Learning Conversations

As well as trying to organise my toolkit, I've also been taking a look back over some of the articles I've written that have played a key part in developing my thinking.

I'm bringing these back into the light of day via a separate page on this site: Key Articles.

I've started to organise my Diigo bookmarks a bit better, so that I can use them to publish a list of the tools I use.

Initialy I was going to publish them as a Mind Map, or Concept Map - but that would just be a static diagram, that would be hard to navigate and to maintain.

So I've gone with Diigo, as it's a tool I use already to maintain my bookmarks. Now I can put it to further use.

I've organised them into:

• Web-based tools
• Windows tools
• Mac OSX tools

I'm only listing applications that I use frequently, not the ones that I just try out for a bit.

The recent additions to the list will always be available on the Toolkit page on this site.

The complete list is available on Diigo.

Except where otherwise noted, this content is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Often a potential client will specify that they want their elearning to be "SCORM compliant". When asked why they want this, and to what level of compliance, often the answer is a blank look.

What is SCORM?

SCORM stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model. Its history is based firmly in the US Department of Defense's need for learning materials to be able to "work" in many different platforms.

The DoD, and now ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning), looked at the range of different specifications and standards available for learning materials (each one known as a "book") and brought them together in the reference model now known as SCORM.

SCORM 1.2 (with which I'm most familiar) brings together:

• The IMS content packaging specification - which describes a way of collecting together learning resources into one file (a simple zip package), accompanied by an XML file (called imsmanifest.xml) that describes the structure of the resources. It's this that allows a learning management system (LMS) to upload one file build a navigation structure for learners and track their usage of the navigation.
• The IEEE Learning Object Metadata standard - which specifies a way of describing the content of the learning object in a machine-readable format. It's this that allows teachers/learners to search for specific learning objects inside the LMS.
• The AICC run-time specification - which describes how the learning resources should communicate with the host LMS. It's this that allows learning resources to display the user's name, or the LMS to take final scores from quizzes built in to the resources.

SCORM 2004 builds on 1.2 by tightening up on what it means to be conformant with SCORM, and also adding in a book known as "Sequencing and Navigation". This new book allows designers to programme different routes through the materials based on user behaviour.

The benefits of SCORM

In theory...

1. Designers should be able to create materials independently of the host LMS's in-built authoring tools
2. Content is not locked into the host LMS. It can be ported to another LMS with no loss of functionality
3. Learning materials can come from many suppliers and will just "work" in the host LMS
4. Learners will be able to find materials from a catalogue that is populated by the metadata

The reality

Different content suppliers, authoring tools and LMS's have different interpretations of what SCORM means. There is a lowest common denominator (the IMS content packaging specification), but if you want to be sure of interoperability, then you need to stick with that, and that only.

SCORM-packaged learning content knows nothing about the functionality available in your LMS. So, if you're using an LMS that has collaborative features like forums and wikis, or functions like polls, surveys and sophisticated assessments, all of that will have to be handled outside of the SCORMed content. If you make use of that LMS functionality, you can almost guarantee that the rich information it contains will not be exportable to another LMS.

SCORM is just about delivering content, tracking its use and providing an overall pass/fail score. It's a model that works for Defence training. Whether it works in other contexts is debatable.

The SCORM run-time (and now the Sequencing and Navigation book) are extremely complex to make work well. Often you find run-time information will only get passed between the package and the LMS if you use a particular browser. Very few of the data calls are compulsory in the specification, so you can't guarantee the data you're expecting is going to be available.

The tracking and score information that comes via the SCORM run-time is of extremely limited use. Yes, it can tell you that someone went into a particular piece of learning, whether they viewed all or some of it, and how long they spent doing so. But a) does it tell you whether they've learnt anything, and b) who is going to be doing the checking up to make sure everyone spent the requisite 10 minutes?

There are some examples of extremely sophisticated SCORM-based simulations, which work well with a particular LMS, provide useful information to managers, and offer a valid learning experience for learners. Such examples are difficult to come across though.

