When I was a kid, the whole world was one giant "Learn-O-Rama." For the most part (outside of the standard classroom), I picked what interested me and learned my way through it. It was a nonlinear process, much like a bloodhound follows its nose to sniff out new information. Nonlinear learning suggests that how we work our way through information can itself contain information, and frame our learning. "It’s the road not the destination," said Jared Bendis, a multimedia developer who works and teaches in the area of nonlinear multimedia storytelling at Case Western. This may seem like a new concept to many: the idea that the learner chooses the sequence in which they learn new material. But the idea on nonlinear learning isn’t new. It’s been discussed in the literature for some time. It’s only in the past few years that tools have emerged to take advantage of a nonlinear approach and put it within reach of educators, not just programmers (remember Macromedia Director and Toolbook? Yikes.) One tool we’ve discussed here before is Pachyderm, a multimedia web-based authoring program that creates highly interactive flash presentations without having to be an Adobe Flash programmer. (See Chris’s Pachyderm post.) Most online learning remains linear with learner choices limited to "next-page-previous-page." What nonlinear learning offers is a model based on self-organization of ideas by the learner where, as Eleanor Duckworth points out in The Having of Wonderful Ideas, "the individual has done the work of putting [ideas] together for himself or herself, and they give rise to new ways to put them together." "Learning often takes jumps throwing new light on and affecting much that has been learned before," says Dr. Uri Merry of the Institute of Organizational Consultation. "In learning sometimes a small input can have enormous reverberations. We learn with disorderly jumps between whole and parts, parts and whole." (Nonlinear learning LO14329.) When you combine this nonlinearity with the power of these disorderly jumps in learning, you arrive at a place of wonderful chaos. The kind of chaos that made learning so effective and compelling to us as kids. A nonlinear approach is not for every learner; there is evidence that learning styles can predispose a learner toward or against it. And some material is intrinsically linear, as in step-by-step procedural knowledge. But the potential for a nonlinear approach to impact e-learning is too good to pass up as another tool to add to the mix. It all boils down to the potential for nonlinear multimedia storytelling. But that’s a story we’ll take up at another time.

Crowdsourcing has become a popular mechanism to generate innovations and harness the contributions of mass volunteers for a specific purpose. Crowdsourcing often takes the form of a company or agency placing an open call for help to solve a problem. Individuals respond with potential solutions and in some cases receive cash rewards if their solution is selected. The concept is that the company placing the call receives a greater variety of solutions at a lower cost than would have been possible by retaining dedicated problem-solving specialists on staff. Innovation Exchange is just one of many Web sites that have sprung up to facilitate crowdsourcing of business solutions. MIT’s homepage design refreshes everyday, thanks to crowdsourcing. But there is another type of crowdsourcing—one that seeks public participation not so much because of the distributed expertise but because of the sheer power of the masses. The Galaxy Zoo project, for example, crowdsources volunteers to help classify galaxies according to their shapes. Over 200,000 people have contributed to date. The recent tweet, blog, photo, and video feeds from Iran’s disputed presidential election could be considered a perfect storm of crowdsourcing, citizen participation feeding into the traditional news outlets. The application of crowdsourcing to education has been discussed before—for example, by Rob Jacobs on the Education Innovation blog. Jacobs makes the case for teachers to leverage, through crowdsourcing, professional learning communities in what he calls the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative approach. Tony Karrer’s eLearning Technology blog has also discussed crowdsourcing and e-learning technology. Exemplifying the very concept of crowdsourcing, Karrer initiated brainstorming on a new term to replace "crowdsourcing;" suggestions included "peersourcing" and "experttapping." The type of collective input Karrer refers to appears to be focused on getting help from peers or others who have expertise in a certain area. Another type of crowdsourcing that could also be leveraged in instructional media development is the wisdom of the masses, the potential learners who may not have any expertise in instructional design or educational curriculum development. For it is only the learners who possess the secret to how they learn. The key to crowdsourcing is matching the need (what you are seeking) with those who can address the need (provide solutions). That is, seeking help from appropriate sources. In publishing, for example, content experts are appropriate sources of accuracy review and end-user representatives are appropriate sources of usability review. While there may be value in an educator seeking help from other educators and professionals, as Jacob’s model suggests, there may be equal or greater value in seeking input from the learner him or herself—for it is ultimately the learner whom educators are seeking to change (that is, we want the learner to learn). Enter crowdsourcing. Here is the idea: Basic educational materials (publications, podcasts, learning objects, etc.) are placed in an online environment. The public is invited to enter the environment and experience the existing educational materials. They are then challenged to create and post a summary of or response to what they just learned, using whatever medium they prefer. Some users might create a short video, some might choose to write, some might create a Pachyderm. The learner-created media would supplement the teacher-generated materials, and could enhance other learners’ experiences through social learning. Have you tried something like this? Would you be willing to?

The use of social networking tools continues to expand at a torrid pace across all layers of society both nationally and internationally. One of the larger longitudinal studies on adoption of social media in corporations comes out of Dartmouth University and shows an amazing rate of increased social media usage between 2007 and 2008. Most recently, social networking tools have helped organize Iranian political movements and provided a catalyst to facilitate Barak Obama’s ascendency to the Presidency (read about Chris Hughes).  Who can forget the "twittering" senators who rather unceremoniously tapped on their PDAs in the middle of a senate session? I’ve lost track of the number of times a TV program has used its 30-frame-per-second platform to showcase static blog pages, quotes from Twitter and Facebook pages. From a purely technological standpoint, there’s no denying the fact that social media tools tap into an underlying human need to communicate and build social networks. What I find intriguing is how best to utilize these tools within instructional or academic contexts. Sure, students and the upcoming generations will always be fluent in the latest social media tools, but how can business and academia leverage their fluency with the latest tools to achieve learning objectives? Some might argue that traditional models of epistemology or instruction have been rendered irrelevant by the highly collaborative, decentralizing nature of Web 2.0. I’ve read a number of articles lately that suggest the latest wave of technology is so robust that there is no longer a real need for instructional technologists, dedicated technology designers or producers.  On Harold Jarche and Jay Cross’ blog, TogetherLearn, I admittedly insinuated not long ago that there should be a more "democratized" distribution of work within educational or training departments. I am quick to agree with those who suggest Web 2.0 be used to empower learners to help create more learning content. My main contention is that the sum of effective instructional principles are not captured by a single theory of learning and in a world that continues to demand more specialization, it’s hard for me to imagine the need for skilled and experienced specialists in any domain has gone away. On the other hand, for some, Constructivism, "just in time" learner-generated learning or decentralized peer-to-peer collaboration has displaced all other learning approaches. Since we are living in the era of the "citizen" journalist, technologist, photographer, teacher, publisher, writer, etc., the question posed might be: Is there really a need for "professionals" and do we really need training departments or traditional models of teaching people how to do things or change behavior? Having spent time in both private industry and within academia over the last 15 or so years as an instructional technologist, I think it’s obviously important to embrace the latest technology and look for new ways of changing behavior, but I think that the reality for most enterprise-level training departments or universities is that it’s difficult at best to teach someone how to build a computer, operate on a patient or project manage an IT project without adherence to some type of process that incorporates a systematic approach to learning. While many corporate training departments give constructivist learning great attention, their primary mandate is to meet specific corporate objectives like training engineers how to service software, repairing hardware or accomplishing some real-world task. When juxtaposing this E-learning goal to change a learner’s behavior with a specific technologies’ instructional potential, I think it’s also important to think critically about how user adoption normally takes place in different environments. It goes without saying that there is rarely a silver bullet or single tool for any type of learning need. The Gartner group captures this phenomenon well in its "Hype Cycle" model. This model is made up of five phases and based on my past experiences in the world of E-learning, I find it very accurate. When reflecting on the place of Social Media within E-learning, I believe we are most likely at step #2, which is the"Peak of Inflated Expectations."  Gartner suggests that ultimately, most technologies mature until they reach the last step, "Plateau of Productivity." However, until this last step is reached, there will invariably be a leveling out in terms of adoption and a more critical and intentional examination of how to match a technology with the best content domains, niches and real-world uses.  One needs only to look back at tools like Blackboard, WebEx and other E-learning platforms or tools to see the unfolding of the Hype Cycle. So, what does Web 2.0 really mean then for those who work with instructional technology? Should the forms and instructional approaches used in more "traditional" E-learning courses be replaced with Web 2.0 equivalents (if there are such equivalents)? Sequenced training with clear objectives, assessments, meaningful tasks that mirror the real-world as much as possible, job aids, and the ability to monitor student progress have usually been the easiest way to ensure learning objectives are met. I’m guessing that the great bulk of E-learning content within private enterprise and universities is still very linear, trackable and adheres to a more traditional form of formatting content in an electronic format.  Why is this usually the case? When exercises are overly open ended or randomly sequenced, more one-on-one time between instructor and student is generally needed, which is rarely practical or possible within a business or university environment. There are numerous other reasons, but this issue of time, cost and complexity constraint is definitely a primary motivator. My point is that in addition to the practicalities of creating an E-learning course in a reasonable amount of time and ensuring the stakeholders can measure user performance, many of the basic behavior-oriented teaching /learning approaches are still as relevant today as they were in 1940s when Instructional Design was applied to help shape visual media that provided more immediate and cost-effective training for WW II pilots and mechanics. E-learning professionals obviously have a bigger toolbox now that they did 50 years ago, but if instructional technology is indeed an academic discipline that has been maturing since it first took root at Florida State University, isn’t it reasonable to assume that we would utilize at least some of the historical principles and lessons captured in this discipline to help inform how we use the latest tools to achieve the latest objectives? From the perspective of the E-learning producer, using Web 2.0 tools generally requires a much more "hands off" approach when it comes to crafting participant’s online learning environments and I often use the analogy of the library versus the coffee shop to explain it to other faculty. In short, the university has more traditionally sought to recreate the "library" in the classroom: Students walk into a rather clinical building, check out books and leave—no talking allowed! On the other hand, the coffee shop is a much smaller room, talking is encouraged and it is obvious there is a mixture of socializing and learning going on. What is more, the much smaller coffee shop requires a much higher degree of intentionality when deciding what goes on the wall, how to arrange the furniture and how best to encourage a social learning atmosphere. At the end of the day, I believe that creating an effective Community of Practice (CoP) or virtual community resembles the coffee shop much more than the library. There are obvious benefits and limitations inherent to each environment and it helps to understand this when you begin your design work.  Just as most libraries house a coffee shop, it has been our approach to encourage integration of these more adaptable virtual communities of practice with larger and more static repositories of online content. In my next post, I will provide some examples of how OSU is using virtual Communities of Practice (CoP) and some other Web 2.0 tools in OSU Extension-based content domains to widen the reach of OSU community engagement and instruction. What do you think? Have Web 2.0 technologies rendered any or all historical E-learning approaches irrelevant? Is your business or academic department using a blend of traditional E-learning content/approaches with newer social media to house the "coffee shop" in the "library"?

