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Seminar – Transformative e-Learning in Higher Education

23 May
Facebook Event Page

The International Medical University (IMU) is organizing an e-learning seminar on July 5 (2011), entitled “Transformative e-Learning in Higher Education“. It will be held in the Senate Room, 2nd Floor, IMU Campus, Bukit Jalil.


OVERVIEW
This seminar brings together five experts in education and e-learning to share their ideas, experiences and best practices on how we can use e-learning to transform the way we learn and teach in higher education. They will explore a variety of areas essential to construct transformative learning experiences covering instructional design, online facilitation and assessment, personal learning environments, and e-learning quality and governance.


Date: 5 July, 2011 (Tuesday)
Time: 8.30 am – 5.15 pm
Venue: IMU Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia


SPEAKERS


KEY TOPICS

  • Instructional Design
  • Personal Learning Environments
  • Curriculum Design & Management
  • E-Learning Quality & Governance

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this seminar, you will be able to:

  • Apply effective instructional design principles to your learning environments.
  • Adopt effective online facilitation and assessment strategies to engage and assess your learners.
  • Build your personal learning environments using social media and web 2.0 tools.
  • Identify and discuss essential e-learning quality and governance issues.


TARGET AUDIENCE

  • Academics
  • E-Learning Professionals
  • IT Professionals
  • Instructional Designers


Registration Fee: RM650
Early Bird Registration: RM500
(Before 8 June)

If you are interested to attend, please download this form. It includes all the registration and contact details required to attend.

Transformative e-Learning in Higher Education http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=55065771&access_key=key-21ncq8qnno20o1aaj7k6&page=1&viewMode=list

Looking forward to your participation!

E-Learning Trends and Challenges in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions

22 Apr

“MEdO will make Malaysia a leading brand in Asia for online higher education services and a one stop centre for learning, education and the administration of international students.“
– Datuk Seri Mohd Khaled Nordin (Minister for Higher Education)

Last Saturday (16th April, 2011), I attended the “Majlis Pelancaran Dasar e-Pembelajaran Negara (DePAN), Buku-Buku e-Pembelajaran dan Malaysia Education Online (MEdO)” event launched by Datuk Seri Mohd Khaled Nordin (Minister for Higher Education).

It turned out to be a very exciting and enriching learning experience for me, and here are my discoveries and reflections…

MALAYSIA EDUCATION ONLINE (MEdO)

Malaysia Education Online (MEdO) is part of the Malaysia Government Transformation Plan (GTP) to expand international distance learning. MEdO is an online learning platform delivering education programmes from Malaysian universities, colleges, polytechnics and training institutes. It is the gateway for them to extend their global outreach whilst each participating institution is able to maintain its identity and uniqueness (more).

MEdO is initiated and led by Asia e University (AeU), which is the selected gateway university (by PEMANDU) for international education for distance and online learning. Six other Malaysian universities and institutes have already signed up to offer programmes on MEdO.

The MEdO platform itself is based on a fusion of Joomla and Moodle with some customization to suit its needs and requirements. As many universities are already using Moodle, it could speed up the learning curve (familiar environment) and adoption by educators that will be required to use it.

It will be interesting to see how this project unfolds. Let’s be positive about it 🙂

E-BOOKS
Besides MEdO, the National E-Learning Policy (Dasar e-Pembelajaran Negara) for Higher Education Institutions, and two books (and one translation) about e-Learning in Malaysian Higher Education were launched.

Here we go:

Unfortunately the National E-Learning Policy (No link yet) and e-Pembelajaran di IPTA Malaysia are not yet translated (or published) into English. Anyway, you could always use Google Translator Toolkit, and then decipher the parts that are poorly translated into English.

E-LEARNING IN MALAYSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
I have to admit I was thrilled to discover the e-Learning in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions: Status, Trends & Challenges publication during the event. Actually, I couldn’t wait and was reading it furiously during Datuk Seri Mohd Khaled Nordin’s speech (please don’t tell!), and what struck me most was all the juicy statistics (Yes, I just love that!) about what was going on in Higher Education in Malaysia, and the simple language used to describe the survey results and findings.

Also, the three (3) questionnaires (E-Learning Admin, Lecturer and student) used for this research were comprehensive and easy to understand (Check Appendices/page 123). The findings in the book is based on 7,962 survey respondents (26 e-Learning administrators, 1,635 lecturers and 6,301 students) from a sample of 30 Malaysian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), comprising of 20 public HEIs, 7 private HEIs, and 3 polytechnics. As four (out of 7) e-Learning Admins from the private Universities did not participate, I suppose we could generalize that the findings mostly represent what is going on in the public HEIs in Malaysia.

Before I dwell more, I would like to introduce you to Prof Dr Mohamed Amin Embi, who was the chief editor for all the three books mentioned above. He was also the first recipient of the prestigious National Academic Award 2006, and the recipient of the distinguished ISESCO Science Laureate 2010. In other words, he is a pretty interesting guy to know. So, next time you want to know more about e-Learning in Malaysian HEIs, who are you going to call? Simple answer: Prof Dr Mohamed Amin Embi

We have met a couple of times, but I suppose I need to bug him more from now on. Actually, I bugged him through e-mail a few days back to publish these 3 books on Issuu or Scribd, and within a couple of days they were published on both. Great guy!

Yes, he has also summarized nicely the key findings of each chapter in the book, and then published them on SlideShare. So, instead of summarizing the book, I can focus next on providing some of my own insights and reflections to what has been published.

Let’s rumble…

Chapter 2: e-Learning Policy

e-Learning policy

Here are few questions we should perhaps ask before even thinking about formulating or requiring HEIs to have e-learning policies:

  • Do we need to have e-learning policies to make e-learning work for us?
  • Who should be involved in formulating e-learning policies (all stakeholders, including students)?
  • How detailed should e-learning policies be (any template)?
  • Can e-learning policies have a negative impact on implementing e-learning?
  • Should the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) have a mechanism to enforce all HEIs to have e-learning policies?

Dealing with e-learning policies is a very tricky issue, and cannot be taken lightly. Actually, sometimes e-learning policies can be self-destructive and curb innovations in teaching and learning. Imagine if we have an e-learning policy stating that, “All e-learning content must be SCORM-Compliant“. A few years back, this might sound totally reasonable, but any enlightened learning professional today would know that a lot of amazing learning resources (and top Universities) don’t care much about SCORM, and are shared in the spirit of Open Courseware (OCW) or Open Educational Resources (OER).

So, e-learning policies is something that all HEIs should explore, but we have to be careful, and strive to find the right balance so that they empower people to learn and innovate, instead of becoming an obstacle to moving forward.

Chapter 3: e-Learning Governance

e-learning governance

According to the survey results, the two main challenges related to the e-Learning governance are shortage of staff (84.5%) and lack of incentives provided by the HEIs to those responsible for implementing e-Learning (69.2%).

So, no doubt HEIs need to invest more in quality staff, and be creative about providing incentives (e.g. less administration and more time to think!) that inspire educators to take the effort to transform their own learning and teaching. It is strange that institutions can spend millions and millions on hardware, networks and software, but when it comes to investing in quality people and paying competitive salaries with the industry; It is so difficult!

In short, HEIs need to rethink their hiring and salary policies to capture the great talent that is out there, but are very reluctant to work in HEIs. Also, HEIs need to learn from creative companies like Google, Apple and Zappos on how to build working environments that empowers and inspires people to express their potential. Challenging, but certainly possible 🙂

Chapter 4: Learning Managements Systems

Learning Management Systems

Interestingly, All (100%) HEIs that participated had their own Learning Management System (LMS), and more than half (57.7%) of the HEIs used Open Source Platforms, while 34.6% used purchased commercial LMS, and the remaining 15.4% were developed on their own. In this survey, Moodle beat Blackboard (12 – 2) impressively, but if we were to include more private HEIs the results would be a bit darker 🙂

Though, from a learning point-of-view, we need to increasingly look beyond the LMS (they just cannot keep up with disruptive innovations taking place), as increasingly learning will take place outside in the web 2.0 (3.0/x.0) and social media worlds in the form of personal learning environments tailored to what learners and educators really want. Here is a crash course:

Social Media & Web 2.0 for Learning (2nd Edition)

View more presentations from Zaid Alsagoff

Chapter 5: e-Learning Training

e-learning training

Sadly, only one-third (34.6%) of the HEIs provide exposure to Web 2.0 applications. Though, I foresee a huge growth in the coming years of educators using Social media and web 2.0 (3.0 and x.0) beyond the LMS to facilitate more engaging and relevant learning with their students.

It will also be interesting to see how institutions deal with copyright and privacy issues, when educators and students increasingly use tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, Wikis, etc.

Are you prepared for that? Don’t wait! It is happening already!

Chapter 6: e-Content Development

e-content development

The main applications used for e-Content development are Flash (92.3%), followed by Articulate (46.3%), Adobe Captivate (38.3%), Camtasia Studio (30.8%), Lecture Maker (15.42%), and Interactive Raptivity Builder ( 15.4%).

One word: Ouch! Hopefully, Apple will come to its senses and allow Flash to run smoothly on an iPad, iPod or iPhone. Unless Steve Jobs retires soon that might take some time. Though, let’s hope that browsers will have auto-converters, or that Flash is updated to meet all Steve Jobs requirements, otherwise e-content developed in Flash would be useless on Apple-based mobile devices. Luckily, Flash-based content works on Androids 🙂

The five major challenges faced by most HEIs are lack of motivation among the academic staff (65.4%), lack of specialists (53.80%), lack of a dedicated team to develop e-Content (53.8%), lack of commitment among academic staff (46.2%), and lack of funding/budget (46.2%).

Why are not academic staff motivated or committed to develop e-content? If you are already overloaded with administration, research, publication and teaching obligations, you are not going to be inspired to develop e-content for your students without some seriously good reasons.

Incentives could help (e.g. one e-content module = 1 publication in a high impact journal), but you still need to find the time. In Chapter 10 (page 119), it is proposed that common university courses could be developed jointly by a centre under the Ministry of Higher Education, as this is a more efficient use of resources, time, money, and manpower, while maintaining an acceptable level of quality.