A simple alternative for interoperability

I would always argue that a content management system (CMS) is the best place for content to sit. It's much more learner-friendly.

Yes, the content is "locked into" the CMS's database, but if you choose the right CMS there will be an export function or the ability to create one.

If you really need to make sure you can move your content around from one system to another, then there is a simple answer...

• Create your learning materials are a mini-website - any authoring tool will do this
• Package them into a simple zip file - nothing complicated. Just add them to a compressed folder in Windows, Create Archive on Mac OSX, or tell your authoring tool to zip up the output (Articulate can certainly do this)
• Upload your zip file to your LMS and unzip it there. Moodle can certainly do this. It's so simple I expect other LMS's should be able to?
• Create a link to the home page of your mini website from within the LMS. Again, this is built into Moodle. Do other LMS do this as well?

if your LMS can't handle simple zip files without the content packaging imsmanifest.xml file, then you can use the manifest maker extension for Dreamweaver, or the open-source Reload editor, which is slightly more complex to use but very powerful.

In Conclusion

If you're tempted to specify SCORM as a requirement for your elearning project, make sure you understand clearly which bits of SCORM are important to you, and why.

Further reading

Click2Learn's Brief Introduction to SCORM 1.2

ADL's The SCORM 1.2 Run-Time

Blog post: The King is dead, long live the King

Blog post: Looking for a learner support system

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licensed under a Creative Commons License.

I've long been an advocate for separating content from courses, but Cathy Moore's comment on yesterday's post has stimulated me to be a bit more explicit about this.

Let's put ourselves in the position of the learner (always a good idea for a designer to do).

Now, this learner may be a novice in the subject, or may be fairly experienced. Since online learning is often intended for large audiences, we can almost guarantee there'll be a mixture of prior experience.

With the typical elearning course, the learner would be pointed to the start of the course, and given a sequential set of activities to do, supported by in-built resources.

The learner works through the course, and perhaps finds a couple of useful bits of information. That assumes they haven't fallen asleep or switched off. (BTW - Do you know anyone that has completed one of these typical page-turner courses. I certainly haven't!)

The next day, the learner needs or decides to put the ideas into practice. Now where were those useful bits of information? Probably embedded in page 17 of 32. But there's no way of finding it without walking through the whole course.

In a couple of months time, the learner, who is, by now reasonably confident in the subject, realises they need to find out about one particular aspect. They're sure the information is in one of their elearning courses, somewhere. But the only thing the LMS search engine can report on is the metadata attached to the course. It can't search inside the course itself.

So how is the learner expected to be able to find information outside the course?

The answer's simple. You have two options:

1. Build your course inside your information system, usually known as a content management system (CMS). This is how w3schools works. Each page in the tutorials is built within the CMS, and is thus searchable and individually addressable. You can work through sequentially, use the menu to jump to specific pages, or use the search engine to find specific information.
2. Build your courses separately from your information. Keep the information in the CMS, and build courses in your LMS.

Implications of separating course and content

1. You can't create an information resource and call it a course.
2. You may realise that simply creating materials for people to read is not always the best learning approach
3. You may start designing-in activities that require people to use the content, perhaps even while interacting with each other
4. You may realise that your learning management system (LMS) is not adequate as it's simply designed to deliver content in a sequence, and has no concept of activities.
5. You will need to ensure that learners can jump between course and content relatively seamlessly. This means providing mutual links from course to content and vice versa.

Implications of not separating course and content

1. Your information will be locked away inside courses
2. Your information will have far less impact
3. If you try to duplicate content inside both courses and an information system then you will end up with one version that is out-of-date
4. Your learners will only find information if they manage to get to the page in the course that it's on

Recommendations

1. If you have a CMS available, then use it as much as you can
2. If you haven't got a CMS, then get one. There are hundreds. But which one you choose will depend on your precise needs.
3. If your subject matter expert (SME) gives you a powerpoint to turn into a course, tell them to put it on the CMS first
4. Don't allow your course designers to embed information in their courses
5. Use your LMS to take people through learning activities
6. Get an LMS that provides flexibility in the activities you choose. Eg. Moodle

Further reading

Learning materials and content management systems
Looking for a learner support system

Except where otherwise noted, this content is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.

