One of the resources Kristin points out is Debatapedia, an  “encyclopedia of pro and con arguments and quotations in important public debates from around the world.” It’s an amazing collection, and one of the items I found in it was a “Daily Debate” on the $700 Billion U.S. Economic Bailout. I’ll be adding this to my list of learning resources for understanding the current financial crisis.

In general, this is an excellent learning site and a commendable example for any organization seeking to educate a broad constituency using a variety of learning tools. Many thanks to Kristin for pointing it out.

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

All of this got me thinking about a great online course series on endangered species that the National Wildlife Federation offers at Wildlife University.  The courses are free, and among them is one on the Gray Wolf. (Disclaimer: NWF was a client of the company I worked for at the time these courses were created.)

I highlight these because the topic is timely and they are a great learning resource, but also because I think they represent a great way for cause-based organizations to educate the public and help create positive change. Defenders of Wildlife - which is responsible for much of the heat Sarah Palin is taking on the wolf issue - also does a good job with this type of education using a variety of Web tools, including the YouTube video below.

In general, if there is an issue you care about, there are probably any number of learning resources out here on the Web to help you build your knowledge and share knowledge with others. And if you happen to work for a cause-oriented organization, teaching rather than preaching can be a great way to connect with your supporter and potential supporters to inspire real change.

If you have favorite resources for learning about endangered species or other issues, please share them in the comments.

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

There are two main areas I look to in arriving at a diagnosis: learning lab sessions and online learning vendor presence in the exhibit hall. These, I feel, are driven by member input and the market environment more than the general assemblies or Thought Leadership sessions are.

In the official program for the meeting there were 4 out of a total of 116 learning sessions that, in my opinion, suggested a connection to online learning (directly or indirectly). These were:

• The Steps for Creating an Online Community
• eLearning: Know What You Are Building Before You Buy a Hammer
• Open Access: Digital, Online, Free-of-charge Publication Models
• Strategies for Effective Online Events

Naturally, I am applying the somewhat broad definition of online learning we use at Mission to Learn to arrive at the list above. If I had to base my diagnosis on the number of sessions alone—particularly those that actually had “e-learning” or “online learning” in their titles—I might have sent the patient off to intensive care by this point. I was able to attend the “Know What You Are Building…” session, however, and the high attendance suggested a strong interest. I was also able to participate in the “A Dialogue on Professional Development” session where attendees narrowed down a long list of potential topics to a final four that included online learning and re-purposing of content—the later with a strong online focus.

I also had numerous conversations with meeting attendees that reflected a hunger for more concrete guidance regarding e-learning and, of course, am aware of the growing adoption rate of online learning in the association sector. I have heard rumblings (though still have received no concrete information) about an online e-learning event planned by ASAE for this fall, but even so, ASAE is simply not doing enough to provide substantive support around a strategic tool that can so clearly contribute to a fundamental element of nearly every association’s mission: education.

The number and variety of vendors who have recognized the opportunity that e-learning represents in the association market is somewhat more encouraging, though I think there is plenty of room for improvement in this area as well. Here are the companies that were grouped under the Distance Learning exhibitor category this year:

• Blue Sky Broadcast
• Boston Conferencing
• Business Training Library
• CommPartners
• Fusion Productions
• iCohere
• Isoph (LearnSomething)
• KRM Information Services
• Results Direct
• SeminarWeb
• Stony Hill Management
• University Alliance
• Vioworks

Many of these, it should be noted, are Webinar providers and/or companies that capture meeting content to make it available on an on-demand basis. While this is understandably a popular e-learning option in the association market, I do have my concerns—which I will address in a future posting—about whether the overall quality of education being delivered via this modality—particularly in its archived, on-demand version—is what most associations really want to achieve.

To wrap up, there were some good resources that were made available as part of the learning sessions. These included:

• Know What You’re Building Before You Buy a Hammer (addresses e-learning strategy development)
• Five Considerations for Successful Webinars
• Tactics for: Effective Online Events

Whether you were at the annual meeting or not, let me know your thoughts on how well you feel ASAE is supporting your needs with respect to online learning.