In a nutshell, we could establish Malaysia’s first official ‘Open Courseware’ initiative, which would enable all HEIs to have access and reuse (hopefully remix) freely common University courses. By doing so, then HEIs can streamline their resources to build unique e-content for their unique courses.

Based on the survey, the copyright issue is also a big problem faced by the majority (80.8%) of Malaysian HEIs in the development of e-Content. What to do? Forget Copyright, Practice Copyleft Instead!

Actually, we need to rethink our obsession with e-content development, and be more obsessed with designing relevant and engaging learning environments/spaces, where authentic learning activities play a larger role than (spoon-feeding) e-content and courseware.

Instead, HEIs students should be empowered and nurtured with the necessary learning skills to find their own content based on the learning outcomes set, or we could expose them to a variety learning resources (for each topic) and then require them to analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and then create their own contextualized meaning.

We want to develop independent lifelong learners. The e-content or courseware (spoon-feeding) model is an easy shortcut to enable them to pass the exam, but perhaps not the best way to nurture the necessary skills required for them to thrive in the 21st century.

Finally, educators need to learn the art of aggregating, filtering and remixing content from a variety of resources using a variety of learning tools out there. In a nutshell, think beyond e-content development, and focus more on nurturing educators to build sizzling learning activities and spaces for students.

In short, only develop e-content when it does not exist, or it can be synthesized or presented in a more engaging and meaningful way 🙂

Chapter 7: Integration of e-Learning in Teaching & Learning

integration of e-learning in teaching & learning

According to the survey findings, lecturers’ two major challenges to integrate e-Learning in their teaching and learning, is trying to balance between teaching and research (59.8%) and time constraints (54.9%). Interestingly, technophobia (13%) was the least responsible challenge among the challenges faced by lecturers in order to integrate e-Learning.

For students, the two major challenges is lack of access (53.4%), and feedback from lecturers takes too long (42.8%). By focusing less on developing e-content, lecturers will have more time to interact with their students, and construct more interactive and engaging learning environments. If we can be replaced by a courseware, then we should be replaced.

To no surprise, most lecturers (50.1%) prefer to upload materials on a weekly basis before the classes begin. Noteworthy, most students (84.7%) prefer to read the materials offline rather than online. The challenge comes when students have printed out the uploaded slides before their class (often weeks in advance), and then find out during the lecture that the slides have been updated. What do you do? Establish an e-learning policy forcing them to upload their slides at least one week before…Not a good idea! Call me to elaborate 🙂

On a positive note, this is a problem of today, and probably won’t even exist in 3-5 years’ time. Why? By then most students will be reflecting their slides on their mobile devices in the form of iPads, Kindles, Galaxy, etc.

Chapter 8: Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance in e-Learning

How do we ensure that our e-learning implementations are of quality? How do we ensure that our conventional learning approaches are of quality? Do we look at the drop-out rates? Or perhaps the students satisfaction levels? What about using the students’ assessment results as a measure of success?

On page 119, the guidelines on e-Content standards that were developed collaboratively by CEMCA (Commonwealth of Educational Media Centre for Asia) and MOHE is recommended to be distributed and followed by all Malaysian HEIs in order to control the quality of e-Learning materials available at the tertiary level.

I disagree in using these guidelines as the standards, but it could be used as a good reference guide, like so many other guidelines out there. Personally, I don’t even like the expression ‘Best Practices’, but instead prefer ‘Good Practices’. The reason is that there is simply too much innovation and exploration still needed to be done, before we can settle down with any form of standards in E-Learning. Let’s celebrate ‘Good Practices’ out there, and learn from them to create our own contextualized ‘Good Practices’.

We want standards, but standards are often the biggest enemy to creativity and innovation. Let’s not forget that!

THE FUTURE?
Not surprisingly implementing mobile learning is a priority (92.3%), according to the survey findings. Interestingly, lecturers (67%) and students (76.8%) believe that HEIs should give priority to Intelligent Tutoring Systems as compared to other applications.

Strangely enough, lecturers (23.4%) and students (19.4%) place podcasting applications as the lowest in terms of priority. Maybe it is just me, but I would prefer listening and reflecting to a great lecture over a courseware anytime of the day, no matter how interactive it may be. I suppose I am a bit weird!

If you don’t have time to read the whole book, just read chapter 9 (summary) and 10 (recommendations), which will provide sufficient insights to see the big picture. Though, I would strongly recommend to enjoy all the diagrams, charts and stats spread over 120 pages.

So, what can we expect next?

Based on the suggestions given in the book (page 120), MOHE will probably soon establish ‘The National Institute of e-Learning‘, a centre of excellence for e-Learning, that can conduct and coordinate research on e-Learning, particularly in terms of the impact of e-Learning on student achievement.

Let’s hope the National Institute of e-Learning becomes an inspiring light that empowers and sparks sizzling e-learning at all HEIs.

Will I be involved?

Only God knows at this moment 🙂

Use Linkedin to Collaborate with the Corporate World?

31 Jan

“While Facebook is a goldmine for connecting people and having social fun, Linkedin is the present and future goldmine for connecting students and ideas to the corporate world.”
– Zaid Ali Alsagoff

Not that this is so exciting, but as universities around the world are striving to create industrial or corporate linkages, and explore innovative ways to connect their students and research projects with relevant companies, professionals and experts out there, Linkedin looks increasingly like a great connector.

WHAT IS LINKEDIN?

Today, Linkedin has over 90 million registered users, and the company is growing at a rate of around 3 million new people per month. Although, most of its current users (as of January 2011) are located in US (52%), European Union (25%), India (8%) and Canada (4%), I predict that the user demographics will dramatically change in 2011, and you will see mega growth in many other countries, especially in South-East Asia. Linkedin has already members in 200+ countries, and delivers around 1 billion pageviews per month (Source).

It is already being touted by Josh Bersin to radically transform corporate recruiting, which means companies like Jobstreet.com and Monster.com might be facing tough times ahead, unless they can keep on innovating, and encourage people to continue to use their services.

Though, I am not going to waste or fickle my words on that, but instead focus on what Linkedin can do in terms of facilitating corporate learning connections.

WHY NOT USE FACEBOOK INSTEAD?
I have already discussed earlier on this blog about how Facebook can be used for learning and creating learning communities. It is still a useful tool to do exactly that, but I have to admit I am getting more and more annoyed with the increasing number of distracting picture adverts (4-5 adverts per page) taking over the Facebook interface. We were first introduced to 3 annoying picture adverts per screen (mostly irrelevant ones, too!), and at one time I am sure it was 5 (getting dizzy!), but now it is 4… What is going on?

From a learning point-of-view:

  • GOOD
    Facebook is great for connecting me to friends and uploading baby pictures to keep my Mum connected with what is going on, while living thousands of kilometers away. It is also a great tool to communicate and interact with students, create small learning communities, play games together, promote ourselves…More
  • BAD
    Facebook is increasingly becoming a BIG BUSINESS, which is understandable when you have 600 million users, and still growing significantly. Though, this also means more adverts, spam, rubbish, junk, distractions, etc…You name it! I actually respect Mark (Seen to be notoriously uninterested in money in the past) for keeping the Facebook interface clean from annoying adverts for so long, but sadly that is no longer the case.
  • UGLY
    Have you ever seen a Facebook junkie at work. I have! If your colleague is checking Facebook updates and pictures every 3 minutes, and is always busy (doing nothing work related), then you have seen one. Did you know that a study showed that 54% of US companies ban Facebook (and Twitter) at work? Working when connected to Facebook is like having a daddy day care full of kids screaming in your ears nonstop. It can be done, but you need discipline!

Having said that, we should not blame Facebook on all this (or should we?), but instead discipline ourselves (and others) to use it appropriately, because if used appropriately it can be an amazing connector and a great learning tool.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook evolves, but for me I will be exploring Linkedin more in 2011, and see how it can be used to connect and transform learning.

WHY NOT USE LINKEDIN FOR LEARNING?
Actually, I have been on Linkedin for several years (since 2005 or 2006, If I am not mistaken), but it wasn’t until recently that I felt the urge to explore and really use it. I had just completed a 3-part series discussing my frustrations with the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS):


Although, I didn’t get many comments on the blog, I noticed there was an interesting BOS discussion taking place on Linkedin, which was initiated by Dick Lee (CEO and Chief Innovation Officer at Value Innovations, Inc), using my BOS article as a trigger.

Me being me, I joined the group and as a result, I experienced a refreshing and truly insightful discussion, which ironically was triggered by my bashing or ‘Critique of Blue Ocean Strategy’ as Dick Lee articulated it. Reading and reflecting arguments by people that have been initiating value innovations for decades was really enriching, and then that got me thinking…

Why can’t we encourage more students to participate or join relevant groups in Linkedin. Professionals and experts out there are always looking for refreshing ideas and suggestions, while students want to learn from experienced people in the corporate world. Bingo!

Also, Linkedin is becoming more user-friendly, the discussion forum is not too bad, and it will probably be introducing more collaboration tools in the near future. WOW, what a potential!

Why not use Linkedin to link up students and educators with awesome people in the corporate world, and explore ways to create value innovations and win-win situations, etc…! Yes, why not?

Finally, I have to agree with Professor Thomas Baker that both Facebook and Linkedin are valuable for their own reasons, and that we should use both to good effect!

What do you think? Do you have any learning experiences with Linkedin to share?

I am still learning the Linkedin way to learn 🙂

MAKNAZ – The Saudi Repository for Learning Objects

13 Jan

“The Maknaz project provides a complete solution for the implementation, customisation, maintenance and support of a reliable and effective online learning environment, including all the required hardware for sustaining a highly sophisticated environment supporting 22 leading national universities.”
– Abdullah Al Mogheerah (NCEL’s Manager for Planning & PMO)

Bob Little ranked Abdullah Al Mogheerah as the 4th most influential person in the corporate e-learning world in 2011 (on Jan 4, 2011)

MAKNAZ (or Treasure Chest)?