... that assumes your clients are asking you to create some learning materials.

I know I've said in the past that Content is (not) King any more, and it's the platform that's the important thing. But we still need to provide centrally generated support for learners. That support usually takes the form of chunks of content which learners have to work through, often in a fixed order.

For a long time, I've worked with Moodle (a widely-used, open-source course management system). Moodle is built around the twin concepts of Activities and Resources.

Activities are things that learners do.

Resources are the things that learners use to help them do the Activities.

Tom Kuhlmann again hits the nail on the head in his recent post about Why Unlocking Your Course Navigation Will Create Better Learning. Read down, as there's a huge amount of useful advice in the article. But the bit that struck me was:

... Essentially, the course content is like the reference manual. The goal isn’t to get them to read all of the content. Instead, the goal is to get them to DO something. The content only supports the DOING.

Considering this, don’t design your course to navigate through content. Instead, create an environment where the learner has to demonstrate understanding of the content by doing something. By focusing on the desired action rather than the content, the learner’s better prepared to learn. The content is just a resource to help them gain understanding. When you lock access to the content, you’re actually hindering the learning process.

This fits very closely with Cathy Moore's Action Mapping approach to designing learning materials. It creates materials that are focussed on what you want people to be able to do. Which, in the workplace, is probably the most important thing we might want to change.

This letter (sent to Ed Balls today) was stimulated by Doug Dickinson's ongoing passionate plea for a rethink in the SATs system, and continues my own small campaign to change it.

Dear Mr Balls,

I am writing to express my personal opinion on the issue of SATs testing.

As a former teacher (secondary and primary), a former primary school governor, a professional elearning consultant and a parent of two children in primary school, I have a keen interest in how we provide an effective education for our children.

My understanding of the rationale behind the SATs is that they are intended to act as a measure of the school's effectiveness, and therefore a measure of the effectiveness of government policy. I have no problem with this. Such measures are essential if we are to know whether our policies and practices are working.

I have two issues:

1) The SATs tests, by focussing on just English, Maths and Science, do not measure the overall effectiveness of schools. For most schools it is logical for them to focus their attention on the areas that are being measured - to the detriment of other subjects. If we believe that PE, Geography, PSHE etc are important parts of our children's education, should these not be measured as well?

2) The pressure on schools to achieve good results is passed down to the children. This leads to the perceived need for exam coaching, practice tests and private tuition - all of which are unnecessary (as stated by your colleague Estelle Morris). How can we persuade schools to stop putting on this pressure, when their very existence may be subject to the results of the tests?

I would agree with those people who call for a sampling-led system of measurement. The ideal, in all research, is to take measurements without impacting on the thing being measured. Random sampling of teacher assessments, across the whole curriculum would go some way to alleviating the problems I've outlined above.

I do hope that the problems you are having with the ETS marking system allow you to rethink how we measure the effectiveness of schools. In the long term, I also hope this leads to a wider rethink of what we really want schools to be doing, as is happening in Scotland.

Yours sincerely,

Mark

Getting feedback from your learners?
How do you get rapid feedback from your learners? Perhaps during a face-to-face session.

There are systems available where you give each delegate a small radio transmitter with voting buttons. These then go to a computer which puts the votes on screen.

But they cost a lot.

If you've got an internet connection then you could use a new website called SMSpoll.

This lets people vote via a text message from their mobile phone, via a form on your website, or via mobile internet devices. The results of the vote are shown immediately on a graph.

Don't believe me? Try it out on: http://www.smspoll.net/demouk.php

What do you think? Would it be useful?

Clive Shepherd and I have been having a spirited discussion about the concept (or not) of "blended learning". I think my last comment got lost in the Blogger system, and I wanted to get some ideas down here anyway...

Basically, Clive has put forward a definition of blended learning that describes it as a situation that uses a variety of media in a variety of social contexts (ie. group size).

