ADDIE design example - m-Learning

This morning I received a link to an interesting article from a colleague (Dr Francois Cilliers): "Key instructional design issues in a cellular phone-based mobile learning project". I started reading it and then realised that the authors used the ADDIE model of instructional design (with some other theories blended in) for their project with Grade 11 learners and cell phones!

So - here is the link passed on to all of you as an example of how the use of ADDIE can look in "real life": http://goo.gl/NxffB

Enjoy!

Ready steady go - blog addresses to show

Well done colleagues on creating your first blogs! Please identify and archive your blogs' web addresses here by clicking on the "comments" link and then typing your name and the full blog web address, e.g.
Hi I am JP Bosman and my blog's web address is: http://vespasarecool.blogspot.com...

2012 Module orientation welcome

It is 2012 and that means the e-Learning module is now in it's 4th year! Every year I enjoy the module more, as I see the wonderful contributions and growth of participants, as their e-skills grow. I am also always surprised at participants' willingness to experience some discomfort in the learning process which is tough for some people as using emerging technologies in health sciences education is not necessarily a given (yet).

So this message is to say welcome to all e-Learning module orientation participants! We do hope that you will enjoy the morning's session and that some of you will choose this module and immerse yourself in the (sometimes) strange new (but always exciting) world of e-Learning.

The morning's session on 3 Feb 2012 is:

08:00-08:45 – General introduction to e-Learning and the module – Dr JP Bosman
08:45-09:15 – e-Learning from a medical perspective – Dr Steve Walsh
09:15-09:30 - Show and Tell: Previous MPhil Student – Dr Stefanus Snyman
09:30–10:00 - Hands-on: creating and using blogs
10:00-10:15 - Tea
10:15-12:00 – Blog experience continued as well as Soundcloud service explored.

Soundcloud track on the 2011 assignment

Send us your sounds
I wanted to do this podcast all day, but only got to it Friday night at 10! I must say, if it was not for the Soundcloud iPad app I discovered, it would probably have stayed a good intention. Well there you have it - I am a digital native (tongue in cheek)! 


Do listen as it is about the assignment. Good luck and enjoy the weekend.


Click here to go to the Soundcloud track


.

Screencasting software

I added this information on a comment - but thought to make it more visible here!

What software is available to make screencasts/ podcasts?

There obvioulsy tens (if not hundreds) of products out there and this Wikipedia comparison of most available screencasting software is quite detailed. The ones I know and use on a regular basis are:

• Audacity: Freeware with which to record and then to produce mp3 soundfiles.
• Camtasia Studio: Great podcasting software from www.techsmith.com that can do anything from videos to podcasts to screencasts. The publishing options are fantastic and the file compression (especially mp4s) are wonderful. 1 month trial download - you have to try it!
• Camtasia Relay: A centralised service (installed at a specific institution - available at Stellenbosch) that allows one to record lectures in the form of screencasts (Voice and all screen activity - like a PPT lecture) and then automatically publishes the videos on a central repository.
• www.screenr.com: Free online screen recording (5 minutes max).
www.screencast-o-matic.com: Free online screen recording (15 minutes)
• www.screencast.com: Great free repository (up to 2 Gb at least) for uploading and sharing your videos.
• Jing: Making and sharing screencasts, as well as screenshots over the internet. Quite useful but file size is an issue with longer videos.
• www.soundcloud.com: My new favourite place for creating and storing soundfiles!
• www.youtube.com: Still a great place to publish videos or even screencasts as it embedds nicely in blogs, and also has an automatic mobile compression service if accessed by a mobile device (like a cell phone or iPad).

Have fun!

How to embed a video in a blog post

On special request (and because I love making screencasts)!

Quick and dirty surveys

This is maybe a bit too late for the Analysis Design Develop and Implement phases of ADDIE, but may still be of great use for the Evaluation stage. Or especiallly for the prototyping idea that was suggested in the previous post.
In this post I want to tell you about two quick and dirty ways of doing an online survey/ questionnaire that could be used to gain feedback from your audience about the prototype, as part of the analysis phase and for the evaluation phase as part of an iterative design process.