“The National Center of E-learning and Distance Learning (NCEL) guides the various efforts of Saudi higher education institutions to develop digital content, enrich the curricula and facilitate learning to achieve excellence in the educational process as a whole...As a result, an electronic national repository has been built to facilitate the process of developing, archiving, retrieving, reusing and sharing of learning objects. The national repository will support the efforts of Saudi universities and serve as a basis for building digital curricula with higher quality and less cost…” – Source

In developing and implementing Maknaz, NCEL has been working closely with eXact learning solutions, and they have fused “eXact LCMS and Harvestroad Hive DR infrastructures to provide a nationwide digital marketplace within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia…Academics and students use the HarvestRoad Hive DR to share and access a wide array of educational materials. The eXact LCMS and other collaboration tools are used to facilitate the production and management of online learning contents.” – Source

Maknaz is “integrated with all NCEL’s internal repositories, including Qanatech and the Saudi Digital Library (SDL) as well as with a network of over 36 international repositories, making it possible for Maknaz users to search for contents across all these repositories.” – Source


THE BIG CHALLENGE

The problem with many Learning Object Repositories (LOR) in the past was populating the repository quickly (too costly and too few people willing to share), and attracting people to use it. In general, people will only visit the LOR, and continue to use it if they can easily find content relevant to their areas of interest.

Interestingly, Maknaz empowers users to search for (and filter) contents across more than 36 international repositories, including ARIADNE, NSDL, University of Cambridge, MIT (OpenCourseware), IDEALS @ Illinois, JorumOpen, Delft University of Technology, Johns Hopkins University (MUSE Project) and Hong Kong University. By doing so, users have access from one search box more than one million learning resources (objects/items), which makes it immediately attractive to find potential learning resource gems.

So, while Maknaz is being populated with local content from Universities around Saudi Arabia, Maknaz has already an immediate attraction with its federated search across multiple learning repositories around the world.

To go beyond just focusing on developing and sharing content, Maknaz has areas for communities, forums and blogs to bloom, which is great to spark connections and facilitate collaborations among users.

The big challenge with such massive projects is getting buy-in by stake holders (Universities, academics, students, etc.), changing people’s learning and sharing mindset from copyright to copyleft (or Creative Commons), and creating an environment where honest discussions and constructive criticism can flow without disruption and fear.

Having now been to Saudi Arabia twice for educational purposes (Nov 2008: 2 E-Learning workshops and Jan 2010: E-Learning Audit of Universities), I am still amazed how fast they are moving ahead with e-learning and investing in the infrastructure to make it happen.

What is even more encouraging and exciting was meeting several young upcoming academics during the process, who have brilliant ideas, and are very passionate about innovating the way they learn, and empower students to learn. I remember even one E-Learning Dean, who told me that he woke up at night having dreams about e-learning. I am passionate about learning and e-learning, but I have yet to have any dreams to testify that.

Finally, having a passionate and strategically driven NCEL push forward with so many innovative projects, hosting conferences, and providing tons of training programs (for both men and women) to support the development of the learning nation, and topping that with a growing group of academics hungry to learn and innovate, it will certainly be interesting to see how the transformation of Saudi Higher Education unfolds in the future 🙂

IMU Student Blogging Project to Promote a Healthy Lifestyle!

12 Jan

“Every blog has a story behind it.”

THE STORY

In late October 2010, Sheba DMani, the coordinator (facilitator) for the ‘A Critical and Reflective Response to Media‘ (Medical Humanities Selective) course (at IMU) explored with me the idea of assigning students to work in groups to develop blogs addressing important issues and promoting a healthy lifestyle.

Of course that made me excited, as I have been promoting the usage of web 2.0 and social media for learning ever since I joined IMU (June 2009). And having already been through one cycle assisting Prof. Khoo Suan Phaik with her students’ project using Google Sites, I was quite confident it would be an inspiring and valuable learning experience.

Interestingly, both these inspiring lecturers are not exactly IT-savvy, but they were willing and open to explore possibilities, and with a bit of assistance they managed to get through both projects successfully without too much hassle. As today’s Y-generation (Most IMU students) is already quite IT-savvy, you don’t exactly need to train them, but instead explore and empower them with creative ideas and possibilities.

A CRITICAL & REFLECTIVE RESPONSE TO MEDIA
This module facilitated by Sheba DMani focuses on connections between media and health within socio-cultural contexts. Media in the form of text and graphic presented through visual and audio modes from magazines, television and internet will be explored. These may include advertisements, films and music videos related to themes on health and healthcare. Students will approach these media texts through critical interpretation, reflective thinking and creative presentations. Upon completing this course, students will have learned that the media constructs views of the real world and that these views have been mediated to provide filtered and partial meaning of health belief and behaviour.

THE PROJECT & EVALUATION PROCESS

So, instead of writing a group assignment (using Microsoft Word/PowerPoint) to impress the lecturer, students were assigned to create a blog and promote their mission to the world. Surely that is more inspiring and exciting, right?

The students were assigned randomly into groups (consisting of 10 or less) and had three weeks (29 Nov-17 Dec) to prepare the blog, before presenting their project to the class and a selected group of evaluators. The blogs purpose was to promote health information to a specific audience (i.e. children, teenagers, adults, special needs and pregnant women).

The blogs would be evaluated based on their originality and creativity (title, tag-line, content, etc.), and the blog had to include at least 3 articles/columns and/or editorials that convey messages on the chosen topic. Finally, each blog had to include at least one video or audio message developed by the group.

Strong emphasis was given on originality, and students were reminded the importance of avoiding plagiarism and dealing with risk communication. In other words, it is important to acknowledge and appreciate authors and sources (re)used to develop the content for the blogs.

Overall, the blogs were assessed for accuracy and relevance of information, creativity, interactive features and the use of media techniques. To make it more exciting and competitive, each group did not make their blogs available to the other groups (or public) before their group presentation on the 16th December (2010).

Each group was given 30 minutes to present and defend their blog on the 16 December. Interestingly, Assoc. Prof. Dr. SriKumar Chakravarthi (IMU lecturer) whom was one of the evaluators was in India during this period, but still managed to watch and participate in the evaluation process using Skype. In addition to getting feedback from other class mates and evaluators, students voted for their favorite blog (using the Moodle poll feature) after the group presentation.

So, what was my role besides being one of the evaluators? As Sheba DMani is not too familiar with blogging, I handled a Q&A session on creating a blog with the students on the 3rd December. No, I didn’t present any PowerPoint slides! I simply came to class, asked them relevant questions, and explored possibilities from this awesome list of free learning tools they could use to create or reuse sizzling content for their blogs.

So, how much did this project cost? In terms of technology, all the online tools they used to spread their message to the world cost…. ZERO! Not bad!

STUDENT LEARNING OUTPUT?

“Healthy foods for a healthy baby”

This blog aims to guide pregnant women through the process of making a positive change in the diet. It discusses and explores nutrition tips, delicious recipes, common myths, pregnancy tips and no-nos, useful links, and a few cool widgets, including the ‘Weekly Pregnancy Calendar’. Overall, the blog is well-designed providing the user with a visually soothing and user-friendly navigation experience, which is certainly a requirement for any pregnant woman.

The project team (Amelia, Melisa, Moushini, Natasha, Ray, Shahira, and Sharon) did a great collaborative effort. Congratulations!

In one word: Wonderful!

“Teenage Life is Never Black & White”

This blog focuses on adolescent issues aimed at the teenage population of 13-19. It explores in an emotionally creative, but informative way common youth challenges such as alcohol, drugs, relationships (family/friends/girlfriend/boyfriend), stress and smoking.

To really connect with the youth in an inspiring and engaging way, this hard working project team mashed-up their own original graphics, directed and recorded a short Abstinence Educational Video, set up a Facebook page, and used Xtranormal to create this cool animated video:

In one word: AWESOME!

“BIG or small, We Save them All”

This blog aims to provide a one stop avenue for information on breast cancer in an easy way to understand. Its’ combination of stylish (pink) and interactive design, easy navigation, and relevant topics makes it a great place to discover more about breast cancer, which include symptoms, risk factors, preventive measures, test and diagnosis, and alternative medicine. In addition to developing a great website, the project team (Qi Quan, Melody, Wern Ching, Shariffa and Praveena) developed a very informative ‘Breast Self-Examination’ video…

In one word: INSPIRING!


Understanding Asperger’s Syndrome

This blog focuses on Asperger’s Syndrome, which is often misunderstood among people. Asperger’s Syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. The project team has done a good job in designing and structuring the few (identified), but relevant issues regarding this disability, which include helping people to recognize it, statistics and epidemiology, books and resources, and famous people with it. Did you know that Albert Einstein had Asperger’s Syndrome? Now you know!

In one word: INTERESTING!

“Don’t Forget to Brush Your Teeth”

This blog provides some useful tips on how to take care of your health, including brushing your teeth, eating oranges and carrots, and washing your hands. The highlight of this blog has to be the creatively designed video developed by the project team (view contributors), entitled “The story of Bluey and Pinky‘.

In one word: CREATIVE!

LESSONS LEARNED

From my experience working with students involved in projects requiring them to develop a website (using web 2.0), often complain that it is time consuming and that it requires a lot of work. But by knowing that their work will continue to live on (more meaning), and that they are publishing it to the world (instead of only to the lecturer), they are willing to take up the challenge and put in a greater effort. In other words, their motivation often goes beyond grades, and that is very exciting and encouraging.

Though, we still have to work on their fair use or reuse of external content and graphics, and teach them proper online referencing procedures, which is something we have to continue to work on. It is alright to quote and reuse (if permission is given), but we must appreciate and recognize other people’s work. As such we have already setup a site for IMU staff and students (only) exploring project based learning (in the e-learning portal), including proper online referencing procedures.

Although, our e-learning portal (using Moodle) is wonderful for uploading and organizing course content, linking online resources, online discussions, assignment submissions, online quizzes, and so on, we should also encourage and empower students to use other web 2.0 and social media tools for creating creative content and informal learning. For example, several lecturers from the School of Pharmacy use Facebook for communicating online with their students, and have experimented with conducting Problem-Based Learning (PBL) sessions using Facebook Groups.