Lately I’ve been absorbed in podcasts on a variety of topics—instructional gaming, carbon markets, sleep deprivation…. I find what I want to learn about on the Web, sync to my iPhone, and listen on the go at my convenience. Podcasts can be audio or video. RSS feeds provide subscribers the latest files, to be watched or listened to on a computer or any number of mobile devices. Podcasting makes content convenient both in time and space. I hope I’m learning something from what I am listening to, but I’ve also been mulling over what I’m learning about the podcasting experience itself. I have 10 observations: Listening to human voices talking—especially on headphones, but disconnected from visual input such as reading or watching—has an immediate, connecting, personalizing quality. Audio podcasting can capitalize on the fact that voices in isolation are enchanting to many ears, in some cases more powerful than in combination with visual images. Because podcasts can be presented as a series or set of episodes, users can subscribe to them and consume them as serials on an extended basis. This creates opportunities for deepening of the educational experience and strategic reiteration. Because of their portable, flexible nature, podcasts lend themselves well to repurposing. Existing audio and video content can be repackaged as podcasts. Great potential exists for creative scripting and composition of podcast programs. Professional presentation and sound quality are valuable. Podcast art and introductory and concluding narration are worth the value added. Nothing beats the authentic voice of a capable content expert talking about their subject of interest. The format can be a presentation or an interview. The iTunes interface is not the smoothest form of navigation, but you get used to it. Many public libraries offer audiobooks and other programs for "checkout" to their patrons. While these are not technically syndicated podcasts, they can be ported to mobile devices and used in much the same way. Excellent radio program podcasts are available from National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and American Public Media. According to Kui Xie and Mengmeng Gu, podcasting has advantages over both in-person and broadcast forms of Cooperative Extension work. For example, podcasting can be used to provide an additional point of access and to decrease demands on Extension educators. They note podcasting’s characteristics of flexibility and mobility and suggest that Extension clients could use Extension-produced podcasts as "first aid kits" for solving problems. Many land-grant universities are providing some form of podcast of their Extension materials. Oregon State University, for example, has converted short Northwest Gardens radio segments into a podcast series on iTunes U. Alan Acosta describes Stanford University’s rationale for partnering with Apple as one of the first pilot schools in iTunes U: [W]hile it would be a great tool for teaching—it also could be a powerful way of spreading the intellectual content we have beyond the university. It’s knowledge in action, allowing the user to control the learning process independently." Podcasts are easy enough to create and distribute that they can be used not only as a mechanism of distributing information but also as a participatory medium. Dennis Mocigemba believes that citizen podcasting could be used to strengthen the fabric of society, serving as a form of civil involvement and community building. Like so many forms of media, podcasts are not one type fits all. Podcasting is in its infancy compared to its potential as a form of both on-the-go education and participatory dialog. Let your ears do the walking.

Social media networking from Twitter and Facebook, to whatever the next hot idea that evolves has one rule for success. "Know Your Audience!" is rule number one in the world of interactive communication. The real issue is less what we know about our audiences , than why we need to know. Our university and all of the land-grant and non-land-grant peers around the country and the world are grappling with a significant issue in the new media world. We have a lot of content, which we want to push out to our target learners. Following rule number one, we know what they need. I mean really, we’re the "experts," right? It’s our job to know who they are and what they need. Our problem is we’re heavy on content and light on engagement. Or so says, ADVERGIRL in her latest blog post. She lists the top four universities for actual engagement using social media networks. I’ll save you the suspense, Oregon State University is not one of them. But I think the ideas these institutions are pursing offer interesting possibilities for Outreach and Engagement at OSU. When we consider social networks as tools for our enterprise, too often we miss the point and obsess on the "social" aspect, as if they are something that can’t be used "professionally." However, if you focus on the "network" part of the concept it is easy to see how and where our audiences can begin to gain value engaging with us. If our goal is reciprocal, i.e. learning from the interaction as much as telling someone what we think they need to know, then the possibilities for real communication seem to surface. The question is do we have the understanding and interest to develop online social networks that can take advantage of what we know from 100 years of face-to-face education and training? As Clive Thompson points our in his Wired magazine blog, this will not come from managers and CEOs.  Effective use of social networking will come from those who best understand their audiences and peers. It will come from those folks anywhere in an organization that are already adept at networking and understand the fundamental value of being connected. A social network is basically the foundation for an effective team. Teams of people who know each other from some level of face-to-face interaction can be more effective in the short run than virtual teams thrown together with a goal but no previous interaction. Pure logic, it seems. Since we’ve been networking with learners for more than 100 years, this should be a no-brainer for Extension. The question is can we begin to develop teams of learners using social networking technology and not succumb to the overwhelming need to just tell them what they need know? Dave King, Associate Provost OSU Outreach and Engagement dave.king@oregonstate.edu

Our office has been receiving numerous requests to help incorporate social media tools into a variety of communication and education projects. Our clients want help creating blogs, wikis, collaborative workspaces, and social networks. We’ve responded with cautious optimism. We’re always happy when our clients want to try out something new with technology. But we also have to be frank and point out that if you create a social networking space, there is no guarantee that it will be used. You can’t mandate that your audience "be social." In several recent cases we suggested our clients survey their intended audience before launching into social media. Here are a few of the questions we’ve developed and have subsequently used in our surveys: • What social media tools (if any) are your target audiences currently using? • Do the audiences currently participate in collaborative work online? • What is their comfort level with social media? • How do they characterize their online technology profile? Are they toes- over-the-edge pioneers or information grazers? Or something in- between? • What features would they find useful? Working collaboratively on projects? Accessing news and events? Sharing best practices? Q&A? Chats? Tweets? Key observations Here are some initial observations we’ve made regarding our clients: • The majority consider themselves "everyday communicators" and "online information gatherers." Only a few consider themselves "digital pioneers" or "creative online users." Interestingly, our findings don’t reflect the commonly assumed age-level biases: 50-60 year-old baby boomers characterize themselves as digital pioneers as often as do the millennial 18-30 year-olds. Approximately one-half use social media (e.g., Facebook); the other half shun it. • Those who rarely use online collaboration and have a low comfort level with social media anticipate greater participation in the future. (Read that as "There’s hope!") • It’s about them, not you. Not surprisingly, using social media for top-down communications from administrators doesn’t score high on their wish list. • The three highest ranked desirable features for an online social network are o Support for online collaborative projects o Getting access to shared material such as videos, slideshows, presentations, and photos o Keeping current with colleagues • They don’t know what they don’t know. For example, our target audiences indicate great interest in receiving timely information about useful URLs, but they see absolutely no value in Twitter. But Twitter has become one of the most valuable sources of quick notification about links. Questions to be tackled Many questions about assessing readiness for social media remain unanswered. We’ll share more observations and lessons learned from our survey in the near future. In the meantime, we invite you to share survey questions you’ve found useful in tackling the issues of bringing social media to your clients.

