His Dark Materials

A useful web site for His Dark Materials

Copes Curtain Tracks & Poles

Copes Curtain Tracks & Poles has some useful information for fitting curtain tracks.

elearnspace. everything elearning.

The article elearnspace. everything elearning. provides a brief but useful insight into instructional design.

Thematic networks at the open university

This article and the work of the open university is referred to by pedagogic strand of Jisc.

Temporal GIS and Spatio-Temporal Modeling

An article on Temporal GIS.

Barriers to elearning

The seven elearning Barriers facing employees

A word test

This is a test to see how the blogger for word will look when published.

e-Learning Centre: Blogging� tools

The page on Blogging tools provides a relatively comprehensive list of blogging tools to use.

WebCT Campus Edition

The page WebCT Campus Edition is the home page for campus edition and has information about version 6

MMU VITAeL - The changing MLE landscape

MMU VITAeL - The changing MLE landscape

elearning and pedagogy - Key Outcomes

Key Outcomes

A review of learning design

A review of learning design is the final report from JISC in the strand 'Review of Learning Design Tools – Supportive systems and tools'

JISC elearning Models Desk Study

This paper entitled JISC elearning Models Desk Study I found only last week andin reading it found it a useful background to the effective practice document released by JISC.

ITS: Student Survey Results 2003

The ITS: Student Survey Results 2003 at Northampton indicate that in 2003 77% of student respondents like web based teaching.

CILIP | Weblogs and RSS in information work

The article CILIP | Weblogs and RSS in information work in Cilip Update provides a useful rundown on Blogs / RSS from a librarians perspective.

LTSN-ICS Book Review

This LTSN-ICS Book Review provides a useful if not uto date list of elearnng books.

Dundee student survey

Dundee student survey

JISC e-Learning Focus - Evaluation of LAMS Project web site

JISC e-Learning Focus - Evaluation of LAMS Project web site

JISC e-Learning Focus - Choosing Open Source Solutions

Some useful quotes come from JISC e-Learning Focus - Choosing Open Source Solutions

JISC e-Learning Focus - Welcome to JISC e-Learning Focus

The JISC e-Learning Focus - Welcome to JISC e-Learning Focus looks intersting as a gateway into a variety of activities.

Archaeology guide

Histroy and archaelogy eresources

Learning Objects for Introductory Programming

Learning Objects for Introductory Programming

Information and Computer Sciences

Information and Computer Sciences: "The Higher Education Academy believe that 'embedding will be achieved where ICT-enabled student learning provides students with opportunities to select tools and resources appropriate to their individual learning needs ... Tutor(s) and other staff should be working in teams to plan, develop and support this student-centred learning environment'. (Higher Education Academy response to the DfES e-learning strategy). "

Evaluating online education and training, distance learning, e-learning (elearning) - eLearningHub.com

Evaluating online education and training, distance learning, e-learning (elearning) - eLearningHub.com may be useful.

Literature review

This Literature review provides some useful information.

IRRODL: An Assessment of the Effectiveness of e-learning in Corporate Training Programs

IRRODL: An Assessment of the Effectiveness of e-learning in Corporate Training Programs summarises a corporate survey of elearnng.

eLearn: Research Papers

eLearn: Research Papers

"E-Learning survey 2004" in Learning Technology Support

The "E-Learning survey 2004" in Learning Technology Support of Lancasters provides a comparative study for use within the University.

EPICs defintiion of blended learning

This blended learning paper is a useful run-through.

EPIC survey

The epic survey looks extremely useful.

A useful strategy

This strategy from calgary could be used as a basis for the report.

What's Your Anorak Level?

The site What's Your Anorak Level? would make an interesting basis for a UoP questionnaire.

The TELRI Project - Technology Enhanced Learning in Research Led Institutions

The website The TELRI Project - Technology Enhanced Learning in Research Led Institutions is worth looking at.

The reference to this site in Warwick's Centre for Academic Practice suggests that content and support VLEs have a tendency to support the tutor centred / content led approach to teaching i.e. a step back to the old dark side of teaching / learning. The argument states that the collaborative tools are simply bolt ons to a content organised set of data. Interestingly Warwicj appear to be using a toolset for elearning rather than a commercially available VLE.

Interesting.

Evaluating e-learning

Warwick university seems to have approached it's Evaluating e-learning in an extremingly comprehensive way. There are quite a lot of useful references to evaluation within the site.

There is an interesting reference to Bristols LTSS guidelines.

Starting points - Technology in education

Some useful links entitled Starting points - Technology in education

eLearningScotland - online portal serving the eLearning community

The eLearningScotland - online portal serving the eLearning community takes a nice clear approach to supporting users.