I have noticed that some Universities in Malaysia ban the usage of Facebook and YouTube at their campuses, and use the excuse that they encourage poor learning/working habits and clog up their network (bandwidth) for other usages. That might be true, but if staff and students learn how to discipline themselves using such tools (no choice!), they will actually have access to some of the most amazing learning resources on the planet (for free), and be able to interact with experts and students from all over the world through Facebook groups/pages (e.g. Harvard University – Facebook). I can’t think of a better investment for learning than boosting the network (bandwidth) to support online learning in all forms. The Internet is the heart, blood circulation, and oxygen of learning in the 21st century.

More importantly, today more than ever, it is critical to encourage students to nurture their communication, collaboration, creative and analytical skills using the web and multimedia tools. Increasingly in the future, people in organizations will be working and collaborating online using the cloud, so it is important to encourage and necessary to prepare our students for this new world.

Also, it is important to highlight here that the quality of the students’ output (results) at this stage is not as important as empowering their passionate and inquiring mindset to explore possibilities and ideas, and continuously reflect, learn and improve from these learning experiences. In short, focus more on the learning process than the output (results). Results will come as they learn. Some are early bloomers, others are late bloomers, and that is something we should never forget.

Can you imagine hiring a graduate that cannot communicate and collaborate online? Try asking that same question in four year’s time 🙂

The MOOC Survival Kit in Plain English!

6 Jan



WHAT IS A MOOC?

5 STEPS TO SUCCEED IN A MOOC

KNOWLEDGE IN A MOOC?

STILL CONFUSED?
Read this Stephen Downes article: ‘Connectivism’ and Connective Knowledge

Connectivist teaching and learning consists of four major sorts of activities (read the article above):

  1. Aggregation
  2. Remixing
  3. Repurposing
  4. Feeding Forward

“Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus… by neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation — autonomy, mastery, and purpose — they limit what each of us can achieve.”
– Daniel Pink

TRY A MOOC?

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2011 (CCK11) is an open online course that over 12 weeks explores the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. Participation is open to everyone and there are no fees or subscriptions required.

Click here to register.

What? You want me to spoon-feed you more! Just do it! I mean register 🙂

Part 3 – ZaidLearn’s Blue Ocean Strategy for 2011

1 Jan

“Blogging is a way to make myself smarter.” – Chris Anderson


So, could we simplify BOS (tools), and make consultants irrelevant in the innovation process?

CONSULTANTS IRRELEVANT?

Impossible! Or that is as likely as making competition irrelevant. No doubt there are exceptional consultants out there, and we often do need to hire consultants do improve our processes, products and services. But do we need to outsource everything to consultants? For example, if we were renovating our University library to meet the learning needs of the 21st century, one could consider, or rather should perhaps hire an Interior Designer (that has experience in this area) to assist in making a wiser decision, and share potential pitfalls for this and that.

What about outsourcing branding, marketing, project management, strategic planning, risk management, programme auditing, innovation, etc.? It really depends, but from my experience working with especially consultants from the corporate consultancy providers (that have got the projects sometimes beyond comprehension) over the last 10 years in three Universities, I would argue besides helping us populate templates, and producing nice looking reports, it has been one disappointment after another.

One reason could be that big corporate consultancy providers (e.g. Ernst & Young, KPMG, Price Waterhouse & Coopers and Deloitte) use their best and most experienced consultants to work on the big dollar projects in the corporate sector, and then sends their young inexperienced staff to work on smaller projects (in the education sector, which brings in less bucks!). For whatever reason, most of the teams that I have worked with over the years are young and intelligent, but totally lack deep knowledge and experience in Higher Education, and are even weak in their core job, which is to facilitate the process to collaborate, populate, collect and synthesize all the great ideas conceptualized. From my experience over the years I feel short-changed, frustrated, and wonder if the money could have been spent more wisely.

In short, my advice would be to hire consultants if needed, but make sure they have the experience (in education) besides the talent to EXECUTE. Also, profile the team assigned to the project, besides the corporate consultancy providers themselves, which are always impressive.

SIMPLIFY BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY (BOS) TOOLS?


“…The reason that we were very excited about the phone, beyond that fact that we all hated our phones, was that we didn’t see anyone else who could make that kind of contribution. None of the handset manufacturers really are strong in software.“
– Steve Jobs


The BOS tools could be very useful to discover insights and explore beyond industry boundaries, but not necessary the best tools to discover and innovate. Breakthrough innovations and inventions, I would argue usually don’t happen using consultants, tools and templates. For example, BOS was used in the process of conceptualizing the Nintendo Wii (according to my knowledge). Perhaps so, but was it BOS that brought about the innovative Wii joystick, or the ingredients that made up the Wii console? The real magic of Nintendo innovations (over the years) are the brilliant people behind them.

In short, although the strategic move (BOS) is important, you can’t run away from hiring brilliant people, or having exceptional leaders/facilitators if you want to have success that is sustainable over years. And more importantly, brilliant people often work best in a working environment that lets them loose to innovate, beyond too many tools to test every new idea to its molecular details.

“Steve Jobs hires really smart people, and he lets them loose—but on a leash, since he overlooks it all with an extremely demanding eye. If you’re seeing visions of the “Great Eye” from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, then you probably wouldn’t be too far off.” – Source

What do you mean by ‘Brilliant People’? Not sure. Can’t think of one description to universally describe what that means. They are for sure driven and passionate about what they are doing, but the rest is for you to table out (smart, process/results driven, creative/critical/innovate thinkers, positive, wise, intelligent, hardworking, knowledgeable, experienced, etc.) according to your needs in whatever industry you are in.

ZAIDLEARN’S BOS FOR 2011?

“I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done…” – Steve Jobs

Looking back at ZaidLearn (blogging) since it started in 2007, I have noticed that my blog posts are increasingly (on the average) getting longer and fewer:
  • 2007 – 247 posts (started July/118 posts from previous site)
  • 2008 – 69 posts
  • 2009 – 41 posts
  • 2010 – 22 posts
  • 2011 – 12 posts

Based on this trend, ZaidLearn might cease to exist by 2012. Ironically, as I am increasingly getting less time to blog (3 kids, work, family, swimming, etc.), my blog posts are getting longer, and that probably explains why I am not posting that often anymore.

“In my opinion, your rambling at the beginning of the post may have discouraged some readers from getting to the meat of your argument. You have GREAT ideas, but sometimes you bury them.” – Clayton Wright (by e-mail)

Great insights from a great (online) friend! Looking back, I obviously see that my ramblings have increased significantly over the years. Yes, I sometimes like to annoy, provoke, irritate, and speak in riddles that sometimes even confuses me, myself and I.

Actually, already in 2008 a person wrote…

“Hello! I read your blog regularly, and really like it. However, the lack of consistent text formatting (making a word orange and big, for example) makes it almost impossible for me to read. Just for when I read it in the future, why is it formatted this way?” – Avi Levin (By e-mail)

At that time I was experimenting with mashing-up different font sizes and colors, and it seriously caused headaches to several readers. Now, I still experiment with colors to highlight the learning juice and for better read scan-ability (green = positive, red = negative, purple, uppercase headings, etc.) through my ramblings, but have toned down my extreme font creativity to make it more reader friendly…I hope!

Another reader complained that he needed to buy new glasses to keep up with ZaidLearn’s long posts. So, what do (or did) people like about ZaidLearn? Based on substantial feedback over the years, ZaidLearn became known for its juicy resources, awesome lists, useful tips, great ideas, funny graphics, and whole lot of fun.

So, what if I amplified what people liked about ZaidLearn, and rambled less, or practice the…

80% (Learning Juice) -20% (Rambling) Principle

…instead of the current 80% (rambling) – 20% (learning juice) principle practiced at ZaidLearn. Deal!

But still, it does not solve my problem of having less time to blog and my unexplainable habit of writing longer and longer ramblings (getting older?). Having scrutinized the best Edublogs on the planet, and looked across typical Edu-boundaries (e.g. TechCrunch) I realize that there is no silver bullet trend for success, except that the best (or most viewed blogs) provide great content (tailored to their target audience), and usually post often (daily) in small chunks (learning nuggets = less than 500 words).

For example, TechCrunch (10+ million unique monthly visitors) can post anywhere from 10 to 30 blog posts a day from their team of bloggers. In one day, TechCrunch can post more blog posts than I have posted this whole year. WOW!

I have experimented over the last year sharing learning nuggets through Twitter, but I probably need 140 words rather 140 characters to share great resources, and add a few tips with some spice. I did launch ZaidSwoosh in 2009, which focuses on short and juicy learning nuggets, but realized soon that I couldn’t manage both effectively due to my other commitments.

To cut this round of rambling short, I love blogging discoveries and ideas, because sharing inspires me to learn (faster and deeper about whatever I am learning). I need to find time and rediscover my joy of blogging and sharing more frequently (2 or more learning nuggets a week). I realize that every working day I will probably have at least 30 minutes to blog (without noise) before work starts, meaning you can expect from ZaidLearn in 2011:

More of less, but less of more!

But based on scrutinizing the most viewed blogs on the planet, readers increasingly seem to crave for granular juicy learning nuggets rather than long ramblings. My new recipe for 2011, I hope will rediscover my passion for blogging frequently, and transform ZaidLearn to become the juiciest learning blog on the planet.

For those of you who enjoyed my long ramblings in the past, you can look forward to it 6-12 times during 2011 (if time permits).

Yes, I need to think like a kid again, breakdown any destructive rules of habit (that blocks me from sharing), rediscover my passion to blog, and hopefully inspire a magical 2011.

Happy New Year! The flow of learning juice is about to start 🙂

Part 1 – Would Nemo Survive Using the Blue Ocean Strategy?

22 Dec
“Blue Ocean Strategy is a bestseller across five continents. It has been published in over 40 languages and sold over 2 million copies (since 2005). ” – Source

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY?

“Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy book first published in 2005 and written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of The Blue Ocean Strategy Institute at INSEAD, one of the top European business schools. The book illustrates the high growth and profits an organization can generate by creating new demand in an uncontested market space, or a “Blue Ocean”, than by competing head-to-head with other suppliers for known customers in an existing industry.” – Source

“Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than 100 years (1880 – 2000) and 30 industries, it provides us with a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and creating uncontested market space. ” – Source

So, what is Blue Ocean Strategy exactly?

“It is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low-cost to create new market space. Blue Ocean Strategy seeks to make the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for both the company and its buyers. Blue Ocean Strategy aligns the following three propositions:

  1. Value proposition
    The utility buyers receive from the product or service minus the price they pay for it.
  2. Profit proposition
    The price of the offering minus the cost of producing and distributing it.
  3. People proposition
    The readiness of employees to execute the new strategy with all of their energy, to the best of their abilities, and voluntarily.

Beyond the alignment of these three propositions, six principles drive the successful formulation and implementation of Blue Ocean Strategy.” – Source

Click here to read more and learn about BOS for free.

If the BOS theory still does not make sense, this should nail it:

“Go where profits and growth are – and where the competition isn’t.”
– Kim & Mauborgne (PDF)

…And what is the likelihood of that?

TWO PART SERIES
In this two part series I will explore Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS), and reflect back on a 2-day BOS workshop I attended a few weeks back (1st – 2nd December) at the UCSI Blue Ocean Strategy Regional Centre. In Part 1, I will zoom in on BOS as a theory and share some insights that might have been overlooked by the authors. In part 2, I will focus on Blue Ocean as a systematic approach to gain insight, innovate and create value, and explore some of the useful tools that we can use to visualize our own Blue Ocean, whatever that might be.

Having read the book twice (first time in 2007), read dozens of related articles, and participated in a 2-day BOS workshop, I believe I am entitled to share my honest opinions regarding this approach next. Though, I might be wrong!

RED OCEAN VS BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY

While I kind of like the Blue Ocean idea (Exotically relaxing and hypnotizing!) and most of the BOS visualization tools (explored in Part 2), I kind of find the ‘Read Ocean and Blue Ocean Strategy’ mambo jumbo (graphic above) and several of the case studies used in the book both misleading and a whole lot of _____ (you guess?)!

The BOS theory has already been around for a few years, and it is NOT short of criticism either, so I am not going to go on a full-blown (reinventing the wheel) shark attack. However, being fair to BOS, it has also rebutted six misconceptions about BOS (PDF) reasonable convincingly.

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL

“Dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment.” – Source

If you read the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) book, or listen to any consultant promoting BOS, they will for sure share with you the ultimate BOS example and pride Cirque du Soleil. No doubt the Cirque du Soleil (founder Guy Laliberté) is an inspiring, innovative and breathtaking story, but is it really a Blue Ocean?

First, Guy Laliberté never used BOS as a tool to innovate and create value. So, although it might be a Blue Ocean, it does not prove that the BOS as a theory is practical and implementable. Secondly, BOS like so many other theories often hijack success stories from a few angles (and hide others), and then absorb them into a portfolio of evidence of whatever they are trying to convince or sell.

Let’s look a bit closer at the amazing Cirque du Soleil story, and explore whether it is really a Blue Ocean according to the ‘Red Ocean vs Blue Ocean’ framework:

  • Break the Value-cost Trade-off?
    The authors would like you to believe that Cirque du Soleil grew out of the traditional circus act and then reinvented it by eliminating performing animals and star performers (cut cost), and shifted the buyer group from children (end-users of the traditional circus) to adults (purchasers of the traditional circus), drawing upon the distinctive strengths of other alternative industries, such as the theatre, Broadway shows and the opera, to offer a totally new set of utilities to more mature and higher spending customers (Source).

    In reality, Guy Laliberté (folk musician, busker and fire breather) never really worked with performing animals or so called star performers, and we could actually argue instead that he reinvented street entertainment by transforming a group of street performers into a “proper circus” (learning the circus act from Guy Caron). He didn’t pick up the idea of telling a story from the theatre, but from the Moscow Circus method. His vision was to create a circus with neither a ring nor animals. The rationale was that the lack of both of these things draws the audience more into the performance (Source).

    Ironically, the book never mentions this, and the main reason is probably that these revelations would confuse their ‘value-cost trade-off’ idea. Yes, Cirque du Soleil enhanced the show value and entertainment as they innovated over the years, but it also made the Cirque du Soleil much more costly than most other street entertainment shows (which are often free, but you are encouraged to donate/give a token of appreciation), and that had nearly catastrophic consequences during the first few years. Did you know that Guy Laliberté or his company went nearly bankrupt several times during the first few years, and if it was not for government grants, his never-say-die attitude, connections, and bit of fortune (luck!) this amazing story would have ended in disaster, and this again was never mentioned in the BOS book. The BOS book gives us an impression as if it was a smooth ride to heaven, and that the BOS was the secret to its success. What baloney!

  • Create Uncontested Market Space?
    Seriously, what does this really mean? How do you create an uncontested market space for adult entertainment? Give us a break! Cirque du Soleil explored, innovated, and has developed (after several financial failures) over the years several amazing and unique shows that consists of a theatrical mix of circus arts and street entertainment. You could have 10 other groups use similar Blue Ocean Strategies and they would have failed, unless they had people like Guy Laliberté to make it happen.

    The idea of creating an uncontested market space is an illusion, unless we simply define it as an uncontested market space, which is easy as the authors have provided no real measure (like so much else!) to prove this. That probably did not make much sense either, but then again the idea of creating an uncontested market space (perhaps on Mars!) in the 21st century, unless for an extremely short period, is highly unlikely. But, we should never stop dreaming. Anything is possible!

  • Make the Competition Irrelevant?
    Very few companies and products throughout history have made competition irrelevant (e.g. Microsoft Office could be an example, but that cost millions, if not billions of dollars in research and development), and if they have made competition irrelevant, it has only been for short periods. But then again, can competition ever be irrelevant? Even the iPhone (Vs Blackberry Vs Android) has relevant competition, although it has been a tremendous success.

    If there is no competition in sight, perhaps the market is not worth embracing anyway. In short, I would argue that there is no harm with contested competition. For example, the iPhone entered a read ocean competitive smart-phone market (which had bad products!), but through its exceptional user experience and iTunes Eco-system it has managed to capture a healthy market share. As for the Cirque du Soleil story, they are not the first acrobatic story show to pop-up. The Chinese dragon show has been around for centuries. Also, Cirque du Soleil will always have relevant competition from other amazing traveling shows and acts (and other forms of adult entertainment!), but as long as their shows are unique, attractive and entertaining, they will amplify their reputation and attract an increasing global demand.

  • Create and Capture New Demand?
    Perhaps on Mars or Pluto (the Moon is more likely)! There is and has always been a demand for new forms of adult entertainment (or ways of being entertained), and Cirque du Soleil has been successful in capturing this universal demand with their amazing shows (not necessarily because of their strategy!).
  • Align the whole system of a firm’s activities in pursuit of differentiation and low cost?
    Low cost for whom? The firm? The customer? Both? This idea has confused me until today. When I first read the book, I got the impression that Blue Ocean was about enhancing the customer value and at the same time lowering the product/service cost. But after attending the workshop, and scrutinizing some of the case studies, I get the impression that the lowering cost aspect, refers mostly to the firm, and not necessarily to the customer.

    If we go back to the Cirque du Soleil case, we see a pursuit of differentiation and lower implementation cost if we compare to the traditional circus act. But, that is rather misleading, because we could have and perhaps should have compared it to street performances, which it really originated from. And if we did, it would be differentiation, but at a higher cost. Moreover, had Cirque du Soleil used performing animals and star performers, it would have certainly gone bankrupt, because it nearly went bankrupt without them several times. Though, kudos to Cirque du Soleil for hiring over the years many amazing street performers, and providing them a healthy and stable living income beyond what they would have probably got from performing on the streets.

WHAT IS YOUR POINT?
Having said all this, we could go BLUE arguing whether Cirque du Soleil is really a Blue Ocean or not. No point wasting any more time on this issue, though please challenge me on all accounts (can always update my post).

Having always been attracted to business improvement books, or books that explore creativity and business value innovations (attracted to the stories rather than the formulas!), I see a common trend and pattern in many of the books I have read, which is the manipulation of past and existing success stories to prove their ideas and frameworks for ultimate success. In other words, they will look through their narrow lenses and highlight what fits their theory, and then hide does aspects that do not fit.

The secret to sustained success lies in the marketing strategy (BOS misses this point)! No, it lies in strong ethical practices (BOS misses this point)! No, the secret to success is strategic execution (RIP)! No, it lies in the strategy itself. BOS claims based on its research that the strategic move, and not the company or the industry, is the right unit of analysis for explaining the creation of blue oceans and sustained high performance…bla, bla (p. 10). They are all right in their own lenses.

Though, I would argue that all of the above mentioned ideas, do not really highlight the real essence of companies that have had sustained success over time, which is exceptional leaders working with amazingly talented people. What would Apple today be without Steve Jobs, or Air Asia without Tony Fernandes?

Exceptional leaders have the ability to visualize (ideas), inspire, empower, and attract talented people to work for them, and as importantly they have the ability to continuously attract the world attention needed (or hire people that can!) to make it a sustained success. So, if you want a real strategy that really works, hire exceptional leaders and talented people with the right attitude (to your needs). Even if you don’t have a great strategy, these people will most likely do a better job on strategy development than any consultant, or consultancy firm out there.

You are wrong! Maybe, I am!

PART 2?
Although, I find all the exotic buzz words (that can easily be manipulated) and the Red/Blue ocean framework from BOS a load of ____ (the real Blue Ocean!), they do have some interesting tools we can use to acquire useful insights and help us create value innovations. Your results using these tools might not turn out to be real Blue Oceans according to their immeasurable and exotic framework, but nevertheless the tools are worth a try.

So, what about the Nemo puzzle? That will be explored in part 2 (if I can cook up an answer!), and I will also reveal the ultimate secret to success, which is…

Islam, Higher Education & The Virtual Campus!

