Educational Media Development Growth, Quality and Innovation

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Educational Media Development Growth, Quality
and Innovation

• Athabasca University
• Summer 2006
• Michael S. Shaw, MSc

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Overview

• Share a few key experiences
• Consider trends and indicators
• Present probable challenges
• Consider future activities

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The misconception of the 90s

• Teachers will use cool tools and plug-in lots
  of online content.

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HIGHER COLLEGES OF TECHNOLOGY
ONLINE (R)EVOLUTION
11 campuses 1,200 faculty 25,000 students
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HIGHER COLLEGES OF TECHNOLOGY
ONLINE (R)EVOLUTION

• 1994/95 Potential for learning technology
  realized
• -Centralized instructional media and technology
  centre planned for 1995/96
• -Staff compliment of 5 hired, to climb to 24 by
  2000
• -Every faculty member gets a computer, Internet
  connection and email account

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• 1996/97 Momentum begins to build
• -WebCT and Toolbook
• -Secondment of instructors for pecial projects
• -Improve infrastructure, increase bandwidth

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• 1997/98
• -Very little progress or acceptance of WebCT
• -Talk of teaching contracts with technology usage
  clauses in them begin scary!
• -I am commissioned by the VC to develop and
  beta-test an online adjunct WebCT course in the
  classroom for 2 semesters for first-hand
  observation
• -Publications section stable and growing

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• 1998/99 The year of faculty workshops
• -The large centralized service cannot produce a
  significant quantity of online course resources
  and materials
• -Over 300 faculty workshops held, over 1,200
  faculty members trained to use WebCT
• -Course development coordinators and program
  managers continue to struggle with attempts to
  develop worthwhile materials

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• 2000 Final recommendations
• -Department is renamed Department of Teaching
  Support and Development and merges with Quality
  Development Department.
• -Each campus hires an educational technology
  supervisor.
• -Select quality products and processes are
  identified and shared across the system.

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• 2004 Regression?
• We've had WebCT here since 96 but I don't
  believe there's much to show for it. Part of the
  problem is that you can be lazy and just use
  online tools for storing documents without
  actively using some of the tools that add value.
• the sharing of course material is ad-hoc and
  I'm doing you a favour sort of approach
• There is still nothing here about pooled
  resources. Oh well, we live in hope.

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How we work
A short phenomenology story
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Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI)

• Learners have asked for more flexible, modular
  courses.
• Faculty has expressed a need to for a way to
  quickly customize and deploy instruction.
• The proper delivery of the content is as big a
  challenge as actually designing and creating it.
• CIHI has over 50,000 clients requiring
  education/support 93 connected.

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Knowledge management?
The file servers alone contain over 2 million
files in over 200,000 folders - equivalent to
approximately 55,000 physical encyclopedia
volumes. Imagine if all of the content was

• Uniformly organized in a system
• Easily searchable (metadata, taxonomies)
• Highly reusable (multi-use for staff and
  learners)
• Structured and presentable
• Easily deployable (currency, relevancy)
• HOW?

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Learning Management System (LCMS)
Student/course Management Tracking, registration,
authoring, etc.
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Learning CONTENT Management System (LCMS)

• Authoring
• Workflow mgnt.
• Content mgnt.
• Communication
• Tracking
• Portal interface
• Instructional and presentational design templates

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Reusable learning objects
links table of contents glossary COP
resources contact info
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Publications meets e-learning
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Process meets product and
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standardized tools, processes and products
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PowerPoint culture
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EMD work environment

• If we are promoting things like lifelong learning
  and social constructivism in academia, then our
  work environments should reflect this as well.

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Collaborative development portal
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Trends impacting EMD

• Tertiary enrollment is growing!!!
• Students require more flexibility
• Competition growing public and private
• Student demographics changing
• Smaller chunks modules, courses
• Demand for increased interaction
• Faculty development and support

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Trends impacting EMD

• Instructor/facilitator isolation
• Knowledge proliferation - CM
• Content reusability
• Outcomes and competency
• Programmatic courses sharing and
  standardization
• Technology itself as an outcome skill
• ---Howell, Williams Lindsay (2005)---

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Trends impacting EMD

• Popular and emerging technologies
• e-Learning 2.0 read AND write
• e-books
• Podcasting
• Intelligent search tools
• VoIP (i.e. Skype)
• Webconferencing
• RSS
• SMS/MMS
• Embedded performance support
• Blogs, Wikis, Forums - CCT

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EMD is integral
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The EMD challenges

• 1. How can A.U. increase quantity while
  maintaining or improving quality?
• Scalable processes to meet growing demands?
• Convert or re-invent existing processes?
• Outsourcing? Keep expanding EMD resources?
• New products?
• Focus more on core P P, drop others?
• More onus on faculty multidisciplinary?
  Decentralization/centralization?
• Faculty training and development and other
  supporting mechanisms?
• Evaluation - identify and codify best practices?

40 increase annually (Gallagher, 2002)
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The EMD challenges

• 2. How can A.U. remain innovative?
• Money and time for RD - Prototypes, playtime?
• Monitor and evaluate trends and technology?
• Monitor and evaluate internal P P?
• Leadership role in teaching with technology?
  Defining faculty roles? Defining standards?
• Staff training and incentives?
• Challenge status-quo silos? R I!

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The EMD challenges

• 3. How can A.U. remain competitive?
• ROI - Quality
• Quantify/qualify good, better, faster, etc.?
• More onus on faculty multidisciplinary?
• Training and development?
• New partnerships/working arrangements?

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The EMD challenges

• 4. Real champions/leaders?
• By example
• Quality products and processes
• Support and encouragement
• Pragmatic and innovative approaches
• Standards software, methodologies, etc.

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The EMD challenges
5. How do we deal with all of the affective
challenges?
Anti-standards
Pro-standards
Actively oppose standards
Follow only if mandated
Follow as soon as they are proposed or set
Follow only if value if seen or understood
Follow when others begin to accept
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Suspected EMD activities

• Take a stong(er) leadership role standards,
  support, research, faculty development, etc.
• New evaluation strategies dealing with the whole
  DL picture as it relates to EMD
• Create a SHARED vision for what teaching and
  learning with technology should be now and in
  the future

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Suspected EMD activities

• Evaluate/benchmark current practices
• Codify best practices
• Performance indicators all U staff and learners
• Create more/better supporting mechanisms and
  standards
• Develop/modify/maintain/optimize products, tools
  and processes as required collaborative
  development portal

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Towards Optimized EMD Processes

• INITIAL
• Ad hoc no formal procedures or monitoring
  teachers alienated large capital investments
  excessive experimentation quick software
  solutions
• REPEATABLE
• Processes are intuitive and dependant on key
  individuals only unrealistic and ill-defined
  frameworks for improvement ubiquitous acceptance
  not attainable
• DEFINED
• Qualitatively defined realistic processes
  established through expertise ownership bestowed
  on teachers processes become accepted,
  institutionalized and routine
• MANAGED
• Measures established institutional memory
  created with ability to re-analyze and update
  quickly
• OPTIMIZED
• Self-improving processes with an exponential
  growth rate