Saturday, December 7, 2019
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Weekly Sporto bookmarks (weekly)
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MicroCredentials, Workforce Preparation, and the Public University Imperative | The EvoLLLution
" Let’s talk about how workforce-applicable degrees can graduate students who can be good citizens. Let’s talk about how micro-credentials can support family-sustaining wages. Let’s talk about how customer service can improve graduation rates and reduce student debt."
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Institutional Decisions on OPM Market: Upcoming discussions on complicated questions - PhilOnEdTech
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Weekly Sporto bookmarks (weekly)
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The MOOC-Courseware Convergence –
- Because that is exactly what Coursera has explicitly become with their Courseware for Campus offering: a courseware provider.
- The less obvious part is that MOOC design and courseware design have been converging for some time now.
- And even less obvious is that the Venn diagram of courseware companies and OPM companies is starting to overlap significantly.
- From its inception, the design model of xMOOCs began decoupling faculty course design from faculty course delivery
- "any of the courses that have been authored on Coursera come with an out-of-the-box analytics platform." If those analytics look anything like the picture above—and I would bet money that they do—then the courses have been built on a backward design philosophy like the one I have been describing in my recent post series on content as infrastructure.
- As I wrote repeatedly throughout that series, almost every professionally designed course uses that design pattern. And Coursera is known for having strong professional course design support
- That content pattern is the revolution of our time
- For one thing, while xMOOCs have a bad reputation for anemic social interaction relative to other course models, they probably have more social interaction designed into them than many commercially published courseware titles.
- LMS developers have to optimize for a wide range of faculty preferences, teaching styles, and teaching conditions. They have to accommodate every grading scheme imaginable. They have to handle huge classes and tiny classes. They have to deal with face-to-face, online, and blended. Constructivist, lecture, and whatever else. That's why they spend so much time adding grade book micro-features and then optimizing the usability to handle all those micro-features without being totally overwhelming.
- Courseware developers, in contrast, have to optimize for the content. If the subject is software development, then you need an interactive code editor and test engine. If it's accounting, then you need a test engine that looks like a spreadsheet. If it's chemistry, then you need a molecule visualizer and manipulator.
- Which side of the divide do MOOC platforms land on?
- These subject-specific affordances, plus competency-based analytics, were the platform highlights of the Coursera for Campus presentation. Not the grade book that can do anything. Not the test engine that can provide any kind of feedback. Not announcements or an event feed. This was all about courseware.
- there were two major barriers. First, as a print-centric company in the midst of a transition, the authoring tools were not remotely faculty-friendly. And second, as a publisher whose bread and butter came from royalties, there was a fear of cannibalization of the business.
- Coursera has neither of those problems. It was born as a two-sided market, which means that it never owned the content to begin with and always had an incentive to make authoring as easy as possible.
- Authoring support can work with a courseware platform as long as the range of course expectations for delivery models can be constrained. And MOOC courseware fits the bill. It's a genre.
- Coursera for Campus is a harbinger of the future, not for the LMS industry but for the textbook industry. And they are an early mover with certain advantages in their business model
- implications for the OPM market.
- (a) Coursera has been pushing into that market aggressively and successfully and (b) that market has been under massive pressure and upheaval lately.
- The obvious one is cost. The less obvious one is geography. It turns out that, even in an era when people can take courses from anywhere in the world, they will tend to take them from their local institution or not at all.
- So the next sustainability play is not so much about reaching students far away as it is about serving students you already reach for 40 years rather than for four.
- They were talking about lifelong learning. Skilling and reskilling.
- From an OPM perspective, this pitch gives the company with the large catalog of low-cost and constantly refreshed inventory a competitive advantage
- But I do think that they oversimplified, and that running a highly successful program at scale with a 90%+ degree completion rate entails a lot more than just handing out a piece of sheep skin at the end.
- The gap between "MOOC" the course model and "MOOC" the courseware model is very much an open question in terms of student success
- Coursera on Campus, in addition to creating an additional revenue stream for the company and putting pressure on courseware providers, potentially ups the ante in the OPM market.
