Beyond Blended Learning

Dozens of definitions of blended learning are floating around, most of them muddle-headed. Here's a collection from the excellent Handbook of Blended Learning , a collection of 39 papers edited by Curtis Bonk.

Blend of classroom and e-learning
Blend of face-to-face and e-learning
Blend of online and offline
Blend of synchronous and asynchronous

The problem with these definition is that the first two prescribe components that may not be needed in an optimal blend. The second two are too general, in that they simply divide the universe into two sets. However, the real issues with all of these definitions is that they are really definitions of blended INSTRUCTION not blended learning.

We need to look at the concept from a broader learning perspeective with definitions tat include:

Blend of formal and informal
Blend of work and learning

With these two, we move beyond blended instruction to true blended learning.

The Mess is the Message

Gave a keynote at the National Trainers Conference around new tools on the web for training (Beyond Blended Learning). The web is giving us e-learning tools and content formats that we never dreamt of just a few years ago. Here’s a few off the top of my head:

Blogs – senior exec blogs, expert blogs, trainer blogs, learner blogs – takes minutes and reinforces learning.

Vlogs – track your team training exercise with a video log – will crystallise and reinforce learning.

Wikis – twiki’s a good start for a company knowedge-base or for a project or team.

Blikis – combine a blog and wiki for projects that need both knowledge gathering and dynamic reporting.

Podcasts – audio learning gets round literacy and dyslexia – everyone can listen, many don’t like to read – MP3 palyers are cheaper than lunch.

Videocasts – don’t worry too much about quality – interviews, talks, discussions - make them short and get them distributed.

Syndication – syndicate gets the right stuff to the right people at the right time – efficient distribution.

Messenger – step above email and, with a webcam, gives you most of the functionality of a virtual classroom.

Webcams – want to see the instructor/learner – cheap and works a treat.

MMOGs – get a life in Second Life and do some avatar-based learning – there’s lots of classes online – weird and wonderful.

Digital photography - so easy to take photographs and get them into training materials, get every new employee to take a picture of themselves and various locations and people as part of their induction.

Google Sketch – build 3D images – easy as pie.

Google Earth – will blow your mind – try it then use it to find international locations of your company – or mash-up some training applications.

Amazon – give everyone a budget and a booklist – follow up with book club meetings.

Wikipedia – fantastic knowledge base with discussions, links and lots of other wiki sources such as Wikiquotes, Wikispecies, Wiktionary and so on. Use it, link to it, do print outs.

Youtube – search for education and training video clips – growing like topsy.

Basecamp – free community project management software that can be used for team-based project management training.

Moodle – free open source LMS, very popular and now adopted by some serious organisations.

This is real learning, knowledge management, creation and distribution and it’s mostly free!

THE MESS IS THE MESSAGE

E-learning jobs galore

Massive one-page ad in The Guardian today offering lots of mullah for e-learning producers, designers etc. Capita seem to have some massive public contract from the DfES. It's a shame that those companies who have worked hard to eastablish themsleves as credible producers are so ignored by the DfES. Capita's last foray into e-learning was the disastrous ICT training for teachers. On the other hand this may show that the market is growing.

A Higher Education e-learning initiative that is working, without UKeUniversities level funding. IVIMEDS has 34 international medical schools sharing content and production to produce a sophisticated set of e-learning learning resources. By all contributing a modest amount of money at the start, the schools get a big payback for relatively small investment. Professor Ron Harding, an expert in Medical Education, and Alan Langlands (ex-CEO of the NHS, now running University of Dundee) are behind the project. Five UK medical schools are busy producing content in five medical areas. This 'distributed production' model seems to be working. Recent evidence from Australia has shown that students using these resources score significantly higher than those who do not. Already international on scale, with academic credibility and a good production model, based on sharing, this could grow into something much bigger.

http://www.ivimeds.org/

FT attack on HR

HR baiting is a regular sport in the business press and Stefan Stern had another go in the FT on April 17 with 'HR is unloved but not unnecessary'. He sees the whole profession as being in crisis but was pleased to see that it attracted more comments than most of his other articles. The FT forum did indeed have some interesting responses. Many saw HR as tactical not strategic, building a wall around itself by recruiting those with restricted CIPD qualifications, not attracting high calibre, innovative managers with the ability to deal with strategic improvement. DISCUSS

Disconnected - fine book

Throwing aside all that Generation X, Y, Z and M stuff, Nick Barham gets out and talks to the youngsters who text, see school as irrelevant, spray graffiti, do pirate radio, have sex, take drugs, hate politics, spend lots of time online and generally see themselves as different. Far from being violent, over-sexed idiots, they turn out to be interesting and creative, albeit in a more fragmented, contradictory and disjointed world. The new tribes of emos, goths, skaters and chavs, the new language of texting, and most of the other aspects of their world, that we adults abhor, turn out to be far more fascinating than you imagine. If you've got kids or work with them - a great £7.99 paperback read.

