Thank you Ernie, yes of course. The e-learning committee at conel promotes e-learning across the college, addressing the problem of uptake. At conel e-learning is mostly courseware development, of two main types: diagnostics (authored in a variety of unpleasant tools, in a variety of unpleasant ways); and course-ware for the virtual learning environment web CT. I represent a group, of lectures across the college who made the following presentation to the e-learning committee:
There is little benefit in buying courseware: that can't be adapted; or turn-key resourcing that is obsolescent when curriculum are revised; or as a reaction to educational policy change.
Whatever the tools the core data remains the same, therefore a specification of that data should be the focus of investment.
Rather that corseware, conel needs meta-data embedded in resources: meta-data descriptive of our core activity (teaching) and that promotes good practice, allowing deployment of these resources in a variety of educational contexts; integrating resources into lessons without system redesign or changes to current operations procedures (like lesson planning).
This specification will lead to tools that make lighter work of the processes of:
1. - lesson and activity preparation;
2. - the distribution of lesson and activities;
3. - the processing of paperwork or assessment, perhaps, without computers in the teaching environment, but say during lesson evaluation;
tools:
4. - to suggest computer enhancement of traditionally prepared lessons;
5. - that sequence resources and activities during (lesson development) by the use of meta-data attached to those resources;
6. - to allow for runtime, dogme, style classes that have been highly praised and place the needs of the learners first;
and above all tools that intergrate differentiation, track learner progress, and ensure quality.
This resulted in a commission to either write a schema, or find a good fit and map this to operational documentation. We found IMS after weighing the relative merits of others, and a frankly hairy appreciation of the magnitude of the task of creating one for ourselves. Our group has a declared interest in opensource (for example and for reasons of GUI I am about to pilot Moodle for our ESOL learners in the computer aided learning program) for the advantages of shared development, adaptability, maintenance, cost, leverage of skills, and transparency, not to mention ethical reasons associated with the responsibility of a college whose student body is made up of many asylum seekers and refugees. LAMS is currently the most exciting of the tools compliant with our schema of choice, and my favourite. Yours, Ben Jones - bjones@staff.conel.ac.uk
Posted by Benjamin Jones