1. Google forms: Don't you just love Google! As part of the Google docs (http://docs.google.com) offering, one is able to design online Forms which can be used as online questionnaires. See an example of a recent survey with Google forms we did for a course on the use of ICTs for Higher Education here. The example looks great and is a bit more detailed but it was really easy to create! I made a screencast on how to create your own Google form. The screencast video can be watched by going to web address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKKyOGcZ6w



2. Survey monkey: This is probably the most famous online Survey tool and the basic plan is free (Google forms is always free of course). I actually just completed a Survey monkey questionnaire this morning about the new Blackboard learning management system. To see what Surveymonkey is all about, go to web address: www.surveymonkey.com

Any other ideas on how to get feedback from students, clients or audiences? Have you used other ways to get the evaluation and feedback "job done"? Please comment and share.

Marshmallows and prototypes

What do the two have in common you may ask! And what does it have to do with e-Learning in Health Sciences!

Well, the prototype is easy, as all participants in the module have to design a small prototype e-Learning product/experience/idea/curriculum etc.

The marshmallows come from a colleague at Stellenbosch University's Business School, Martin Butler, who referred me to The Marshmallow Challenge, an exercise he does with senior business executives on the value of prototyping. This was after I sent him a link to a short document on how to choose an LMS for an institution (the gist is that one has to ask a lot of questions). As Martin says - yes, questions are important, but more important is building a quick prototype and getting feedback on the idea. In this way one sees the issues that even the questions could never have anticipated!

Thought this might be a good reminder of how we should be thinking about e-Learning design.

Three things - great site, hybrid teaching and uptake

The idea of the central blog is of course to provide interesting references to new technologies, resources and research that will hopefully inspire us all to keep the e-Leanring flame burning brightly. To keep my own momentum going I have three things:

1. Elearninglearning site: I cannot stress enough how wonderful and important the www.elearninglearning.com site is. I subscribe to the weekly digest and this is a great way to be alerted to interesting news, tools and articles around e-Learning. In fact my number 2 "thing" came from a link from the e-mail digest of elearninglearning! So here goes thing nr 2...

2. Hybrid teaching and learning: There has been a lot written about blended- or mixed mode, or hybrid learning, and the Learning Solution article "Hybrid learning: How to reach digital natives" gives a concise and useful summary of the issues as well as ideas for using the power of hybrid teaching and learning. Seeing that the kind of students that we are already teaching might gain by us knowing about this powerful model, it is a worthwhile read and builds on the post I wrote recently about Digital immigrants . I would like some comments on the hybrid model - especially on how you implement it in the Higher Education context. Which brings me to the third thing ...

3. The benefits of e-Learning is not always so abvious: This article is quite clever in that it is honest about the fact that e-Learning does not function "automatically". Sometimes you could have the greatest e-Learning idea or course, and the students are quite "langtand" or unmotivated to join. The author takes a look at cultural factors (mainly West vs East) and how that may impact on the uptake of e-Learning. It does not only give a negative outlook, but suggests ways in which one might address the issues of adoption (like couching your learning as a traditional style of learning, but through a technology medium).

I hope everybody is tinkering away at their prototype design for e-Learning. The blogs are quiet. Could we have some dialogue perhaps - it always makes a facilitator's heart beat faster!

I am a (worried) digital immigrant - and proud of it

I am a bit worried today, and worry leads (if we are lucky) to reflection. My worry should maybe be called pedagogical "Angst" as I am contemplating the reasons why this year's module is less dynamic in its "out of the blocks" start of the 1 month e-Learning dash to glory.

