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As I am completing an eLearning subject as part of my university studies, I come across some of the latest technologies that could be used for eLearning.

However, Webinars have become one of the most impressive I have seen yet. Organisations are starting to utilise Webinars such as Webex. Webinars such as Webex allows the facilitation of online seminar’s with easy access for users. Webinars are much more interactive, and help to engage learners in a number of ways.

Participants in Webinars (depending on the access given by facilitators), can listen and speak to the facilitator (like skype) in an online seminar with lecture slides. Participants are provided with a chat interface, in which they could ask questions to other participants and the facilitator. Participants can even draw and write on the slides themselves, with everyone being able to view what has been drawn or written. This usually ends up in humourous collaborative situations in which a myriad of squigley lines and randomly placed texts are created. Through this process, collaboration occurs and new ideas are created. Facilitators can also even conduct live anonymous voting polls to determine how participants are responding to the information.

This highly interactive synchronous technology has enabled participants to enjoy a more engaging learning experience, as they interact with real people online rather than a program. Some of the advantages of Webinars, over more traditional eLearning technologies are:

1) They are more engaging

2) More Interactive

3) Easy to use

4) Help cut’s training costs (Decreases the need for facilitators or participants to travel for training)

4) Facilitate ‘real-time’ human communication

Therefore, in my opinion; webinars will become even more popular within organisations, due to its ability to engage participants, it’s flexibility and its ease of use. Webinars have already have an excellent reception from participants in various industries.

In the last 2 weeks, through various conversations with friends, I have found that interactivity is a key factor in creating a successful elearning program.

I first discovered this when one of my friends showed me a website developed by Stella Artois, the Belgian Beer company. The website provides a highly entertaining and interactive experience for the user, in which user’s are introduced to a cinematic history of the beer. Through exploring the site, it is easy to see that the design of the website is based upon a Constructivist theory in multimedia design; in which user’s are free to explore the various parts of the website. In certain parts, user’s can play games to help ensure that the Stella Artois beer is produced, in an epic backdrop of Belgium in the 1300s.

Another website that is highly interactive is the official Halo 3 website in which user’s are introduced to a cinematic presentation of the story behind the popular games. Here user’s are free to explore various components of the site, in which information is presented as real historical fact.

Therefore, even though such websites are primarily for marketing and promotional purposes, it is evident that interactivity is a key factor in creating a successful elearning program. Through these website, I have felt that I have learnt so much about Stella Artois and Halo 3, as they were very engaging and interesting.

Hi There,

As a part of my studies in eLearning at University, I have had to submit one of my assignments onto my weblog. This assignment is a written report regarding the application of learning theories into a selected e-Learning course.

The structure of the report is as follows:

1.Topic and context for the e-Learning course to be developed

2.An explanation of a learning theory or theories and how they can be applied to the course

3.A storyboard that reflects the chosen learning theory or theories

4.An explanation of how the storyboard represents the chosen learning theory or theories.

To access this page, simply click on the “Participate in a Virtual Community” Tag at the top of the page.

Flickr is one of the world’s most popular photo sharing websites. By using this website, people can upload their photo’s from their computers and digital devices (e.g. Mobile Phone, Digital Camera) in a secure and flexible way. Users can upload photo’s to share with anyone that they want to around the world. They can show off their pictures in a bid to become a web celebrity, or they can securely and privately share their photo’s with designated friends and family. The developer’s of Flickr aim to enable users to upload photo’s onto the website in as many ways possible, providing users with an easy to use and flexible website to manage their photo’s.

Flickr provides users with almost unlimited access to images that can be used for e-learning initiatives such as presentations, blogs, wikis, emails, RSS feeds and any other elearning activities. Images can be easily accessed from around the world at any computer with an internet connection; giving elearning instructional designers an easily accessible resources of images.

Throughout my short years of studying e-learning at university, Information Technologies have become increasingly advanced at an unbelievable rate. When I first started my university studies, the craze of MySpace and Facebook had not started, Youtube and other social networking online sites did not exist.

One of the most popular of these online social networking phenoma are Virtual Worlds such as World of Warcraft, Second Life and SIMS online. These virtual worlds allow users to explore computer simulated environments, filled with thousands of other users from all around the world. In such an environment, people can interact through their own characters in the virtual world platforms called ‘avatars’. Your Avatar can take on a number of forms, depending upon the platform that you are using.

These virtual worlds are so popular that even some educational instituations are using such platforms to promote themselves. Even now, some educational institutions are conducting elearning games and tools in various fields to aid students to learn, create and share new ideas. An example of this can be see with the Imperial College in London developing virtual hospitals in Second Life to demonstrate what healthcare in the future could look like, allowing them to observe current and possible future procedures.

Connectivism can be described as a perspective that views learning as the creation of knowledge networks. George Siemens from Learning Circuits, provides a concise and thorough explanation of this perspective and discusses the implications that this learning theory has on educators.

According to Siemens, learning occurs when people are exposed to new content, which are then coded into nodes (elements of information and knowledge). These nodes are then connected into the mental networks of a person, and gives the nodes contextual meaning in a persons mental network construct. The success of the learning depends upon how well the node is connected to the person’s existing mental networks. The forming of such networks depends upon a variety of factors such as the persons motivations, emotions, exposure to the new content, the patterning of the content, the logic and the experiences of the person.

The implications of such a perspective on learning, affects how organisations and educational institutions view and faciliate learning. In the past such institutions have based their instructional design upon behaviourist, cognitivists and constructivists learning orientations which depended largely upon how the instructors have organised and presented information.

However, the Connectivist learning perspective recognises that learning is a messy, informal, rich and chaotic process which shifts the emphasis of learning to the learner. This means that educational instructors are required to place greater emphasis on allowing learners to navigate through information themselves; rather than the organisation and presentation of information.

