Category: Learning Technology

Omniplex eLearning Community Demofest February 2016

I spent a few enlightening hours recently at the, Omniplex organized, eLearning Community event.

The event was arranged with various demonstrations in the room, with attendees given fifteen minute at each, rotating around the demos that interested them.  Most of the stalls looked at Articulate solutions, including a couple directly from Omniplex staff on their work.  Highlights included:

  1. Pizza Hut’s Batman themed course.  The course showed how high quality visuals can really make a difference to the learning storytelling.  The comic style similar to some of the training I have seen delivered by other organizations, including the US Army.  Each Pizza Hut store had an internal competition for high scores on the learning – reminding me of McDonald’s gamified till training.
  2. Changing templates to break the back/next monotony.  This was a relatively simple hack but it was a nice idea by Omniplex – have the navigation buttons at the top and bottom of the screen to create the artificial feel of a modern style scrolling webpage.  Elsewhere, there was a database training module that avoided the navigation buttons by chunking content to avoid the need for them, with much material delivered via embedded Captivate videos.
  3. Course completion for visiting a specific slide.  I’m pretty sure I’ve done some tinkering with this in the past but it was a useful example of using Articulate for something other than “you should read all the slides” or a “complete the quiz” format.  The basic gist being that you can do a lot by changing the labels on buttons and hiding Articulate functionality off-slide, away from what the user sees.
  4. Another example of using Articulate for a different use case, away from the usual course, was where it had been used to setup a competency self assessment framework.  I liked this as I’ve often reverted to Articulate as an authoring tool for non-SCORM items, it is a shame that people tend to always think about it just for back/next eLearning.

Perhaps the most interesting stall, however, was a non-Articulate orientated one.  The CoachMaster Academy showed their software which can be used to support the coaching process.  I really liked this idea – giving prompts and structure to a conversation, rather than relying on memory of best practice coaching approaches.  I tend to agree with the sentiment from a previous CIPD Show that coaching can be made too unwieldy, the software shown here could really help at the point of need for coaching conversations to make an impact.

‘Professional development teachers receive has a tremendous impact in the classroom’ (Nicky Morgan…*facepalm* and my BETT 2016)

I missed BETT last year due to work commitments so it was good to go this year and see the usual mix of product evolution and emerging ideas.

Enthusiasm I had from the event was though, at least partly, brought back down to earth by the email I received from the BETT organizers not long after getting home or, at least, by the subject line:

‘Professional development teachers receive has a tremendous impact
in the classroom’ (Nicky Morgan today)

The Day 1 highlights video that was included in the email is here:

Now, that specific quote from Nicky Morgan is not actually in the above video, it is in her 14 minute talk embedded below (text version here):

Whilst you might think the sentiment in the quote seems fair; for me, the quote is a real face palm moment.  Why?  Well, because it summarizes so many of the problems with education today.

The fundamental issue I have is that professional development is not something that should be talked about as being received, it is something you should undertake by seeking out opportunities and sharing with colleagues, it is personal, yet collaborative.  If the Secretary of State for Education is reinforcing such a fundamentally incorrect concept about lifelong learning it really is a worry.  Whilst I recognize teachers are among the very busiest professionals we have in the UK, so it is difficult for them to reflect on their practice, engage in communities of practice, etc. it would still be better to encourage all teachers to engage with improving their skill sets.  Instead she links teacher CPD to DfE, university and private sector funding, all of this whilst standing in possibly the biggest single free personal development event of the year.  Oh well, opportunity missed I guess.

There are plenty more points in the presentation that I could complain about but I’ll resist with the exception of the below piece:

“we have made it clear…that knowledge is the key to excellent educational outcomes…probably the worse attitude that we can take is that access to search engines is somehow a substitute for knowledge, it isn’t”

Let’s ask the future what they think of that opinion:

iwkad22

Okay, okay, so we perhaps do not need to go as far as to believe we live in a world where we can just ask a computer when we need to recall something (I’ll not go so far as to suggest tools such as Cortana and Siri are there yet).  However, there is the implied suggestion that the curriculum and assessment become recall assessments as a result of a focus on ‘knowledge’, rather than skills.  Let us see what the business community (well Accenture) has to say on that kind of approach:

Indeed, even if we just look at the “knowledge is…key” opinion from a Blooms Taxonomy perspective (aka Learning and Teaching 101), then recalling knowledge is clearly a pretty low level skill.  I understand the point that the EBacc has been introduced to ensure core knowledge, with higher level skill development possible on top of that, but it jars to me to suggest that search engines should not be recognised as a hugely powerful resource.  My own instructional design aims to avoid ever redesigning/reinventing/redelivering content that exists on the open web without, at least, adding value through context.