CETIS-Learning Technology Standards: An Overview

The site CETIS-Learning Technology Standards: An Overview has some basic ideas on learning technology standards.

Virtual Adaptive Learning Architecture

Virtual Adaptive Learning Architecture

Digital Immigrants / Digital Natives

Prensky's paper on the idea of Digital Natives is worth reading for it's perspective on teaching in educational systems where the students are effectively used to using technology.

Benefits Of E-Learning

A summary of the Benefits Of E-Learning

eLearning Reviews: Expected and Actual Student Use of an Online Learning Environment: A Critical Analysis

Another useful article entitled eLearning Reviews: Expected and Actual Student Use of an Online Learning Environment: A Critical Analysis

National Virtual Learning Environment Conference 2004

The site National Virtual Learning Environment Conference 2004 has some useful presentations

Motivating Students in eLearning Environments

This presentation on Motivating Students in eLearning Environments provides a succint summary of some of the key factors.

elearnspace. everything elearning.

This article by elearnspace. everything elearning. is roken down into some useful headings.

Project management Life Cycles

Feel free to post any commnets or notes you have here.

Exchange

Exchange is a new elearning fourm / magazine existing to "to stimulate the sharing of ideas, practices and news about learning and teaching in higher education."

elearningpost

The blog elearningpost has some interesting articles on learning objects including one from stephen downdes.

Articles of the Month - university of wisconsin

The link Articles of the Month on the Universit yof wisconsin site hads some useful reading.

Change Management and E-Learning

The Brandon Hall article Change Management and E-Learning while writen from an American perspective has that 'evangelical' knock down walls approach which is useful when viewing elearning and organisational change.

e-Learning Centre: Planning and managing an e-learning project

The website e-Learning Centre: Planning and managing an e-learning project provides a set of links on using project management within elearning - many of these I will probably use as background for my presentation.

Implementing elearning systems

The article Implementing elearning systems provides some key points of failure when implementing elearning. I think it could form part of my presentation on use of project management within elearning - all of the points would be mitigated by the use of a methodology.

e-Learning Egypt

The conference in Egypt on e-Learning gives a view of what is going on elsewhere in the world. One of the sessions (The use of ICT..) provides some data on use of technology.

Contemporary Advertising - eLearning Session

Given our slight stant on a more market chain view of things I thought the Contemporary Advertising eLearning Session site interesting in providing information on push type approaches to create a pull.

4.02 Project effort estimation

A few websites forund when researching the above:

- How Long Does it Take?
- The Icus Think again site contains a mass of useful links.
-cost of elearning projects
-elearnopedia supposedly had an article but I couldn't find it in the list of articles.
- Planning and estimating provides a general overview of the process.
-process managementestimating software development costs..

Project management methodologies

I found the website Software Development and Linearity as an extremely useful source on the above. Goes through the methods described in Morrison in a slightly clearer way.

The associated papers are at:

- Part 1
- Part 2

Extreme Programming Roadmap

The site Extreme Programming Roadmap provides links toother sites for extreme programming.In some way this form of agile process has been around for years in the form of 'skunk camps' whereby programming is used to deliver solutions quickly with the minimum of staff and committee involvment.

Relies on knowledge, skills and experience of staff in the project to fule the design and development in a dynamic way making use of prototypes where possible.

The student portal at the university was achieved through this form of development.

DSDM - Helping you deliver on time

References to agile approaches e.g. DSDM Consortium - Helping you deliver on time makes me smile with the idea that programmers are nimbly moving about the office throwing javelins of code around.

3.02 Some Value Chain websites

A few websites when investigating the above. All are a bit 'supplier' based but worth looking at for the parallel ideas.

Business Intelligence Value Chain
e-Learning Centre
Epic groupreports on unilever.
The learning curve

Business models for distributed learning is quite comprehensive and provides some intersting information / material on numerous areas.

western colleges consortium references the fact that elearning allows acces to the whole learning value chain.

A review of literature is a little out of date originating in 2000.A report from Nottinghamshire

Strategies for Building Blended Learning

In looking into blended learning the following urls were found:
-Strategies for Building Blended Learning describes several ideas but also states that blended learning enhances learning (unfortunately the link to Netg's white paper is broken).
-Blended Learning: What Works? describing the latest buzz-word.
-The Blended Learning Unit is the homepage for the cetl associated with blended learning.
-A Blended Learning Approach for Teaching Professionalized Action is a paper from the networked learning conference 2004.
-VLEs and is the UCISA paper and mentioned earlier in my blog.
-EUNIS elearning workshop
-Blending Online and Classroom Activities is the jiscinfonets view on it.
- Blended learning: Forget the name but what about the claims? comes from OU Knowledge Network.
- an infrastructure for blended learning describes some of the physical resource issues.
-Blended strategies to support lifelong learners. A survey of present practice
-Case studies of innovative e-learning practice contains one for blended learning.