29 Nov

“When the son of Adam (human being) dies, his deeds are stopped except for three things, namely, his good deeds, his knowledge, and his pious child who prays for him.”
– Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

In this context, ‘his knowledge‘ means knowledge that benefit others (including written materials such as articles, papers, books, etc.). Not only what has been learned, but more importantly what has been shared. So, sharing knowledge is not only a good thing to do, it is a form of worship in Islam. So, let’s practice it sincerely (whether we are Muslim or not)!

TWO CONFERENCES

A couple of weeks back (9-11 November), I attended and participated in two (2) very interesting conferences (Oops, I mean one conference & one forum!):
  1. International Conference On Islam And Higher Education (8-9 November)
  2. Future Campus Forum Malaysia (10-11 November)

As for the first conference, I could only attend the 2nd day (9th November), as I was stuck with other work commitments. Overall, these two events where enriching and enlightening (in their own ways), and now I will share some insights (lessons learned) and explore how we could face some of the challenges ahead.

ISLAM & HIGHER EDUCATION

Actually, I was invited to moderate the e-learning session just a few days before the conference. For whatever reason that may be (the original moderator pulled out, poor planning, etc.), I don’t care, except that I was delighted to get the call, and obviously agreed to take up the challenge. As I have never moderated a session at an International Conference, how could I say ‘NO’ to such a great challenge.

Also, I have to share with you the invitation phone call, which was a classic. Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr. Osman Bakar‘s (Deputy CEO, IAIS) personal assistant (PA) called me, and said (roughly, as my recall memory is not 100%):

  • PA: Can I speak to Professor Zaid Ali Alsagoff
  • ME: There is no Professor Zaid Ali Alsagoff here!
  • PA: Can I speak to Dr. Zaid Ali Alsagoff
  • ME: There is no Dr. Zaid Ali Alsagoff here!
  • PA: Is there any Zaid Ali Alsagoff here?
  • ME: Yes, I am Zaid Ali Alsagoff
  • PA: Oh, Professor Osman Bakar wants to….bla, bla…!

In short, I was the only session moderator (7 in all) that is not at least a Doctor, which is a pretty good achievement in an academic kind of conference (good or bad, I am not so sure!). Even during the conference, the announcer wanted to address me as ‘Doctor’, and was confused that I was not one. I have to admit, I like the attention of being a non-doctor in such situations. A few years back during an International e-Learning in conference in Thailand, I was asked (presented a paper):

Person: Doctor?
Me: Still a Bachelor, but married!
Person: (He looked confused!)

Technically that can work for a Muslim, but I don’t want to get into that (visit another blog for that). At that time I was doing my Masters, and was probably the only presenter that didn’t even have a Masters. In short, I am not too academic inclined (or talented), and prefer reflective blogging to writing ‘Objective’ research papers! Until now, that has been a quite wise decision (in terms of connecting and reaching out). But I am planning to return mentally to the academic world soon, I hope!

Also, I am planning to do my PhD (2012 or later), but at the moment I am enjoying family life (including my 9 months old baby girl), work, and learning (what I want, whenever I want!). So, I don’t want to give that up yet for a PhD (unless it involves just that)! Enough about me, let’s zoom back to the…

9th NOVEMBER
I attended all the sessions at the International Conference On Islam And Higher Education (download the presentation slides) on the 9th November, as I was interested to listen and get some insights into how different countries and communities are struggling to infuse more Islamic teachings and values into their mainstream education models. Of course, if FOX News was here, they would paint a different picture saying ______, and I would be on CIA’s most wanted list.

But, getting back to reality, it was heartening and enlightening that most have realized that investing in education and moving forward is NON-Brainer. I had the opportunity to listen to speakers discuss Islam and (mostly Higher) education in India, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Iran, Tanzania, Kazakhstan and Malaysia.

No doubt, we (Muslims) have many challenges ahead, but investing heavily and smartly in education could do wonders to deal with many of them. No doubt, dropping bombs from 30,000 feet is not going bring Muslims closer to the West (or accomplish the mission, except amplify hate. Obama, time to wake up!), but also Muslims have to realize that there are plenty of peaceful loving people in the West, and just brushing everyone under one monster roof is not the solution. We both have to do some soul searching (Including me!), and educating and connecting people (besides using Facebook!) is a great way to infuse greater understanding and move forward.


GLOBAL WARMING!
Yes, moving forward together to solve mission nearly impossible, which is mankind’s authentic TERRORISM AGAINST MOTHER EARTH! Whether ‘Global Warming‘ is a fact or myth, I cannot verify, but what I do know is that mankind is abusing the Earth beyond its capacity (by __%), and unless we change or transform the way we live soon, we are not providing much hope for our future generations. But, on a positive note this disaster in the making (or made!) will increasingly bring us together around the world, and eventually we will have to put our differences aside (for a while), so that we can clean up our own mess. Shame on mankind, shame on me! I suppose I am dreamer, but why not? I am still learning! Let’s get back to the conference…

HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Although, some might argue that Universities will be extinct soon (like the dinosaurs), unless they transform the way they facilitate and assess learning, they are still very much needed (for reasons also beyond learning), an e-Learning can play a vital role to empower more people to be educated. As you see in the diagram below, we have a long way to go to ensure that all in the Muslim world (15 selected countries) have the opportunity to continue their education:

Professor Dato’ Dr. Ansary Ahmed‘s insightful an stimulating talk (PDF) during the e-Learning session (which I moderated) went beyond wishful thinking, and provided us with hardcore (sad) numbers and some excellent thoughts on moving forward.

The other speaker during the e-learning session, Professor Dr. Ahmad Memariani Azizolah from Iran (FOX News, please chill!), explored Payame Noor University (PNU), Iran: A Universal Distance-Based University in the Islamic World, which I found truly mind boggling. For example, The University has 485 centers throughout the country supported by 3500 teaching staff and the student population exceeds 1,100,000, which means roughly 314 students to one teacher. WOW! To put this into perspective, Oxford University has a ratio of 3 students to one teacher. How can one ensure quality University education with such a student-teacher ratio (314 to 1)? Any magic formulas to share?

In 1979 the access to higher education in Iran was just 5% . Today the PNU and Islamic Azad University (1,200,000 students in regular programs!) cover approximately 65% of the students. And Al-Mustafa Open University (a virtual Islamic University) attracts more than 18000 international students from more than 100 countries. Again, WOW!

Having also witnessed (2 trips) the tremendous growth and emphasis on education and e-learning (e.g. National Center for e-Learning & Distance Learning) in Saudi Arabia over the last two (2) years, it is an exciting time to be working in the education world. I was fortunate to be part of the first e-Learning audit team that visited eight (8) Universities earlier this year, and it was very encouraging to see the passion and drive in Saudi Arabia to transform the education system (more input here). Actually, the whole Middle East is going through a massive transformation, and education and e-learning is increasingly playing a critical role.

MOVING FORWARD?
But, we still have a long but exciting way to go, and here are three (3) transformative things that I recommend that we should focus on to really take-off:

[free+internet.JPG]
  • Free Internet Access is a Fundamental Human Right!
    Internet is the oxygen of learning in the 21st century, and without it we are denying millions (1.57 billion Muslims around the world) of people access to learn (e.g. free learning resources), even if educational institutions have no space for them. Also, the Internet provides people an amazing platform (ecosystem) to connect, network, innovate, and do business directly and indirectly.

    As of 1 July this year (2010) “every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection. Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015 (Source).” In short, we must realize the importance and the empowering impact the Internet can have on society and education, and therefore should do everything possible to make it happen. Of course, the Internet can be used to do negative stuff, but that is a challenge we have little choice, but to face. If that means sometimes censoring sites, fine, but do not censor the Internet itself, which is probably the surest way to self-destruct in the 21st century. Let’s think beyond, and envision Internet (and learning devices) for all! It might sound impossible now, but it is not! We, just need to rethink the way we think, and put our energies and passions in the right direction(s)!

  • Forget Copyright, Practice Copyleft Instead!
    Isn’t it weird that we can actually copyright and sell knowledge that was created by others, but synthesized, paraphrased, and mashed-up by ourselves. Oops, I forgot, we contributed say 5% originality. What right do we have to copyright and sell such knowledge? We can argue that we invested time synthesizing it, referenced resources used, but does that take the fact away that many academic textbooks today are often just a collection of other people’s work wrapped nicely up into a sizzling cover, which we glorify and sell as if we are the masters of the universe. Some people do actually make a (necessary) living from it, fine! But, to the rest who already make a decent living, let’s practice the greatest passion of a true academic, which is to share what we learn to as many people as we possibly can. Today with the Internet and tons of amazing free learning tools we can reach anyone in the world that has access to the Internet without needing to invest much, except our time.

    Maybe I am wrong here, or maybe it is that I am left handed, and as a result I find copyright so difficult to appreciate (especially in the academic world). Anyway, now that we can easily Copyleft (Confused? Click the link!), or use Creative Commons, we should think beyond copyright, and explore sharing more for the benefit of everyone (except the publishers). Also, if we argue that a University would lose its competitive edge by sharing learning resources (courses), I disagree. If your real competitive edge is content, I suppose you need to rethink your learning model, because content can easily be duplicated within seconds. Having awesome content is not a sustainable competitive edge, but infusing and nurturing learning models that use content to apply learning and transform learning minds is. You can duplicate content easily, but a learning model and culture takes time to nurture. Many top universities around the world know this, and don’t mind sharing their educational resources? It is also great branding for a University to be part of the Open Educational Resources (OER) or Open Courseware (OCW) movements.

    Moreover, if you are a Public University funded by citizens (tax money and endowment), you should share back whatever you can. Although, Public Universities cannot enroll every potential student due to obvious limitations (facilities, teachers, car parks, etc.), they can still share at least their courses and learning resources, empowering hungry minds to learn on their own. Also, the public should have the right to check the quality of their investment. In short, we won’t lose much by sharing learning resources (not like money!), but the community at large can benefit tremendously by creating a learning sharing ecosystem (reuse, remix, adapt, contextualize, mash-up, etc.) that is potentially sustainable beyond physical barriers, providing everyone the potential to learn. But, how do we then make money? You can make money through teaching, coaching, online facilitation, consultations, workshops, site advertisements, funding, endowment, etc. There are so many ways to still make tons of money, if we really think about it!

