Pontydydysu is a partner in the European funded Bazaar project and I will be speaking at the project conference in Utrecht in December. This looks like a great event. I am really happy that people are getting more imaginative in how they organise these type of events. The conference is free. Please do try and come along. The conference flyer is attached with this post.

The conference will take place on 14 December 2007, Utrecht, the Netherlands from 9:30 - 16:00, at Boothzaal, Utrecht University Library on the University Campus de Uithof, Heidelberglaan 3. It is jointly rganised by the Bazaar project and IVLOS, the Institute of Education of Utrecht University

The Conference Objectives are:

• To provide a space for participant-driven discussion and debate
• To promote critical enquiry and discourse
• To allow for the presentation of ideas in progress
• To provide access to peer expertise and opinion

The five main themes are based on key and emergent issues identified by Bazaar:

• Hey Dude, Where’s my Data? On data security, privacy
and sustainability
• Social Software, Tools and Content Creation
• OERs and the Culture of Sharing
• Interoperability and Metadata and OERs
• PLEs, ePortfolio’s and Informal Learning

The major aim of the conference is to promote dialogue and exchange between ‘experts’,researchers, developers, practitioners and learners. We are particularly keen that learners and junior researchers are given an opportunity to discuss and exchange their ideas. We aim that the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants rather than the traditional ‘presentation and five minutes questions’ format with content determined in advance by a single organiser, or a small group of organisers.

Workshops and Round Tables include:

- Social networking services & social search – led by Josie Fraser, EdTechUK, UK
- THINKing and UNDERSTANDing the internet – led by Helen Keegan, Salford University, UK
- Building an infrastructure for lifelong competence development – led by Wolgang Greller, Open University, NL
- Developing Open Educational Resources – led by Marco Kalz, Open University, NL
- The use of wikis and open architecture spaces to promote a culture of sharing – led by Steve Wheeler, University of Plymouth, UK
- Creating and sharing Open Educational resources – led by Veronika Hornung, Salzburg Research, AT
- Personal Learning Environments – led by Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu, UK
- How can we use IMS Learning Design? – led by Raymond Elferink, RayCom BV, NL
- The future of Learning Management Systems – led by Geoge Bekiaridis, Ergon KEK, GR

The Conference is free but we would ask you to inform Raymond Elferink if you intend coming (not least of all because we are providing a free lunch).

Details of accommodation in Utrecht etc will be posted on the Bazaar Web site.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/sustaining-the-commons/

Interesting letter from Larry Lessig asking for advice about the future of ccMixter, “the community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.” I first came upon ccMixter when I was searching for Creative Commons licensed music. It is a great site and I had a go at the remix competition myself (although the result was so bad I never actually entered it).

Firstly, great that Lessig has written to all those registered on the site. And I am sympathetic to his fear of being misunderstood - in the Open Content movement we can get too paranoid about peoples’ motives sometimes. More importantly, it raises big questions about how we sustain open and free resources. Servers cost money to run. Users require support. Technical development is important if services are to grow. sadly, legal advice is critical. And, without advertising, which I personally hate, the more a service becomes popular, the higher the cost. ccMixter is not the only service facing this challenge. I think Larry’s proposal seems a sensible courses to pursue. I would be very interested in hear what others have to say - not just on the subject of the future of ccMixter but on the general issue of developing and sustaining free and open community services

“I am writing to ask for your advice about a Creative Commons project that you know a great deal about: ccMixter. Let me start by saying “thank you” for participating in that project. By sharing your gifts with the community so that other musicians can learn and create together, you have helped us make it clear that culture is enriched when artists work together in a legal and sane way.

As you know, ccMixter.org started as a tie-in promotional remix contest with WIRED magazine . Thanks to you, it has grown into a vibrant community of quality musicians sharing not only their love for music but the music itself, and not just with each other but with everybody through Creative Commons licensing. As part of a larger initiative to spread the word about music in the Commons, that one-off remix contest site is now part of the larger Creative Commons Sample Pool that boasts over 50,000 CC licensed music samples including 700 amazing a cappellas. As sponsors of ccMixter.org and the Sample Pool initiative we are both honored and heartened that the music production community has taken to these projects.