The Electronic Papyrus blog recently hit 6 months of existence and we felt that some reflection on what we have learned from our experience was in order. Here is a list of lessons learned in no particular order: Electronic Papyrus Traffic from March 2009 to September 2009 (6 months) 1)    Content quality always determines the viability of a blog. We met multiple times prior to our first post to work through issues of audience, tone, scope, main areas of interest, frequency of posts, and division of work.  We continue to meet periodically (perhaps once every other month now) to course correct or discuss strategy. Overall, we probably spend about four to five hours a week on the blog. Keep in mind though that with three contributors, this averages out to about an hour per week per contributor since each of us generally posts only once a month. 2)    Although we initially wrote our posts for a broad audience that included an academic and private enterprise readership, we have been consistently surprised to see how geographically diverse our audience is (or has become). Our readers are primarily located in the following countries (listed by highest proportion first): U.S., United Kingdom, India, Australia, Canada, Germany and then Italy (Cluster Map of this data). We then have a smattering of readers from all over the world, i.e. Latvia, Iran, Kuwait, Senegal, Romania, etc. 3)    Regularly reading other blogs that focus on the same content domain is beneficial for many reasons. In short, it’s very difficult to enter a broader dialog about a specific topic without participating in other blogs. When possible, we found that it is helpful to post comments on others’ blogs as this helps foster relationships with other contributors in the blogosphere. Case in point, while preparing this post, I wandered across the Upside Learning Solutions Blog that had a post on their lessons learned at six months. 4)    Statistics and analytics are indispensible (and sometimes painful). Our most popular keywords are the following (listed in most popular first): Palm Pre, iPhone, Mobile Devices, SmartPhones, Microlearning, E-learning, Rapid E-learning, Millenials, Netflix and Modularization. Ranking article popularity is relative to a number of arbitrary variables, but it appears that our most popular articles were those that dealt with mobility, E-learning, generational characteristics of learning and to some extent, different social media topics. 5)    It’s good having friends. Over the last 6 months, we depended on what I call "Blog Angel Investors" to help us understand how best to engage our audience and to also help give us some marketing buzz. Tony Karrer over at E-learning tech highlighted many of our articles in his vast expanse of blog terrain, which resulted in a significant increase in traffic to our site. The authors of Infodoodads also helped us initially by sharing some of their experiences with blogging.  We were pleased to see a relatively high number of feeds for our posts-by way of example, Harold Jarche was also kind enough to embed a link to our post from his very well-crafted blog. 6)    Be real and if possible, a bit edgy. Blog readers expect blogs to be a little more in line with face-to-face or stream-of-consciousness dialog and more than just an academic article. We did our best to recognize that our identity as a group is tied to an academic department (more attention to presentation style, grammar), but we also did our best to express opinions, grind our axes a bit and in general, to be ourselves. Whether or not we have totally succeeded, it is also a goal to ensure our posts apply to workplace environments. We have also experimented a bit with creating posts as lists, inserting interactive polls, ending our blogs with questions aimed at invoking input and so on. Overall, I think we probably agree that this is an area we can continue to improve as we ourselves learn more about our audience’s preferences. 7)    Comments aren’t everything and are probably not the best indicator of a blog’s success. I think that initially we had hoped for more comments on our posts. The reality is that very, very few people post blog comments, while the vast majority of readers are simply consuming the information. Here’s a great article about participation rates in virtual communities. By way of example, survey other blogs and even those that have hundreds of thousands of page views, still receive only a handful of comments on their posts. Having said this, I think we still received a rather high number of comments for each post considering our blog’s focus, but it is an intriguing exercise to think about how we might increase this. Interestingly, several of our posts surprisingly resulted in responses that were longer than the original post. 8)    Think "reach." I think I still feel a bit overwhelmed by the concept of how many people we have reached with our posts and thoughts. On a normal workday, we might discuss our latest thoughts with two, three or ten other people at most. When sharing these thoughts via our blog, it’s possible that several thousand people from thirty different countries will read these thoughts over the first several months. This is eye opening and I think relevant to the notion of academic engagement. For better or for worse, reach and promotion seem to go hand in hand. While trying hard not to self-promote, we have added reference to our blog’s URL in our email signatures and have also begun twittering our new posts. 9)    Practice humility. I think each of us probably felt more humbled by the fact that there are numerous bloggers who understand this content domain much more deeply than any of us do.  Blogging ultimately "levels the playing field" and from time to time, forced each of us to acknowledge our viewpoint was probably not the most current or accurate opinion on a specific topic. Hopefully, this also helps shape our tone and eagerness to post incoming comments. 10)    Share. We need to share what we have learned just as others shared with us when we first kicked the blog off. After looking over the most popular blogs housed here at Oregon State University, I was at times surprised to see that our blog is the most read blog. In short, I find most of the other OSU blog topics more fascinating and my gut feeling is that OSU is loaded with content areas or stories that can be told more interactively and broadly using a blog format. I think the fact that our blog has a larger readership is a reflection on some level of our attempt to be more systematic and principled in our approach to building, advertising and maintaining the blog. I think our group here now feels more comfortable describing this in more detail and then sharing this with others. When we first began our blog, these types of "how to" or "why" articles were invaluable to us. We were also somewhat shocked to see the average read time on our feeds being over 8 minutes. This reinforced the idea that feeds are an essential mode of outreach for disseminating the blog content. 11) Brevity can be sweet (especially if you plan on posting multiple times a week). Where better to put this item than as number 11 on a 10-point list? It was obvious that some of our most popular articles were not always the longest. Length isn’t the always the kiss of death, but it better be well justified. Some Statistics from the Top Five OSU Blogs (129 total blogs listed) March 1st to August 24th 2009 (roughly 6 months) (1) Electronic Papyrus:           50,137 visits, 73,034 page views Feeds:                                   14,817 visits, 20,125 page views (visit length = 8:44 minutes) (2) Israeli Palestine Trip:       29,320 visits, 32,00 page views (3) H2ONC (Rob Emanuel):  28,000 visits, 38,000 page views (4) Deliciousness Blog:       28,000 visits, 34,000 page views (5) Pam Van Londen’s Blog a8fk7yjsgw

About ten years ago, I left UCLA in the middle of my Ph.D. work and since that time, have always had mixed emotions when contrasting the relative calm of the academic classroom with the storm of a tech company’s cubicle. Needless to say, it felt ironic to recently come full circle and return to academia. This last year at Oregon State University has been somewhat cathartic, but also surprising in terms of just how relevant E-learning has become to the academic context … and "yes," I had my doubts at first when I realized that some of the clouds forming over the technology industry years back have also cast a shadow over university campuses. It was a wonderful surprise to find that many of our department’s E-learning projects focus on translating practical, research-based content for a broad cross section of the population into some type of format that can be easily understood by as many members of this audience as possible. In other words, deliverables really seem to matter to our end users and ease of access is a major factor with each project. While many projects in private industry seek to package specific proprietary information for product usage (learning software or otherwise), our projects tend to run the full gamut of content area variation (viticulture, gerontology, energy usage, gardening, canning, etc.) and are oftentimes topics that are "near and dear" to our audience. So, while our work may not be as readily classified as workplace centric, I do feel that E-learning projects that mature under the umbrella of university Extension entities can be helpful artifacts that contribute to the larger dialog of what can be deemed as both efficacious and scalable within the world of instructional technology. To demonstrate how some of this confluence between content variation, personal/professional development, serving end-users and media comes together, I thought providing some examples would be the most efficient approach. Please note that most of the headers include a live link to the course or example-just hover your cursor over the text and click. 1. Mastery of Aging Well Overview: An assistant professor wanted to broaden the reach of her "Aging Well" classroom-based courses by making the content available in an online format. Where possible, we tried to ensure the user experience was as straightforward and accommodating as possible based on the characteristics of our audience.  AARP sponsored this course and funding came from the USDA for its development. Tools/Platform: PowerPoint, Adobe Presenter, Fireworks, Sony SoundForge In support of this project: "Getting Started" video using Camtasia Aging Well blog to help encourage discussion of course-related topics 2. Portland Metro Area Master Gardeners Ning Site (Virtual Community) Overview: Our group worked with several key faculty members and created a customized Ning site (using CSS, unique header). We did a basic needs analysis and populated the site with features and media that we felt would be welcomed by this audience. We then worked with this group to help ensure that there were volunteers who could help provide momentum as the community got underway. Since this site went live, the community has added numerous new features such as a Twitter widget, links to Google calendars/documents, Photosynth panoramas and many other innovative enhancements that allow gardeners to post photos and then diagnose or discuss these more collaboratively while online. Tools: Ning, Fireworks, CSS, some Dreamweaver 3. Oregon State University BeaverTurf Ning Site (Virtual Community) Overview: The primary stakeholder, a professor of Turf studies at Oregon State, wanted to more efficiently help foster professional relationships among golf course superintendents in the Pacific Northwest. We built a customized Ning site for his end users and "seeded" his site with videos, RSS feeds from relevant Turf groups and other assets. We also added a new Ning application to allow the group to do turf-based product reviews as this was one of many items end users requested via our needs analysis. He will also be feeding blog content into the site and we added the Twitter feed filter application to populate one page with the latest Twitter activity around turf-related key words. Tools: Ning, Fireworks, CSS, some Dreamweaver 4. Pachyderm Presentations This "do-it-yourself" multimedia development tool is yielding some wonderful online presentations. We offer some basic training on how to use the tool and then let faculty loose to shape their own Pachyderm story. Please note the examples below are still under development. Ganti Murthy from the department of Biological and Ecological Engineering explains bioethanol production for the rest of us. (or) Sarah Griffith’s Pachyderm, "Art about Agriculture" 5. OSU Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn Activity OSU Master Gardeners (Twitter) Information related to their classes, activities, etc. OSU Gardening Tips (Twitter) We’re pushing information about new articles, planting/growing tips, etc. General list of Web 2.0 activity at OSU 6. Microsoft Photosynth Overview: What’s not to like about using this tool for content areas like gardening, forestry, and just about any other topic that involves the outdoors? We are linking to a Photosynth page from our Ning sites and will soon provide a link to help users understand how to use this tool for sharing their photos using medium. We see numerous opportunities with this tool. Some virtual garden panoramas Examples from the Master Gardener program in Portland 7. Powered by Orange Overview: This project is really more of a marketing plan than a deliverable and comes out of Oregon State’s University Advancement group;  I found it too compelling to not include in this list. Note the very clever overlap of Web 2.0 technologies with their end user interests to help drive brand identity and group affiliation. Take a few minute to also browse the banner images that saturate the campus as well. Again, this is not instructional by any means, but, very elegant integration of images, engagement and message in Web 2.0 wrappers. 8. Oregon State University 4-H Learning Resources CD Overview: 4-H is a very important component of the Extension program at Oregon State as we are a land-grant institution and much of our population lives in a rural setting. The 4-H leaders wanted to make their online content available as a CD so volunteers could more easily access the content even if they did not have Internet connectivity.  Keep in mind that this is designed to run on a CD and is "low tech." I just wanted to make the point that sometimes the solution to a problem isn’t always the newest media. Tools/Platform: Dreamweaver, Javascript, Fireworks So, while this list is not exhaustive, I hope it gives you a window into some of our recent instructional technology activity. Where possible, we have been trying to make more intentional pushes into using more Web 2.0 tools and platforms to deliver our content with our end users. We are moving toward including more mobile device e-learning formats and look forward to the dialog that comes out each project as we evaluate the impact of how a specific program or content area was made more accessible and relevant to our end users.

