Project Management Resources for Determining Costs, Effort, Durations

I found an on-line provider of a Gantt chart service called SMARTSHEET. This project management tool resides in the cloud and offers features to manage the simplest to the most complex of projects.  It literally only took the promised 10 seconds to sign up for a free trial with my email and get right to a two minute feature overview video-cast. “Gantt charts can represent different views of the project activity against a calendar”(Russell, 2000, p. 45).  This data sheet allows several different views of the data, uploading of previously created data files or a selection of templates to set up a new file.  This powerful data management tool allows you to easily change, edit, drag and drop and reorder information in a number of ways.  You can set up dual views of your spreadsheet information and associate corresponding files with tasks by attaching them into any row.  This service also lets an unlimited number of users to contribute data to the spreadsheet given the authorized access.  These contributor groups can then also do any uploading of PDFs for matching tasks, etc.  There is also a really neat discussion board feature that maintains a pop-up thread of comments specific to individual rows and cells inside the spreadsheet.
 

I think this is the most powerful tool because analysis of the data or costs or timelines or resources allocated for any project can be collected collaboratively inside these little discussion boardlets.  This would be an extreme time saver since your project “audience list” (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton & Kramer, 2008, p. 275) would have all the information needed to run the project for the entire team.  A close second on the most important tools inside this SMARTSHEET is also the search and filter capabilities.  Every single move made on the document is tracked and can then be mined for administrative reporting.  You can search by key term, by contributor, by date, etc. to produce a myriad of different valuable reports from the project SMARTSHEET.  Plus you can set up automated email alerts of any change to the entire team’s broadcast email list.  It contains intuitive tools on a left bar of the desktop document and numerous short tutorial videos to get started. Lastly, there is a Google App for download of the SMARTSHEET to a mobile device…pretty cool.

Bright Hub, the Hub for Bright Minds is a terrific online community of experts and enthusiasts that blog about a broad range of useful current topics including project management topics.  This LINK directs you to a page within Bright Hub that is dedicated just to providing tips, tricks and other good advice for managing projects, including ID projects.  I like this blog board because it is a collection of advice from numerous credible experts.  It is a searchable site so you can find exactly what topic you want quickly.  But the most useful part of this site is the right scroll box where the most popular articles related to project management appear. I poked around this scroll and learned some very useful basics rapidly including how to do a RACI chart.  The articles are brief but informative.  I added this site to my RSS feed.

I also found THIS review site that lists the top ten project management softwares available for fairly cheap.  I liked it for the feature chart comparison.  It really helped me to orient to all the basic capabilities of most project software tools.  THIS Google site also provides a top ten list of Google Apps for project management tools which are amazing as well.

Hope you find my resources helpful!

References

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008).

Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects.  Hoboken, NJ:

John  Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Russell, L. (2000). Project management for trainers. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.

The Art of Effective Communication in Project Teams

“The long-term success and sustainability of project teams require motivating behaviors from project managers”(Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton & Kramer, 2008, p. 310).  One major key to success is good communication or “sharing the right messages with the right people in a timely manner”(Portny et al., 2008, p. 367).  The chart below evaluates three different modes of communication for the same message as presented at this LINK 

in my graduate course studies this week.

Mode of Communication	My Interpretation of Message	Factors Influencing my Perception
Text Email Mode	Jane needs Mark’s report soon, but it is not necessarily an urgent priority.	-Text email let me take my own time to read or re-read the message. -There was no bolded or numbered specifics to the  task request. -The request gets a bit lost in all the words.
Audio Voice Mail Mode	A personal friend needs Mark’s report urgently.	-Tone of voice was personal and friendly, but a bit stressed and rushed.   -Wording was rapid and voice evidenced emotion that caught my attention.  Voice sounded very appreciative. -I had to replay the message, however, to discover what the actual request was asking for: ETA data.  That detail got lost in the rush of sound.
Video Face to Face Mode	A professional colleague requests Mark's ETA report as soon as convenient.	-Co-worker’s face to face presence and smile was friendly and subdued. -Eye contact was hard to ignore, but warm and not urgent.  Her in person presence distracted a bit from her message. -Tone of voice was sort of sing song, so the message did not feel super urgent.

