This past week, Harriet and I began to present our ideas on a new vision for the Learning Management System at the TxDLA 2009 conference. We will continue to present these at other conferences, including the Sloan-C Emerging Technology conference. We had some rough ideas, but the common feedback we heard was: we need to make some big changes… now! A few really good ideas were shared as interacted with people and received feedback. So, coming soon, we will be opening up an area to discuss what the new vision could look like.
The biggest missing piece right now is the name. We have plenty of ideas for how this can look, and even for a new instructional design method to accompany a new LMS… but we need to come up with a new term to describe this system. ‘ Learning management system’, ‘course management system’, ‘virtual learning environment’, and most all other terms have problems. Well, problems in addition to being over-used. We want to create a system that focuses on connectivism, active learning, social connections, constructivism, etc. The best I have in ‘Connection Environment.’ Harriet came up with ‘Connection Console.’ Both console and environment have connotations in other areas… so they might not work. Maybe that is what we can brainstorm also.
Stay tuned for links to discussion areas and other assorted EduPunk-ish goodness coming soon :)
Matt is currently an Instructional Designer II at Orbis Education and a Part-Time Instructor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Previously he worked as a Learning Innovation Researcher with the UT Arlington LINK Research Lab. His work focuses on learning theory, Heutagogy, and learner agency. Matt holds a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas, a Master of Education in Educational Technology from UT Brownsville, and a Bachelors of Science in Education from Baylor University. His research interests include instructional design, learning pathways, sociocultural theory, heutagogy, virtual reality, and open networked learning. He has a background in instructional design and teaching at both the secondary and university levels and has been an active blogger and conference presenter. He also enjoys networking and collaborative efforts involving faculty, students, administration, and anyone involved in the education process.
Just thinking out loud here…
– Instructional Materials Portal (IMP)
– Instructional Management Portal
– Educational Portal
It just seems more of a portal to me, which is why I keep using that term.
… How about EduGeekJournal Portal??? :P
… EduPunk Portal? :P
We call Scholar360 a Networked Learning Environment because it includes all the necessary features of a learning management system and the web 2.0 connectivity features (wikis, collaborative communities, blogs, secure social network, etc.).
I had mentioned the work Michael Wesch has done in terms of creating a different learning space. Several links of interest may be:
Blog post: Collaboration Strategies
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=199
Other posts of possible interest:
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=202
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=170
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=168
I’ve been moving to something similar, but it’s more focused on creating individual learning spaces for learners – building on ideas around personal learning networks, blogging in the classroom and using a portal much like what Wesch has done previously. Your presentation at TxDLA though has me thinking bigger. It would be very possible to aggregate and build the user stream you described using Yahoo Pipes. I’m beginning to wonder how much backend coding needs to be done to make something like your vision happen, very quickly.
As far as a name? Call it what it is, an Collaborative Learning Portal. Or, if going for an acronym: Collaborative Open Online Learning: COOL.
-cmd