Month: April 2008

Teaching a Class Entirely Through YouTube

I read an interesting article on Wired Campus today called “What Happens When a Course Is Taught Entirely via YouTube?” The basic idea was that a class was taught entirely through YouTube – class interactions were filmed and posted, discussions happened through comments, etc. Of course, this design does violate just about every Instructional Design standard in the world. Not surprisingly, the instructor felt like it was a failure.

I have to say – of course it was. Why design a course entirely in YouTube, only about YouTube? Here are some of my thoughts on this:

  • Why not make it on something more interesting than just YouTube? Why not try to do something on art, history, culture, or a hundred other topics more suited for the medium?
  • Why not use Google Videos in the first place – and keep the videos private?
  • Why not use Google Groups to discuss the videos, and upload other assignments?
  • When you use a site that was not built for social presence, of course you are going to lose social presence and immediacy. Try using some tools that can increase social presence, like maybe Google Sites?

Just taking these suggestions in to account would have negated most of the criticisms on the accompanying blog post. Most of these reflections I would have predicted before the class even happened, but I think this was still an interesting experiment. I am interested to hear if anyone has used Google Sites to teach a course? I am setting something up in there now, and it is an interesting free tool.

Dilbert Puts The Smack-Down on Millennials

I think we all know a millennial like this one. Or at least a famous conference speaker that idolizes millennials so much that they come across the same way. Don’t want to break any copyright laws, so I won’t put the comic here. But click the link for a good laugh (EDIT: seems that dilbert.com now lets you embed comics in your site now):

Dilbert.com

Re-Thinking Learning Management Systems: StudentLink

In a field full of hot-topics, one has been catching my attention lately: getting rid of the Learning Management System (or Course Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment). I understand the sentiment driving this discussion: most people are tired of how long it takes for new advances in technology to actually be integrated in to most programs. They want to ditch the LMS application and go to something else. I say, why throw out the baby with the bath water? Why not re-think the learning management system?

Harriet and I recently attend a session about a new e-Learning software solution: StudentLink. They are really re-thinking a lot of what we do in online education. You can see their list of features on their page. We were impressed by the podcast feature, and the fact that they have all class content on one page (like Moodle) and not buried under layers and layers of links (like… [a-hem]… others). Most of the other features were also really nice. Here are four things that I really feel help them stand apart from others:

  • The class page feels more like a FaceBook profile than a course. FaceBook, to me, really hit that sweet spot of putting everything you need on one page, but organized in a way that doesn’t make your head hurt. This is, of course, before you go adding 20 million applications….
  • Groups and organizations are integrated and easy to create. This is pretty rare in LMS programs – getting students communicating across courses.
  • Need a new feature? Just ask them and they will make it for you. Yep – you read that right. They create new features by request. If fact, at the conference we were at we started talking about how instructors really wanted blogs inside of classes, and the guys doing the presentation wrote that down as a good idea. We asked them about another feature that our professors love, and they said that they could add it no problem.
  • They have a website where you use their software for free. Yes, you also read that correct. Straight from their literature: “Studeous is a free web-service with many of the same features as Campus Suite™, although there are some structural differences (no administrator access, no branding, no parent accounts).”

So, off to a nice start. The Campus Suite is not a free program, but it is priced much better than… [ahem…] others. Keep an eye on this one to see where it goes.

More Insanity From “The Lawsuit”

To be honest with you, I hate picking on Blackboard. I really do. They just make it so easy. Campus Technology published an interview with Blackboard’s Chief Legal Officer Matthew Small. I’ll just quote the article – no need to embellish what was said – it’s funny enough.

“this was in a very sophisticated patent jurisdiction that hears a lot of patent cases with a very sophisticated judge.”

I nearly fell over laughing on this one. I’m from Texas, and this jurisdiction was East Texas. Texans hate to be called “sophisticated” in general (to us, it’s better to be a “good ‘ole boy”). I don’t know if they realize that they actually might have insulted the people they were trying to compliment. But, in all seriousness, this one smacks of propaganda. I guess there is just no nice way to say “this was in a rocket-docket jurisdiction that hears a lot of patent cases and always finds in favors of patent holders regardless of prior art.” Blackboard, if you want us to go for this, try filing in a jurisdiction that finds closer to 50-50 on these cases.

“I think what’s happening is there are some people in the e-learning community who quite frankly don’t understand patent law, and, if they understood what is typically patentable, what a patent looks like, what a good patent looks like, they wouldn’t read the Blackboard patent and say, “Oh, I don’t think this should be a valid patent.” I think for many of the commentators, this is the first patent they’ve ever read”

The same old tired line from Blackboard – we are too stupid to understand something like patent law. I get tired of shooting this one down, because it is just plain insulting. Patent law is not hard to understand. Get over it. You can’t come up with a good counter argument for most “commentators,” so you resort to blowing smoke. And what does the first patent thing have to do with anything? If that means anything, then why are you trying to patent something that was the first thing you created in 1998? If being the first at something means that you don’t know what you are talking about, then what does that mean about you patenting being the first CMS to have multiple roles for a single user? Hmmmm…..

“When you look at the facts, at the end of 1998–a decade ago–when you look at course management systems and see how many of them allowed a single user with a single logon and a single user account to have multiple roles across multiple courses, none of them did.”

What is sad is that many CMS companies have pointed out that they did have this back even in 1995. It’s even sadder that Blackboard thinks that there is this huge wall of separation between online education and the rest of the online world. For at least a decade prior to 1998, bulletin boards had the ability to allow a single user with a single logon and a single user account to have multiple roles across multiple boards. It would be comparable for someone to come along and patent the concept of a blog in CMS because they were the first to stick one in their software. The course management system did not grow up in a vacuum separated from the rest of the online world.

“But in late 1998, it was not obvious that you would take role-based access control and apply it in the way that we did to a course management system.”

This one makes me sick. I remember discussing this exact issue in an education class while working on my Bachelor’s degree. And I graduated in 1997. Sigh……