Synthesis of Thoughts

For this particular message, the most effective mode of delivery for me was the audio mode in the voice mail.  That’s because I sensed both a sense of urgency and a sense of gratitude in the person’s recorded voice.  Both those tonal messages hit me more deeply than the other two modes because I felt an emotional connection to the person requesting the report.  This little message mode activity has taught me to carefully consider customizing all my communications according to task and audience in a project. “Communication can be formal or informal, written or verbal. Whatever form communications take, however, project managers should plan and prepare so their messages are received and correctly interpreted by project audiences”(Portny et al., 2008, p. 367).

I also learned that while email communications help people record, document and keep track of communications, a lot of the message can be lost inside a text paragraph. I realize that project managers cannot avoid this mode of communication, but I also now realize that selecting that right moment for a voice message can help to create a sense of friendly urgency when needed. “While managers today typically write fewer memos than 10 years ago, nearly all project managers must write some type of report on a regular basis – as well as dozens of emails each day”(Portny et al, 2008, p. 371).  That’s why I think we are lucky to have the podcasting tool for conducting team communications as well.

Our course text even provides an example of using podcasts for regular team communications on page 365, which can also be found at this LINK. This manager tools website provides many helpful and downloadable podcasts that deliver accompanying tools such as project delegation worksheets, meeting agenda templates and effective email outlines, all for successfully coordinating the behemoth of communications in any project.

References

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008).

Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects.  Hoboken, NJ:

John  Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learning from a Project "Post Mortem"

Project Phase I:  Need and Feasibility

Back in the day, I spearheaded a project to create a competitor training guide for the sales force at a technology company.  The notion of spending money and time to develop an actual training on competitor products was a brand new concept for the company, but one they had to admit the sales force was pleading for.  This was even before the rapid evolution of technology products we experience now, because it was during the dawn of email, computers (no laptops anywhere) or even wide spread distribution of cell phones.  The pricing and bundling packages for network connections to the internet were the real competitive “products”, and so quick to change as just promotional deals really.  The sales force was experiencing demoralizing undercut bids at the last minute of a close on the deal and their results were dipping, and the company’s profits were plummeting.  The need was clearly evident, but how to fill the need was not clear.

I was blessed to have been recruited fresh out of the field into the training organization, having just completed my most successful sales year ever.  So I really did understand what the sales force needed and I set to the ADDIE process immediately. When my team and I began to gather information, we had no idea of the enormity of the task.  It seemed there was a mountain of competitor information that came at us like a good New England Nor’easter.  The deadlines began to slip from the get go.  It was impossible to size the scope of the project as it had never been done before…anywhere in the entire industry in the entire country.

Project Phase II:  Create the Project Plan

We had the right personnel with the right expertise, but we underestimated our timeline by about three months. We projected about 3 months to be able to deliver the single most coveted artifact in the company:  a competitor’s product comparison guide complete with sales strategies to beat competitor product strengths and hype our own product strengths.  It took 6 months.  When I tell you that there were literally towers of competitor promotional materials on four desks, I mean the new Freedom Tower going up in NYC.  We made a hypothetical table of contents and split up the parts.  

It was a stealth operation because we had to pose as real potential customers to our competitors in order to get the latest information and the best pricing that they provided.  We also meticulously documented the competitor’s sales pitches and scripts and closing strategies.  Our big milestones were weekly update meetings to status our boss, who was sponsoring the project exclusively from his training budget, but who trusted us entirely.  His organization’s credibility had been seriously mocked in recent years as being a useless entity pushing outdated curriculum.  Our boss was desperate to win company favor back.

Phase III: Create Specifications for Deliverables  

The deliverable was to be a guide, a binder of sorts with easy tab sections and clear labels in which simple update packets could be inserted.  This was pre-computers, pre-cell phones don’t forget, so the binder idea was our only option. That three ring monster grew bigger and bigger by the hour it seemed.

Phase IV: Create Deliverables

Finally, the dates for delivery were set and the sales people trickled into the presentation room where they picked up their “quick reference chart” (basically the table of contents for the binder).  There were some snickers, but also some warm hellos from my previous colleagues, a tough bunch to please.  However, all the skepticism evaporated when the power point visuals displayed the long hours of valuable, price crunching analysis on chart after chart, all in hard copy in the binders.Then we handed out one segment at a time during the training.  It was so satisfying to watch their shoulders relax and their noses turn into the pages, avarice for more.  We hit the bull’s eye.  It was exactly what they had begged for…now, they exclaimed, they could sell because they knew what they were up against.  The feedback was glowing.