Blogs, wikis and other collaborative learning tools are now allowing this type of learning in which learners are presented with a vast array of tools to construct their own learning pathways and mental networks.

Hi everyone,

As part of my university studies, I have had to study the phenomena that is Web 2.0. A part of Web 2.0 has been the increasing popularity of RSS Feeds and Aggregation. So, I had a look around to find out what on earth it is. This is what I found from whatisrss.com: and Miller’s Spin Weblog

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary and is a format for delivering and managing regularly changing web content. Many news sites and weblogs have RSS feeds so that people can be informed of new content in a simple and convenient manner.

What is an Aggregator?

An Aggregator is a type of software that you can use to organise and collect RSS feeds into one place. The aggregator regularly checks feeds that you have subscribed to and compiles new content to be displayed.

How is it being used?

RSS enables greater convenience for people who view various websites that have content that are regularly updated. There are now many aggregator websites that can read RSS Feeds such as FeedReader, NewsGator, My Yahoo, Bloglines, Google Reader and Netvibes. Such sites grab the latest news on your selected favourite websites and inform you of them in a single screen.

To subscribe to an RSS through your aggregator reader, you must find out whether or not the website that you are subscribing to has an RSS Feed. A website usually indicates the availability of an RSS feed by displaying the logo.

Once you have clicked on the logo, you will be taken to another page. At this stage, you can then copy the URL of the page, and paste it into your Aggregator site.

Hi everybody,

After a long period without a post, I have decided to come back and make some more comments about what is happening in the world of eLearning. I shall start off with just a reflection upon some of the articles that I have been reading about Learning Management Technologies in the workplace.

What is a Learner Management System (LMS)?

A Learner Management System is a high-level strategic tool that combines previously fragmented and isolated learning programs into a systematic means of assessing and raising competency and performance levels throughout the organisation. An LMS enables organisations to plan, deliver and manage all learning events including online, virtual classroom and instructor-led courses.

What is a Learning Content Management System (LCMS)?

LCMS are similar in nature to LMSs but they focus more on the management of learning content in organisations. It is less flexible than an LMS, however it enables organisations to create e-learning content more efficiently. The primary business benefit an LCMS offers is that it can create just enough content just in time to meet the needs of individual learners or groups of learners. Thus enabling a more efficient appraoch to managing learning content.

Which would you recommend to your organisation? Why?

My organisation is a financial institution that has quite a lot of compliance-based learning programs. My organisation also has existing face-to-face classroom based learning programs that are quite effective.

Therefore, I would recommend an LMS to my organisation, as LMSs are more suitable in facilitating blended approaches to organisational learning. An LMS would also increase the efficiency in the management and administration of large amounts of compliance courses that employees have to complete in order to be continually employed in the organisation. An LMS would also be more suitable in managing the compliance learning programs that have already been designed by other organisations, who have designed them in a way that meets all regulatory requirements.

After reading the 2005 LMS Survey

What I found interesting from the figures shown from the page, is the large percentage of organisations who do not purchase the most known LMS software that is being offered in the market. Another interesting figure that I found was that the most common reason for organisations to implement an LMS; is to centralize the management of the organisation’s learning activities.

After listening to Josh Bersin I was aware of a few more things about the Learning Management Technologies market. They are:

1)LMS are the most widely deployed learning management technology
2)Learning Management Technologies market is changing very rapidly
3)60% of organisations around the world have LMSs
4)24% of current owners of LMSs are dissatisfied and are switching platforms.
5)Most of frustrations experienced by LMS owners involve incompatibility
6)Talent Management Systems are also coming into the market
LMS market will continue to grow.

Below are some of the issues faced by organisations implementing LMSs or LCMSs into their organisation:

1) Data Compatibility
2) Flexibility of the systems
3) The ability of the systems to meet business needs
4) The high cost of such systems
5) The usability of the systems
6) The rapidly changing market for LMSs and LCMSs.

This post is to advise of corrections made to my page “A Current Practice of measuring ROI for e-Learning”.

On this page, I had previously implied that Kirkpatrick’s Four Level’s of Evaluation Model and Phillips additional fifth level is a commonly used measure for ROI. However, this is not the case. Only the fifth and last level of the models measure’s ROI, as it measures the monetary impact of an e-learning program. The other four levels evaluate other aspects of an e-learning program.

I also stated previously on this page, that ROI can be both quantitative and qualitative. Due to re-reading my research material, I have found that not to be the case. ROI can only be measured quantitatively in monetary terms. Therefore, I have concluded on the page that ROI does not include soft benefits (eg. improved communications skills). Qualitative data needs to be collected in order to evaluate how e-Learning programs improve soft benefits.

After completing the 6 hours of Spanish Steps, I feel as though I have learnt a lot about Spanish.

I found that the Administration of content into different forms of media such as sound files, video files, and flash games really added to my learning experience as they kept and maintained my attention.

I also found that the content was readily accessible with various links to “Help” options and “Grammar Tips”. The only problem that I experienced in completing this course was my rather slow bandwidth that, on a rare occasion impeded my learning. However, this Spanish Steps course greatly assists people with low bandwidths, allowing them the option to work with less interactive activities, such as the option to print out transcripts.

The online course also gave great feedback. Whenever the learner answers a question correctly, the online course provides positive feedback through sound files and texts in Spanish such as “Excelente!!”.

I also found that the layout of the content in this course to be logically sequenced, with different elements and games under certain Units (eg. Choosing clothes element under the Unit of Shopping). However, I would also recommend that there should be an Online User guide link in every activity in the course, to remind learners of the many features that they could take advantage of. I recommend this option because I didn’t notice features such as “Grammar Tips’ until I was half way through this course.