Jon Dron and I have received funding to enhance social networking amongst the distributed students and staff at Athabasca University. This is a two year position and requires programming skills and communications abilities to help create and sustain AU’s system and contribute to the elgg community.
For more details check Athabasca Human resources listing
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New Open Access M-Learning Book
This is the second book in the series Issues in Distance Education from Athabasca University Press. I am the series editor, and wrote the forward to this text, so obviously there is lots of room for conflict of interest (though no pecuniary gain) in this review.
The book is edited and contains an introduction by Athabasca University professor Mohamed Ally. The text consists of 3 sections:Read More
Canada/ Brazil Distance International Education Symposium
I’m sitting in the Rio airport one leg down and three to go on my way home from the Canadian-Brazil International Seminar on Distance Education, just concluded in Goianas. The seminar featured presentations and lots of questions from about 200 Brazilian delegates and Canadian DEers Heather Kanuka, Griff Richards, Elizabeth Murphy and myself. I did two presentations, the first titled Distance Education: Past, Present and Future and a shorter panel presentation on quality in distance education.
Elizabeth was the star of the show, with her panel presentation in Portuguese. She also had her video camera out and captured a few minutes of my concluding comments on Web 2.0 implications for quality DE programming. The camera angle reveals my midriff bulge that increased significantly after five days of fine Brazilian food and beer. She uploaded the video to YouTube, demonstrating the ease with which video can be captured and shared with minimal editing.
Brazil is well on its way to developing a vibrant online distance education community with a consortium (Brazilian Open University consortium) supporting course development and learning centre support for a number of Universities. I have a lingering fear that the 30 person max cohort model of asynchronous online courses, may fall short of meeting the large demand for postsecondary education. But as pointed out by Brazilian colleagues, Brazilian culture is one of conversation and communication and perhaps the more cost effective “industrial model” used by most of the Open Universities in developing countries, is not a good match. I was always surprised how few students were carrying laptops (or at least have ready access to desktop machines) , which seems to be a prerequisite for the type of online distance education predominately practiced in Canada. This reinforces my interest in self paced courses that allow options for cooperation and collaboration using social software and promise more scalable models than the 30 student, teacher led cohort.
Another great issue of IRRODL
I feel less engaged in shameless self-promotion, with this announcement of the 9.3 issue of the International Review of Research on Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL), as Jon Baggaley was the editor in charge of this fine issue.
The issue features a video as well as text editorial by Jon, neither of which should be missed. As usual, each of the 8 main section articles is available in HTML, PDF and MP3 format- no excuse for listening to hot tunes on your IPOD, during this week’s commutes, when you could be engaged learning with some of the world’s best distance education researchers and theorists!! The issue also contains 4 book reviews and 2 “research notes” articles. As always, IRRODL articles are available to all as Open Access resources, distributed under a Creative Commons License. Don’t forget to register for a free email subscription, in case you miss my blog post announcing Issue 10.1 in a few months
EduBloggers, while likely be especially interested in the review of connectivism by Rita Kop & Adrian Hill and a research article on student motivation for blog use by Paul Henry Leslie and Elizabeth Murphy. Adminstrators will enjoy learning about re-engineering distance education processes in a great article by M’hammed Abdous and Wu He. Theorists will welcome both the constructivism article and one on the role of Transaction Theory by Sushita Gokool-Ramdoo as the major theoretical grounding in distance education.
Jon Baggaley has gathered a very international mix for this issue with articles from Japan, Iceland, Ghana, United Arab Emerits, USA and SE Asia – affirming IRRODL’s claim to be the most international of the distance education journals. My thanks to Jon for very ably editing the last two issues of IRRODL, while I was on sabbatical.
This issue also is the final one to be constructed by Managing Editor, Paula Smith. Paula has been the key factor in the timely production and innovations of IRROD over the past 6 years. She leaves to begin her own web 2.0 communications company. I am sure all those who have directly interacted with Paula during the review and publication of IRRODL articles will wish her well and join me in thanking her for her considerable efforts. For those whose only contact with Paula, was indirect through reading IRRODL articles, you have benefited from her keen eye for detail, publishing innovations and competent procurement and distribution of many important works during her tenure. Best wishes Paula, from all your IRRODL friends and subscribers.
Terry Anderson- Editor, IRRODL
E-learning Entry level costs down to $0.00
Congratulations to the folks at Nuvvo a Canadian, employee owned company that has released an AJAX based, web service that allows ANYONE to create and manage their own e-learning system. And the cost is FREE (unless of course you want to charge people to take your courses) in which case the cost is $9.99 a month (but those are Canadian – not REAL dollars).
The service offers interactive (blogs, quizzes and emails) and dissemination tools to create and host a course. The program seems at first glance to not be dissimilar to Moodle or other LMS systems – except there is NO installation needed and the price is right.
The lowering of the e-learning creation and delivery entry barriers to $0 or $9.99 a month allows a whole new group of teachers and education delivery agents to enter the market -check out the list of currently available courses.
As i’ve long predicted, the era when quality elearning courses can only be produced, distributed and supported by an army of professionals is rapidly ending.
Terry
CIDER Research in Distance Education Workshop in Montreal
I’m using my Blog to repost an unreflective invitation to join the CIDER gang in Montreal this May. It should be interesting and you are welcome to participate (even if you are not a Canuck!)
Dear Colleagues
We are pleased to invite you to the second annual CIDER Workshop. This is a day for those interested in distance education research to share discoveries, meet colleagues and find their own place in the world of distance education research. Whether observer, practitioner, student or active researcher, your interest and passion for distance education – in its many forms, makes us want to see you in Montreal.
We think we need time together to stimulate and support our community and to address the challenges and the opportunities associated with removing barriers and creating new ways of learning. The conference is associated, as a pre-conference, with the annual conferences of the Canadian Association for Distance Education and the Association for Media and Technology in Education. The logistic details are below and the agenda and registration is at Pre-Conference Workshop Agenda. We hope to see you in Montreal in May!
Terry Anderson, Ph.D.