to be used in eLearning and that those skills need to be kept constantly sharp. It is now being used in social learning networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Chat. There is great potential of Twitter since it is limited to 140 characters per post and has the potential to chunk small bits of materials and instantly broadcast it to others aligned with the topic. In eLearning, smaller content is preferred to the larger content involving hours of reading text, etc… These MicroBlogs are created quickly, to the point and easily read by the audiences. According to researchers, these microblogs support many people’s learning styles and could be used in greater eLearning applications.

Jeff Tennembaum – Legal Aspects of eLearning

Copyright issues are by far the most impacted involving eLearning.

Elliott Masie:

The 1B smartphone owners is contributing to the explosion of microblogging on Twitter and more. This may be leading to a curious increase of Attention Deficit Syndrome. With the increase of technology, we are seeing the evolution of “thinking” games where the brain controls robotic arms, movement on a chess-board screen and more. There seems to be a consensus that a collective intelligence is more important and an individual one.

Learning Management Systems LMS

Moodle is by far the most used LMS in the world. There are other LMS used including Ilias, Sakai and more. Since Moodle is open source software, other companies are developing products to function within this LMS. Moodle Rooms is one such type where there are content rooms created by the designer and available to learners. These Moodle rooms provide a framework, storage and a place for updates to content in an easily accessed area within Moodle. According to studies, there is no difference in student learning when students experience it within Blackboard or Moodle… it is content important and not the delivery method. Moodle tools can use Camtasia Studio, Articulate Presenter, Articulate Engage and Articulate Quiz within their framework.

LMS are best when used: as a scheduling tool, for Tracking Learners, for Report Generating, for Organizing Materials, for content delivery, integration of content with other tools and for learner compliance issues. LMS are not good at being cutting edge or are not complete learning options within themselves.

The future of using Moodle involves the expanded capabilities of using a content rating system, content tracking system, simulation capture efficiency and efficient learner search.