As facilitator I reflect on the following questions:

• Why are so few of this year's participants not actively taking part in their blogs at the end of week one?
• Did I make a mistake to introduce an extra new technology (i.e. Soundcloud.com) so early in the process, thinking that it will lead to excitement rather than fear?
• What else can I do to make the participants in the module actively and immersively take part in their learning? I.e. will an online voucher prize e.g. for the best blog of the week make a difference to the intrinsic motivation?
• Are there other reasons that participation is so low? I am thinking of school holidays in South Africa; maybe fatigue/ recovery from the previous research assignment module; too much clinical work during the day and too tired after hours ...

Please comment if you have any ideas on how to improve the module, I would really like to practise what I preach and be able to adapt as we go along - or at least change for next year's session.

Maybe you thought about what the "digital immigrant" refers to in the title of this post?

Well, my first idea was to write a post about how the distinction that Marc Prensky introduced in 2001 (click here for an article by Prensky) between digital natives and digital immigrants lies at the heart of a lot of the fears that people that are BBC (Born before computers) have when thinking about and using technology. Prensky (2001:2) states:

"the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language" (Prensky 2001:

Since this idea has been seeded, the educational thinking around technology has never been the same. The distinction sometimes creates fear in the hearts of digital "illegal immigrants" (i.e. those that find themselves in the digital world, but are not even trying to assimilate), and a lack of flow and creativity in those that are using technology for teaching because they are always feeling like they will never be true "natives". For some it has become a motto, or even a rationalisation. Be it as it may, the distinction has created a huge chasm between two groups that I think is a false divide.

In the last couple of years, there has been increased criticism on this dichotomy with thinkers and authors from all sides questioning the sweeping statement type characteristics of the initial research. Recent examples are:

• Kennedy et al (2008) who questions the fact that ALL incoming students are so adept at technology and then states: "Such generalisations risk overlooking a more complex mix of technology based skills, knowledge and preferences among the student population".
• Bennett, Maton & Kervin (2008) who critically reviews the evidence about the debate and comes to the conclusion: "A sense of pending crisis pervades this debate. Hwever, the actual situation is far from clear ...the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic'". They then ask for a more disinterested approach. 
• The Economist Monitor (2010) asks if it is really helpful to talk about digital natives. They site Siva Vaidhyanathan, Micheal Wesch and Sue Bennett implying that one should dig deeper. Quoting Wesch: "incoming students have only a superficial familiarity with the digital tools that they use regularly, especially when it comes to the tools’ social and political potential. Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives, in other words. The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population".
• Craig Pladson (2011) does not mince his words: "The more I think about these phrases, the more annoying and inaccurate they become. Thinking about digital natives versus digital immigrants in terms of age is fundamentally incorrect. To me, being a digital native or digital immigrant has everything to do with mindset and nothing to do with age."

So, where does it leave us and our wonderful module? We are (I guess) all digital immigrants in the Prenskyan sense of the word, but that should not cripple us in our learning. If it is not about age, but about mindset and the willingness to learn, then we will all be able to excel in our discovery of this new and wonderful world of technology. The internet is not going to go away, is becoming easier to use, and can be (and I truly believe this) used to facilitate deeper learning than ever before to a new generation whose language (even if it may have different levels and competencies) is "Web".

I look forward to your own "learnings" as reflected by your active and interactive writings on your blogs!

Since writing this post, I have come across another interesting post about the same debunking the myth by Dan Pontefract who cites even more research making more or less the same point.

Reference list:

Bennet, S, Maton, K & Kervin, L (2008). The 'digital natives' debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol 39, Nr 5, 775-786. Available online: http://goo.gl/QMYIG

Kennedy, GE, Judd, TS, Churchward, A, Gray, K & Krause, K-L (2008).First year students' experiences with technology: Are they really digital natives? Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2008, 24(1), 108-122. Available online: http://goo.gl/IKbUI

Pladson, C (2011). Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants, blog post on http://craigpladson.posterous.com. Available online: http://goo.gl/aRLhu

Prensky, M (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, in On the Horizon. MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001. Available online: http://goo.gl/4oYb