Phase V: Test and Implement Deliverables

It didn’t take long for the sales force to accept the guide as their own personal encyclopedia to improve quota results.

Sales overall improved within weeks of distributing the guide and conducting the training seminars. I was proud and relieved, but our success grew another sort of monster.  Who was going to maintain and update the binder so that it too would not become obsolete?  This was the one thing we didn’t actually anticipate, but really should have.  There were no job positions officially designated for “competitor product expert”.  Eventually, three new employment vacancies were posted to support this binder of materials and the effort to stay abreast of competitor products in general.  From our long and hard won training and design processes of developing the guide, sprang easy to write product specialist job descriptions and a whole new department, which our boss assumed control over and which earned him a nice pay raise as a result.

Conclusions:

Our training and design team’s expertise and contemporary expertise contributed to the success of this project. Unlike most instructional designers at the time who “are ill-prepared to manage the resource, schedules, and budgets associated with ISD projects” (Allen & Hardin, 2008, p. 75), we were well equipped from the sales environment to handle all these aspects of the project.  “These project objectives include planning, budgeting, scheduling and [especially] managing relationships with stakeholders” (Allen, p. 76), which are all very familiar tasks and roles in the quota driven world of technology sales.  Also,the company's diminishing bottom line helped propel our little project into high priority status, so we pretty much received anything we asked for and that made a huge difference in meeting objectives.

References

Allen, S., & Hardin, P. C. (2008). Developing instructional technology products using effective project management practices. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 19(2), 72–97.

Copyright by Springer-Verlag, New York.

Distance Learning: A New Frontier

Future Perceptions of Distance Learning: 5-10 Years 

A 2009 study of 239 schools found  “a surprising lack of high visibility of online degree program offerings on university official websites” (Gambescia & Paolucci, 2009, p. 5) revealing  that nearly 70% of these universities relegated their online program information to secondary page links or even worse, to a search box capability.  This is the case, even though evidence points to “a strong trend upwards in considering online education as part of a school’s long term strategy”(p. 5).   These disharmonious facts lend credence to the notion that degree granting institutions are currently struggling to identify their own future in distance education programs.

My Alma-mater, Providence College, only refers to online learning in it's continuing education section of its web-site which is at least three page clicks deep:

“Distance education is not yet a comfortable environment in promising success for those who prefer to run with the crowd, to ‘play it safe’, and who are unduly respectful of convention and tradition”(Burge, 2007, p. 122). Those institutions with the inflexible views that distance education degree programs are still the inferior method of learning, display a rigid ignorance to what the numbers are clearly evidencing.  I believe that more of these institutions and their faulty perceptions will soon buckle under the competitive market pressure to offer substantive virtual degree tracks or they will not survive financially in their current educational missions.  Perhaps, these campus dinosaurs will slowly evolve into research institutions exclusively, but they will not be able to carry their own weight under traditional teaching or under deficient distance programs.

I think that distance education degree programs, now experiencing a polishing period so to speak, are poised to exploit an impending "bubble burst" in the next 5-10 years for traditional education. People will increasingly perceive that the costs and other intangible sacrifices of conventional learning have just grown so egregiously enormous [and therefore, increasingly only for the wealthy elite], that more will take the route of seeking customized skills instead of the orthodox, inelastic, campus-based degree programs. More people will see that distance education successfully serves this market demand through “new communication tools, contribution of experts around the world, and increased use of multi-media, games and simulations”(Siemens, n.d.). Read this 2011 article entitled The Future of Online Learning which corroborates these specific impending trends for distance learning in accountability and transparency, course content and quality, the role of the instructor, and finally, collaboration and multi-modal content delivery.

Future Perceptions of Distance Learning: 10-20 Years

“A major benefit of college level online learning that cannot be overstated is that this new delivery method has accelerated the democratization of a college education”(Gambescia & Paolucci, 2009, p. 14).  The future of distance learning will “enable a universal population to be able to say, if they wanted to, that they too were entitled to learn, and able to learn” (Burge, 2007, p. 122). This distance learning future will not exclude formal virtual degree programs, but it will also include and even be challenged by those learners who not only want to learn but also want to innovate in highly specific ways.

