eLearning Futures/Learning Grid

• The Charge from John Cherniavsky
  - Action items
  - Standards activities
  - Areas of cooperation
  - Mechanisms of cooperation

Where we are

• Discussion of issues and ideas
• Grand Challenges
• Collaborative Research Ideas
• Demonstration Project Ideas
• Collect lessons learned

Discussion of issues and ideas

• Standards
• Industry is setting standards
• This is sub-optimal because business case is not clear – i.e., future is uncertain, roadmap?
• Based on current practices
• Standards process is slow (too slow)
• what standards are required for eLearning?
• Ubiquity and reliability more important
• Sharing Information
• Standards (in particular, metadata standards) are important to support knowledge sharing
• There are existing projects that have addressed this to some degree, e.g., UK metadata in education and MERLOT uses metadata to describe its ed objects
• Need to develop model first then address specific metadata standards, specs, schema
• End user perspective
• People want to solve problems not merely have access to information/resources
• More than just UG or K-12 – workforce, etc.
• What are the problem solving processes the eLearning system needs to support
• Need to look at assessment approaches, the resources needed, and their impact on end user outcomes
• The eLearning Model
• Collaborative framework
• Ubiquitous and easy access to resources
• Over broadband infrastructure (i.e., fast)
• With tools for resource discovery, analysis and use (including people as resources)
• To accomplish user-defined learning objectives
• Ubiquity and reliability
• Defining an eLearning approach
• Focus on high impact areas of science and engineering
• Evaluate/improve virtual laboratory research model
• Cost and reliability issues need to be addressed
• Assume students are not tolerant of technology
• Focus on reliability when activities move from "lab research" to "clinical trials."
• Issues/Ideas
• An experimental program needs to be built upon an experimental infrastructure supporting more than eL
• Experimental courses need to be designated as such, but should have a certain level of reliability required
• Many K-12 teachers are not technically competent to support use of elearning/dlearning – students are ahead
• Systems not supporting move to inquiry based learning models oriented toward student managed elearning
• Tools/systems need to support different learning models
• Issues/Ideas
• A lot of education is really training and needs to be considered as such.
• Business model (or impact, generally) needs to be an evaluation criterion for eLearning research outcomes
• Can use university primary and secondary schools as experimental sites?
• Need to ID exceptional teachers and practices that can be "codified" into elearning system objects
• Issues/Ideas
• Students are already developing elearning approaches using the reliable and ubiquitous internet
• We setting the problems out for them to solve, but are not leveraging their willingness to try new approaches and creatively meet their learning objectives
• Strong economic pressure for k-12 improvement
• Need school, home and work all part of eLearning infrastructure -- K-12 schools as a community resource
• Consider parents in k-12 system – need to be considered in information sharing models

Barriers

• Intellectual Property and privacy constraints
• Ownership and derivative works
• Institutional focus on all works generating $$$
• Resistance by professors and institutions

Grand Challenges in eLearning

• Grand Challenges
• Business model development for international/global eLearning environment
• Scalability
• Just-in-time ubiquitous learning environment which embeds learning processes in work processes
• Teachers and learners involved in design and development of the systems and services
• Redefine authoring as a mechanism for just-in-time communications
  • Open curriculum model -- content and learning needs are not necessarily specified apriori

Collaboration Ideas

• Research Gaps areas of cooperation
• KMS design and development
• Standards
• System Architecture – technical issues of learning grid
• Evaluation metrics
• Audio mining, voice detection
• Collaborative projects US-EU 2-3 years
• AG net to non-CS projects
• AG net of ourselves
• Wireless collaboration (IP phone)
• Collaborative projects US-EU 2-3 years
• Multiple venue project spaces using e.g., AG with multiple synchronous sites in a classroom
• Timezones! -- Asynchronous V-mail, data collection, metadata, threaded information spaces
• "Water cooler" model for persistent collaboration
• Powerpoint replacement – sketches, animations, video production, rule driven, rapid prototype environment
• Video FAQ capture stored (repetitive) video material into editing environment that a faculty member can use to develop content

Knowledge Management and e-Learning

• With 6th Framework – knowledge management can be considered in conjunction with e-Learning
• Past KM needs were corporate oriented – as we move to e-learning – broader context and relevant to e-Learning issues
• Perhaps we need a different reference name?

