Fresh look at eLearning

Does anyone really believe that technical eLearning is being properly evaluated and selected ? Take a look at some of the rubbish material provided by big eLearning vendors and wonder aloud !

I have a concern that the more focussed the content (ie technical, or domain-specific) the less can a HR staffer, eLearning/Training buyer, or plain 'front-of-house obstacle' detect value in the product at all. So the easy thing to do is just invent a 'we don't like/use elearning' excuse.

Is it vaguely possible that they are just focusing on (a) price (b) volume of titles, or (c) their own job ?

My suggestion for making some progress here is that corporations should look afresh at the eLearning debate. It is not useful to just say 'we got no value from buying it before'. If you never put in place the proper evaluations, roll-out programs, and evaluation metrics - and never followed up by making employees feel good about doing some learning activities, just forget it. You should not have the job. Go fishing.

Don't make eLearning the explanation for your poor training processes, budget or unhappy job. Go and look at it again. Your competitors in Asia (and eventually Africa) use it in huge volumes - because they know that acquiring up-to-date skills is difficult. Particularly now that big corporations have rightsized their best (ie most knowledgeable rather than most compliant) people. And why have you lost so many jobs anyway ? Is it because your corporation just could not cut it with the right set of skills ?

Or are your top guys blaming somebody else for that too ?

Mobile tests

Ossidian has long offered randomized on-line tests and certificates for most of its eLearning modules. The user must (just like a regular exam) take the test questions in full and achieve the passing grade. Then the system will create a real-time pdf certificate to save or print.

That works pretty well for most users - since they now have something to show they achieved a pass on the materials their employer paid for !

But what about practice tests ? or even tests for people on the move ?

Now we are looking to move tests onto mobile devices - phones and PDAs. You could logon, access your chosen test and take it anywhere, anytime.

Media Cube

Ossidian is moving office between tomorrow May 3, and May 10.

We are moving to Media Cube a dedicated digital media complex associated with the Dublin-based IADT institute. Soon, this campus will also include the National Film Institute.

As soon as we have re-located, we will post some blogs concerning our plans for 2007/8.

Multimedia

Getting to use a range of multimedia in eLearning seems sometimes like the Holy Grail. Easy to describe, but difficult to do properly.

It's reasonably easy to add audio tracks, animations and suchlike. But there are real problems with video - what streaming technology to use. Not everyone wants the same solution and not every corporate firewall lets streamed video inbound.

A key issue in Ossidian's exploration of video technologies has been to make sure that everyone can get our content. But if you don't have fast broadband, then don't try to run video.

When you've experienced good video-based content, it is pretty hard to go back to plain old text.

Re-using SCOs

We have recently completed the pre-audio work on our latest module ('SS7 Fundamentals') - which is a technical module on telecom signaling. This was one of the first times we have tried re-using graphics, text and audio from our new content repository.

Up till now we built each new module from scratch. Obviously that took lots of work - but we could customize the content around the subject-matter. Now, having built nearly 500 tutorials, we have a great collection of artwork and re-useable text. We also have a huge repository of test questions that can be randomized for assessment purposes.

So what's the advantage of this new approach ? Well the first thing is we built our latest module in 50% of the time (and probably 25% of the cost). Secondly, we know the existing materials have been pre-tested and peer-reviewed - so that means the Q/A effort is much less. Thirdly, we now have visibility into our entire content repository as a library of re-usable SCOs - and that means we can roll our new (or custom) modules quite easily.

Anyone else got experience of this approach to technical eLearning ?

CBT/WBT - who likes it ?

We are noticing some interesting patterns in usage across our worldwide customer base. For example, in Europe and USA many of our on-line students seem to take courses outside work hours. But they do it in short bursts of activity.

In Asia (and particularly Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia) we note that students do much longer periods of study in one session,but mostly during work hours. The same is true in Africa.

Why is this the case ? Is it that Anglo-American employers just give minimal learning time on-the-job ? Or is it that Asia/African employees are more hungry for technical learning ?

Serious Games

A lot of game technology businesses have tools that could work for eLearning. But those businesses have really never been concerned with providing content for business applications or management issues.