             

          To this point, I found another visionary article that details how the world population’s increasing literacy rates will explode in 20 years and how this will be a major catalyst for positive changes in distance education. “Digital technology will continue its rapid ascent… There will be more pooling of resources among the providers of education to meet the demands of personalized/customized education of the next twenty-five years. Open and distance education as it is being practiced today will not be the same, just as the traditional university will no longer be traditional. Being flexible as such, open and distance education institutions would lead the way, becoming universities/institution of convergence, fully engaged in networked learning. "The transformation has already begun”(Srivastava & Reddy, 2003) . “Let us not forget that the post-industrial environment is global rather than national” (Srivastava et al., 2003). The infamous digital divide will no longer exist between the wealthy elite and third world learners.  

  

             We already see new and exciting curriculum possibilities provided to global learners from top-tier institutions, which now offer web-based courses available online for free to reach millions worldwide.  Click this  Announcement of Coursera and visit this Coursera Web-site, which is just another of many, such accumulating open courseware sites on the world-wide-web.  Additionally, the world’s greatest thinkers are currently assembling across the internet in non-degree forums such as this one at TED.com, in order to spread the wealth of knowledge to all peoples.  As such, people of the world in 20 years will recognize distance learning just as valuable for their minds and for their economic survival as water is for their bodies.

My ID Role as Proponent in Improving Society’s Distance Learning Perceptions

“We believe strongly that distance education, specifically web-based distance education, is the single most promising educational innovation of our lifetime.  We feel sure it will continue its current spectacular growth in both popularity and availability, and that future growth will involve nearly every imaginable level and type of schooling” (Aggarwal, 2007, p. 7) Aggarwal’s worthy book highlights the current conundrum of balancing the concerns for curriculum quality and intellectual property rights with meeting the needs of the outlandish growth in distance education.  My role as an ID proponent of distance learning in society is an important one in helping to navigate these troubling waters.  My role will be one of an inventor in helping to discover, create, and implement effective curriculum content for society’s knowledge needs.

  

Myself as a Positive Force for Continuous Improvement 

in Distance Education Field

When I started this course, I thought about how much I felt like Daniel Boone, the famous frontiersman.  Now in my last resource article of the class, the author calls distance education students, teachers and instructional designers “pioneers [who are] idiosyncratic, innovative, [and] creative”(Burge, 2007, p. 122).  I have fallen more comfortably into the role of path cutter now and feel more confident in my abilities to “look for [my] chance of contributing to the needed revolution”(Burge, 2007, p. 122).  I hope to continually stay abreast of the latest research in distance education because “it summarizes what is known…and it shows where there are unexplored spaces”(Burge, 2007, p. 123). 

Just for kicks, here are two pictures:  one of the actor, Fess Parker, who played Daniel Boone on TV in the 1950's versus the real Daniel Boone who settled the Kentucky frontier:

I hope to continually improve my skills and never stop learning more as the online world changes so rapidly.  Perhaps then, I can become a positive force in the field and help others feel more comfortable, because as Dr. Siemen puts it, simple “comfort is the key challenge”(Siemen, n.d.).  “Tomorrow's citizens [especially me as an instructional designer in distance education] will have to be more competent and comfortable with the technologies of the day. [ I ] will have to be versatile in [ my ] readiness and willingness to embrace change and learn new skills” (Srivastava & Reddy, 2003).  I will be 88 years old in 2050 and God willing, still sharp as a tack. “As the adage goes, ‘If you want to live in the 21st century, live with the 21st century tools’”(2003).

 References

Aggarwal, D.D. (2007). Future of distance education. New Delhi, India: Satrup & Sons.

Burge, E. (Ed.). (2007). Critical minds for a change. In Crafting the future: Flexible higher              education. Open University Press/McGraw Hill Education. 

Gambescia, S., & Paolucci, R. (2009). Academic fidelity and integrity as attributes of

             university online degree program offerings. Online Journal of Distance Learning 

             Administration,12(1). Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla

             /spring121/gambescia121.html

Schmidt, E., & Gallegos, A. (2001). Distance learning: Issues and concerns of distance 

            learners. Journal of Industrial Technology, 17(3). Retrieved from http://atmae.org

            /jit/Articles/schmidt041801.pdf

Siemens, G. (n.d.). The Future of Distance Education Lecture presented for Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6493363&Survey=1&47=8988324&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Srivastava, M. & Reddy, V.V. (2003).  ICT and the future of distance education. Turkish

          Online Journal of Distance Education, 4(4).  Retrieved from

           https://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde12/articles/reddy.htm

Blended Learning Best Practices Trainer’s Guide

Click HERE to access a WORD document on GoogleDocs which contains a useful chart and narrative description of some of the best practices for adapting a face-to-face course into a hybrid or blended learning program. I have not yet figured out how to attach a PDF directly into my Blog post or how to upload my PDF to GoogleDocs without damaging the formatting, etc., so the WORD file link will have to do until I learn :-) !  This best practices guide for blended learning provides tips and ideas that address five major categories:  Pre-planning strategies, facilitating student communications and learning, which aspects of the original course would be enhanced by the distance learning format, changes in the facilitator’s role in the online environment, and adapting to technology.  Additionally, the guide provides numerous excellent reference sources and over ten useful links related to best practices in blended learning.  Please do not hesitate to offer your comments or questions. Thanks!