I’ve been waiting patiently, but couldn’t take it any longer as I’ve watched more and more friends whip out their iPhone 3G to get a GPS fix on our location or perform some other mundane task sliced, diced and served on the micro-mobile-super computer that is the iPhone 3G. I know, I’m late to the party, but from the perspective of a technophile, I have to admit I’ve felt very much like Batman’s understudy in these situations. Ultimately, I just couldn’t wait for Verizon and Apple to make nice.  I honestly don’t know where to start and I’m not accustomed to blushing, so I’ll simply share where I see potential as it relates to learning apps on the iPhone in general.  But first things first: I’m now convinced that any dialog about the iPhone should begin with a mandatory effort to share one’s favorite iPhone apps.  In that vein, the list below highlights my top 10 learning or educational apps for the iPhone, and attempts to point out where innovation and learning potential inherent to each app might paint a picture of potential future approaches in the world of online learning experiences. Chris’ Top 10 Eductional Apps for the iPhone 1. Touch Physics by Games 4 Touch A glimpse of the future now: seamless, motivational learning that is fun, kinesthetic and fully accessible. Learn about friction, gravity, mass, angles and other principles of physics via a clever game that allows you to exercise agency on both the physical and mental level-suitable for just about any age over 4 years old. I’m completely intrigued by the category of "Doodle games" (games where you draw objects on the touch screen that instantiate themselves in the game). These games open up a world of possibilities for any subject and seem like the perfect convergence of device, content and user motivation.  I would be remiss if I also didn’t mention Geared by Bryan Mitchel-an extremely elegant interface that allows the user to manipulate spinning gears around variables of distance, proximity and speed. 2. Kindle for the iPhone Of course you lose some ergonomics when compressing the Kindle into the iPhone shell, but the distribution system for e-books (especially those in the public domain) is wonderful. This app has a clever interface, lots of free books and access to the Amazon catalog via a "get book" button. 3. Abc Pocket Phonics It’s not so much that my five year old adores this application (he does), but it’s what this type of application represents. For language acquisition, the approach is a highly compelling supplement and the touch screen features allow users to trace letters while listening to the sound or word. Need to learn Chinese characters? Try eStroke Chinese Characters 4. iSeismometer This application brought back memories of the first time I realized that the Wii controllers house an acceleramator and a gyrometer to measure motion and tilt. This application allows the iPhone to react to various types of external motion. This app provides a very innovative way to learn about how motion is translated into a digital representation.  You can submit your data directly to a website that associates your location with your seismograph data.  Can you think of some learning contexts for this technology? 5. The Chemical Touch I’m not a chemist, but this app really impresses me. A touch sensitive periodic table that allows you to explore various combinatorial properties of chemistry. You can change the chart color to your liking and the extremely high ratings for this app on iTunes reflect its popularity from 5th grade into graduate school. Not finding what you’re looking for? Click on the Internet button to open up the online Wikipedia page. 7. AroundMe by TweakerSoft I so desperately wanted to pick an iPhone app focused on a specific locale, but none of them were up to snuff. AroundMe locates gas stations, restaurants and other helpful resources and then displays that information on a map relative to your location. From an educational standpoint, I would like to see apps that track on your location in place like DC or Boston (the Discovery apps looked wanting) and display relevant photos, videos or information overlaid on a map—a virtual docent in a box. Presence awareness holds tremendous potential and I’m sure more apps will leverage this in the future. 8. iReadMusic by GLP Software Want to learn how to read and play music for a stringed instrument? The touch-sensitive screen allows you to play games (read "learn" here) that help you recognize pitch, notes, and position on a virtual fret. Again, amazingly creative and effective use of device, software and user needs. 9. USA Presidents This is a typical iPhone flash card program that incorporates photos, quizzes and deck shuffling. A very innovative approach to liven up a traditional learning method. There are flash card programs for just about everything under the sun: anatomy, vocabulary, trivia, etc. Don’t blink or you might not notice how many of these apps are free. 10. Weather Radar by Exact Magic Software iPhone apps will always shine in outdoor settings where the issue of mobility separates  the usefulness of the iPhone over a laptop. View realtime video of weather patterns from the closest doppler radar in your area. View fog, clouds and adjust their transparency if you so desire. How can an app like this not stimulate one’s interest in meteorology? When many of the traditional software constraints of accessibility, price, usability, lack of motivation are gone, why limit learning exclusively to enterprise workplace environments or the classroom since learning ultimately becomes much too interesting and ubiquitous to be restricted to schools and company training departments. Call it what you may, but on-the-go, just-in-time learning has never looked better than on the iPhone 3GS.

There’s a lot of traffic on the blogosphere about best practices for social media. But we need to be cautious not to confuse best practices with "rules." Many of our colleagues in higher education in general, and Extension in particular, are seeking some hard and fast policies about social media. Here are four misconceptions that could encourage the development of "rules" about social media, and why I think we should totally ignore them. 1. "Social media needs to be carefully monitored for accuracy." There is a fear in industry of compromising proprietary information, that loose social lips will sink corporate ships. Educators have their own version: removing the center of information sharing from the subject matter expert will compromise the credibility and accuracy of information. Instead of seeing value in social interaction with knowledge, they fear it. They are no longer the sage on the stage. In the Information Age, we have been taught since grade school to check our sources, to ferret out accurate, unbiased information. In the Google Age, it’s a flat out survival skill. We need to trust people’s judgments, and get over it. 2. "Social media needs to be controlled." In some policy conversations it’s not uncommon to see the word "manage" used in the same sentence as social media. From my perspective, managed social media is an oxymoron. It is by its very nature unmanageable; it is creative chaos. But recognizing patterns in chaos is just what the human brain is designed to do. We’re good at it. 3. "Social media can waste valuable work time." Is time spent interacting with social media yet another way for workers to shirk their duties to engage in personal communications? Some think so. But given that social media has surpassed email as the preferred means of communication, this makes no sense. That’s where your clients are, and your colleagues/employees need to be there, too. For many newbies, getting comfortable with social media will require playing with it. Industry understands this. "Make social media part of the job, just like email," says ENGAGEMENTdb in their report evaluating how well the top 100 global brands are engaging their consumers using social media. 4. "Best practices are the same for all." Because so much of what is published about best practices—and policies—comes from private industry, it’s only natural that many will look to them for ideas. But the drivers for industry—revenue and profit—will influence their approach to social media, and not always apply across the board to educational settings where social media will necessarily be practiced differently. Educators need to study what industry is saying about social media, and then apply it with their own twist. That’s just four "rules." There are more, I’m sure, and I look forward to your additions of what else to ignore.

Mobile device enhancements in GPS, image capture, computing power, APIs and the wireless networks that move mobile device bits and bytes have all matured to the point where the desktop computer is in some respects now playing catch up with the mobile device. Case in point: Imagine a new technology that leverages many of the unique mobile device characteristics you’ve come to know and love and helps you navigate your physical environment with more intentionality. It’s here and it’s called Augmented Reality (AR). Even though AR has been around for awhile, AR app support for both Android and iPhone devices is a recent development. So, what is AR? Let’s take a virtual reality trip sans technology for some answers. Close your eyes and imagine yourself walking the Champs-d’elysee with your significant other. You hold up your iPhone and pan your viewfinder across the Arc de Triomphe. Pop ups appear directly on top of your image-filled viewfinder providing historical video clips and a marker where the tomb of the unknown soldier lies. This overlay of information changes as you walk and you notice information about the Grand Palais appearing on the horizon of your viewfinder. Site seeing is stirring up a hunger. You point your iPhone street level, tap your screen a few times, and digital arrows appear indicating where restaurants can be found. You scan the virtual horizon for Indian restaurants and several pop up on your screen several blocks northwest of your current location. As you view the row of cafes, patisseries, and restaurants and make your way down the street, your mobile device again dynamically overlays a digital layer of information about each establishment on top of your real-time view with links to menus, reviews and some online order forms. You’re in Paris, so as the sun goes down, romance is in the air. Your spouse looks up to point out a bright star. You point your mobile device heavenward and activate your Sky Map AR application. Your spouse doesn’t look enthused, but within a few seconds a digital layer of content appears and your mobile device identifies the bright star as Jupiter. Not a star-gazing, Indian food-loving Francophile? How about locating subway stops, activating a digital docent in places of historical interest, fixing your car, navigating while on a bicycle or finding Twitter users who are nearby? How big is AR for the world of E-learning? It’s obviously still a developmental technology in many respects, but I’m betting that if the chatter on the blogosphere and the initial AR apps are any indicator as to how big this wave will be, we might be looking at the shifting plates that hasten a technological tsunami for the world of location-based mobile apps. Not surprisingly then, the initial salvo of AR apps has people (including myself) asking a wide range of questions and taking their turn at presaging the relevance of this technology for instructional potential. To put the discussion into perspective, two years ago, AR developers in Switzerland were strapping almost twenty pounds of technology to their end-user’s back, feet, and head to enable an AR experience; now an improved version of this experience is accessible via one small handheld device that fits in your pocket. How could this quantum jump not generate some level of speculation as to what the next iteration of this technology will look like? Fast Company proclaims AR is no longer science fiction and with some qualification, states AR is the "killer app" that is both fad and future. Steve Rosenbaum at the Huffington Post proclaims decidedly that AR is "here to stay," while Read Write Web is looking to the future and has already posted their wish lists of potential AR apps. Amais Cascaio’s article at the Atlantic is an indictment of sorts on the "yet-to-be" abridgement of civil liberties perpetrated by AR proponents. He envisions the time when AR will move from the virtual yellow first-down lines on TV’s Monday Night Football to individuals who will aggregate data about their political opponents and push this information above AR-enabled views of a face or place of residence. Ivor Tossen at the Globe and Mail takes a more philosophical tack and frames his discussion of AR within the larger world of epistemology, "AR…What does it mean to really know something?" Personally, the concept of a new AR-enabled browser (Layar) has me wondering whether the user will ultimately become both user and middleware as appears to be the case with some 3rd-world crowdsourcing apps. On the positive side of an AR-drenched future, should we be asking whether we might be approaching a time where our imagination will be the primary constraint when it comes to developing software to facilitate learning and parse salient characteristics of our environment? Look at some of these concepts (Some of these are more conceptual at this point) and imagine how this type of technology might redefine how you educate your audience. Currently, developing content for this space still requires a considerable toolbox of technical know-how, but I can only imagine the popularity of "off-the-shelf" templates that allow non-Cocoa programming app developers to create location-based AR learning apps like the ones that have begun to surface. A fad, the future or a more efficient way to map out ten yards on an augmented reality football field? What do you think?