    Finally, by focusing on researching, constructing and innovating the missing links, instead of wasting too much time reinventing content that already exists (reuse/remix existing OER/OCW), we become more valuable as a teacher and educator. This is the only way to catch-up and lead the way in the 21 century where ‘Zorro’ bytes of new learning content is created and made available only (mostly for free) every day.

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  • Build Learning Networks!
    Having free Internet access and free learning resources is not sufficient to transform us into a learning and innovation society. Learning resources usually don’t inspire people into action or learning (if they did, libraries would be crowded beyond reach!), but inspiring and knowledgeable people can. We all know that the Internet can also be the biggest waste of time creating an amusing life out of basically doing nothing (in the real world). We have to get out of our University cocoon nests and interact beyond. We need to create learning communities and networks where we share and discuss trends, issues, resources and ideas, and are receptive to criticism and disagreements. It is amazing how powerful group and network learning can be, if we embrace it and participate.

    Finally, we should increasingly explore the idea of facilitating ‘Massive Open Online Courses/Environments (MOOC)’ where we get together to share, discuss and reflect important topics and issues. If you are looking for a good example, try PLENK 2010. Imagine having educators from say 78 countries explore together important issues using a variety of free learning tools.

That brings me back to this conference, and the problem with most conferences (that I have attended) is that when completed, I suffer from information overload and exhaustion. In other words, how can we transform conferences to become less bla, bla, bla… to be more engaging & interactive?

In other other words, conferences should perhaps emphasize ‘Less is more’ for presenters, and encourage them to focus on key points/issues, so that we can have more time to discuss and network.

And that is what I experienced at the…

FUTURE CAMPUS FORUM MALAYSIA

The ‘Future Campus Forum Malaysia‘ took place at Westin Hotel (Kuala Lumpur), and there were roughly 100 participants. The forum hall was a perfect fit for a stage and 10 discussion tables (with 10 seats each). Besides the amazingly small prayer room (only 4 could pray at once), Westin is a reasonably good place to conduct a forum with this context.

Although, this forum did not have any particularly enlightening or inspiring speakers (got quite high expectations, usually!), the whole format was really built around networking and sharing ideas (and capturing them). My role was to be a participant only…

DISCUSSION TABLES
Even though the presenters or the panel discussion was not too enriching, the real fun was the 10 30-minute interactive discussion sessions. So, basically for 6 hours during the 2-day forum, we were in intensive discussions covering 10 different relevant topics:

  1. Measuring Effectiveness
  2. Remaining Competitive
  3. Gaming & Immersive learning
  4. Content Development
  5. Future Learning Styles
  6. Creativity & Innovation
  7. Public-Private Partnerships
  8. Connected Campus
  9. Continuous Professional Development
  10. Choosing Classroom ICT Equipment

Each discussion topic was facilitated by an international or local expert who initiated the discussion and captured the interesting ideas and experiences shared (1 facilitator + 9 participants). The 10 interactive discussion sessions were organized according to 10 different colors, and each color was associated with a number, too. Every participant was given a color (on the name card), and would then start from the table with the same color, and then move from table to table after each discussion session. I was black (my name card!), meaning I would start at table 1 (Black). Since some people might be color-blind, it is good to have numbers besides colors to refer to. After 2 or 3 sessions, we would be enriched (discussion break!) with a talk or coffee (networking) break.

To manage time (and speed up the discussion), they projected an Interactive Discussion Table Timer (starting at 30 minutes), which was kind of cool, but at times also made you feel like you were taking an exam. As they were going GREEN (Yeah, whatever!) they would not hand out web resources, and instead we needed to participate in all activities and submit the forum evaluation before getting the password (and certificate of attendance) to download all the presentation slides. Did all, but yet to receive the password (by e-mail)!

Overall, it was an interesting way to encourage participation, discussion and capturing of ideas. Though, you are stuck with the same group (of 9) throughout all the 10 discussions, and that is where they could have innovated more. Surely, it would have been fun to mix-up perhaps after two 30-minute discussion sessions, and then challenge your ideas with another group of people. By the time my group had reached session two, everyone realized I was the only E-Learning professional (or whatever!) in our group, meaning from then onwards I became the automatic choice to be the first participant to share ideas and experiences.

In conclusion, the forum setup was perfect for discussions, networking, sharing ideas and learning; though it would have been even cooler if we didn’t have to stick with the same group throughout the two days. Don’t get me wrong, my group was a lot of fun, but just something to ponder, if we were to adopt such an approach for our conferences or forums in the future.

LESSONS LEARNED
To be honest I didn’t learn that much new, except from the way the forum was dynamically facilitated. But there were a few new nuggets of wisdom and resources shared during the two days, which I will blast away in the form of bullets here:

  • Check out the Digital Education Revolution (New South Wales) resources and information.
  • DER-NSW research focuses on how educational technology (or their programme) is influencing teacher pedagogy, students and the consequences of it on the students’ educational outcomes (3 key research questions).
  • Digital Citizenship (8 free lessons to download).
  • Amazing to learn about Fung Kai Innovative School from Ma Siu Leung (CEO), who is a lively & engaging speaker, too! He shared with us tricks on how to create win-win public-private partnerships, and how to trick (smartly) vendors to sell you great technology for bargain prices, and then make them feel like they have a bargain, too (win-win).
  • There are now 9 million Facebook users in Malaysia alone…Now that is connectivity 🙂
  • In a connected campus, student traverse formal, informal, & virtual learning space towards learning outcomes in a seamless manner (Whatever!)
  • How to develop authentic learning experiences? Prosumer? Produce and consume your own learning!

Not much to scream who-ha about, but I did really enjoy listening to Dr. Stuart Lee (Director, Computing & Services, Oxford University) over the Skype session to us. Now, that was the highlight for me (without doubt!). For example, I learned that Oxford University embraces open source and tries to use it where possible (according Dr. Stuart Lee). Interestingly, some Oxford University building walls are up to 7 meters thick, so it can be a challenge to drill holes to wire the network. Dr. Stuart Lee seemed very conscious that Oxford University is an old University, and that it takes sometimes centuries to change things there (or more than a lifetime).

Then Melissa Highton (Head of Learning Technologies Group, Oxford University) took over the Skype session and shared with us that Oxford University uses Sakai for VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) and invest a lot in video recording lectures and increasingly making them available online for free (something to ponder!).Oxford University also embraces mobile technologies and learning to support their 3 students to one lecturer ratio (Small group teaching).

Interestingly, Oxford University rejected Blackboard as they didn’t understand or support the needs of Oxford University’s need for a free roaming kind of learning environment (not necessarily course-based)…Ouch! Was it just poor marketing, or could it be that Blackboard is simply not up to mark (yet)?

When we came to the Q&A session with the Oxford ‘Twin Tech Terrors’, silence from the participants continued. However, that did not stop me from asking whether Oxford University uses Moodle or not. It was revealed that Oxford University has embraced Moodle for distance education, and mostly use Sakai to support face-to-face learning and online research activities. In short, who needs Blackboard?

Finally, I visited Taylor’s University (our group) new campus, as the 2nd part of day 2 was a field trip to one of three chosen locations. Tailor’s University new campus is pretty impressive, and their 5 (or 4) floor state-of-the-art (whatever that means!) library, which had sizzling noise, collaborative, quiet and sleeping learning spaces, was certainly my favorite highlight. The library even had a mini orange cinema, which included sand bags perfect for falling asleep. I took tons of pictures with my IPhone until it fell asleep (too early!), but I promised not reveal their secret spices.

So, please visit the place yourself to experience a trendy mini-city kind of campus, which looked more like an outdoor version of KLCC (shopping mall) rather than a typical campus you would associate with a University (Certainly hip with Starbucks, Baskin-Robbins, Famous Amos, restaurants, cafes, cinema, hotel, etc). In short, they are making tons of money also by renting out spaces beyond the hostels.

Anyway, since their student population (around 9000 at that campus) are mostly young and trendy, this outfit is perhaps a perfect match. Interestingly, when I came to Tailor’s University new campus, I had trouble finding a car park. Later I found out that they actually had 3000 parking spaces (according to their tour guide), and ironically I still had problem finding a car park (at 2 pm). I suppose most students today have cars!

Overall, I learned a lot during those three (3) days and three (3) major events (conference, forum & Field trip).

If only everyday could be like that! I wish 🙂

PLENK 2010 – The Most Awesome Course on Planet Earth!

20 Sep




HOW DID YOU DO THAT?
I used xtranormal to create the animation (above) by simply writing the dialogue script (text only! Seriously!). The whole production process (thinking and writing the script) took me around 30 minutes only. Now, that is what we want from awesome learning tools; Minimal effort, amazing output! Though, xtranormal has a commercial version (besides the free features) with even more sizzling juice, and that _____ me off 😦


PLENK 2010?

PLENK stands for Personal Learning Environments and Knowledge Networks. This Massive Open Online (thinking) Course is facilitated by Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Dave Cormier and Rita Kop. More than 1500 persons have already registered. The course will last until 21st November, so you can still join and experience inspiring and useful information overload on rocks!

Click here to know more about PLENK 2010 and register.


MY PLENK 2010 REFLECTIONS?

Over the next nine (9) weeks this post will be continuously littered with my reflections as I learn week-by-week (One mega post, instead of 9-10 small ones! Between 4000-6000 words for sure!), but for now I am too busy engrossed learning and making noise beyond this blog.

But, before scanning my reflections, here are the most juicy collaborative reflections of PLENK2010. Yes, you can find that in the weekly webinars, which include the facilitators (Stephen, George, Dave & Rita), invited speakers, and active participants (recorded webinars):

Actually, due to time differences and sleepiness I have missed all the live sessions, but the great thing about webinars (or using tools like Elluminate) is that they can be recorded easily and archived for later viewing. So, in that sense I have managed to watch and reflect most of these recorded sessions, and they have certainly enriched my ideas and opinions about learning and moving forward. Seriously interesting, so don’t skip the recorded webinars above!