One of the majjor themes at 'The networked learning conference 2004' held in Sheffield was on blended learning.

Epic Group plc - blended learning and knowledge solutions

As always the epic group comes throguh with a nice clear explanation of some of the issues in Epic Group plc - blended learning and knowledge solutions

Marketing - Promotion - Push and Pull Strategy

There are inherent issues when we plunder terms from other industries. The terms "push-pull" would appear to come from the world of business / marketing cf. Marketing - Promotion - Push and Pull Strategy.

A useful article entitles Push & Pull technologies using a WIDE approach discusses how the student might identify the his preferred style for push-pull learning.

A useful JISC document

I would recommend all staff to read the document Effective Practice with e-Learning . Produced by JISC it both useful and clear and moves the agenda for elearning away from the 'technology' to the idea of the process/activity.

It also widents the interpretation of e-learning to be wider than simply that which is designed specifically for delivery as 'CBT' / Online learning.

EELIP Unit starts now

Well today is the start of the new term and the start of the new unit.

I have created a weblog for the unit reflections:

EELIP Reflections.

VLEs & Blended Learning

The paper Blended learning discussion encapsulates some of the issues I have been raising about VLE in relation to learning communities.

The conclusion states that it raises a lot of questions - it migh make an interesting dissertation topic along the lines of online 'virtual learning environments are more than a sum of their parts'. It would be interesting to investigate how the open / closed nature of them dictate the style and development of learning.

Recent Postings

A note to say that over last two weeks I have been posting into a specific Weblog set up for the CBT project. I've been using that to place general musings of where I have got to and any ideas I might have. The most recent posting is for the 18/1/05.

Prototyping and web interface design

Following my use of Powerpoint to produce a storyboard I decided to do a quick skim search of the web for articles and papers. This posting is simply a collection of sites as I trawled around looking at design tools for web interfaces.The tools break down into several key areas:

- Non computerised i.e.paper based (a favourite amongst the articles below)
- Diagramming methods e.g. DENIM, Visio, Smartdraw
- Graphic design tools e.g. Photoshop, Paintshop pro
- Presentation e.g.powerpoint
- HTML generator e.g. frontpage, dreamweaver
- Multimedia generator e.g. Authorware, director
- Software development e.g.visual basic

Sites visited include:

a) Website Development Philosophy is a company into developing.
b) This survey is quite useful.
c) DENIM a product we have met before. Its predecessor is mentioned in sketchhing storyboards to illustrate interface behaviours.
d) Paper as design article discusses disadvantages of passing across to 'expert'. This is also supported in an article entitled paper prototyping in interfacing and web site design .
e) User Experience Resource Collection amongst other links has a prototyping section which lists numerous links to other sites - lots listing paper as a preferred method.
f) The Art of UI Prototyping discusses the reasons for protoyping and the methods to undertake it.
g) Prototyping With Style is an article in a magazine asking What tools should I use for prototyping?.
h) SAP design site has several articles on prototyping including one on using prototypes.
i) Perils of prototyping.
j) This Topics in usability - prototyping page lists various resources including one on protyping using visio. Another article on visio is at
Visio - the interaction designer's nail gun.
k) Web design
l) Using Paper Prototypes as Interface Design Tools
m) This article talks about high fidelity prototyping
n) Short description of storyboarding multi-media

Journal of Interactive Media in Education

Things you wish you had known when you were ....

Grainne Conole refers to the Journal of Interactive Media in Education on several occasions. Well worth a look as it has some excellent articles and it is free.

10.03 Reflection on week 10

An extremely brief review of 'Week 10' some two weeks later than supposed. Been catching up slowly over this week. Now posted to my KMETP reflections journal

10.01 Videostreaming

Interesting to note that Macromedia have information on their own Flash Video Streaming Service.

HAs anyone found free videostreaming services?

JISC infoNet - LTSN - Sustainable eLearning

The JISC infoNet - LTSN - Sustainable eLearning has some interesting articles on the general approach of learning objects and sustainable elearning.

Week 10 - RADiCAL - Colston Symposium 2004

The Colston Symposium 2004 shows how a weblog could be used to support an online conference. I think it is a more elegant solution for RADiCAL than what we can achieve in WebCT. Perhaps something to aim for next year.