A few weeks ago I boarded a flight to St. Louis for a conference and met a young man who made me realize how connected we’ve become with mobile technology, across not only distance, but across cultural and social divides. On a typical connecting flight, the person in the seat next to me will be from thousands of miles away from my home , and sometimes light years away in their social, cultural and world view. Not surprisingly, this disparity can lead to just the briefest of conversations followed by hours of reading, listening to MP3 players, or watching in-flight movies. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannysullivan/ My flight with Marc (not his real name) could have been that way. Our lives were vastly different: me-a white 50-something assistant professor from a small college town in Oregon, and Marc- a black 20-something car dealer from inner city New York. But within moments of putting on our seat belts, we both had our mobile devices out, making our last-minute online connections before the plane’s door was closed. I had my new iPhone and Marc had his iPod Touch. There was an immediate connection as we nodded at each others technology, and the conversation began that would last for the entire three-hour flight. Marc offered me half of his sandwich (I had foolishly neglected to get something before the flight) and we began comparing notes on our favorite apps. I described my latest hobby using Geocaching, with the iPhone’s built in GPS capabilities. Marc countered with Trapster, an app to alert you to the location of speed traps. I shared a picture of my ride—a two-seater—with photo altered with ColorSplash. Marc countered with a photo of his motorcycle. I tapped up Cartoon-Wars, and Marc pulled up Wooden Labyrinth. Eventually our conversation began to enter more serious territory-learning from mobile technology. I showed him how I could view science lectures on my iPhone from MIT for free on YouTube. We ruminated how open education is truly arriving, and learning about any topic (including the Theory of Relativity—another common interest) can be fully realized for free, on-line and while in motion. We parted ways, with me promising to listen to his favorite music, rapper Juelz Santana, and Marc promising to look into the TED talks online. It was a wake-up call for me about how mobile technology can help break down so many walls, whether economic, cultural, or just the barriers set up by seat dividers.

Institute for the Future I recently had the opportunity to hear Bob Johansen from the Institute for the Future present a vision of the future that is at once compelling and frightening: The term "consumer" will be replaced by "participant." Our perception of reality will be largely shaped by technology. More powerful, personalized filters will be required to block out data bombardment. A "generation"—an age group that shares a basic worldview and cultural experience—will continue to shrink such that parents and children may be three or four generations removed from understanding each other. The concept of mentoring will be flipped—youth will teach their elders (which reminds me of a funny bit by Craig Ferguson) To appear "trustworthy" will be held in suspicion. The art and science of "futuring" is not new. In 1901, H.G. Wells published a collection of provocative and predictive essays entitled Anticipations. Later, he prophesized a "world brain": The encyclopedia of the future may conceivably be prepared and kept by an endowed organization employing thousands of workers permanently, spending and recovering millions of pounds yearly, mediating between the original thinker, the scientific investigator, the statistician, the creative worker and the reporter of realities on the one hand and the general intelligence of the public on the other. But such an organization would outgrow in scale and influence alike any single university that exists, and it would inevitably tend to take the place of the loose-knit university system of the world in the concentration of research and thought and the direction of the general education of mankind. So I decided I would pick up a few recent threads and try my hand at imagining the future of online learning environments: 1. Creativity will finally get the respect it deserves in most areas of life. In learning material development, the relative nexus of power will shift from content experts and technology specialists to artists and communicators. As content continues to be more easily accessed, repurposed, and crowdsourced, content experts will be less involved in leading creation of educational materials and more focused on add to, refining, and validating the accuracy and context of information in a "knowledge commons." Technology specialists will have a relatively smaller role in determining the scope, function, and quality of learning materials as instructional technologies continue to be more widely available, more sophisticated, and more easily employed by those without technical specialization. The creative contribution will become the central leading force because the powerful, essential assets of imagination and creativity will always be illusive, human, and without substitution. The Web learning environment of the future is creative centered; the best small glimpse of this I could find today is this MoMA exhibit designed to provide rich, experiential engagement through art; if anyone has more or better examples, please post them. 2. As technology increases the availability of information, the ability to contextualize and understand the potential application of the information will become more and more important. Institutions that have traditionally played an "information gatekeeper" function, determining what material is and isn’t published, now find themselves in difficult times. In their place will rise a "curation" function to help users find the right information and use it in their own social context. See the Scholarly Kitchen and Publishing 2.0 for their take on Web curation from the information-provider perspective. Here is an example of a social curation. Harold Jarche talks cogently about the relationship of the individual and community in collaborative sense-making—what he calls "personal knowledge management." Instead of a world where full information flow is the default and filters are needed to remove distractions, I hope for a world where our senses are our primary inputs and assistive technologies help us decide when to "turn on" certain curated streams of information. 3. The historical social patterns of society will recreate themselves in social media. As the name suggests, social media are social. Early generations of social media were shaped by technology capabilities and the vision of the technology developers, but as social media mature and pervade, they will replicate age-old social structures and conventions to a greater degree. A diversity of familiar spaces will evolve—for those who want to discuss a professional interest in a private, well-maintained space; for those who will scream in the streets; and so on. Participation levels will increase as these separate virtual environments are increasingly distinguished. 4. Facebook will either change or give way to other things. The controlled, specific look of Facebook has served it well in attracting new users. At some point, Facebook will lose the enthusiasm of many users if it doesn’t allow greater flexibility and control to the user interface and options. In the future, users will expect to be able to function as "curators"—look, sound, feel—of their own spaces and experiences (with capabilities far beyond those in MySpace; a fusion of talent show and tool box). 5. GPS-powered social media will become the way people learn about and experience their real physical environments. The potential of accessing information and learning opportunities related to a specific location/situation is staggering. See Chris LaBelle’s post on augmented reality, for example.

I recently gave a talk to the green industry about using web-based video and photo assets to help meet instructional goals. I was reminded of the amazing potential visual story telling holds for industries that find their center of gravity outdoors. Visual pedagogy is a powerful tool that can be used to unlock this potential and more effectively share the stories and underlying knowledge in the context of real-world physical settings. As we’ve discussed in an earlier post, Augmented Reality is pushing this kind of "location-based learning" to new heights, but video will always be a major player in the reformulated media types that emerge in the years to come. As the sites and resources that house and deliver visual assets (think Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr) continue to evolve and integrate with map and location-based websites like Google Maps (and Panoramio), crowdsourcing and syndication models continue to become more important. Therefore, the core functional requirements around which web-based interactive sites are defined  require a much deeper understanding of visual literacy and how to convey information using visual assets (visual pedagogy). One of the leaders in this field is Michael Wesch at Kansas State University. His recent article on being "knowledge-able" is enlightening and a must read for anyone looking for insight on this topic. Core SME (subject matter expert) content, as essential as it is, will more frequently co-exist (but not necessarily comingle) with content contributed by the SMA (subject matter amateur). One of the best examples of this shift can be found on CNN’s recently redesigned website. CNN is the 59th most popular website in the world (Alexa.com) and its main audience is 25 to 44 years old and predominantly male. Sometime around November of 2009, CNN completely reformatted their site to include a very heavy focus on video content (see the prominent position, size and number of video thumbnails) and pushed their video navigation tab to the top position on the top bar (after the Home tab). They also integrated their iReport pages on the top navigation bar and included the following text when a user clicks on this tab: "Welcome to iReport, where people take part in the news with CNN. Your voice, together with other iReporters, helps shape how and what CNN covers everyday." We’ll definitely see more of this message across different industries, "your voice, together with other iReporters." The SMA, or subject matter amateur, has become a driving force now even in the news industry, and text is continuing to move into a supporting role for video content.  Howard Keen in his book, "The Cult of the Amateur," along with others, decries this strong push towards unregulated and unvetted content creation, but he concedes that examples like Wikipedia seem to suggest that accessibility continues to trump quality gatekeeping in many domains. As Keen reminds us, "It’s hard to beat free." Is the CCN website shift towards supporting video and "iCreateContent" a sign of things to come, i.e. "Our Stuff" + "Your Stuff"? Sure, interaction is always a plus, but will more once-trusted sources of information go the way of Wikipedia? Here are some interesting statistics about the increasing popularity of video on the Internet: "The age diversity of online video viewers is reflected in a July 2008 Nielsen study that showed a fairly even distribution by age among the US audience. Although a combined 39% of US viewers were under age 35, the single largest cluster of users was in the 45-to-54-year-old cohort. Older users were also well-represented, with a combined 22% ages 55 and older." Cisco Systems says that in 2012, Internet video traffic alone will be 400 times the traffic carried by the U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. Video-on-demand, IPTV, peer-to-peer video, and Internet video are forecast to account for nearly 90 percent of all consumer IP traffic in 2012. The SlideShare presentation referenced above has some links to companies (especially gardening or green industry related) who are tapping into this type of approach. Not all of the examples employ crowdsourcing or even user participation, but they definitely extend the reach of each organization and utilize video and photos in a way that is relevant and engaging. A key consideration in this type of undertaking is whether or not an organization’s deficiency in this area leaves room for the end-user (SMA) to define the visual assets that shape sites like Panoramio and Flickr. The repositories that hold our visual assets will become more relevant as they progressively proliferate content to more network endpoints and also leverage geotagging. Do you have any similar examples? Do you feel like most of the E-learning you’ve encountered takes into account user preference towards video and visual assets?