The Economist - Monitor (2010). The net generation, unplugged. Technology and society: Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of “digital natives” who have grown up with the internet? Available online: http://goo.gl/NEnLF

Voice Power - welcome to October 2011

A BIG word of welcome to all of us to our joint e-Learning module blog as part of the MPhil HSE!
This year we are going to try something new and exciting! I will place audio messages (podcasts) on Soundcloud where we as an e-Leanring module have our own special group (called MPhilHSE). 
Click on the icon/picture/logo below of soundcloud to go to the group audio dropbox. It really is easy to use, so try it out! I have placed one or two recordings on there already. Please feel free to experiment.
JOIN the group (you will quickly have to create a username and password - or log in with your Facebook account) and then it is easy to add comments in the discussion, as well as to record your voice directly online.
One can record online, or upload audio files that can be listened to by all of us. There is also space for discussions. All you need is a headset! There are some other interesting features as well, but lets start with the basics. (Remember to jin the group and to get a Souncloud account/ log in with Facebook.
Task: Everybody go to our SoundCloud group Audio dropbox and record something of less than a minute! "Hear" you online!


Send us your sounds

Welcome 2011 Second years!

I am busy preparing for your elective session on e-learning and just wanted to check if we would be able to blog from the computers in the CSS. As it turns out, it seems we can!

I really am looking forward to our time together!

From fear to fight

Dear 2010 Mphil HSE e-Learning participants
It is with a bit of sadness that I write this last (official) post on our communal central blog. Experiencing my own journey, and being part of all of your journeys the last month or so was indeed a privilege! To see the movements and changes and wow-moments (and yes to feel the pain of struggles and uncertainty too) is humbling and invigorating at the same time. I enjoyed the module with you as a super group tremendously and look forward to next year's process. I truly have learned so much from each one of you, and want to thank you all for finding time and energy to reflect and share and grow together in this open virtual space.
Now that most of your assignments are submitted on Webstudies, the final grading from my and Bob's side will commence. I want to ask one last thing of you: Please do the feedback form/ survey on the module on Webstudies. We want to know how you experienced the module to be able to improve next year.

I did a quick count and the following Stats might interest you:
In 40 days:
Bloggers: 13
Total posts: 116 (21 on the central blog)
Total comments: 204 (34 on the central blog)

I think we all did some wonderful thinking and learning! I feel proud of us all.
Please keep up the momentum with e-learning. I look forward to reading your assignments, and staying in touch.
Feel free to keep on blogging and sharing about your learning and teaching, I would very much want to know how everybody is doing.

So without any further official ado ... "That's all folks!" Good luck with your research assignment!

15 Mind-blowing or numbing facts about the internet

How does reading the information in the linked site below make you feel? Does it have something to say for e-Learning in Health Sciences Education? Please leave your comments below the post.

The image about the mind-boggling Webstats was a bit big to keep on the blog for ever. So I decided to change the blogpost with only the link to that amazing image: Click here to view.

Over a million views

Sparked by Mirta's post about blogging, I searched on Slideshare.com and found this very useful presentation, embedded below) about the 25 different styles of blogging and when to use each one by Rohit Bhargava. Enjoy!

The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging ... And When To Use Each One

View more presentations from Rohit Bhargava.

Proud concern over ideas

eProud!
All of you should be proud of what you have achieved and learned over the last couple of weeks during this module! This e-Learning module differs a bit from the other modules in that it incorporates a great deal of self-exploration in the learning process, and also because it asks participants to become comfortable with something new. Apart from that it asks for reflection during the module (which is a difficult although meaningful discipline) and not just at the end, and the process (as mediated by the reflections on the blogs) is also evaluated. Then there is also the coming up with something real and tangible in the form of a learning project, that does not have to exist as a final product, but does have to exist in a theoretical design space. It asks of participants to be scholarly and integrate a lot of the general learning principles into the design of the learning intervention.

eConcern :(

"I wonder wheter JP could recommend us/me to tackle something that is still missing or we should be familiar with before uploading the big assignment at the blackboard. Any ideas?" Quoted from Mirta's blog.