We at Creative Commons are now working through how we can best build upon the success that ccMixter is. We are a nonprofit. We don’t have the resources or expertise to turn it into a business. Nor do we want ccMixter to lose its special commons-like character. We are therefore considering a move that I’d like to get your feedback about.

This move would change the “ownership” of ccMixter, and add to its potential. It would not in any way change its importantly “free” character. In reading the description that follows, please keep this promise in clear view: ccMixter’s core character — as a free, non-advertising space where people can share and remix (at least for noncommercial purposes), will not change. Instead, the change we are considering would simply complement this core character, with added functionality, and value, that we believe could help sustain the site, and make it much more significant.

It is this change that I want to get your feedback about. The plan currently being discussed is to identify a competent commercial entity to take over operations of ccMixter. Subject — again — to the

requirement that they keep the existing ccMixter.org site as it is, this commercial entity would be free to add commercial services beyond the services currently provided. Again (and I know, even if I say this 100 times, there will still be some who don’t hear it), ccMixter.org would remain as it is. It would be kept free from any commercial interference (fees, ads, etc.) and continue to have all the music owned by you, licensed under CC; in other words, everything exactly the way it is. But the company would fund the free site by creating a new business-to-business website devoted to serving commercial consumers of music.

This new site (call it ccMixter-Plus) will be for commercial purposes and require that the artist signs a (non-exclusive) contract with the company to participate. By signing with the company, the artist will allow the company to license music for the financial gain of both the company and the artist. Registered users of the free ccMixter site will be NOT automatically be signed to the business site. That decision will be between the artist, company and fellow artists. No one will be required to sign. No one’s rights to use ccMixter.org will change depending upon whether they sign. The only change would be to offer to artists who want it a way that they might commercialize some of their (and everyone who wants) creativity. And its aim would be to enable this opportunity with minimal hassle.

So, again, ccMixter (the free site) would continue to work the same way it always has. But it would now also serve as a “community A&R” pool for signing artists to ccMixter-Plus (the music licensing site). The profits from the business, in turn, would fund the free site, and guarantee it can continue to grow as one of the most interesting music remix sites on the web……..”

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/sounds-of-the-bazaar-14/

This edition of Sounds of the Bazaar came out a couple of weeks ago. But it was just before we launched this web site. So I am republishing it now, for those of you who may have missed the original on the Bazaar site.  And, don’t forget, Sounds of Bazaar can also be obtained from the iTunes store.

Welcome to the second of our special series of autumn shows. This series is being produced in conjunction with Online Educa Berlin. Each edition we feature some of the themes and speakers form this years Online Educa conference, being held at the end of November in Berlin.

In this show we feature two contributors to Educa. Ruth Rominger is Director of Learning Design at Monterey Institute. Ruth talks to us about the development of Open Educational resources, social authoring, sustainability models and much more.

Steve Wheeler will also be at Online Educa. He is part of a panel looking at the potential of Multi User Virtual Environments, including Second Life, for learning. In the interview Steve talks about the development of a project on sexual health in Second Life.

Web site of the month is “not School, not Home , but Schome.”

We present the second part of our interview with Stephen Downes.

And I talk about the forthcoming Bazaar conference.

The musical mix which holds it all together is the work of Dirk Stieglitz. As a good tradition the music comes again from the great music site Jamendo.com and is published under a Creative Commons licences. In this volume you listen to the band Killing Jazz and their album “2nd Round“.

We hope you will enjoy the show.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/a-teachers-perspective-on-creat

I would be delighted to host guest entries on the Wales Wide Web. I forgot to ask. But Martin Owen has emailed me saying: “I have been minded to write some things about 1994 for some time and I was prompted to write this. I think it might belong on Pontydysgu.” It certainly does, Martin. And I am honoured. Martin was one of the people who first got me hooked on technology and learning. you can read it here now. When I get the research pages sorted I will also add it there.