To my mind this covers pretty much every learning situation, so I can't see the need for a separate definition of "blended" learning (which should actually be blended teaching anyway, but that's another argument).

I gave an example from a typical (pre-internet) primary/secondary classroom:

- self-study (eg. children working through worksheets, reading books etc);
- one-to-one (eg. children reading individually with me)
- small group (eg. children working together on a science experiment)
- larger community (eg. children presenting ideas in school assembly)

You could equally use a typical face-to-face training session which includes reading, small group discussion, presentation to the wider group, viewing of materials on a screen etc.

Clive responded with the comment:

"... I must admit that my primary perspective on this issue is work-based learning, where this scenario would be extremely rare."

If that is the case then we are in a very sad situation, where, by trying to constantly find shortcuts to learning we have thrown out everything that we know about how people learn.

I think it starts at University, where the lecture seems to be the dominant teaching form (regardless of its effectiveness) and we then assume that all adults learn through single medium, single context situations.

So, workplace learning professionals out there, do you think we need to go back to school to learn how to teach again?

I use a lot of templates from places like Open Source Web Design. Often these templates come with the source files for the graphics/images. Often these have the extension .psd ie. they're Photoshop files.

If I needed to edit the graphics, I had two options. I could work with the bitmaps (ie. jpgs, gifs, pngs) - a very painful process. Or I could find someone with Photoshop who could break up the image into its consituent layers and edit them.

The image editor I use is Paint.net. To my graphically unsophisticated needs it is ideal; a massive step up from MS Paint (yuk!) yet without the learning curve of Photoshop et al. Most of the time I'm just cropping, changing colours, and extracting bits of an image to overlay on another image. Nothing fancy.

Don't get me wrong. Paint.net is capable of far more than that. I've not scratched the surface yet.

Today I discovered that I could also open .psd files in Paint.net - using the Photoshop file plugin. It was a revelation...

The NewsPortal template contains a simple graphic showing three overlaid documents with varying levels of transparency. All I needed to do was changing the basic colour from blue to green.

To do so in a bitmap editor was virtually impossible, as there are many different shades of blue in the image.

Open it up with the Photoshop file plugin in Paint.net and you see the four consituent layers. The bottom one is the plain blue background on which all the white document images sit.

Then all I needed to do was change the blue to the appropriate green and hey presto! (In fact it took longer to write this explanation than to do the whole thing - including install the plugin).

How do you record your learning in a format that prospective employers will understand?

The accepted tool for communicating your achievements etc is a CV or Resumé. Usually this would have a section devoted to "training", where, traditionally, you would record the courses you've been on.

However, I've not been on a "course" for probably about five years now (ever since the appraisal training I mentioned last week). Yet, I've learnt more in the past five years than through all the previous ten year's worth of "courses".

Some of that learning gets recorded on this blog. It's the place where I reflect on things, try to crystallise my thinking, and elicit feedback.

But what would I put on my CV?

Prospective employers will see that I've not done anything towards personal development. I haven't been on a presentation skills course. Yet what I learnt in 20 minutes through the Manager-Tools podcast made an immediate improvement to my presentations. I haven't been to any conferences about workforce development. Yet what I learn from the regular writings Janet Clarey, Harold Jarche and Will Thalheimer among others is far more current than any annual conference.

I haven't been trained in any of the software I now use, yet through the support available freely on the web I am now proficient (some would say expert) in:

• Articulate
• MindManager
• Moodle
• Joomla
• Etomite
• Jadu
• MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access
• ...

Similarly, I've never been on any courses about infrastructure or programming. Yet I am confident to work with HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Javascript, web servers and XML, knowing that, if I get stuck, I will find the answers I need from other people in similar situations.

Neither have I been on any courses on how to write and cost business proposals. Yet, through working with colleagues, I've gained enough skills to be able to win consultancy, materials creation and workforce development contracts.

Where's the proof? Well, it's certainly not in certificate form. There just aren't any. It's in the outputs. But most of those aren't packaged neatly enough to put into a CV.

How do you do it? What do you put in your CV? Or do you rely on your personal network - of people who know your outputs - to get the next job?