Actions for next couple years

• KMS for e-learning and KM content
• Create collective knowledge base of research, development and practice
• World-wide crawl underway
• Text mining and analysis
• Document and database searches
• Topic detection
• Need multi-lingual support

Capturing Lessons Learned

• Successful and unsuccessful projects
• Cultural issues – design, content, and usage
• Authoring for short-life of content
• Content indexing and searching
• Understand student practice
• Lack of longevity of web materials
• Campus design changes
• Scientific grid environments
• Alternative educational models – e.g, home schooling
• Diversity
• Economic models and return on investment
• Evaluation – methods and summaries

Need to capture lessons learned

• Need to collect information on projects that haven’t paid off or that are not yet concluded
• Address Cross-cultural Lessons
• Usage patterns have been largely observational
• Content needs for some populations is improving but much more is needed
• People will come if content exists
• Research on interface design issues underway
• Global corporations have great need to serve diverse cultures

Lessons learned

• How to author effective content
• We often have compelling content that is not practical
• Ephemeral change of content
• Need to generate content on fly
• Lacking tools for high quality short time use
• Need not be perfect – needs to be good enough
• Accelerated instructional design
• Capture segments of classroom – record for extraction
• Study Patterns of viewing of video material – selection process
• No support for the selection process
• Student indexed list of important material to share
• Multi-tasking is a natural process
• Instant messaging, chats, etc during meetings/classes
• Instructor mentions web site – people check it out
• Students are being overt – make it part of the program
• Sense making of sessions
• Speed up of replay
• Students need topic maps from instructors to make sense of material
• Share URLs of commission funded projects

URL life-time

• Project underway to roll up the web to address temporary life of sites
• Change in patterns - 20% in web pages, 80% in databases and growing
• Need to maintain reference materials – to maintain scholarship
• Much as scientists record their science
• 99% of silent films are gone
• Need to study preservation process

Changes in Campus Design?

• Brick and mortar versus virtual
• Political pressure for bricks and mortar
• Change in campus design?
• Physical co-location important
• Yet internal designs are destructive
• Semi-personal space versus factory mentality
• Is there a post-industry design?
• Wireless is supposed to allow flexibility
• Cost driver is physical plant more than personnel
• Correlation between education and health care

Impact on Two and four year colleges

• Widely divergent background and skills
• Research 1 universities – more homogeneous students
• Schools without research programs – need grid to engage faculty and students

Grid architecture

• Scientific grids already setup
• Study them to look for commonalities for learning
• Not quite there for remote instrument access
• Define more general requirements for design
• Start with study of existing grid environments
• Learners can be anywhere
• Learning – modest cost add-on to scientific grid
• Broader distribution (coverage) for learning
• Analyze who uses what - paths of discovery

Economics

• What do students require
• Economics of use - ROI
• Difficult to capture
• Portugal has done some good analysis for training
• Companies are seeing positive bottom line
• ROI for a PhD – does not pay off

Economics of college systems

• Dot.com impact on graduate programs
• Methodologies for costing
• Cost of ownership
• Quality assurance
• Unexpected benefits of using e-learning
• Rank institutions
• Student hours versus podium hours
• On-line hours?

Student campus systems

• Often restrictive to student interests
• Students use yahoo and other systems for communications
• Start using them prior to coming to campus
• Need solid base of costing
• Agree to differ on some things
• Softer measures – less agreement on how to measure

Home schooling

• Strong growth in US
• Stronger social ethic
• doing community service
• Students are more altruistic in general
• Students coming to colleges better prepared
• What does it say about traditional learning
• Home school – largely web based

Diversity – digital divide

• Involvement of women and minorities
• Fewer women in CS
• Disabled access
• Needs to be explicit
• Multi-modal capabilities R&D
• E.g. Sign language over grid
• Drop out rates

Evaluation

• NSF funds evaluation
• Every education project requires
• Look at student outcomes
• Number of teachers impacted
• Not as elaborate as EU evaluation
• EU collects more data
• Methodological comparisons?
• Longitudinal studies cost much more and more are needed

Current education system

• Seem to be teaching worthless materials
• Often using dated materials
• Grid can help set heights higher
• Offer access to resources
• Motivation
• Access to real data