e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

LETSI/SCORM 2.0 Wrap Up and Thanks!

So I spent most of last week at the LETSI/SCORM 2.0 Workshop in Pensacola, FL. I used CoverItLive to do a running set of notes of the workshop and that's available here. I don't want to go over all the stuff in my notes but I did want to be sure and point out that the workshop developed and is currently refining about 30 use cases for SCORM 2.0. This is in addition to the 100+ white papers that have been written and submitted to LETSI on SCORM 2.0 topics.

All that tells me is that there is considerable intellectual firepower being directed at this issue of what SCORM should/would or could be in the future. It also tells me that the LETSI leadership is serious about creating an open and transparent process and being as inclusive as possible. Kudos.  It doesn't tell me if the efforts will be successful -I think that a large part of that success will depend on how well LETSI can research, evaluate and leverage existing work being done in terms of SOAs, Web services and so on...and how fast LETSI can move....and how the market reacts to LETSI's biz model. I just had this thought - could LETSI be hamstrung by the market it serves?

What I mean is that the e-learning industry - or whatever you want to call it - over the past ten years, hasn't exactly been keeping pace with the pace of tech advances...I think KM has probably done better but still not great...but services that have their own conferences like ECM (enterprise content management) have also been progressing but as an industry, I don't think e-learning has exactly done a great job at integrating the advances in these other areas. I wonder if part of this is due in part to an out-moded model of instructional design than is focused on industrial-era units of learning like courses and isn't built from an architectural standpoint, to handle the idea of people actually learning vis systems like IM, wikis, blogs, etc.

I will say this...whether or not LETSI or SCORM 2.0 succeeds or not - it will not be because it lacks great, dedicated people. I met a lot of great folks like "Hey I think I'm drinking with Robert Scoble" look-alike Lang Holloman, or my new Twitter-based best friend and brother from another mother Aaron Silvers, Dapper Dan Young, Angelo "Have I told you about the flood" Panar, Tom "former guy who really ran Macromedia" King, Av "The Host with the Most" Barr, Allyn "G'day mate" Radford, Eric "Socrates was an idiot and I taught Piaget everything he knew" Roberts, Mike "BAQON Bits" Rustici, Nina "The Hammer" Pasini Diebler, Ellen "The Maestro" Meiselman and a cast of dozens. I should also thanks to the IHMC for a TERRIFIC hosting job and a great chef. So let's get out there and get all mavericky and see if we can see Russia from our house or maybe just a way forward.

What's the opposite of evolution? An interesting question about SCORM

So my friend Mark Friedman, down at JKDDC, posed the following question to his LinkedIn network:

"What do you think the SCORM E-Learning Reference Model will evolve into during the next 10 years? SCORM is literally 10 years old now - so guessing what it can evolve into (or not) in the next 10 years seems to be good question to ponder these days."

I just wanted to post a couple excerpts from the answers that Mark has received so far.

• "Where I see the technology going is being adopted by a major player in non-traditional learning for grade and high school students. The use of the technologies will be financed by non-traditional program dollars that states provinces and countries are setting aside to find ways of educating students that don't fit into a class room."  Sorry. I just don't see that happening - not because it technically couldn't but I just don't see the biz case that would drive that.
• "I'm not sure SCORM is still relevant. A lot of people are putting eLearning out there without really using SCORM (that is, their content is SCORM compatible, but doesn't really make use of the features); while I am a huge advocate of component-driven development, eLearning is one area where I feel that the tools for rapid prototyping and developing eLearning content have developed so rapidly that SCORM compliance is much less of an issue"
• "In my work, SCORM is already outdated. It was developed for the Federal Government 10 years ago. The individual sco's in the standard include both display and content. The purpose is to allow each SCORM compliant course or module to transfer tracking information no matter which LMS platform you are using. I work with multiple LMS systems and come across many problems with compatibility. It's not efficient to re-publish a course for every end user display platform."
• "While I agree with the general point made previously that SCORM is outdated, I also think you have to consider the question from the point of view of emerging models of learner behaviour and their drivers in the Mobile Web 2.0 world. Blended learning, personalized learning and social or collaborative learning are not driven by questions of whether objects within a program are SCORM-compliant."

Facebook (for example) versus an LMS/LCMS: Need some technical help...

OK...so help me out here....someone smarter than me (big number) help me understand the difference in architectural requirements and transactions that go on in say a social network like facebook with millions of users, probably hundreds of thousands of concurrent users, all executing millions of transactions from chat to photo uploads to quiz taking...with those of an LMS or an LCMS. I really want to understand issues around scaling, etc.  Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

SCORM and the Whole 2.0 Thing Again.....