- But we need to look to those universities which are pioneering affordable degrees at scale to understand the service gaps, marketing gaps, and cost differences between MOOC courseware and the totality of what they are doing in order to understand the what it would take to replicate their success.
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Saturday, September 14, 2019
Weekly Sporto bookmarks (weekly)
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Learning Circuits Big Question: Working with Subject Matter Experts | LifeLongLearningLab
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Donald Clark Plan B: 10 challenging ways to get the best from your SMEs
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Donald Clark Plan B: 10 big reasons for rise of corporate MOOCs
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Donald Clark Plan B: Agile production – online learning needs to get its skates on
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Weekly Sporto bookmarks (weekly)
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Internet Access and Education: Key considerations for policy makers | Internet Society
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http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.837.7765&rep=rep1&type=pdf
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The Best Scrum Tools of 2019 for Agile Project Management - nTask
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9 Of The Most Popular Project Management Methodologies Made Simple - The Digital Project Manager
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4 Tips for Working With SMEs | Bottom-Line Performance
- Ah, SMEs. The heart and soul of any project.
- maximize this relationship.
- SMEs are subject matter experts providing guidance and explanation as you are building training on a given topic.
- SMEs will provide you with the raw information, but it is up to the learning designer to figure out how to teach the content and make it easily accessible.
- Position them as an expert in their content and you as an expert on learning and how people learn
- Recognize value they bring to the table
- Help them take a step back
- What level of proficiency they are trying to make the learner gain?Because of their position and knowledge, SMEs will always be tempted to provide more knowledge than the learner can actually absorb.
- Don’t assume SME understands how the learning solution is being designed and produced.
- Take the time to fully walk them through every step of process and show them deliverables produced at each stage
- Where do they plug in? How much time will they spend on each step? How will you interface with them?
- Clarify who ultimate decision maker is. Many times it isn’t the SME, it’s important to set this up. Is your SME there to be a consultant, or make the final decision? This is critical.
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Nuts and Bolts: Working With Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) | Learning Solutions Magazine
- this SME was strategic (if they don’t do it correctly, the paperwork will be misdirected or delayed or rejected, and they won’t achieve their goals)
- I’d found a more meaningful performance-based outcome, the critical content, and the “What’s in it for me?” factor important for gaining learner attention, all in one fell swoop.
- The better choice isn’t always the most experienced worker, but the most recently competent one: that newer person who remembers what it was like not to know how to do a task, who remembers having to learn and what that entailed.
- we are all SMEs for someone else: think of a time you have been one. How did it go? What did you learn? What does this look like from the SME’s point of view?
- Ask the right questions: Ask a subject matter expert, “Does the learner need to know this?”
- Often SMEs don’t understand that we are just trying to get a new performer up to speed, not create another SME.
- and, “How often does that happen?” and, “What is the consequence if the learner doesn’t know this/perform this?” Don’t ask “What do you know?” but “What decisions do you have to make?”
- “Can you give me an example of when the learner would use this information?”
- Do your homework: Spend some time researching and reading up on the topic before meeting with the SME.
- if you don’t want them to suggest a screen-by-screen narrated reading of the procedure, then show them another way to present it.
- Remember, the SME already has a job. Don’t expect endless, frequent meetings.
- Pay attention to the relationship: Begin with the end in mind. The SME has information that you need, so work to cultivate a collegial relationship — this will help you get the information you need. Be respectful. Appeal to their sense of expertise and mastery. And for goodness’ sake, say, “Thank you.
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3 Steps to Get MORE out of Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interviews
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How to convert the toughest SME – Cathy Moore – Training design
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E-Learning Secrets: Managing Subject Matter Expert Time, Part Two - eLearning Industry
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E-Learning Secrets: Managing Subject Matter Expert Time, Part One - eLearning Industry
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65 Tips on Managing Projects and SMEs for eLearning : Publications Library | The eLearning Guild