Digital Learning Content Where Do We Go From Here?
Discussion Session Held at EDUCAUSE 2008 Orlando
Held on 29 October, 2008
Facilitated by Rob Abel, IMS Global Learning Consortium
Meeting Notes:
The attendees numbered approximately 50 persons.
The IMS Global Learning Consortium provided a summary of interviews conducted over the last 90 days with industry leaders regarding their thoughts on the future of digital learning. This summary is available online here:
http://www.imsglobal.org/articles/7trendsindigitallearning.html
The facilitator asked the attendees to volunteer discussion points for the group to consider regarding major trends, challenges, and opportunities in the use of digital learning content. There was no attempt to achieve consensus, as the meeting was only 50 minutes in duration. What are captured here is the major points raised during the session, organized under the several theme areas that emerged.
Theme #1: The arrival and importance of online learning and online students
For community colleges and some other types of colleges, online learning is important and growing in importance.
Physical campus accommodations are limited. Online learning addresses the challenge of serving more students with the same physical space.
Students are requiring greater time shifting and convenience. Online options and online supplements to the classroom experience are popular with students.
There is also growth in use of online for dual credit courses – obtaining high school and college credit by taking college courses.
Theme #2: There are some early developments, not yet widely in use, in digital alternatives to printed textbooks to support online students
A representative from University of Phoenix (UoP) indicated that they have been using digital textbooks since 2002 and have some 1300 digital books.
UoP moved to all digital textbooks over a 3-year period. They have developed their own XML digital format that they have worked with publishers on.
This form of digital delivery does not address learning. It is simply a way to improve convenience and cost for students.
Pricing models are per student per course for the eBook. The costs to students are significantly less than a physical book and are in the range of $5-$40. Statistics show that approximately 15% will pay extra to print the book and approximately 1% will pay extra to buy the original book.
Other digital book programs mentioned by discussion group participants were:
- Wiley – digital book program at University of Texas – recent press release
- Flat World Knowledge – online books with print on demand - $30-60
Several attendees commented on how the emphasis should be more on development of skills for information literacy – cognitive and evaluation skills – rather than new digital forms of the same content.
One participant commented that the IMS Common Cartridge activity addresses the need for open standards for digital alternatives to printed books. Additional information is available at http://www.imsglobal.org/
Theme #3: Podcasting and other forms of multimedia capture, especially for recording what happens in the classroom, and later used by students to aid with their studying, are becoming used more widely
The use of audio podcasting, primarily recordings of class sessions, and iTunes U, is popular with students. It gives students a way to review what happened in class. More faculty are doing this because students are requesting it.
Video recording is also becoming more popular, and according to one participant is favored by 60-65% of students who are participating in using podcasts at their institution.
It was pointed out that the effectiveness of streaming media is limited by the lack of ability to search for the point of interest in the recording. Several participants pointed out that there are several providers of commercial products that record and synchronize with other activity, such as PowerPoint presentations, allowing users to search for the appropriate point in the recording. Use of a combination of media – audio, video, PowerPoint – also benefits various accessibility scenarios.
Several participants had concerns about the content management issues associated with multimedia. For instance, how are prior term recordings handled? It was clear that many institutions using the iTunes U platform have relied on self-management by individual faculty. It appears that adopters of some of the enterprise platforms for handling recording and study access to multimedia (such as Articulate, Tegrity, and Sonic Foundry) have a better opportunity to establish and enforce institutional policy and support processes on such content management issues.
Comments were made regarding how multimedia and text-based content are complimentary. There are different strengths of each approach and used together they provide a full set of materials for teaching and learning.
Theme #4: While repositories of digital content (so-called “learning objects”) are available from many sources (such as Merlot, MIT OpenCourseware, OER Commons), it is very unclear how useful these are.
MIT OpenCourseware was criticized as having limited use for remixing because of the size (lack of granularity) and format. The opinion was expressed that educators are more interested in limited size learning activities and interactions. As the materials exist today, it would seem that perhaps students or informal learners find more use for online course materials, such as OCW.
One participant commented that in their field, history, there is already a great breadth and depth of content available on the web in general. These resources are not found within educational repositories. They are distributed from among many sources on the web. There were comments that discipline-specific organizations of resources and content would be most useful for faculty.
Some participants indicated that after various projects over 5-6 years in developing digital repositories of micro-resources that still very little reuse has been achieved. The upshot seems to be that faculty/teachers do not have time to develop superior online, interactive resources. It was commented that this is an opportunity for publishers or other content providers.
One participant indicated that effective use and degree of use of online repositories has been directly related to faculty/teacher training. The opinion expressed was that if faculty/teachers are adequately supported through training or other support resources, 3rd party digital resources could be used effectively.
Some interest was expressed in using 2nd Life to create interactive learning experiences. This topic was covered in other EDUCAUSE 2008 sessions.
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