So what about my day at BETT 2016?  Well, there was not much that really caught the eye and I did not attend too many talks as I wanted to get around the whole show.  However, some thoughts below:

  1. Adaptive tech, as mentioned by Nicky Morgan, continues to bubble away as a potential game changer.  In the Higher Education sessions I caught Desire2Learn talking about their LeaP product.  The possibilities here for automated semantic matching to create bespoke learning pathways are hugely interesting.  It was also interesting to see how D2L had one of the smallest stands in the exhibition space when Instructure had a huge one for Canvas, I guess it goes to show how the funding of tech companies changes over time (albeit that Canvas was being pushed to the event’s core schools market).
  2. I tweeted before the event that it seemed around half of all stalls were new this year.  That number astounds me but shows there is still a lot of buoyancy in the learning tech market – or at least a lot of investment speculation.  To be fair this is partly skewed by the very small stalls where people are effectively pitching ideas – there were some interesting stalls in those spaces including around analytics products.
  3. The best demo I saw was of Arcgis.com – cloud based mapping technology, with a wide arrange of options and data mapping all within the browser.  Even better is that a lot of the tool’s functionality is public, with education users able to use it for just £100 a year (per school) as part of their CSR – their profit making sales coming from other users.
  4. Microsoft.  The main sponsors/partner for the event had quite a lot going on in their exhibition spaces (including the above Arcgis presentation).  Interesting to see them pushing the idea of combining apps (including OneNote), devices 1-2-1 (Surface), session recording (OfficeMix) and more for an integrated classroom experience.  With Google and others present it really does seem to have become the battle of the ecosystems, however with Office Apps on non Windows platforms I wonder how much value Microsoft can really suggest the bundling approach creates.  LP+365 was particularly interesting in looking to turn Office365 into an LMS, in contrast to the longer standing SharePoint solutions (such as this one).
  5. Discendum seem to have cracked some of the Open Badge deployment challenges, I liked the idea of learners being able to come up with their own badges and recommend colleagues/fellow students for those.

Adobe Education Summit 2015

Back in November I was fortunate enough to attend this year’s Adobe Education Summit.  I must admit it is a while since I have really used an Adobe product, beyond the obvious freebie ones and Connect, so I really just wanted to see what was happening with their suite of tools.  Indeed, in the past, Photoshop and Dreamweaver were two of my most used tools, in fact I used to support art students in developing their capability in those tools.  The focus on the day being largely being on the more artistic tools in Adobe’s suite, i.e. the Creative Cloud.

The event was the second held in the UK and was made up, as tends to be the way, between some official corporate messaging, user demos and thought leadership.  The event was also, to an extent, a celebration of 25 years of Photoshop – a pretty amazing fact in-itself considering the way tech has changed in that time.

Adobe keynote

This looked at some of the big trends they seeing from a generational, digital transformation and education sector perspective.  Nothing too much new in what was discussed but they did stress the rise of the Chief Marketing Officer in (higher) education and the impact competition and student demand is having.  On the marketing front, the Adobe ‘Marketing Cloud’ empowers schools and companies.

In terms of learning outcomes there was a mention for Tony Wagner’s more transferable skills (aka survival skills) vs student demand to see clearly what the tangible skills they will get from their studies.  There are clearly some crossovers here to capability education and assessment models that offer alternatives to the 1st/2nd/3rd model.  Interestingly, Adobe are hiring on demonstration of transferable skills – the technical expertise can, they argue, be taught in house.  With my L&D hat on this was obviously interesting to hear.

There were some interesting stats thrown in around the way, for example 72% of students surveyed wanted to be able to look at study options and information to help choose schools on their mobile.  Adobe’s positioning through the student life-cycle looking to help with:

Attract > Engage > Empower

Within engage, they have performed multiple activities, including working with universities on interactive books and mobile apps.  Meanwhile tools like the ‘Document Cloud’ can help organizations with their operations (including the digitization of forms).