Open Courseware Evaluation

Open Culture
http://www.openculture.com/

 

My Walden University masters course provided the above open course resource link for evaluation  and I was blown away by this index of extraordinarily valuable resources in all content areas and in various methods of delivery:  podcasts, video casts, PDFs, course sites, etc.  This link is well worth anyone’s time in exploring for any area of interest.  However, I wanted to evaluate a specific open course so I went straight to the LINK for the single Journalism course listed since I teach two Journalism classes. This link goes directly to a YouTube video lecture of a UCLA professor teaching one of his college classes in Journalism and there are several more recorded lectures from this course in the YouTube sidebar.  While the lecture is very informative, it is not the best practice for an online course according to the criteria established in our course text. It does not appear to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment at all.  It does not provide any of the following nine fundamentals of teaching online recommended in chapter four of our text on pages 134-137:

• Avoid “Dumping” a Face-to-Face Course onto the Web

• Organize the Course and Make the Organization and Requirements Clear to Students

• Keep Students Informed Constantly

• Think about Course Outcomes

• Test Applications, Not Rote Memory

• Integrate the Power of the Web into the Course

• Apply Adult Learning Principles with Nontraditional Students

• Extend Course Readings Beyond the Text

• Train Students to Use the Course Website    

(Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S., 2012, pp. 134-137)

                                                                                   

There were no “powerful opportunities for resource utilization, collaboration, and communication: (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 136), no “options for customization” (p. 136), no “plethora of online resources” (p. 137) built in, no “online tutorials” (p. 137), no “announcements tools”(p. 135) such as a syllabus, email capabilities or “calendar, activities, and expectations” (p. 134) or outlines of any sort, and there was no form of “student assessment” (p. 135). Plus, I just didn’t appreciate the poor sound quality besides.  Basically, the course was deficient in most every regard especially in that it does not implement any course activities that maximize active learning for the students.  The only sense of interaction a student, or should I simply say a "viewer," gets is the occasional questions asked of the lecturer by students who remain invisible in the video as they sit outside the camera's scope.  "It is imperative to activate higher-order thinking skills" (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 135) for learners, but this course simply encourages a couch potato to sit back, view, listen and eat popcorn.

Apparently, I am not the only one who does not consider UCLA’s offerings as worthy enough to be called courseware.  HERE is a great article written in 2010, by one critic who asserts that video streaming a lecture does not make a course.  Additionally, the article details how UCLA was pressured to suspend their YouTube videos due to copyright infringement accusations.  Very Interesting!  Chapter 10 of our course text teaches on these intimidating legal concerns (Simonson et al., 2012. P. 295), but just to take a bit of scare out of this one case, HERE is another article (really it’s a kind of press release) which explains UCLA’s move to safeguard themselves on the federal copyright act.  UCLA even developed a set of guidelines for its faculty to use streaming video as found at this LINK.  WOW!  Who thought it would be so tricky to launch a course online?!

While it’s true that “the literature abounds with guidelines for distance education [see (Beldarrain, 2006, p. 144)] and identifies ‘best practices’ of distance education, [still] common threads have emerged”(Simonson et al., 2012, p. 178).  While you should not abandon the Open Culture resource because there are many numerous courses there that do fulfill best practices for distance education, ultimately, I like this list as the best one for evaluating whichever open course you choose:  

“1. Instructors should provide clear guidelines for interaction with students.

2.      Well-designed discussion assignments facilitate meaningful cooperation among students.

3.      Students should present course projects.

4.      Instructors need to provide two types of feedback:  information feedback and acknowledgement feedback.

5.      Online courses need deadlines.

6.      Challenging tasks, sample cases, and praise for quality work communicate high expectations.

7.      Allowing student to choose project topics incorporates diverse views into online courses” (Simonson et al., 2012, p. 179).