“I write this from a teacher’s perspective. I may write the story from a learner’s perspective later. It is a response to Graham’s piece of Nov 9th about the death of VLE’s.

This is a heresy in some circles – repositories of learning materials are not what the world needs. The idea that a teacher needs a mound of other people’s worksheets or powerpointlesses or yet –SCORM/IMS Learning Design structured learning objects is a figment of the imagination of deranged computer scientists and people who need tidy desks to remember where they put things.

I will say that having good access to some neat stuff (like a well drawn diagram of  Fleming’s Left Hand Rule which I found in seconds on Wikipedia) and sharing that knowledge with others is incredibly useful.

What was true in 1994 – when I first wrote a successful grant proposal for social media in education – is true now. Sharing and borrowing is what we need to facilitate. Sharing and borrowing are social actions. They involve reciprocity and interaction between the people who share and borrow. It comes with knowledge that the people are the source and people are the receivers of this stuff and that is quite a different mindset to the notion of a repository. They are verbs associated with communities. They come with conversations.

It is increasingly easy to find stuff and publish stuff in ways they can be found. The repository is the internet and search engines are pretty dam powerful. They both become much more powerful when people are trading ideas around what is there.

My first attempt at a “virtual learning platform” was an open access room in my University that was open ‘til late. It had 12 networked MacPlus with some networked hard drives (G. Sidhu is the unsung hero of modern computing for developing AppleTalk) with the best peripherals and software tools I could afford (Scanners etc). People met, people talked, people traded, people created together. My second attempt added FirstClass to this – which coupled with putting 56 computers into the schools where my pre-service trainee teachers were learning to teach. I learned from this.

One thing I learned is that teaching and sharing on line is not straight-forward. People who were starting using the internet for learning just then where doing things like putting up some text and the telling students to “discuss and respond” in some associated forum. The kid who was going to do well usually wrote a convincing response and the best the rest could do would be to say “me-too” or “flame”. Instruction to students needed to be structured in ways that allowed multiple responses and required students to think about how they would involve others in their learning. It needed to be like the open access room where there was borrowing, sharing and mutual support. I have some  historic advice on this.

The online environment we started to build as a European Framework 4 Telematics project REM was about a multi-media learning network (we were not building platforms or repositories- we were building tools for a learning network – a different mind-set). It had means to share and discuss resources and to build collaborative learning in a virtual resource rich environment. As with all too many projects the files now rest on an old hard disk with files dated December 2000 – the end of funding.

There was a tension in the development I am only just fully coming to understand. There was some feeling amongst the project workers that there was “a” workflow through which we would drive people. We adopted a model from a paper by Lehrer et  et al . This was constructivist in its intent – however I do not think that the authors intended it to be as hard wired as a workflow as our designs might have made it.  I think design and learning are not one-way flows or on a single track. Human activity is capable of managing multiple tracks – and prefers it that way – that is to say learning is managed by the learner – learning management is not imposed or assumed by the system. As an aside, my colleagues who promoted this system initially (with my full agreement) went on to be leading proponents of IMS Learning Design. I think at a micro level it is clearly the job of a tutor to direct attention to what is salient and more importantly provide formative feedback to students on their learning. I am far from convinced that there is a set of recipes, templates or algorithms that are the formula for teaching and learning success. I appreciate that has been a holy grail for learning technology. My 36 year career in learning technology has been littered with such visions from   Skinner  onwards. I think humans are much too good at learning to be constrained by such tracks.  I even proposed an   educational modeling language  based on conversations and meaning making (as per  Nonaka) myself.

I   do think that some of the ideas expressed about the teaching of creativity in design by  Richard Kimbell at London Goldsmiths – who proposes phases like having ideas, developing ides and testing ideas without suggesting that students might not be doing all three in some sense at any time – although design will tend to go in a general direction if it is to be completed.