In private industry, successful use of new media technology is evaluated by the subsequent effect on revenue, with recognition, pay increases, and promotion the payoff. In contrast, Higher Education is slow—some say glacially slow- to adopt new media, and is ill equipped to reward individuals when they do incorporate new technologies in their research, education, and outreach strategies. Let’s take a quick look behind the glacier. In higher education, peer-review is the Holy Grail for gaining acceptance and receiving credit for scholarly work. This means that creative work is scrutinized by other experts in the field in an impartial manner for accuracy and quality of thought. This process is considered an essential part of academic life; with the traditional peer-reviewed print journal article the final result. Ironically, many University faculty—especially those with Extension responsibilities-are under increasing pressure to move away from focusing solely on print publications, and begin to use all available media sources, and incorporate a variety of educational strategies in their education and outreach efforts. In a presentation to a group of educators at a recent Extension national conference, Robert Hughes, Jr., Professor in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of Illinois at Urbana outlined this radical shift in educational focus, including "from one-to-many" strategies of short messages broadcasted through Web sites, email newsletters, tweets, videos, and "many-to-many" strategies, including blogs, wikis, and social media. However, few if any of these strategies are represented in the peer review process, or in the evaluation of scholarly activity, otherwise known in the academic world as promotion and tenure (P&T). P&T drives innovation in the system, and Hughes challenged the audience with a proposal for developing guidelines to include new media technologies in that process. Otherwise we continue to be faced with a dilemma: How can the development of new media be encouraged if those products don’t even appear on the radar screen for evaluation of scholarly success? How can the wheels of peer-review navigate down new media roads if those who do the peer review are not familiar with this new terrain? How do promotion and tenure committees apply metrics that don’t exist in typical faculty P&T guidelines? In a preview of its 2010 Horizon Report, the New Media Consortium observed: "New scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching continue to emerge but appropriate metrics for evaluating them increasingly lag behind or fail to appear. Citation-based metrics are no longer indicative of the relative importance of a given piece of scholarly work; new forms of peer review and approval, such as reader ratings, inclusion in and mention by influential blogs, tagging, incoming links, and retweeting, are arising from the natural actions of the glob community of educators. These forms of approval are not yet recognized as significant." Here at Oregon State University, we have been struggling with this issue of how to support and implement the scholarly acceptance of new media in a process traditionally dominated by print journal publications. To that end we have identified the need for two levels of peer-review: a review by the content experts (where the buck stopped before), and a simultaneous review by media/instructional design specialists, who can judge the choice of media and its design, and recognize the look and feel of a successful learning product. We have identified several pilot new media projects to shepherd through what we hope will become a model for scholarly peer review. We’ll be entering new territory and will face numerous challenges, including-as Professor Hughes pointed out-documenting impact, identifying metrics, and translating new media citations to a format that is compatible with traditional P&T citations. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be to get buy-in on a new model from administrators, and particularly those who hold the cards in the P&T process. We have to look at an evolution—or perhaps a revolution—in evaluation to endorse new media as scholarly activity, and really begin to meet the rapidly changing needs of our clients. You can view an Adobe Connect archive of Dr. Hughes presentation here.

Humor. Style. Attitude. Personality. Expressiveness. Cleverness. Charisma. Are these characteristics in "e-teaching" friend or foe to e-learning? A theme in both educational theory and communication theory calls for educators and communicators to know their learners/audiences and target their learning styles. This post is a reminder that teaching style is just as important as learning styles. And e-teaching style is just as important as e-learning styles. The e-learning world can learn a lesson from popular media—when given a choice of similar topic material, people will establish preference and loyalty to certain voices and personalities in large part because of their personal style, charisma, cleverness, creativity, … personality. Interestingly, the personal style of the educator is often devalued as the culture of learner focus has grown. As teachers are expected change shape to fit the learners’ needs, the nexus of education tends to shift away from the teacher’s personal experience and personality to the learners’ needs and experiences. Though a recent study has challenged the strongly advocated learner-style focus in education, attention to learning styles is not likely—nor should it—go away anytime soon. However, the personal style of the educator is an asset that should be encouraged and leveraged—in the classroom and in e-learning. This does not need to be an either/or world. Just because an educator asserts his or her style does not mean that the learners’ styles are disrespected. And just because the educator’s materials carry the educator’s personal style does not mean that the objectivity of the content itself is compromised. The theory of social learning that we often discuss in this blog supports not just the preferences of the learners but also the instructors as they interact in a learning environment. It is interesting to see how teacher personality has been viewed over the decades: More and more teachers and administrators are realizing the importance of the teacher’s personality in the learning-teaching situation." That was how the editor of the Journal of Educational Research introduced "A Study in Teacher Personality" by M.A. Tschechtelin in 1951. By 1977, the importance of teacher personality had been extended to instructional materials themselves: "Personality aids teaching, for communication takes place between the teacher and the learner—even in the absence of the spoken word (nonverbal communication)" (W.J.F. Lew, "Teaching and the Teacher’s Personality," Education Journal). Today, some sources of e-learning materials (for example, this from Penn State) embrace the importance of teacher personality in online course material design. Yet, overall, educator personality seems to be even less supported in e-learning contexts than in face-to-face classrooms. The personal style of the educator is often minimized or avoided when educational materials are developed for e-delivery. There are many reasons for this. For example, it is often thought that it is too difficult or dangerous to try to employ humor in instructional media. But blogger Geetha Krishnan defends the engagement value of humor in e-learning. And Cathy Moore offers some interesting tips on using humor in e-learning. But because humor is a contextual art, not a definitive science, clear do’s and don’ts can’t be universally defined. That’s where instructor judgment and … personality come into play.

Recording audio for E-learning contexts is a straightforward process when you use the right equipment and adhere to some basic steps to optimize your recording environment. When was the last time you heard a poorly recorded E-learning course, podcast or online presentation? You know of what I speak. Close your eyes and let the hissing, cracking, and muffled notes course through your auditory cortex. It’s unbearable and you long to hear a stereo-balanced, amplitude appropriate MP3 file. Let’s roll up our sleeves and talk shop in this post. I’ll discuss basic techniques for audio recording and highlight some equipment that will help ensure your message is communicated loud (but not too loud) and clear. 1. Microphone Use the best microphone your budget allows. Microphones come in many different shapes, sizes, and prices. If you are on a more conservative project budget, I suggest that you invest in a USB Plantronics headset with integrated microphone as I’ve generally had good luck with this brand. Using a USB microphone ensures that your recording is transferred to your computer digitally (analog microphones use your sound card and must convert an analog signal to digital—resulting in sound degradation). Here’s a good "starter" USB microphone from Plantronics that can be purchased for under $40. If you are willing to spend more than $100 and are looking for a higher-end USB microphone, the Samson C03U USB Condenser Microphone is popular for audio screencast recording. 2. Beware of the Buzz Buzzing, humming and other audio degradation can be caused by a number of issues, but electrical interference is the most common. Of the different forms of electrical interference, ground loop problems are perhaps the most noticeable and difficult to control. Ground loop is generally due to uneven levels of current being picked up on your power cables. You will want to be careful to pay attention to nearby TVs, overhead fluorescent lights, and anything else that emits an electrical current when using a microphone. This is just as important when using an external microphone attached to a video camera. Here’s a good example of why you need to be careful around electrical devices like TVs. 3. Ambient Noise Dampening In many offices or rooms ambient noise is very noticeable. Fans from heaters or computers are not uncommon in many work environments and what sounds like a very faint hum will oftentimes take on a strong and distracting static or hiss when recording using a microphone plugged into your computer. Do your best to dampen the ambient noise. Your main goal is to block or absorb this noise. There are some creative ways to do this. If you have a noticeable amount of ambient noise in your environment, surround your microphone with foam and ensure your computer’s fan and other computer peripherals are behind this dampening barrier. Here are some examples of how this might be accomplished. 4. Recording Basics Make sure that you keep the microphone on your headset right in front of your mouth and don’t change its location once you decide on the best placement. You will notice a very significant change in audio quality if you move your microphone during a recording session. S et your audio input and output level at about 3/4 of the maximum amplitude so that when you playback the audio using your speakers (test quality via both your speakers and USB device), your system more closely resembles that of the normal end-user. Double and triple check your initial recordings to ensure the audio sounds suitable for your context. Again, don’t forget to listen to your audio using your USB headset and then remove the headset and listen using only speakers. Be a discerning user and ask yourself if the audio is free of hissing, cracking, and other distractions. 5. Software There are a lot of choices, and in all honesty, this is one of the least important aspects of ending up with high-quality audio. Audacity is a solid freeware option and will be more than sufficient for most. If you have some money to spend, Sony’s Sound Forge is a sophisticated audio editing tool. Soundtrack Pro for the MAC is also very popular. I tend to use these more pricey software options when editing audio files that need buzz or hum reduction or more filters applied. I also enjoy Sound Forge’s ability to open video files and edit the soundtrack of that file using their audio editing tools. 6. Attitude Before you begin recording your audio, spend some time thinking about what type of tone or personality you want to project when narrating your content. You obviously want to sound energetic and excited about your content area. You also want to make sure that you sound clear and intelligible. Do your best to record audio files for a module in one sitting. Your voice changes as the day goes on and mornings are usually a difficult time to record for many as their voice is still raspy. Additionally, make sure you have some water nearby and take care of your throat as you log the hours required to complete your audio files. Do you have some other helpful tips?