Two of the participants' posts contains the word "Concern" and reveal a feeling of aloneness or that something is missing. Although I have tried to explain exactly what the module is al about (i.e. what one has to do) it seems that there are still lingering doubts as to exactly what is expected of participants - especially with the assignment becoming a reality for starting/finalising/ submitting before 10 August on Webstudies.

I guess this feeling comes from having to explore a very broad field of knowledge. e-Learning as a broader concept is very diverse, and one could literally have a whole module for the different kinds of e-Learning available for medical education. From blogs to wikis to social media, to multimedia, to online facilitation to blended learning to podcasting to webconferencing etc etc. Maybe the following pointers will help you to focus and relax into the final few days of the module:

• The module is a broad introduction to e-Learning in HSE and will therefore feel very wide and woolly at first because there is so much to experience and learn.
• Having said that, however, it is imperative that one tries to focus on one or two technologies or e-learning modalities and gain some sort of deeper experience with them. This is why I have encouraged everyone from the start to try and choose a do-able and specific project. This helps to narrow the scope to what interests you very immediately (relevance).
• All of us have gained some experience in the use of a blog (a very useful skill/adventurous journey I hope you will agree) and  blogging therefore became one of the common specifics of the course (which some of you will incorporate into your own projects.
• The module framework document (available on Webstudies) does spell out what you have to do, and gives assessment criteria for both the assignment and the blog reflection. There is also more than enough material and links to get "into" the world of e-Learning and to gain a scholarly perspective on e-Learning.

Ideas ideas ideas ...

 Mirta asks if I have any ideas that we could tackle? Well ... I have a lot of ideas that we could still discover together, but I am afraid that it will create more confusion for many participants. I think we should call it a day with the official elements already covered (ADDIE, iSpring, Blogs, LMS type designs ... and of course the other technologies that different participants will choose).

We were introduced to new ideas like Twitter (sparked by Worst Case Scenario-Yo), Screencasting, SlideShare, Wikis and the like. These "extras" are dynamic interesting things that grews out of a need to communicate and teach and not as "official" additions to the module curriculum.

Actualy, what we are trying to do here is create a space for a more open learning experience. More self-directed, more integrative, more exploratory - yet with a clear goal or end point.

I might add one or two new things (for fun) into a last few posts, but I want all of you to be finalising your assignments, and writing your last reflections on your blogs.

Please let me know if I can assist with anything.

Publishing files on the open web

Good morning everyone, and welcome to our last week of intensive (for some) reflection and working on your blogs. The module ends on Friday, but of course the assignment still has to be done for submission before 10 August (remember 70% of the assignment is a document to be submitted on Webstudies scholarly describing your project according to the ADDIE model of instructional design).


Mirta had a very important e-mail request, and my reply is important for everybody, as it relates to e-learning and especially if one wants to share files (which are not pictures, videos, documents etc) but little folders/ sites containing a few files which have to be together in a directory before they will actually "work" on the internet. 
A good example of this is iSpring, which uses PPT, but then publishes a folder with three different files in them. All three files (one of them a flash file - .swf) needs to be on the internet somewhere (like on a website) before one can link to the start-file (the .html file in iSpring's case). This might seem overly technical to some, but try and understand the issues involved here. I must say, thinking about the difficulties in sharing folders without having a website over which one has full FTP (file transfer protocol - i.e. the ability to upload files to the internet in a website structure) control made more thankful that most universities have LMS's that take care of the display and distribution of documents, and other e-learning objects (like iSpring projects).
Well, the following is the exact e-mail I sent to Mirta earlier this morning:

Dear Mirta

iSpring publishes your PPT in a folder (the name of the folder is the name of your presentation) with a few files in them, the most important one being the flash file (.swf).