Do we need any more proof of how much smarter our kids are, compared to their teachers and parents, at IT?

Brin, Page, Bezos and Wales?

What do the founders of Google (both of them), Amazon and Wikipedia have in common? Like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, Buckminster Fuller, Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, Jean Piaget and Hilary and Bill Clinton before them, they all had early Montessori schooling.

Sergei Brin and Larry Page both attended Montessori schools. Indeed, they both credit their Montessori education for much of their success. It was the Montessori experience, they claim, that made them self-directed, allowing them to think for themselves and pursue their real interests.

Jeff Bezos's mother tells of his single-mindedness at his Motessori school, being so absorbed in the tasks he chose that they had to drag him off to give him a change. This same self-directed, single-mindedness was a feature of his Amazon adventure.

Jimmy Wales was educated in a one-room schoolhouse. Although not home-schooling, it was close as he was taught in a class of four by his mother and grandmother, who ran the school. The school was significantly influenced by Montessori methods and he had the freedom to study what he liked on his own terms.

Note that all three have made significant contributions to increasing access to self-directed knowledge and learning.

Google buys Writely

Web 2.0 is getting closer as Google buys a web word processor. They seem to be gearing up to offer a rival web Office suite, with full data storage online. Could this really rock Microsoft who only seem to offer more features at greater cost.

All this Web 2.0 stuff will also affecting learning. With blogs, wikis and loads of other Web 2.0 productivity tools, knowledge is being created by users, edited by users and shared by users. This brings real bottom-up knowledge into workflow. The prognosis for training - get into this now or lose the battle to have a meaningful say in the management of knowledge in your organisation. This stuff is user-centric therefore learner-centric. It's also cheap and easy to use.

10% of teleworkers work nude!

Love this Wikinews story. A survey by SonicWALL, a Sunnyvale, CA, based company, reports that 10% of worldwide telecommuters are nude while working, finding 12% for men and 7% for women, respectively. A gender gap also exists for showering on work-at-home days, with 44% of women showering, while only 30% of men did. The survey also found that 39% of both sexes wear sweats while working from home. The survey also covered less racy topics, including opinions on productivity. 76% felt that working at home increased productivity. The number of telecommuters has increased sharply in recent years. For example, 43% of U.S. government employees telecommute, at least part of the time; up from only 19% one year ago. Posted while naked!

'Grey gamers' have less dementia

The growth of 'grey gamers', backed up with with recent neuroscience research, has led Nintendo to release 'brain training' games for the elderly. It's a package of workouts designed to reduce your brain age. This is big business with a heft £2 million advertising campaign in the likes of Saga magazine . The research comes from Ryuta Kawashima, a professor of neuroscience at Tohoku University. It'll be in the UK in June.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1725131,00.html

E-learning raises GCSE grades

And here's another.....The Fischer Family Trust has produced a report on the exam results of 105,163 Year 11, a total of one in six students who took their GCSEs. Over 105,600 year 11 students from 1006 secondary schools were analysed in an independent report which proves that using e-learning to prepare for GCSE exams really does improve grades. The report takes into account the results of one in six students who took their GCSEs and found that pupils who used e-learning for as little as 10 hours achieved 4.7 per cent more 5+ A* to C GCSE grades than expected, based on prior attainment. The value added gain was 2.1 capped points per pupil, which is the equivalent of one-quarter of a GCSE grade per subject. Improvement, in terms of overall GCSE points score, is greatest for students in middle and lower prior-attainment groups. In terms of attainment of 5+ A* to C GCSE passes, improvement is greatest for middle prior-attainment groups, particularly where levels of use are above 10 hours. For pupils in the lowest prior attainment band, using e-learning for 10 hours or more achieved gains of nearly half a grade. This is the equivalent of 50 per cent of students achieving one grade higher than expected.
http://www.fischertrust.org/ict_main.htm

E-learning raises A-level grades

People are always crying out for proof of the learning efficacy of e-learning. Here's one from secondary education. A series of Independent Reports from different countries all reach the same conclusions. The graph shows the link between SCHOLAR and attainment. Those with no or low use of SCHOLAR achieved the same or a lower grade at A2 compared to AS level. High users of SCHOLAR achieved the same or a higher grade.
There have now been three SCHOLAR pilot programmes in the UK, one in Scotland, one in England, and one in Northern Ireland. All three have been evaluated independently using different approaches, yet all three have identified the benefits of this approach. The improvement in exam results between AS and A2 level is particularly significant. Analysis revealed that there was a positive correlation between the number of SCHOLAR pages accessed by a student and the difference between their AS and A2 grade. The more pages of SCHOLAR accessed by a student, the more likely they were to improve a grade between AS and A2.
http://www.interactiveuniversity.net/programmes/scholarengland/evaluation.aspx