JTC

P.S.—By the way, if you would like to see other blog posts about ASAE, visit http://www.technorati.com/tag/asae2007, which was set up by Ben Martin, or subscribe to the RSS feed at http://feeds.technorati.com/search/asae2007.

asae2007

Also, see the following posts over on my Hedgehog & Fox blog:

• 4.5 Projections for Association E-learning
• 7 E-learning Resource Quick Hits for ASAE
• ASAE E-learning Conference
• The 7 Measures and Online Learning

LINGOs
LINGOs (Learning for International Non-Governmental Organizations) is a consortium of international humanitarian relief and development agencies - including well-known names like Habitat for Humanity, Care, the Nature Conservancy, and Save the Children - working in collaboration with companies and associations to provide technology-assisted learning support aimed at alleviating poverty around the world and effectively responding to emergencies. The group has assembled an impressive list of partners from the online learning industry and provides member organizations with free access to a learning management system featuring donated online learning content from Rosetta Stone, CertiLearn, Mind Leaders, Microsoft and other corporate sponsors. Just as importantly, LINGOs supports information exchange through a vibrant community of practice, provides opportunities for e-learning professionals to volunteer, and advocates the development of standards for online learning content and learning management tools.

ItrainOnline
Similar to, though less American-centric than LINGOs, ItrainOnline is a joint initiative of eight international organizations with expertise in computer and Internet training in developing countries. OneWorld.net, referenced elsewhere in this blog, is among the group of participating organizations, as are UNESCO and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). The stated aim of the initiative is “to assist civil society organizations (CSOs) and other development actors in developing countries to confront the challenges posed by new information and communications technologies (ICTs). In seeking to overcome skills gaps in development, it connects people and know-how with the needs of ICT learners and trainers.”

The ItrainOnline site provides well-cataloged access to a variety of resources available across the Web, some of which represent interactive online learning experiences, but many of which simply represent good knowledge, tips, or support tools for trainers or  individuals making use of  ICT in their homes and communities.

STEP
The Sustainable Technology Education Project, or STEP, is an initiative of Practical Action, formerly known as the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG). Rooted in the work of E.F. Schumacher, author of the alt-economics classic

Small Is Beautiful, STEP “aims to increase people’s awareness of sustainable technology, enabling them to recognise the economic, environmental and social impacts of their own technology choices.” Similar to the ItrainOnline site, the STEP site is focused not so much on delivering interactive online learning activities, but in using the Web to provide well-organized knowledge resources—most in the form of downloadable PDFs—that can be used in teaching situations. The case studies that the organization has collected and will presumably continue to add to over time are particularly effective and are easily reviewed online or printed for classroom or individual use. STEP’s audience is primarily design and technology teachers in the United Kingdom, but the intended impact is global. Like ItrainOnline and LINGOs, STEP and its parent organization, Practical Action, view technology as a tool to help fit poverty and mitigate the consequences of disasters in the developing world.

JTC

Books referenced in this posting:

The “map” is
basically a matrix that lays out sixteen trends along with various “hotspots”
and “dilemmas” the Foundation has identified across related “drivers” and “impact
areas.” Drivers include things like smart networking and grassroots economies
while impact areas encompass specific individuals, groups, tools, and
practices. Hotspots include:

• An Expanding Learning Economy
• Deep Personalization
• VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) Communities
• Media-Rich Pervasive Learning
• An Explosion of Learning Agents

Dilemmas, which are defined as” issues that can’t be solved
with either/or thinking but require new strategies that go beyond simple
problem solving” emerge from the relationships between trends, hotspots,
drivers, and impact areas. As the ultimate resolution of
these dilemmas arguably will have the most impact on the future of education, it is
worth noting each here with the accompanying detail text from the map.

Reconciling Extreme Diversity and Deep Localism
An emerging dilemma over the next decade will be reconciling
the demands of extreme diversity and the needs for building coherent,
integrated local communities.

Achieving Standards and Personalization
An emerging dilemma for education is how to achieve
personalization while maintaining standards.