But getting back to the main thread of thought. In our second phase of development of this learning network tools we engaged with a BIG international bank. What was learned from talking to their training management was that they had  profound understanding of learning in their company, that development of staff was multi-dimensional: company process knowledge; knowledge of the industry’s facts and concepts (legal frameworks, economics etc) ; generic knowledge (IT skills) and interpersonal skills and so on. Using a standardised controlled vocabulary to describe their resources or most of the wrappings of systems like SCORM did not begin to address the richness of training they needed to deliver. However they were very systematic in profiling employees, their employees career trajectories, and equally profiling the needs and skills that the company required to function as a business. They recognized they needed systems of mentoring, instruction, community building, reward-giving, need-identification, ambition fulfilling . They had their own dynamic mappings of conversations, resources and learning pathways. The pathways were never straight.

Here is a simple case example. An employee was newly charged with writing a quarterly report that demanded skills in spreadsheets and charts he had not previously had. Normal processes would have had them identify and external course provider and sent the employee out for a day at some high-cost and loss of his labour for that day. A modern trend might have been the provision of one of the many dull online courses there are in the subject. However the company had tagged or profiled one of its employees with “Excel expert” and “mentoring” attributes. The company demonstrated that having someone show you the ropes to get going and being there to help when you get stuck is quite and efficient way of learning to use software – and in the process two people were having their career developed and a community of practice was being augmented.

When Graham Attwell writes about social media tools connected together to make learning are   better than VLEs  we should think about that social process of learning and teaching. Sure we can probably do them better with loosely coupled tools but I can still make cock-ups. The way we plumb things together is significant and needs to map onto the activity system or be part of the transformation of an activity system. That is a new skill – however we are fortunate in that the tool-bag is fairly bulging with opportunity and we can add, remove, augment or find scope for new invention. We can build many tailored systems for sharing and reciprocity that are true to the context in which they work. One size, one platform, one standard does not fit all.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/drive-curiosity-ethics-collabor

I have been trying to reorganize my feedreader and picked up this post from June from Jeremy Herbert’s Headspace blog. It quotes a post by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen about what he seeks in new hires:

DRIVE: “First, drive. I define drive as self-motivation — people who will walk right through brick walls, on their own power, without having to be asked, to achieve whatever goal is in front of them. People with drive push and push and push and push and push until they succeed.”

CURIOSITY: “Second criterion: curiosity. Curiosity is a proxy for, do you love what you do? Anyone who loves what they do is inherently intensely curious about their field, their profession, their craft. They read about it, study it, talk to other people about it… immerse themselves in it, continuously. And work like hell to stay current in it. Not because they have to. But because they love to.

ETHICS: “Third and final criterion: ethics. Ethics are hard to test for. But watch for any whiff of less than stellar ethics in any candidate’s background or references. And avoid, avoid, avoid. Unethical people are unethical by nature, and the odds of a metaphorical jailhouse conversion are quite low.”

I think this is interesting and would agree with much of it but it raises some questions. Firstly, I would add a fourth category:

“COLLABORATION. The fourth criteria is collaboration. The ability to work with others is a critical source of learning. Even more so the ability to collaborate is central to developing and sharing knowledge. Collaboration leads to informal learning, innovation and productivity. Collaboration includes listening and valuing other peoples opinions as much as putting forward one’s own.”

The problem is that even if new pedagogic approaches involve curiosity and collaboration for learning, when we seek to assess and certificate competences, these are not qualities we value.

Is it possible to develop new forms of assessment that value drive, curiosity, ethics and collaboration? Is it even desirable that we seek to measure such things? What is the relation between our measurement of general educational learning or vocational skills and knowledge and what might be called the soft skills highlighted by Marc Andreessen.

Technorati Tags: competence development, assessment

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/developing-an-i-curriculum/

The issue of digital literacy will not go away. And it reappears in strange forms. Every six months or so there is a surge of posts on teh Becata research list serve suggesting all kids should be taught to touch type. Fair enough - if I could type properly it would save me a lot of time in correcting errors. But I don’t really see the keyboard lasting much longer as the main form of talking to a computer.

