Why Big Data, Not MOOCs, Will Revolutionize Education Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are hailed as a new innovation so disruptive for academia today that they will do to higher education what the Internet has done to newspapers or what Napster did to music. There's only one problem with this bold hypothesis: It's simply not true. Don't get me wrong, online learning will fundamentally transform higher education, bridging distances and creating access in ways that have not been possible before. But, in this arena, MOOCs are not a transformative innovation that will forever remake academia. That honor belongs to a more disruptive and far-reaching innovation – "big data."
Putting Out Fires, Part 4: Setting eLearning Standards by Jennifer De Vries & Joe Ganci “We all follow standards, whether we realize it or not. If we can document the standards that we used in each project, then someone who comes after us will be more likely to revise our courses in the intended style” In part 1 of this series, we discussed 10 questions to ask before you start to modify someone else’s eLearning project. In part 2, we discussed what to look for once you open the files. Marc My Words: Back to School (Killing and Reigniting the Learning Flame) by Marc J. Rosenberg “The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.”—George Bernard Shaw For this year’s back-to-school column, let’s first go back to a dark place, a place of learning nightmares … your freshman college lecture hall. But don’t worry: there is light at the end.
5-Steps for Creating Effective Employee Training There can be a variety of reasons why an organization needs to create training for their employees. Sometimes it is for standard processes (think orientation training), but other times it is to ultimately change the behavior of the workforce to better the company. If you have never created training before, or are new to the field, your first stop is probably to do a Google search for a valid training design approach. As a warning, there are many out there, and they can sometimes be quite confusing and theoretical. The Best K-12 Education Technology Blogs If it takes a village to raise a child, how many people does it take to train an educator? It’s hard to say, but 50 helping hands seems like a good place to start. In the spirit of community, collaboration and information sharing, EdTech: Focus on K–12 has rounded up 50 ed-tech blogs that we deem must-reads for the K–12 community.
Blended Learning What is blended learning? Blended learning is not the same as technology-rich instruction. It goes beyond one-to-one computers and high-tech gadgets. Blended learning involves leveraging the Internet to afford each student a more personalized learning experience, meaning increased student control over the time, place, path, and/or pace of his or her learning.
Flipped-Classroom: Future of Education? [INFOGRAPHIC] New technology is opening new doors in classrooms all over the world as more teachers are using a flipped classroom model to deliver their content. A flipped classroom is a different approach for traditional classwork and homework. In the flipped model, a teacher will record or post video lectures instead of lecturing in class, and then student will watch the lectures as homework on a computer or mobile device. Types of Blended Learning [INFOGRAPHIC] Many organizations are realizing the inherent benefits of utilizing a robust blended learning approach to their learning initiatives, in fact, by 2019, 50% of all high school courses will be delivered online. But what exactly is blended learning? Blended learning can take a variety of shapes, but it is often unfairly defined vary narrowly. For those of you who are new to the concept of blended learning, it is defined as a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace. For instance, LearnDash offers one approach to blended learning, making it easy for organizations or educational institutions to supplement lessons with e-learning modules – but this is just one approach.
Marc My Words: Don't Dismiss Level One Evaluation by Marc J. Rosenberg “If you are collecting Level One data, be smart about it. Don’t gather so much information from participants that you drown in it, ignore it, or dilute the survey so much that you lose sight of its most important point— measuring the worthiness of your efforts.” Many training pros disparage Kirkpatrick’s Level One evaluation. Introducing Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) to a Corporate Audience by Eric Kammerer “Learners want some guidance about the changing boundaries of professional development. Traditional models of learning involve taking a chunk of time to step out of the workplace. PKM makes learning a real- time activity within the flow of work. We need to clarify what people are allowed and expected to do in terms of learning during the workday.” The emails went out in mid-December: “I’m looking to put together a set of participants for a pilot professional-development workshop we’re putting on in January. Your name came up as a strong learner and an influential person.”
3 Reasons Videos Go Viral: YouTube’s Kevin Allocca at TEDYouth At a recent TEDYouth event, Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s Trends Manager (i.e., he gets paid to watch and analyze YouTube videos) explained why, despite 48 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, certain videos go viral and often become cultural phenomenons (dare we remember Rebecca Black’s “Friday” or, more recently, PSY’s “Gangnam Style“?). While his talk focused primarily on videos that HR would prefer we watch outside of work, the trends he explores are very much relevant to the videos that communicators are being asked to create and/or publish more and more frequently. In particular, he notes that the majority of videos that spread like wildfire among a given audience possess at least one of three traits: 1) Unexpectedness
Metrics that Matter® Demos You’ve got a lot riding on your talent. Are you sure they’re headed in the right direction? Are your talent development programs effective? Is there anything you can do to improve? IMS Global Learning Consortium: Interoperability Standards for Education by Bill Brandon “The IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS GLC) is a global, nonprofit, member organization that strives to enable the growth and impact of learning technology in the education and corporate sectors worldwide.”— IMS profile statement Standards for interoperability are increasingly important as platforms, applications, systems, and technologies for learning and education proliferate. Many readers of this magazine are already familiar with SCORM and the Experience API (xAPI), learning management systems (LMSs), and Learning Record Stores (LRSs) because of the attention that government and corporate organizations have given them.