References

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance education trends: Integrating new technologies to foster
student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2),139–153.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

A Case Study: Asynchronous Training

While there are many distance learning technologies that could be used effectively to address the training needs in this case study, the focus below is only on the following three in order to more fully explore each one:

I. Course Management Software (CMS)

A CMS such as Canvas Instructure provides a reliable learning environment “in the cloud” so that the workers can access content during any shift or even on their own personal time from home. More than one worker could access the courseware at any given time, so scheduling would not present any problems. A CMS offers organization by content or by modules or “around themes or ideas that directly relate to student activities or learning” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright & Zvacek, 2012, p. 117). This would be perfect for establishing the biodiesel company’s individual safety modules. The CMS also allows branding features so that the company can customize its online look with logos and mission statements, etc. in order to bring the sense of workers’ physical environment at the plant to the internet. The instructional designer in this case should look for a classroom management software that provides easy, intuitive navigation capabilities which “permit students to move through the learning activities at their own rate and pace, in a route they determine themselves” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 119). Also, a good CMS will provide tools to insert hyperlinks, graphics, photos and embedded videos so that “learning materials are available across the entire Web” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 125). This would allow the instructional designer to refer workers to other manufacturing companies who follow best safety practices, thus expanding student learning and the credibility of the training. Finally, in this case study, a CMS would provide administrative “manageability: Can [the course site] system track the appropriate information about the learner and the content?” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 140). Mining for data about how workers use the system would provide invaluable information not only for the ID to revise content, but also for monitoring and clocking which workers have completed which modules.

A Photo of one Biodeisel Plant:

II. Podcasts

“Podcasting is not a new idea. It has been around at least since the audio tutorial movement with the Sony Walkman” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 146), which is why using podcasts for this case study makes sense. Experts also encourage supplementing podcasts with pictures or videos. Similar to a SONY Walkman audio tape from the old days, the podcasts placed in this training could be positioned as a more familiar technology to the workers, some of which may be digital immigrants and therefore not especially comfortable with online learning. From the instructional designers perspective, “audio recordings are easy to make and simple to edit, and they can easily be uploaded into course management systems” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 130). Relying heavily on the podcast distance learning technology lets the ID further customize the content to each particular safety module, while maintaining the workers’ attention. “The versatility of podcasting may impact the way distance educators deliver instruction as well as the manner in which students are engaged in learning” (Beldarrain, 2006, p. 141). Perhaps, the ID in this case study might even explore recording one of the supervisors’ voices within the podcast in order to enhance familiarity and credibility of the learning. From the workers’ view, “the technology is relatively easy for students to use” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 125) just like hitting the pause, play and rewind buttons of the old tape recorders, only now with a click. The only caution for the ID is to make sure that each podcast be single recorded events not lasting any more than “3 to 10 minutes long” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 146). Studies show that anything longer than that, loses its learning transfer value.

Showcase Podcast Example in Distance Learning

Stanford University Open Courseware on iTunes 

Stanford on iTunes U provides access to a wide range of Stanford-related digital audio content, courses, faculty lectures, event highlights, music, sports, and more via the iTunes Store, Apple’s popular online music, video, and podcast service. This site says, “Stanford on iTunes U grew organically out of a pilot project with Apple, beginning in the spring of 2004, to deliver supplemental course content to registered students using iTunes. We soon realized that the same platform would be an elegant and cost-effective way to deliver Stanford content to alumni and the public as well. The project has proven to be a great fit between Stanford and Apple. Apple provides us with an intuitive and broad scale method for distribution, as well as the storage and bandwidth for our content.”

Another Showcase of Podcasts in Distance Learning

Click HERE to jump to a link which provides an index of hundreds of FREE podcast modules on every topic of interest and every category of learning and living. Some podcasts are short while others are many hours long. Explore the wonderful world of podcasting.

III. Virtual Worlds and Avatars

The supervisors at this biodiesel plant are concerned that their workers remain engaged in the independent learning and that each worker can show their understanding of the safety training. A Virtual world could be created which matched the look of the plant's physical surroundings and then, one module or safety site at a time, virtual workers could carry out safety measures in this interactive world. Workers would remain engaged as they make the avatars in this copycat plant environment move to make the correct safety choices on the floor, the virtual floor that is. A worker could be given several choices in each given safety scenario to carry out correct safety procedures with their avatar. If they make the wrong move, the virtual world could be designed to track that, but then to also coach the learner with additional safety tips and reminders until the worker/learner makes the avatar execute the correct safety steps. “Virtual worlds appear to have exciting potential for placing students in real-life applications of course content; for example, in problem solving situations… virtual environments [are] built on the very premises of online engagement and interaction”(Simonson et al, 2012, p. 132).

