Sunday, July 31, 2005

Awouters - Teaching and Learning with ICT

Valère Awouters, one of Flanders's most distinguished experts in e-learning and Virtual Learning Environments (VLE's) - and a nice colleague as well - was kind enough to provide us with an electronic version of the dissertation for his "M.Sc. in e-Learning, Multimedia & Consultancy" from the Sheffield Hallam University (UK). The English version of the work is called Teaching and Learning with ICT, the Dutch version is called "Digitale didactiek". His dissertation contains - next to an interesting theoretical chapter - an interesting case study from a VLE implementation in an institute of higher education. He draws some quite interesting lessons for general practice.

The dissertation also resulted in a book "Digitale didactiek", co-authored with Jan Schuer and published by De Boeck (ISBN 9045514052).

I can especially relate to some of the conclusions that Valere draws at the end of his theoretical chapter, when describing his view on The Way forward".

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Economy of e-learning



Somehow, Stephen Downes seems to have a nack of reporting on matters that are very actual for my work, at just the right time. Two weeks ago, he wrote a comment on the economy of E-learning, at the time that we are producing a final version of the business model for our EUREA project.

The aim of the EUREA project is to produce a feasibility report on a content sharing platform between members of the European university network LERU, the League of European Research-intensive Universities. The idea of the project is to share high-quality learning materials through the development of a meta-database.

At the start, the EUREA business plan envisaged a potential commercial exploitation of the learning materials, especially for institutions and companies outside the consortium, but now the business plan suggests a free offering of learning materials, and a commercial offering of added services, such as coaching, supervision or creditation. The main idea is that no institution is willing to pay for learning content.

Downes' analysis supports the new approach of the EUREA business plan, and offers 'academic' support from a very influential expert in e-learning. Now we may be able to convince the European Commission that our approach is not as silly as they - liberal as they are - might think.

Our report on the EUREA business model should be available at the end of next week, at AVNetWiki.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Finally: HOW TO make Enhanced Podcasts (images, links and more with audio)


Long time since my most recent post: But now I've found something interesting to post about: the 'enhanced podcast'.

Through Stephen Downes' edu_rss I found this manual by Phillip Torrone for making enhanced podcasts: MAKE: Blog: HOW TO make Enhanced Podcasts (images, links and more with audio)

Especially the option to add chapter tracks to the audio (or video) stream makes the enhanced podcast a potential instrument for e- or m-learning. Now you no longer have to sit through 45 or 60 minute audio files to find out whether there is something that might interest you in it. You can just skim through chapters and get a quick overview of what the audio file has in store for you.

This may well be the essential breakthrough that the Podcast needed to become a tool for learning.