To share this presentation with the world you need to upload the whole folder to a website and then create a link in your blog (or on a website) to the .html file inside the folder that is now situated not on your computer, but on the internet.

This is very difficult to explain in an e-mail, so maybe for now you can send me the file. To be able to send the file, you need to go to the folder and create a Zip (.zip) file out of it. On Windows one can right-click on the folder and then choose “Send to>> zip folder” (or something similar). One needs a zipped folder as one cannot e-mail a normal folder. Then attach the zip folder in an e-mail and send it to me to view.

Alternatively, you can look inside the folder for the .swf file (the flash file) and just e-mail that one to me.

Note: Inside an LMS (like Webstudies) it is easy to display these kinds of published projects (like iSpring) as one has the ability to upload folders and files and then make it available to the students. The moment one moves to the open web (like with your blogs) it becomes more difficult to share these kinds of projects if one does not have your own website, where to one can upload projects like this (we call it “ftp”) and then link to those  files on the internet. There are free websites where one has ftp rights (like www.freewebsites.com) to – although limited bandwidth available.

Sometimes it is difficult to e-mail large files to someone (which might be the case if you try and e-mail your project to me). In that case one an use a service like www.megauploader.com where one can upload any file, and then send the link for download to an e-mail address. The receiver gets the link to the file, and then downloads it from the megauploader website.

Well, that is a mouthful already, so I will stop. But this topic (although nitty gritty in character) is quite important once one works outside the LMS. Where to store and host files can become quite a challenge.

Good luck for the week!

Have a great wiki-end!

 Wiki wiki - or "quick quick" in Hawaiin, was brought into our collaborative e-learning consciousness by Worst Case Scenario-Yo who reflected in her recent post

wikis for everyone  on the online projects she is involved in. I am glad she highlighted Wikis as important educational spaces. In the words of Worst case Scenario-Yo:

"I volunteered to re-build the site content on Wikispaces so that the website could really promote collaberation and learning.  Wiki's are a learning theorist's greatest dream - they have the ability to promote Constructivism,Cognitivism and Behaviourism through collaberation, interaction and distribution of learning." 

This made me think of a great and forward-thinking Physio lecturer at the University of the Western Cape, Michael Rowe, who has researched the use of wiki's for teaching physio. See his OpenPhysio wiki site at: http://openphysio.co.za/. All his important presentations around e-learning and technology (like PLE's, blogs, wikis etc) can be found at his Slideshare page. The one entitled: "Collaborative knowledge construction with wikis"
 I embed below. This is wonderful insight backed by a research mode of teaching. Enjoy!

Collaborative knowledge construction with wikis

View more presentations from Michael Rowe.

e-Learning as part of learning - your colleagues have spoken!

Welcome to week 3 of the e-learning module!
Without any further ado, I want to urge you to read the recent blog entries of two colleagues.
They are brilliant, and capture the essence of what this module is trying to achieve.
The interconnectedness of e-Learning with learning, the instructional design process, and the broader Mphil programme is succinctly and beautifully argued and showcased.
Please read:
Annie's World - De-mystifying the design and all e-Learner's posts.
You are welcome to reflect on your own blogs about what they have said, or comment right there and then so that a debate/ discussion can erupt.
Enjoy!

Share your slides with the world (or just with your captured audience)

Apart from Screencasts like the one from yesterday, one could also use www.slideshare.com to upload and present to the world your presentations and documents.

I embed the presentation given on 5 February 2010 on the overview to the module below.

This is what I did:
1. I logged into www.slideshare.com with my Slideshare username and password (free service).
2. Then I uploaded the PPT presentation.
3. Once converted into Slideshare format I clicked on the presentation and then copied the "Embed" html coding.
4. Now I am writing the blog post, and will paste the html coding below (remember to be in "Edit HTML" mode while creating the post - and not in "Compose" mode).
5. This will result in the presentation embedded in my blog below and looking quite magical and amazing.

Mphil hse e-learning overview 2010

View more presentations from JP Bosman.