Anyway, it has always seemed to me that one of the big challenges arising from the idea of digital literacy is the curriculum. I am quite bemused by curricula in general. Whatever research we undertake, whatever needs we show, the development of curricula seems to go on in a seperate and parallel universe. There was one project that I evaluated which greatly impressed me. Martin Owen was one of the project partners and his guest blog on this page earlier this week reminded me of the project. It was called i-Curriculum and it set out to research and develop guidelines for curricula for developing digital literacy. At least that is what I think the project was about. The official European project blurb says:

“The I-Curriculum framework is a set of guidelines that can be used by policy makers, teachers and other educators, the producers of digital resources, and students to check whether a project or lesson achieves the goal of enabling active participation in lifelong learning practices. This framework could help in the examination of current curriculum and learning design, locating the process within the demands of changing cultures and mapping educational provision onto the new demands of new contexts in which life, work and education interact.”

Central to the project is the framework.

“The framework represents a shift away from the notion of key skills. It looks at an activity as developing various skills related to digital literacies, the areas are:

• exchanging and sharing information; communication and collaboration


• researching: finding things out


• modelling


• working practices and attitudes.

Across each of these skill areas are three levels of curriculum activity:

The Operational Curriculum is learning to use the tools and technology effectively. Knowing how to word-process, how to edit a picture, enter data and make simple queries of an information system, save and load files and so on.

The Integrating Curriculum is where the uses of technology are applied to current curricula and organisation of teaching and learning. This might be using an online library of visual material, using a virtual learning environment to deliver a course or part of a

course. The nature of the subject and institution of learning is essentially the same, but technology is used for efficiency, motivation and effectiveness.

The Transformational Curriculum is based on the notion that what we might know, and how and when we come to know it has changed by the existence of the technologies we use and therefore the curriculum and organisation of teaching and learning needs to change

to reflect those changes.

There is implied inclusion of levels along the axis, but it is not the case that you need to study in an operational way before you become transformational. There is a real danger in making that assumption. If you start from the position that you are going to be transformational or integrative then you do not approach the acquisition of operational skills in the same way. If the curriculum is viewed in such a way that competence operations in themselves are the learning outcomes then teaching can be fairly mechanical – however, if the curriculum is designed to be transformational, the acquisition of the operational skills is needs driven,

intrinsic, secure in a model of transferability and almost taken-for-granted.”

If you are interested, FutureLab have a web page giving access to the final report. The report contains the following sections

Background - this section defines what is meant by digital literacy skills in this document, and how we can distinguish between levels of competency.

The framework - discusses the theoretical underpinnings of the matrix as well as presenting the matrix.

Case studies - three illustrative case studies taken from some of the partner countries that demonstrate how current practice can be considered using the framework as an assessment tool.

Conclusions and recommendations - this summarises the findings and recommendations for the EU with respect to the development of digital literacy skills.

The project web site also provides access to many of the projects working documents. Some of these are avaiable in Greek, Spanish and German, as well as English.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/impala%c2%a0podcast%c2%a0models

I’m in a bar in Sofia - grabbing a bit of bandwidth. And in comes this interesting email.

“Dear Dr. Attwell,” it says, (thanks for the Doctorate, I am a sucker for flattery), “I am a producer for the Spanish Americas Section of the BBC World Service. I am writing an article about Online Educa Berlin and I would like to have a telephone interview with you about Podcasting.

The idea is to talk about Podcasting as a tool for learning, what is the potential and the future of the tool, the plus and the minus points.”

Well how could I refuse. But I thought it might be time to do a little research about podcasts, as opposed to just making them. I remembered the excellent Impala project - I have an interview with one of the project researchers, Ming Nie, due out next week. The IMPALA project, funded by the UK Higher Education Academy, is investigating the impact of podcasting on student learning and how the beneficial effects can positively be enhanced.



Perhaps more interestingly, the IMPALA partners are experimenting with a range of pedagogical models to address specific challenges in teaching and learning.

I searched around the various project web sites, wikis, blogs and presentations. I am not sure about their first attempt at a model - it seems to me overly media / technology prescriptive. But some of the work looking at the pedagogic use of podcasts is very useful.