The term "access" is used with great frequency and sense of purpose in education these days. We’ve got our accessibility standards, an open access movement, and just plain access. It is a good word. But it is insufficient. The basic definition of "access" is simply to gain entrance. There is nothing inherently educational about gaining entrance. An unlocked door, for example, gives us access to a building; a gate gives us access to a park. The door and the gate are essential—without them, we would not be able to enter the building or the park. But what happens in the building or park is the important thing. In addition to providing access, educators and e-learning developers need to provide a memorable experience (experiential learning) and stepping stones for life’s next steps (opportunity). Access Access is worth understanding. Accessibility is sometimes confused with availability. All sorts of scientific, medical, legal, and financial technical information is openly available on the Web, but that does not make it accessible. Turning availability into accessibility requires accommodation—that is, translating information into something usable to target audiences. Many factors contribute to whether e-learning materials are accessible. E-learning is accessible when … It fits with their existing knowledge, vocabulary, and proficiency. It is delivered in formats (text, images, audio, etc.) that match the learning styles of the learners. It accommodates users with disabilities (for example, is compliant with ADA Section 508). It is technically compatible with the learners’ equipment (computer, software, Internet connectivity, etc.) The cost to the students does not exceed what they are willing and able to pay. Clearly, access is a continuum. Nothing can be accessible to everyone. Experience Once learners have crossed the access threshold, e-learning materials should effectively engage them in a memorable, preferably interactive experience. The value of experiential learning has long been documented. John Dewey outlined a progressive education based on experience (for example, see his book Experience and Education, 1938). In Freedom to Learn (1969), Carl Rogers described his view of experiential, social learning. More recently, David A. Kolb has explored many facets of the topic over decades, most notably in Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (1984). New technologies, such as those frequently discussed here, now provide an abundance of tools for educators to engage learners online. Opportunity Someone I know at another institution of higher education got me thinking about the inadequacy of "access" in the first place. He recently performed an informal survey of students and found that the word "access" does not resonate with them. But they really like the word "opportunity." Educational opportunity conveys that the student and the educators will be active participants in an experience that will be useful to the student. "Opportunity" goes hand in hand with another educational term—learning outcome. But from the students’ perspective, they don’t seek learning experiences in order to receive an "outcome." They would prefer it be put in simpler, more learner-centric terms. When you buy a car, you assume it will come with keys—that is, you will have access into the car. So why do educators keep focusing on the access to learning. Instead, answer the learner’s question: "What will I get out of it?" Education should provide the experience that creates opportunity.

When Mike Derocher, the Experience Design Manager for HP in Corvallis, Oregon invited us to see a demonstration of their Halo telepresence system, I wondered how this might be relevant to our work in financially strapped higher education. But the demonstration convinced me that the technology of telepresence is on a vector to a whole new landscape of possibilities for collaboration and learning; and despite it’s current high price tag, it’s sending us an echo from the future. I’m sitting in front of the three large HD video flat screens and seeing my colleague Chris LaBelle broadcast through HP’s Halo telepresence system. My first impression is a slight feeling of disequilibrium mixed with mild shock at the realism of the experience. The Halo system—and others like it—are taking the debate of "no significant difference" of online experiences to an entirely new level. The system goes to great lengths to recreate the physical, verbal, nonverbal immediacy of a face-to-face encounter, despite what could be thousands of miles separation between participants. For years, those who design distance education facilities have struggled to create truly interactive environments, where the technology would become transparent to both near and far audiences. But the limitations of jerky, low resolution video, poor audio, and awkward room design made this extremely difficult to achieve. But through a combination of HD technology, interface design, and careful attention to room geometry, these telepresence systems are on the verge of erasing the physical and psychological distance between participants in online collaboration and learning. These kinds of solutions could take the discussion and inquiry into the variables of presence and immediacy in online learning and collaboration to a whole new level. And as designers of online educational experiences, we need to be aware of the possibilities. Listen to our podcast about telepresence.

Although it is true that much of our e-learning thinking these days revolves around money, our work is not only about the money. Through this troubled economic time, we must maintain some attention to our ultimate goals: effective teaching and learner success. For more than a decade, online and distance learning experts have been quoting studies from literally every educational corner of the world that identify the "no significance difference phenomena," meaning that study after study continually find no measurable differences between online students and face-to-face students in achieving learning objectives. In fact, researcher Thomas Ramage, wrote in 2002 that, "Interestingly (he) found no studies that exposed lower grades or test scores of online students compared to traditional students." Now, there is research that indicates what we’ve seen anecdotally for some time, it’s not just there is no significant difference, but online learners perform better than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. USDoE graphic A systematic review by the U.S. Department of Education of the research literature between 1996 and July 2008 brought us a meta-analysis called Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. Among the key findings: •    Students who took all or part of their course work online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course in a traditional face-to-face instructional setting. •    Either blended or purely online learning opportunities within a single class or instructional setting generally result in similar student learning outcomes. •    Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the effectiveness of an online learning class. •    Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection. Digging deeper into the findings of the meta-analysis indicates possible reasons why online students outperformed their face-to-face counterparts.  Without over-simplifying too much, it appears to relate to time on task. Do online or blended courses enable asynchronous learning to occur, which allows online students to more conveniently schedule their learning activity with other work and family commitments?  Does this in turn give them more time on task as it relates to their learning activity, and therefore make them more successful in class? Online learning per se may not be the reason learners are more successful. It is probably more how the learners use the tools. The bottom-line outcome is that when the tools are made available and the curriculum is appropriately enhanced to engage the tools, the learners can be more successful. Among the types of individual studies that were reviewed in the meta-analysis, a couple of specific examples help provide greater detail, and together they indicate improvement can occur in both undergraduate and graduate programs. In her article Learning Style and Effectiveness of Online and Face-to-Face Instruction, Charlotte Neuhauser of the School of Business at Madonna University in Michigan, compared two sections of the same undergraduate business class. And then looking at graduate classes, Charles Karr, Barry Weck, Dennis Sunal, and Timothy Cook at the University of Alabama writing in Analysis of the Effectiveness of Online Learning in a Graduate Engineering Math Course, discuss the complications and successes of online high-level mathematics courses. Both studies are good examples of the type of research included in the meta-analysis by the US Department of Education study. And both studies reveal significant success for online learners. It is only slightly disingenuous for me to assert it is not about the money when it comes to online learning at OSU. In reality it is not only about the money.  Chris LaBelle, Oregon State University Educational Outreach instructional designer, points (and regular contributor to this blog) out. "…that 99% of the time, it’s ‘all’ about the money when it comes to elearning. For the students, distance education is usually about promotions or job advancement that comes with a new certification or degree, which equals money, and these students usually save money by being able to take online courses as opposed to leaving their job, home, etc." And, of course, many Continuing Education business models around the country return significant revenue directly to colleges and department, and that is not inconsequential. So, if it is, at least in part, about improving learning for our students and learners, what’s next? How do we continue to improve? A guest post by Dave King, Associate Provost of OSU Outreach and Engagement

While it was enlightening to see Steve Jobs demonstrate what the iPad can do, I found it more interesting to see what the iPad cannot do. Tablet-like in size only, the iPad’s conformity to the iPhone OS, features and ergonomics suggest that we’re seeing Apple promote a renewed focus on empowering crowdsourced content creation over significant platform enhancements—perhaps in a way we have not seen before. When looking at the evolution of smart phones over the last year, it’s fair to say that mobile content characteristics are progressively less defined by bandwidth and endpoint constraints and more influenced by app developer community innovation, user need, timeliness, and cost. Dev Patnaik at BusinessWeek recently discussed product innovation in this light and the relation to mobile content and e-reader growth is telling. In this environment of greatly improved platform and decentralized content development, the $500+ iPad brings renewed attention to the e-book phenomenon and adds some serious sizzle to mobile video viewing and Web surfing. However, whatever benefits it might bring to the table, my gut tells me its raison raison d’être is to strengthen Apple’s content delivery position around their iTunes content delivery model. In an insightful post about how the iPad is shifting power to the publisher, the Scholarly Kitchen blog suggests Apple’s main revenue is tied to device sales; however, my own view is that Apple’s iTunes revenue stream is more raging river than trickling tributary. Case in point: Apple has been generating iTunes profit upwards of several hundred million dollars for some time now; all the while selling many of their devices at a price just marginally above the cost of production. All this to say that there is some reason to be cautious about aligning oneself too exclusively with iTunes or any other proprietary content repository where gatekeeping is controlled offsite. Here at Oregon State University, as we’ve contemplated porting our text- and image-based publications into an e-book format, the complicating factors have not generally revolved around issues of user preference or medium maturity (we know our users would enjoy more video- and image-based content and that the majority of our users have adequate bandwidth and hardware), but rather gatekeeping and format. The former speaks to the fact that like many content distributors, we need to ensure we have ample control over posting, maintaining and disseminating content from our repository; the latter refers to the challenge we have in approximating the robust feature set found in the PDF format. We’re exciting with some of the emerging technologies that might allow us to address both of these obstacles in the months to come. Based on the iPad’s content delivery model, it is clear that Apple and other mobile device manufacturers are seeking to expand their role as content gatekeepers. Consequently, it is more important than ever to understand how a company like Apple prioritizes, monetizes, and categorizes content types and what this tells us about whether or not the role of the gatekeepers will be to secure the kingdom or assess excessive tariffs to participate in it. One of the more interesting windows into Apple’s recent iPad activity comes from Flurry, a mobile device analytics company. In late January, they posted the following on their blog: "Using Flurry Analytics, the company identified approximately 50 devices that match the characteristics of Apple’s rumored tablet device. Because Flurry could reliably "place" these devices geographically on Apple’s Cupertino campus, we have a fair level of confidence that we are observing a group of pre-release tablets in testing. What did their "stealth" analysis uncover? Essentially, prior to the release of the iPad, Flurry analytics showed that the tablet device would support mainly games, entertainment, news and books, music, and other lifestyle content. Strong on content consumption capability (browsing), short on content creation (computing). I’m also betting that Apple recognized the trend towards cloud based computing and "thin client" functionality implemented via HTML5 and web services and designed the iPad accordingly. See also Horizon’s 2010 report, which points to these trends.  As an e-learning developer, I also see the continued movement towards edutainment as deconstructing and redefining traditional e-learning containers and approaches for both professional workforce development and lifelong and informal learning contexts. Is it a game, an e-learning course, a marketing tool? In many instances, especially when conveyed via phone apps or mobile devices, the content simultaneously matches all three descriptors. Personally, I see this convergence of content form and device function opening up vast new domains of content creation potential; especially since phone apps are more increasingly used as free e-readers or content organizers that allow pushing and pulling of remote content in a pay to play (or read) model (see Amazon’s iPhone Kindle application). Augmented Reality and touch-sensitive science games are two of the best examples of educational game-like format—oftentimes incorporating integrated marketing. While there are some who feel e-reading on mobile devices is not ready for mass adoption, Kindle’s popularity has laid that discussion to rest. Timothy Egan, a writer for the NY Times blog, iCountry, sees the acceleration of e-book reader adoption as a step towards preserving "book culture" and believes that a key part of ensuring this movement is equitable is to hold the gatekeepers accountable. In relation to accountability, access becomes paramount—can those who lack financial means still find opportunities to read without having to pay? This is even more important as our traditional print-based gatekeepers such as local bookstores and libraries continue to close their doors or reduce their holdings. A nod to the oft-quoted phrase, "the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed" is appropriate as mobile devices will always require significant equipment and subscription costs—not to mention the ancillary costs of content downloads. As a publically-funded organization whose mission is framed by a directive to seek public good over private gain, gatekeeping is very relevant to our group as it relates to how we monetize our publications and ensure equitable access to content. If we were to push more of our content to the Kindle platform, we would be forced to port our book or article content to HTML, import the content into Amazon’s store and then handle e-commerce using Amazon’s proprietary billing system. We have neither the toolset to efficiently format our longer books into a CSS/HTML format, nor do we have the stomach to fulfill the logistical steps required to run a departmental revenue stream through Amazon. What’s more, this virtual space would only be suitable for publications with ISBN numbers, which represent a fraction of our publications. iPhone and Android offer interesting opportunities since more and more of our users are using mobile device applications as a means to find information. We are currently working on an app for the iPhone and feel this will provide us with an opportunity to understand how we can best use this format to help promote larger print-based projects and also bring interactivity to those publications that are place-based, procedural and fit the metaphor of a field guide. However, this option requires fluency with object-oriented programming and the iPhone SDK and is the more time intensive option when it comes to development. In terms of format, we are particularly interested in the possibilities that seem to be emerging with the Epub format. Several different e-book readers and the iPad support the Epub format, which CS4 AdobeInDesign allows as an export type. InDesign allows more out-of-the-box formatting of graphical objects and is part of our group’s existing toolset. Add Adobe Air and CS5’s export to iPhone/iPad and you have some interesting options. What remains to be seen is whether the iPad will allow users to import Epub documents directly into their device from a non-iTunes repository, which would provide a much needed nod to more equitable access.