Now content providers like Ossidian are seeking to provide more engaging learning experience. That has historically meant multimedia, simulations, and animations. Now comes the Serious Game idea. This is the application of gaming technology to eLearning - gaming engines and virtual reality spaces to provide an immersive and stimultaing learning environment.

The great thing here is that Serious Games can use reward principles to keep the user engaged in pursuit of goals. Reaching goals along the way can be rewarded in many ways - points, new levels, 'top scorer' lists to mention some.

The tech environment for building Serious Games is in its infancy. Who wants to download huge programs to a PC just to run some eLearning ! But web delivery is not yet good enough because the browser just is not able to do really serious graphics-intensive work. And that assumes the bandwith is even there to deliver the content.

We are looking at ways to promote Serious Games options in the Ossidian content library. We'll keep you posted.

Web 2.0

Here at Ossidian we are looking to improve the engagement of learners with each other. We are also researching ways to de-formalize some learning processes so that people can share ideas with each other.

Essentially this is to get away from the push model of learning that is so prevalent in the eLearning world.

Web 2.0 appears to offer ways for us to improve. Blogs. Mashups. Video. Bulletin boards. Maybe not much new under the sun, but lots of interesting stuff.

Take a look at the non-commercial Wikiversity. This is a really cool collaborative site based on the wiki idea. Maybe a little thin on good stuff, but it's growing fast.

Universities just will not collaborate

So does anyone think that Universities have an inflated sense of their own value ? It seems as if Internet-based learning is here to stay - but without really good content there is a risk of a devalued learning experience for many people. Surely, one might suppose, Universities have course content that can be transformed into the new medium ?

Well, you might have though so. But there are lots of problems here. Firstly, quality content is not easy to locate since lots of Unversity course materials are not packaged well for re-use.

Secondly, Universities generally want to guard 'intellectual property' very closely - even if it's not their own. Getting them to collaborate on co-development of eLearning is a nightmare because their common 'business' models don't allow them to think really creatively. Ownership is the chief criterion for decision-taking. And exercise of bureaucratic decision processes takes too much time - products have to be innovated, brought to market and changed within 3 months. Any longer and the ship has moved on.

Getting their hands on money ('research funding') is a primary goal of institutions. Sharing assets in a collaborative way is very low on their list. Universities really want all of the cake - they think they have good undergraduate teraching content, they think they are central to all R&D and they believe they can market/sell internationally. And they really do not understand co-financing at all !

Of course, the last point is crucial. The value of on-line diplomas/degrees has been severly diluted by the number of them available (and from disreputable sources in many cases). We suggest that Universities need to recognize that the key is to target co-produced and co-branded digital products at specific markets (and corporate training is the one most dear to our hearts !).

There are some good exceptions - MIT's OpenCourseWare is making vast swathes of course materials freely available oneline. And the Open University (UK) too. This is good news for people that want access to good content across a range of subjects. But bad news because commercial re-use is prohibited.

3GSM

We visited Barcelona, SPain last week to see what the collective 3G cellular community is doing in mobile content. Frankly there was a lot of hype about mobile TV, gaming and gambling - but very little outside those areas. There were even 'adult' booths that looked pretty cheesy among the high-tech.

We wanted to see people porting content to mobile devices - but we were disappointed. The supposed mass market in mobile gaming looks pretty far away (to our eyes) (a) the form factor is so small, and (b) the graphics and processor speeds are so poor. That will definitely change - but will anyone really want to play tiny Mario games with two thumbs more than one time ? And since mobile phones typically intercept only one key at a time, the gaming developers have a job to do to fool the eye!

We didn't see any decent examples of eBooks nor of eLearning. Looks like the networks are chasing some impossible SMS-replacement that remains elusive.

Managing Roaming Agreements

We are getting a lot of requests around the topic of Roaming Agreements. These are the formal agreements between network operators (all types of cellular networks including CDMA, GSM etc) and emergent networks such VoIP and wVoIP.

The processes of negotiating and formalizing the agreements are well-established - and the weaker (ie the smaller) party often has difficulties since they may not have lots of experienced negotiators.

Watch our home page for developments in this area. www.ossidian.com