In a paper presented at a JISC Workshop on Innovative E‐Learning with Mobile and Wireless Technologies, they say podcasts can be used:

1. To support online learning and to integrate other e‐learning activities – a profcast model


2. As extensions to lectures: summaries, additional learning resources, further reading and research


3. To enhance student learning in location‐based studies


4. To bring topical issues and informal content into the formal curriculum


5. To develop reflective and active learning skills


6. To develop students’ study skills during the first year at the university

In a presentation at Alt C, 2007 Ming Nie says podcasting can “facilitate collaborative learning and skills development through dialogue (Allen, 2005; Laurillard, 2002;Wenger, 1998).

Ming Nie goes on to say podcasting can be used to “Capture Informal Knowledge, Experience, feelings, viewpoints through conversation, discussion, debate. Podcasting is Personal, interesting and engaging.”

From conversations with e-learning researchers and practitioners in the corporate sector, I think education is behind in this. Many large companies are already using podcasting to develop and capture informal learning. the problem with education is it isn’t quite sure about informal learning. Yes it is there. yes, it is probably a good thing. But do we really want to sanction knowledge acquisition which takes place outside of the classroom or the VLE and outside the approved sanction of the official curriculum.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/sounds-of-bazaar-16/

Not quite sure if it is 16 or 17 - and no time to post it here now. But if you can’t wait for the next edition of Sounds of the Bazaar head over to the Bazaar web site - and listen to the latest edition of our podcasting goodness.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/sounds-of-the-bazaar-podcast-no

It is already time for another edition of Sounds of the Bazaar.

This issue features a round table discussion with Jaan Netzow, from IBM Germany, Gareth Greenwood, IBM UK, and Bert de Coutere, IBM Belgium. All are involved in one way or another with the development, sales and support of software for collaboration - particularly in the workplace. Can IBM applications replace Facebook as a ‘managed social network?’ Should managers have the right to change employees’ personal profiles. All this and more in this round table.

The Sound of the Bazaar interview is with Rebecca Stromeyer. Rebecca has been involved with organising Online Educa Berlin since the start - in 1994. In the interview she tells of the origins of the conference and talks about what she enjoys about it all.

Website of the Month features the European Collaboration for Innovation project. And - this is a little embarassing - just at the moment we don’t have the url for the project to hand. But if you do want the url please visit us again when we have updated this page.

As ever thanks to Dirk Stieglitz - from stray hints in emails I gather that I made a mess of recording this issue and he had a bit of a technical struggle. And thanks to Beate Kleessen from ICWE for help in planning SoB this autumn and to Agnes Breitkopf from IBM for setting up the round table

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/show-that-you-share/

Creative Commons changed its pictogram for Attribution and adjusted the pictogram for Noncommercial to European needs, so Bazaar has been updating their Bazaar Pins set too! See also: Show that you Share.

For those who are not familiar with these pins: to stimulate the sharing and reuse of content, the Bazaar project supports Creative Commons and came up with the idea to wear pins to Show that we Share to conferences, seminars, our Show-me days and every other (non-)Bazaar event. Pinning the ones we find important on our rugsacks and jackets makes showing that we share an everyday thing. And we wear them proudly.

The old set has now really become a collectors item. The new set will be available at the Bazaar Stand at the Online Educa in Berlin, Germany, next week (November 28-30, 2007).

Every attendee to the free Bazaar Conference on December 14 2007 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, will receive their own Bazaar Pins set, to Show that they Share. For more information on the Bazaar conference, see: Networks, Communities & Learning: Show that you Share!.

We hope to see you there, we hope to see you wear.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/evaluating-e-learning/

We still have a substantial backlog of material to be published on this site. And we have a backlog of paper publications to go out. It will all sort out in time. But for the moment I am just trying to get things out in any way I can. So I have attached a PDF (1.1MB) version of a Guide to the Evaluation of e-Learning to this post.

This guide has been produced as a report on the work of the Models and Instruments for the evaluation of e-learning

and ICT supported learning (E-VAL) project. The project took place between 2002 and 2005 and was sponsored by the European Commission Leonardo da Vinci programme. The project was coordinated by Pontydysgu.

The following text is taken from the introduction to the guide.