I recently posted about the SCORM 2.0 Call for Papers and how I feel this is a very important moment for SCORM and that I think it would be great if the papers came back with big,hairy audacious goals that really sought to move the industry forward and so forth.

As if so often the case, I am merely following what Tom King has also already thought about:

"I think this is important, as we could be at the cusp of a make-or-break situation for evolution (or revolution) of learning and training infrastructure. Much of the current e-learning and LMS infrastructure is grounded in the learning and training approaches of the 1990s ('80s? '70s??). By comparison, today's technical and learning environment is much more “read-write”, collaborative, social and nomadic-- all while being more personal and individualized." [I added the bold]

Evidently Brooks Andrus REALLY feel strongly about this as well:

"I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone, outside the DOD / ADL who doesn’t think SCORM and AICC are over engineered pieces of junk. And the LMS / LCMS products and vendors engender pure hate at every contact point whether purchaser, content develoeprs, admins or end users. Do a couple of white-papers do anything to help remedy the situation?"

I do think that there are very serious issues here and I would say that if LETSI and or the authors of the white papers fail to appreciate the degree to which the marketplace in general has moved away from both the pedagogical and technological models that were dominant when ADL started - and by that failure do not push forward far and/or fast enough...there is a real possibility that even DOD dollars will not be able to sustain the effort. Make no mistake, I still think there is a role to be filled here but it is a role that focuses on pedagogy, design, design, design, and to a small degree any unique, technical requirements that are not being met by existing and emerging market standards. Its a different role but its there.

Technical Committee on Learning Technology's Special Issue on ADL/SCORM

Man! If that title just doesn't make all the geek hairs on the back of your neck stand up, then I don't know what will! Actually, I kid, I kid because I love.
From the issue:

Special Issue on ADL/SCORM... 2

Revisiting the -ilities: Adjusting the Distributed Learning Marketplace, Again?. 3

SCORM Frameworker: An Approach to Supporting Implementation of Standards-based Distance Learning. 5

Identifying and Embracing the Trade-offs in Creating SCORM-Conformant SCOs. 7

The JADL 2012 Integrated Prototype Architecture. 9

Integrating the Delta 3D Engine with a SCORM-Managed Learning Environment 11

DARWARS: An Architecture for Delivering Experiential Training. 13

Intelligent Delivery of Sharable Content Objects – An Integrated Solution to Enhance Learning. 15

Authoring Tools for ITS with consideration of SCORM Standard. 17

NLTML: A Mark-up Language for Transformation-based Question Generation

"FeDCOR: An Institutional CORDRA Registry" (D-Lib Magazine)

Man...I know I have to read this and I know this stuff is important (mad props out to my ADL brothers and sisters) ...but this title just makes me want to drive a hot nail into my head. Here is the recommended pre-req. reading.

I cannot imagine how freaking exciting this video must be!!!

(from CETIS)

Interoperability in action video
Wilbert Kraan, CETIS staff
November 02, 2004

"The eXchange for Learning (X4L) programme has released a video on the web about the practicalities of making interoperable learning content. While there's plenty to read about the pros and cons of standards, this video shows an actual scenario of finding, creating and enhancing learning objects using a variety of tools.

With the video, Mark Power, the CETIS X4L support officer, has created a step by step guide through the four most common actions people need to do with learning objects."

"When metadata becomes content, and authoring learning" (CETIS)

"and the result an assessment method and part of a learner's/learning profile, you have something like Topic Maps. One of a number of emerging semantic web standards, it is the subject of quite a bit of research and development. The Norwegian estandard project and its members are busy working on educational applications of the technology."

LINK

I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to post this but...Meta-data, meet meta-crap.

Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia
Cory Doctorow
Version 1.3: 26 August 2001

"There are at least seven insurmountable obstacles between the world as we know it and meta-utopia. I'll enumerate them below:

People lie
People are lazy
People are stupid
Mission: Impossible -- know thyself
Schemas aren't neutral
Metrics influence results
There's more than one way to describe something"

"CORDRA: ADL's Federated Content Repository Model"

(LINK)

"Summary of the ADL Content Object Repository, Discovery and Registration (or Resolution) Architecture, to be demonstrated later this fall and launched early in the new year. The idea is to create a system whereby all learning resources can be given a name and a system where these names can be resolved into physical addresses on the network. Not included in this paper (because I was talking at the time) was the exchange I had with the presenter, Dan Rehak, about the management of the system, the question of whether it breaks the internet into pieces, whether it builds authentication into the network infrastructure, whether the use of handles is the best way to locate objects, and whether the proposed system is or is not the same as RDF. These are all serious issues (in my view, at least), and while Rehak says this is a work in progress, it is also true that it will be dropped on the community as an essential fait accompli early in the new year. I will have more on all this some time in the future."