Some organizational uses of Creative Cloud were considered, for example Uber’s phenomenal growth has been powered by ‘Creative Sync’ where head office can retain control over core marketing assets centrally, with different countries able to make use of them.  The advantage being that any updates at HQ will automatically filter through to the websites.  In the education space there was a look at Clemson Uni in the US who have taken the approach of “creativity as a competitive differentiator”, with digital creativity embedded across curricula and the whole organization (seemingly) working to this end.  Some of the tangible ways this has impacted have included library space being handed over to students for video production and other products.  Indeed students are expected to product an ePortfolio as a concrete piece of evidence beyond their resume.

I must admit that I had largely heard of a decline in use of Creative Cloud due to cost issues, however, growth numbers are apparently strong.  Perhaps I need to look again!  The ‘Digital Publishing Suite’ certainly looked an easy way to create mobile apps (no coding).

Finally there were plugs for the peer support available via the ‘Adobe Education Exchange’ and the value in some of the certifications available.

Adobe demos

There were a few main messages from these:

  1. no longer just about desktop, more and more about cool mobile apps
  2. increasingly about to work on a project across device and switching between apps
  3. mobile apps aiming to be fun and easy but with real utility, especially when combined with desktop

The main apps to catch my attention:

  1. CaptureCC: capture traditional media for digital work (i.e. hand drawn to vector), a little like OfficeLens for creative types 😉
  2. Premiere Clip: video stories
  3. Comp CC: create a rough sketch of web layouts, creates styled widgets and then can populate with digital assets later.  Those assets can come from elsewhere in your creative cloud so you can have a central store.  Effectively this seemed to produce a drag and drop web authoring environment when combined with Muse but you can also send you layout to InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator.  I thought this was interesting in that it is a ‘creative’ solution to producing digital content in the same way that the eLearning industry have gone and produced their own tools (Articulate, etc) rather than there being a ‘go to’ HTML5 authoring tool.
  4. Slate: presentations in browser or app.
  5. Photoshop Sketch: not that I’m ever likely to be doing any drawing but the timeline feature is really nice.  You can effectively branch a project from a base to create multiple different images or finishes from a standard starting point.
  6. Photoshop fix: use the healing tool on the go!  The demo showed how you could use the ‘face tool’ to make the Mona Lisa smile!!

Guest speakers

Sarah J Coleman (aka inkymole illustration) and David Butler (VP of Innovation at The Coca-Cola Company)

Sarah’s talk was most of interest to me in just seeing her mindset around digital tools, she uses traditional and digital media.  However, there are some things she is known for (such as chalk-style effects) that she has only ever done digitally.  It was also interesting to hear how her digital approach has changed over time, she was apparently a big user of MySpace for self promotion!  There were certainly some lessons for those, such as me, considering the talk from a ‘learning’ perspective – not least “It’s OK to bugger things up as long as you had a go” (the kind of message that of course comes up a lot when thinking about learning cultures!).  She has worked with others to produce a film, “Stupid Enough“, aiming to provide better advice to aspiring creatives from the likes of Gareth Edwards.

I had to leave before the end of the Coca-Cola presentation but it was looking how ‘design thinking’ has changed their business.  From one which took decades to change or introduce new products it is now much more flexible and a “design driven company”.  I particularly liked the point that we are now all designers and our organizations need to work to get us designing better.  I’d argue we can see some bigger trends around this, if we thinking of data presentation (including infographics) the need to have an ‘eye’ for design is increasingly important (he says somewhat ironically considering the basic design I have opted for with this site).  His approach to design being:

explore > simplify/standardize/integrate > scale

Within the above, you can design for agility by having fixed elements (like the coke ingredients) and recognize the flexible pieces (new productions, sizes, packaging, etc).  For Coca-Cola this has led to three new billion-dollar juice brands in the last five years and increased growth in emerging markets (where the core product is fixed but distribution/sales models can be seen as the flexible elements).

Educators’ presentations

A number of presentations, I had to take a few calls during these so did not see them all but they included:

  1. rllearning.com: presenter has worked with teachers at his school to digitize curriculum.  He is also a Lynda.com author to help a wider audience, including students so they can help themselves.  Justification for all of this was to “help changes lives!”.  A very passionate speaker!  It seemed like a lot was done via publishing to the ‘Adobe Content Viewer’ app.
  2. tipsquirrel.com: presenter focused on why he has students actively using their mobiles [yes it seems there is still a debate on if phones should be left on or not!]  There was a lot of basic stuff on phone management in the room [the nicest idea was that they have phone breaks every 20 mins which also doubles up as a ‘brain break’].  The more interesting bit was how some apps are being used in the curriculum and by students, he mentioned: Capture, PhotoShop Light-room, PS Mix, PS Fix and Instagram for Photography.  Cross-subject apps included Slate, Adobe Voice, NearPod, Edmodo and RefME.