The development of e-learning products and the provision of e-learning opportunities is one of the most rapidly expanding

areas of education and training.

Whether this is through an intranet, the internet, multimedia, interactive TV or computer based training, the growth of e-learning is accelerating. However, what is known about these innovative approaches to training has been limited by the shortage of scientifically credible evaluation. Is e-learning effective? In what contexts? For what groups of learners? How do different learners respond? Are there marked differences between different ICT platforms? Does the socio-cultural environment make a difference? Considering the costs of implementing ICT based training, is there a positive return on investment? What are the perceptions of VET professionals? What problems has it created for them?

E-learning is also one of the areas that attracts the most research and development funding. If this investment is to be maximised, it is imperative that we generate robust models for the evaluation of e-learning and tools which are flexible in use but consistent in results.

“Although recent attention has increased e-learning evaluation, the current research base for evaluating e-learning is inadequate … Due to the initial cost of implementing e-learning programs, it is important to conduct evaluation

studies.”

(American Society for Training and Development, 2001).

The Capitalisation report on the Leonardo da Vinci 1 programme, one of the biggest sponsors of innovative e-learning projects in European VET, also identified the lack of systematic evaluation as being the major weakness in e-learning projects.

However, whilst some have been desperately seeking answers to the question ‘What works and what doesn’t work?’ and looking for ways of improving the quality of e-learning, the response by a large sector of the community of e-learning developers and practitioners has been a growing preoccupation with software and platforms. There has been only limited

attention to pedagogy and learning. The development of models and tools for the evaluation of e-learning can help in improving the quality of e-learning and in informing and shaping future development in policy and practice.

The guide contains eleven sections:

1. Introduction – why do we need new models and tools for the evaluation of e-learning


2. Evaluating e-learning – what does the literature tell us?


3. A Framework for the evaluation of e-learning


4. Models and theories of evaluation


5. Models and tools for the evaluation of e-learning – an overview


6. The SPEAK Model and Tool


7. Tool for the evaluation of the effectiveness of e-learning programmes in small- and medium sized
   
   enterprises (SMEs)


8. Models and tools for evaluation of e-learning in higher vocational education


9. Policy model and tool


10. A management oriented approach to the evaluation of e-learning


11. Individual learning model and tool

You can download the guide here: eval3

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/scottish-standard-for-chartered

Been meaning to blog about this for some time. Jenny Hughes forwarded me the link today so I have finally got round to it.

Why is the Scottish Chartered Teacher scheme so interesting.

Firstly it recognises that teachers can develop their career without leaving the classroom. In other words it values the activities of being a teacher, rather than in most systems where career advancement is based on becoming a manager.

Secondly it introduces a framework for Continuing Professional Development, based on professional values and personal commitments.

Perhaps most important is the the Chartered Teacher qualification is based largely on reflective learning and self evaluation.

The Standard has four key components:

a. professional values and personal commitments;

b. professional knowledge and understanding;

c. professional and personal attributes;

d. professional action.

The basic assumption is that the Chartered Teacher is characterised by four central professional values and personal commitments:

a. effectiveness in promoting learning in the classroom;

b. critical self-evaluation and development;

c. collaboration and influence;

d. educational and social values.

You can find out more about the Chartered Teacher Scheme on the Scottish Government’s Standard for Chartered Teachers web site.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/news-from-berlin/

A quick post from the Online Educa conference in Berlin.

The experiment working with students from Koblenz producing podcasts from the conference is great fun - will report more on it later.

And yesterday I did a stand in key note presentation - Web 2.0, Social Software and Personal Learning Environments. A copy of that will also appear here soon.

And of course we are getting those podcasts out. Here is Sounds of the Bazaar 17 - a special edition on podcasting in education. This is a link to the full edition - if you want to access the individual items in the programme head over to the Bazaar site and listen there.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2007/11/searching-lurking-and-the-zone-

I’m very gratified at the interest in ‘Searching and Lurking and the Zone of Proximal Development’, the book I edited on the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises.

We brought to boxes of the books to Berlin - they have all gone. So if you still would like a copy here is a link to a PDF version.