WEEK 1: A TOUR OF PLEs & PLNs
The first week of PLENK 2010 was an explosive and inspiring discussion flow of ideas and thoughts from the participants (and facilitators); exploring what is a Personal Learning Network (PLN), or should I say Personal Learning Environment (PLE). Here is the reading materials shared to ‘trigger’ off this explosive discussion (#plenk2010, Daily [Sep 12-18], Paper.li Daily and Blog feeds list):

However, as the discussion raged on, it turned out initially to be a battle for whether PLN or PLE is the appropriate term to describe our self-assembled/constructed learning environment/network using a variety of learning tools. Of course from a semantic, theoretical, or academic point-of-view such discussions are extremely exciting, but many (based on my understanding) seemed to be more interested in exploring the ‘HOW’ rather the ‘WHAT’ and ‘WHY’, which we will eventually do later in this course (I think), based on the course outline.

As from a learning point-of-view exploring what a PLN or PLE is, and the potential differences helps (hopefully) the learning group come to some sort of agreement or understanding (reference point) of what we are actually talking about, as we progress in the course. Also, it was great to explore how participants articulated their own original and personal ideas and thoughts of what a PLE/N is to them.

As the discussion raged on, I discovered that PLN originated from USA, and PLE originated from Europe (somewhere!), and that PLN indicated ‘Active’, while PLE on the other hand indicated a more ‘Passive’ role, and therefore PLN is perhaps a more appropriate term to use (Nice with brains and perception!). Also, PLN emphasizes more on our online (or offline) network of people, while PLE is more focused on the usage of learning tools. Soon, some argued that the terms PLN or PLE (and lifeless visual snapshot diagrams) were not appropriate, and that perhaps ‘Lifestream’ with real-time flowing diagrams was more appropriate (Whatever!).

As the discussion raged on, obviously someone would argue that ‘P’ or Personal did not make sense for our mostly shared Learning Networks/Environments. Usually, we like to keep our Personal stuff (e.g. life) private and perhaps only share a bit (on Oprah!). But then it was argued that we needed to understand the difference between ‘Personal‘ Learning E/N from ‘Personal Learning‘ E/N, and as Socratic intellectuals that makes totally sense! In short, maybe we should just ditch the ‘P’ totally, as some people actually pronounce ‘P’ with a ‘B’ (my 5-year old son for starters!).

So, if no ‘P’, why not use ‘S’ standing for Self (or perhaps Social). So, instead of PLE or PLN, let’s explore instead SLN or SELF LEARNING NETWORK :

Alright, my first diagram of SLN is too abstract, meaningless, and macro to make sense for beginners, but I will work and re-visualize it throughout PLENK 2010, and hopefully it will bloom beyond Bloom’s taxonomy (No harm in being a bit ambitious!).

Finally, the real challenge for me (and probably for many others) was to access or build the mother of all learning streams, which includes every single learning contribution from all the participants (Forum discussions, blog posts, Twitter, and whatever!). Of course that would be information overload on rocks, but I kind of like that option. Of course, the Stephen Downes Daily updates are awesome, but you have to wait 24-hours for filtered juice. The Paper.li Daily is more attractive than Daily, but until Moodle Forum posts are included in the #PLENK2010 Twitter hashtag, it simply excludes too much.

In short, is it possible that all Moodle forum post links are shared through the #PLENK2010 hashtag? The only option I can think of now, is to use my Google Reader to subscribe to #plenk2010, Daily, Blog feeds list, and Moodle forums (RSS) to create my own mother of all learning streams, and enjoy the full stream.

Any better solutions?

WEEK 2: CONTRASTING PERSONAL LEARNING WITH INSTITUTIONAL LEARNING
Reading materials for week 2:

I have actually discussed earlier in my blog, why LMS is playing an increasingly less important role in our PLE (without actually using the PLE term):

Here is a photographic best answer to contrast LMS with PLE (or Constructivism and Connectivism), inspired by George and Stephen (plagiarism or copyleft?):


I am already one week behind (the class geniuses), so I will leave my reflections for week 3, and then perhaps return to week 2 if ‘learning time‘ permits 😦


I nearly dropped off my seat in surprise and laughter while watching the recorded week 3 webinar with Janet Clarey, as she was not sure what the marshmallow man is doing on the diagram (above)…

I thought it was pretty obvious… I am still learning 🙂


WEEK 3: UNDERSTANDING THE NEXT/EXTENDED WEB
Reading materials for week 3:

Whatever! It will always be the ‘Next Web’ or ‘Extended Web’. Web 3.0? Alright, now that gives us some number, so we can perhaps relate to. Semantic Web? Yes, that sounds even more specific and contextualized. Anyway, all these terms kind of mean different things to different experts and ordinary people (like myself). Also, I have never really engrossed myself in defining where a specific tool belongs; whether it is web 1.0 or web 2.0, or web 4.5…who cares!

What really matters, is what a particular learning tool can do for us (efficiently, effectively, in an user-friendly manner), or perhaps what we can do for it. For example, only a clown would today train Professors to use ‘Dreamweaver’ to develop a course website, and then recommend subscribing to a hosting company, so that the website can be uploaded. Or teach Flash MX to develop animations and games. Or even use Photoshop to mashup or create images (PowerPoint 2010 rocks!). Today, we are blessed with an amazing and growing toolkit (or PLE) of possibilities to learn, share and interact with practically anyone in the world (Who has access to the Internet).

It is fine to define what level the Internet and learning tools have evolved to, but what really matters is how we use the Internet and learning tools to establish our own PLE, and how we engage and inspire students to create their own little PLEs, so that that they can evolve into independent self-learners for life.

WEEK 4: PLE/PLN AND LEARNING THEORIES
Reading materials for week 4:

Are learning theories important to know? Good to know, but not necessary to know to become an excellent learner or teacher. If you explore learning theories, you might notice also that learning theories often seem to reflect THE FLAVOR TECHNOLOGY/IES OF THE DAY. And Connectivisim is not an exception, as it seems to be influenced by the emergence of the Internet (connections), social media (networks), and brain science (neural connections). Whether these new technologies and understandings (of the brain) have influenced George Siemens and Stephen Downes thinking consciously or not, I have no clue, but the more I read about their evolving learning theory the more I see connections, or influences they have on their thinking. However, there is nothing wrong with that, it is just an observation (which might be wrong).

But does any learning theory conceptualized until today actually describe how we learn? I doubt it! Meaning, Connectivism is the flavor of the day today, but in a few years time another delicious learning theory will pop-up and everyone will get excited again. Although, learning theories don’t exactly describe how we learn, they are still important as they guide our thinking about how we learn. As such, I believe all the major learning theories (Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism & Connectivism) have a place in understanding how we learn, and they may be relevant in their own way as they explore learning knowledge, skills, attitudes and wisdom.

In short, NO learning theory conceptualized until today actually describes how we learn, but they are all important to know as they explore how we learn from different angles. We could discuss, ‘which learning theory is the most appropriate for our time (perhaps Connectivism), but I find that a waste of time. Why? Because (in my opinion), no learning theory until today really describes how we learn, so instead we should appreciate the nuggets of wisdom in all of them, and use these nuggets of wisdom to facilitate sizzling learning experiences.

So, how do we really learn? The process of learning is too complex, dynamic, unique, contextual and amazing to really understand using words and diagrams to explain. Looking forward to the next learning theory! Excited already!


WEEK 5: EVALUATING LEARNING IN PLE/NS
Reading materials for week 5:

PLE Conference Papers (.pdf):

Have you ever heard anyone excited about using and learning through a Learning Management System (LMS). Perhaps initially, but most people kind of get turned off after a few experiences. Why? I am sure there are many reasons for that, but it could be the way it operates, influences, monitors, user-interface design and the way it structures (or controls) learning (objects), which often resembles the factory model (input-process-output), or perhaps like a book. For reading that is fine, but for interacting and collaborative learning? Not so sure!

What I am trying badly to say, is that the way systems are designed and used do effect our learning, especially our motivation to learn. For example, I am passionate about writing this blog post (which is open to everyone!), but would I be passionate about posting my reflections in a closed forum (in a LMS), which is only accessible to my teacher and students. Or even worse, I write an assignment using Word, and then it is submitted online to the LMS for only my teacher to review and grade. Worse yet, the teacher is too lazy to provide feedback, except a grade (number or alphabet!). Now that is terrible, but sadly happens often in our Universities around the world.

Today, we have so many awesome learning tools to use, and getting stuck in one all conquering (LMS) is not the way to go. LMS today are more like airports, whereby we meet up before using the most appropriate learning tool(s) to collaborate and sizzle learning.

In short, we need to find those learning tools that suit us best for learning, and integrate them into our PLE and PLN. Learning is actually really fun, just need to find the right rhythm and tools!

WEEK 6: USING PLES SUCCESSFULLY – SKILLS, MINDSETS, AND CRITICAL LITERACIES
Reading materials for week 6:


WEEK 7: PLE/NS TOOLS – WHAT EXISTS, WHAT IS BEING BUILT?
Reading materials for week 7:

WEEK 8: PLE/NS AND PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Reading materials for week 8:

PKM PLENKhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=pkmplenk-101105101306-phpapp01&stripped_title=pkm-plenk&userName=jarche



Oops, I forgot George Siemens! Now, it makes more sense:



Great, Harold Jarche has also discovered ZaidLearn’s intergalactic gaga PLENK 2010 adventure! Amen 🙂

WEEK 9: PLE/NS IN THE CLASSROOM (PLE/NS AND BLENDED LEARNING)
Reading materials for week 9:

WEEK 10: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLE/PLN COMING IN A DISTANT FUTURE!
Reading materials for week 10:

The Representative Studenthttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=therepresentativestudent-100623184315-phpapp01&stripped_title=the-representative-student&userName=Downes


Still thinking 🙂

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