The personal interview is perhaps the most powerful tool for video storytelling both online and off. Here are some basic technical production tips for producing more effective and watchable video interviews. I’m aiming at those readers who may be beginners, or who may "know enough to get themselves in trouble." 1. Use a lavalier mic. Use the best microphone you can get your hands on. This should be a lavalier mic, either wireless, or wired with a sufficiently long audio cable. Be aware that inexpensive wireless mics can be noisy, and may pick up interference from other radio transmitters or noise generated by computers or machines. You may have to switch the frequency setting to get around the interference, or move your subject to a different location. Better wireless systems are diversity receivers, and automatically switch between frequencies to avoid interference. If you have a less expensive video camera that lacks an external mic input, you will have to use the on-camera mic. If that’s the case, be sure to find a quieter location to minimize background noise, and get close to your subject . 2. Monitor your sound. Monitor through headphones when you are interviewing (or have the videographer do so if you are lucky enough to have one!) Listen for problems with the mic, clothes rustling, wind, or other background noises. Ask your interviewee to repeat a thought if there was an audio problem during the recording, or they stumble on a word during a particularly useful quote. 3. Get proper audio levels. Use a manual setting on you audio levels if your camera has them, and set the levels such that the signal only occasionally peaks in the -12db (decibels) range on the audio meter, and doesn’t hover in the "red" zone above that. The goal is to record the audio as loud as possible, but without distortion. Viewers will put up with bad video (as YouTube proves), but are very impatient with bad audio. 4. Use a tripod. While we have become used to "shaky cam" over the years, it can be hugely distracting in interview situations. I tell my video students "Use a tripod even when you can’t." This may sound uncompromising, but I assume that beginners will still be tempted to handhold the camera more often than they should. For interviews, camera stability is critical: at least find way to prop yourself against something solid, and failing that, form a tripod with your elbows on a table. 5. Frame your subject effectively. Follow the "rule of thirds" when framing your video subjects to bring a more powerful and aesthetically pleasing composition to your interview. When looking at your subject in the viewfinder/LCD panel, visualize two sets of imaginary parallel lines dividing the image horizontally and vertically into six zones. The four locations where those lines intersect are "power" points. (See fig.1.) Composing your video image to put interesting objects on or near these points will can energize the image, increase viewer interest, and be more engaging to their eye. For example, instead of placing a person being interviewed in the exact center of the picture, pan the camera slightly to one side and put their eye line on a power point. Beware of giving your subject too much "headroom", and tilt the camera down to balance the image vertically. You might want to also occasionally reframe the picture to provide some variety when editing your interview. Fig. 1. Use the "Rule of Thirds" to energize your composition. 6. Get close. Video is a close-up medium. Frame the image of the interviewee to create a "chest shot", or move in even closer. How close can be a stylistic preference, but setting up the shot to see the whole person can be difficult to pull off, as people can look awkward, distant, and usually not have a clue of what to do with their arms! 7. Choose where the interviewee should direct their answers. Consider directing your interviewee to talk "off-axis" to the interviewer (which may be you as both camera operator and interviewer.) Have them talk to you as you stand beside the camera, or to an imaginary person just a few degrees off-center. The alternative is to have them speak directly to the lens. This creates a very different feel to the interview, and is not recommended for non-professional talent. Whichever way you choose, stick with it throughout the production. Better cameras have the ability to flip the LCD viewer 180 degrees and place it flat against the camera facing out. This way you can conduct the interview with the camera on your right, and quickly glance at the viewfinder to monitor your shot without distracting your subject. 8. Prep your interviewee. Give your interviewee some tips before starting the interview. Remind them that your questions will not be heard on the final edited program, so they should include some of your question in their answer to create a complete thought. Remind them that "electrons are cheap" and you can always stop and re-start if they aren’t happy with something they said or if they misspoke. Make them feel comfortable. It’s not easy being interviewed on camera. 9. Get their info on camera. Be sure to begin the interview by asking your subject to say and spell their name aloud, and identify their position/title. This helps immensely when you are editing and adding their names with on screen fonts—you might lose your notes, or may not be the one who edits the video. Misspelling a name in a production is a major faux pas you want to avoid! 10. Express gratitude. Be sure to thank your interviewee, and offer to get them a copy of the final program, or send them a URL to the video after it’s placed online.

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What could be a more perfect recipe for learning opportunities than the introduction of each new increasingly sophisticated mobile device and the growing numbers of smart phone users worldwide? E-learning developers are clearly eager to apply their ideas and skills in the mobile kitchen and cook up some new mobile innovations. Mobile learning will be increasingly rich, pervasive, and personal, finding its way into nearly every facet of life—any time, any place, anybody, loaded with place-based GPS data and user tags, a new facet of reality augmenting our understanding of our lives and our world. But will mobile learning be fundamentally truly participatory or actually proprietary? Will it be extensible and interoperable, where third-party development extends participation, innovation, and openness; or will it be device dependent, closed systems controlled by proprietary gatekeepers, where "participation" occurs only by the terms set by the device vendors? This essential question, raised by Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard professor and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, in The Future of the Internet, can and should be asked regarding the future of mobile devices. Zittrain describes the historical progression of computing and network systems—an arc from a proprietary model to a generative or participatory model and back toward a proprietary model. Zittrain starts his story in 1890, when the U.S. government commissioned Herman Hollerith to tally the U.S. Census using a punch card system he had devised. Hollerith’s machine business was a precursor to IBM and a proprietary or vendor-centric generation of computing machines. The key features of a vendor or proprietary system is that the manufacturer determines the specific purpose for its use and designs it so that the user can accomplish that specific use relatively easily and not much more. If the user needs additional functions, they must rely on the vendor to provide upgrades or new equipment, in addition to maintenance. The vendor essentially locks in future business for itself. In many cases, the vendor system works well—a coffee maker does its job, and a typewriter does its. If such a machine breaks, consumers accept that they may need to replace a part from the manufacturer or purchase a new one. The use is discrete enough that being beholden to a vendor does not impact the rest of one’s life (personal) or operations (business). Zittrain then describes a new generative or participatory movement with the rise of personal computers in the 1980s and culminating with the height of the Internet and World Wide Web. The key feature of participatory systems is that the manufacturer doesn’t determine what you will use it for—they leave it up to the user to either develop their own applications or install a variety of applications developed by a spectrum of third-party vendors. The code is open to being altered; anyone can join and use the networks; people can communicate between different types of machines and service providers. The benefits of participatory systems are clear—they encourage innovation and entrepreneurship while supporting the broadest number of users. Open, participatory systems, however, are not always ideal and sometimes not feasible, as Zittrain admits. These systems are vulnerable to security issues, and because people are allowed to tinker, they cannot be relied upon to operate 100% as expected all of the time. In other words, generative, participatory systems allow the world of users to create marvelous, unexpected new applications, but if what you really want is to be assured that your coffee will brew as desired every day, you may be better off with a proprietary machine from a specific vendor. So, what do we want from our mobile devices? What is more important—that they operate consistently for specific purposes, or that we are allowed opportunities for participation and unexpected innovation? If the decision is left to the mobile device manufacturers and service providers, they will choose the proprietary path to the future as that is likely in their best interest. But that may leave mobile learning in the less-than-ideal position of being tethered to the constraints, formats, and fates of the vendors. To consider the impact—imagine if Amazon or Apple or any other company had the power to set requirements for and approve or remove all your current e-learning materials on the Internet, and to take a percentage of the profit for the pieces of your business they did approve? Who’s going to call the shots and make the demands in mobile learning’s future? Are you concerned or complacent? Too excited by all the great potential of these devices to see where the road could lead? What other options do we have?