A big concern about creating virtual worlds, however, is that they can be labor intensive to develop and instructional designers may not have the budget to support this kind of instructional development. In this circumstance, the virtual world still offers lower cost simulation tools such as simple talking avatars which can be inserted into the CMS to serve as a guide for example. A cartoon or character guide such as the ones which can be quickly customized at this Web 2.0 site can be used as a friendly, pop up Sherpa guide of sorts to talk the factory workers through the modules and help them manage their way toward the end of all the safety modules.

VOKI Avatars



Of course, the ID would have to make sure that all the necessary technical requirements for accessing a virtual world are in place before the asynchronous training could begin. “Bandwidth limitations make it difficult to present advanced technologies such as streamed video, multimedia, and memory intensive graphics, over the Web” (Simonson et al, 2012, p. 126).

Showcase Virtual World Example in Distance Learning

Second Life


“Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, reports on the company's Web site that universities such as Harvard, Texas State, and Stanford have Second Life campuses. While Linden Lab states that more than 200 educators and about as many universities are using Second Life, all signs point to a far larger community. The fun factor can't be ignored, either. While some people think Second Life is too much fun for a serious endeavor, many teachers will retort that learning should be fun. A learning environment such as Second Life can make students eager to join the classes or projects. Another significant benefit to using Second Life is the availability of multimedia presentation tools. An instructor can load a PowerPoint presentation onto a virtual screen, play a video on a virtual monitor, and type Web site URLs students can launch immediately within the program. Teachers hand out class notes or other literature on note cards that can be copied into Word documents, and can make graphics that are clickable to reveal more information” (Harrison, 2012).

Other Virtual World Links:


Click HERE for virtual world lists and embedded video peeks at complex 3D virtual worlds used in numerous topic areas.


Click HERE for a listing of dozens of simpler virtual world games and sites for various age groups, for dial up or broadband, for the PC or the Mac and those that are FREE too.


References

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance education trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2),139–153.

Harrison, D. (2012). Real life teaching in a virtual world. 1105 Media Inc. Retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/02/18/Real-Life-Teaching-in-a-Virtual-World.aspx?Page=2

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

The Definition of Distance Education Evolves

Distance Learning was for Geeks

I remember watching the lunar landing live as a little girl and then later that evening I watched THE WALTONS on TV where the oldest child in the TV family, John-boy, got part of his education via correspondence classes.  I remember thinking “how old fashioned compared to going to the moon!”  Fast forward to college, and I was proud to be one of a small few who took a course in BASIC programming.  The entire semester culminated in a project of programming scripts hundreds of lines long, which made a smiling, winking face on the computer screen.  Still, distance education always seemed like a useless pursuit to me because it did not seem to offer what I was looking for.  I always wanted to be ahead of the technology learning curve and was fascinated by innovation, but I just never wanted to program inside an operating system….ugh!  In 1990, I finally ruled it out when I attended my first class in a Masters Degree program for computer science.  Twenty minutes of syllabus review and mind blowing confusion and I walked out for good without regret, deciding that the “world wide web” and programming was only for geeks who enjoyed communicating in secret codes. 

Distance Education Still Misunderstood

Now I operate daily with four different email addresses, a work computer and a home laptop.  I can get information from anywhere, anytime and I spend countless hours per month learning off the internet.  I used to think that was the sum total of distance education, like a self-study, unless I was willing to commit to a computer science degree.  Indeed, I never even heard of alternative degrees in Technology outside of learning operating systems hardware and programming.  So distance education never seemed very compelling since I really wanted to advance my technology skills, but just not in html, COBOL, C+ or any of the hundreds of others.  Plus, raising my children kept me busy enough and the high school job didn’t really require the skills so much.   The idea of actually obtaining a Masters degree in Instructional Technology only hit my radar about three years ago, so I researched it.  I was thrilled and validated to discover Walden’s program, so I signed up!  Learning from a formal “institution” via distance education has transformed my opinion of distance learning and my definition of geeks. 