 

ALT Winter Conference 2015 (Day 2)

I am hoping to attend at least part of a few ALT Winter Conference sessions today, notes below.

Jessica Gramp (UCL): Welcome to ‘Moodle My Feedback’

  • Moodle plugin being developed at UCL – this was an update on progress as it has been showed at previous events.
  • Adds My Feedback to profile block.
  • Problems with default Moodle included feedback is stored in TurnItIn – this tool aggregates links back to TII, rather than having to go into different courses to find them.
  • Tells you if students have looked at feedback.

Using Social Media Data in Learning Practice and Research

  • 9 minute demo video: https://vimeo.com/147996126 using Facebook data, visualized, for research.
  • Overall I took that the point here was there are a huge amount of possibilities and questions from this.

Gaming the Conference: can Playful Interactions Engage Delegates

  • #altcgame
  • Some details on the game that took place at the conference.

Arena Blended Connected (ABC) rapid curricula development at UCL

  • Presentation on an approach that has been found to be a great way to engage academics.
  • Previously did not have a coherent way to talk to academics about their programmes, they have adapted Ulster’s approach from JISC Viewpoints project.
  • “Connected Curriculum” – wider framework for good design at UCL: this is the C part.  A and B help with the structure to reach those outcomes.
  • Core to the approach is a “Gamestorming” 90 minute workshop, have a high energy discussion on what to do.  Consider issues such as what learners should be doing, mockup of examples of modules (broken down by learning types), etc.
  • Argue best to not start with assessment as to allow for mindset that anything could be assessed.
  • Use session to bring in other elements such as high level costing of module development, impact of including videos, etc.
  • http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ele/

TFPL – Dashboards in Excel Made Easy

  • Not an ALTC session but another webinar I attended today.
  • How to build dashboard combining one function, a chart, some data validation.
  • Used COUNTIF to count a total from data.  COUNTIFS for multiple.
  • Use bar conditional formatting and then create chart from there.
  • Add data validation with tool-tip for interactivity on page.
  • Then format the worksheet as a dashboard – basically calling on data elsewhere through a visualised approach.
  • Overall this was relatively straight forward stuff.

The Future of Learning: Project-based teaching and assessment supported through new media technologies

  • I didn’t attend too much of this one but when I came in then there was a discussion of some of problems with current university education, including the student focus on grade and the resulting concentration on what the exams will be.
  • Presenter’s research has just reconfirmed that content heavy education leads to rote learning.
  • Need to align assessments with what you really want the students to learn.
  • About personal journeys – only way to ensure students take subject to heart.

RefME as an example for viral apps

Do you remember Harvard referencing and building lengthy bibliographies during your student days?  If yes, did you find it time consuming?  Yep, thought so, did you ever use the techniques again (presuming you’ve not continued in academia)?  No?  Didn’t think so.

Even if we’re kind to academic referencing it is, at best, a necessary evil to show the development of research skills and the correct representation of ideas (i.e. to avoid plagiarism).  I’ve been to two events this week, the first on Adobe products will get a longer post but the second, on RefME, showed how a tool can go viral with users if it is really well targeted on solving an actual problem.

RefME has built a following of more than one million users quicker than Facebook or Twitter – all thanks to the humble citation!  Why?  Well those negative experiences of citation and bibliography building are now finally tackled through this very easy to use app.

When I studied there were some tools in this space, some institutionally backed, but none as easy as RefME appears from the demos at the #BLEevent.  Overall, I took away a key message here – focus on your audience (whoever they may be) and their challenges/frustrations.  If you are facing a lack of adoption with your corporate/institutional technology then it is probably fair to presume that it is (a) not easy enough to use and/or (b) not solving a problem that is felt keenly enough.

It will be interesting to see if any institutions opt to stand against it as a way of students ‘cheating’ by not having to spend hours formatting their own lists … not to mention all the librarians who will have another thing they ‘own’ taken away from them by technology.