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Friday, December 08, 2006

Biases that eLearning 2.0 Faces (or What We Are Up Against)

Saw a post in the eLearningAll group that expresses a lot of the biases that exist in the world of eLearning around eLearning 2.0 approaches:


Before you "optimize eLearning" through the use of Wikis, Blogs, PodCasts, video feeds, IMs, XML, SOAP, AJAX, and other "new"/"improved" methods, it is really important to understand:

1. How can these "optimize eLearning"
2. How will you manage them
3. How will you measure success
4. How you will add the next "hot" technology
5. How will you prevent the system from becoming a garbage repository

that is first overwhelmed with everyone wanting to post their latest thoughts on the lint residing in their bellies and then is ignored because the only content it has is people's musings on belly lint?

Wikis: Will you have a librarian organizing posted content and verifying that it is correct? How will you limit posting access so you don't get some whacko (like me) uploading incorrect, opinionated, and possibly insulting content?

Blogs: How will you take the word "I" out of people's postings (e.g, "This is my first experience posting a blog, and I am really thrilled to death about it") That is, how will you make the blog content useful as an instructional element. If you go to the Brandon-Hall network, you'll be amazed how many postings are of this character.

PodCasts: Will you have professional announcers recording things, or will you subject your audience to amateur, scratchy, poorly organized rantings? How will you ensure accessibility both in terms of iPod ownership and ADA?

Other technologies: Do you understand the implications of these mechanisms?

Have you thought about just creating good content that the audience might be interested in reading and referencing?

Al Moser
ReadyGo

In fairness to Al, he is generally one of the more forward thinking people out there. Wow, a long way to go. Or maybe people out there share his opinions and biases - of course, you don't see it expressed much.

1 comment:

Darius said...

I guess the easiest way to answer this is to turn the question around just a little bit:

Before you "optimize paperLearning" through the use of lose paper leaves, bound paper, and other "new"/"improved" methods, it is really important to understand:

1. How can paper "optimize paperLearning"?
2. How will you manage all that paper?
3. How will you measure success with paper?
4. How you will add the next "hot" printing technology?
5. How will you prevent the paper system from becoming a garbage repository?

I've been overwhelmed with everyone wanting to post on paper and in bookstores their latest thoughts on the lint residing in their bellies and then have it on a NY Best Seller list because the only content it has is people's musings on belly lint.


Cheers,
Darius