Currently Improved Definition of Distance Education

This particular course has augmented my understanding even further.  I have learned that new standards have been developed (SCORM) to better define technology access and quality in learning tools, including data, voice and video (Distance Education: The Next Generation, 2012).  I was reassured that much scholarly work has been done globally to formalize a uniform definition of distance education and that foreign governments have weighed in as well.  I have learned that the definition of distance education is a changing permutation of many different approaches including the open learning approach and the virtual school approach (Simonson et al, 2012).

Dictionary.com defines the word “institution” as a noun: “an organization, establishment, foundation, society, or the like, devoted to the promotion of a particular cause or program, especially one of a public, educational, or charitable character.”  The building devoted to such work is incidental.  This became extraordinarily important for me when my honors student, 16 year old daughter dropped out of high school after her sophomore year to basically “self-school”.  Together we designed a rigorous line-up of home study, community college, open courseware (Yale and MIT) and college level achievement tests  to meet her state requirements and earn her 18 college credits besides.  I am proud to report that she did a good deal of her learning through distance education and she finished high school in three years and entered college with sophomore, second year status.  Distance education is powerful and freeing and improving every day.

Future of Distance Education

So it seems that a combination of my progressing technical knowledge, my profession and my life stage contributed to my changing definition of distance education.  Universally, factors such as profit making, governmental support and pressures, students’ collective sense of autonomy, the demands of the global population, advancing technologies and the morphing teacher-student bond will continually reshape the definition of distance education (Tracey & Richey, 2005).  I believe that “web-based instruction has the potential for never-before-seen levels of personal customization” (Huett, Moller, Foshay & Coleman, 2008, p. 75) and we, as instructional designers, are on the forefront of this groundbreaking trend.  The struggle for us lies in the following statement:  “we have neither the unlimited time nor unlimited resources to prove our worth to the current leaders aggressively advocating the use of technology in training and education” (Moller, Foshay, & Huett, 2008, p. 66). Yet, why not go for the moon?

Click Here to see my Visual Definition of Distance Education

TIMELINE FACTS

1883-1892  Newspaper correspondence courses and the first “open source” courses offered through The Society to Encourage Studies at Home (for economically disadvantaged women-now dissolved)

1898 Telegraph and Hermods (Swedish company still around)

1906-1933 Several institutions, colleges and universities establish correspondence classes

At nineteen years old, my Irish grandfather arrived in America in 1908 with a sixth grade education and landed a mill factory job. He worked that mill job his whole life and went on to have eight children, including my mom, the fourth.

1963-1965 Several correspondence classes offered via TV, Phone and Radio

I was born in 1962, number seven of twelve kids!

1969 The Internet’s Grandfather was born at NASA  called ARPANET

My grandfather was 70 and still only had a sixth grade education.

I was 7 and watched John-Boy Walton take correspondence classes on TV.

1970 Walden University was established

I was 8 years old and climbed trees every chance I got.

1975 to early 80s Video Tape Classes and the internet grows

I tried not to fall asleep during video programs in high school.

In college, I made a winking, smiley face for my final project in BASIC programming class.

The 90s New Virtual Schools and Blended Learning

I got my first computer in 1989 for its powerful word processing capabilities…wow!

It was a Leading Edge Model D, cost $600.00 and I needed to know MS DOS commands to work it.

In 1990, I attended my first class in a Master Degree program for Computer Science. 

Twenty minutes of syllabus review and mind blowing confusion and I walked out for good,

deciding that the “world wide web” and programming was only for geeks.

I sold large corporations GEM Service, the first aggregate email service offered by the CT phone company.  I sold voice mail systems and I became a trainer for Microsoft products. I saw the power of technology first hand.  I started my own ADDIE consulting firm.

The Turn of the Millennium LMS developed, Web 1.0, Learning Portals and SCORM established

2007-2009 Web 2.0 and Blackboard, wider distribution of the PC in laptop form

I have owned about 20 different computers and laptops in my life and can’t imagine living without one.

In 2011, I started my Walden Master Degree in Instructional Technology and am now on my 7^th class.

References

Distance Education: The Next Generation. (2012). [Video Transcript]. [With Dr. Simonson]. Baltimore, MD:  Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6493363&Survey=1&47=8988324&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Coleman, C. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5), 63–67.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 1: Training and development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70–75.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.). (chapt. 2, pp. 32–4). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Tracey, M., & Richey, R. (2005). The evolution of distance education. Distance Learning, 2(6), 17–21.