Leveraging Institutional Predictability and Network
Adaptability
An expanding learning economy raises a dilemma between
leveraging the predictability of traditional institutions and the adaptability
of new network structures.

Supporting Teachers’ Rights & Changing Teachers’ Roles
A core dilemma will be to support teachers’ rights and their
changing roles and responsibilities.

Integrating Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants
An emerging dilemma related to media-rich pervasive learning
is integrating digital natives with immigrants—adults, teachers, and those youth
without access to digital media.

If you do not feel comfortable with all of the terminology
above, you may find the map to a bit tough to digest. One of the weaknesses of
the site is that it does not provide a centralized glossary of terms—at least
not that I have been able to find so far. The map itself is also a bit unwieldy
to navigate, but the Foundation has done an admirable job in confronting this
challenge, from providing a very useful “Compass View” under the Map Menu (note
if you expand the Resources tab as well you will see the resources list change
with each new map area that is selected), to making it possible to print a PDF
of the map, to requesting that a print version of the map be mailed to you
(which addresses at least some of the accessibility issues that the map
presents). For each map area it is possible to print a PDF that summarizes the
area and provides a variety of resources (see Create a PDF of the Topic under Next
Steps).

Finally, it is possible to participate in discussions around all of the
map areas, add resources, and easily share parts of the map with friends and
colleagues. In general, the map itself is a very interesting learning tool; one
that will no doubt be challenging for some learning styles but that
nonetheless, presents a wealth of information to explore and process.

JTC

P.S. For additional thoughts on the future of learning, I
encourage you to check out An
Interview with Futurist David Houle at Evolution Shift.

…. here to provide a space for people everywhere to communicate ideas and experiences about the issues that matter. It acts as a counterbalance to the narrow perspective presented by major broadcasting corporations, by offering an open forum for all voices to be heard.

As an open publishing platform anyone who becomes a member of the site can upload content and contribute to the debate. As a filmmaker or video activist you may have finished videos that have never seen the light of day – this is the place to get them seen. If you are attending a conference or workshop relevant to the issues being aired you could use the platform as a means to send your reports to interested parties.

Basically, OneWorldTV provides participants with guidance and an easy-to-use interface for loading video into its network. These can range from very practical pieces on topics like boat motor repair to more cerebral offerings like Video Reflections: Of Communities, Cameras and Change. It doesn’t take much of a leap of imagination to see how a model like this might work for any network that would benefit from the exchange of knowledge in a visual format.

With the rise of YouTube, it is clear that video has come into its own as a workable medium for the Web, and it is not surprising to see a small boom in the number of sites that are now doing essentially what OneWorldTV has been doing for years (before anyone thought there would actually be a Web 2.0!). Take a look, for instance, at the listing of “How-to” video sites at Mashable and consider where your organization might take this model as part of its learning technology initiatives. (And if you are already doing great things with Web-based video, let me know!)

Now, on the surface, a standards group may sound like one of the drier targets I could have picked, but then any organization that coins its name from the infrequently-used SAT vocabulary stumper “ubiquitous” and has even gone so far as to publish an eponymous song on its Website surely must have something of value to offer. As Medbiq itself puts it, the end goal of its standards work is to “make healthcare education more accessible, measurable, and effective, thereby improving patient care.” A laudable goal in this day and age to say the least.

The key to Medbiquitous’ eventual success—and I do, in fact, believe this is one set of standards that will not simply be put out to pasture after an initial mad dash get boatloads of documentation across the finish line—is the effort of seven distinct working groups. Full information can be found at http://www.medbiq.org/working_groups, but worth calling out is the fact that Medbiquitous has focused the majority of the early working group efforts towards nailing down a learning object model (drawing on the SCORM initiative of the ADLNet and a professional profile standard. Following closely behind is an activity report standard.

These three together address a core issue across the medical community, and for that matter, pretty much any community in which continuing education (CE, CME, CEU, etc.), credentialing and certification are important. They define how learning opportunities can be packaged and shared, how key learner information is to be maintained, and how the combination of the two can be shared with the relevant bodies for managing medical education data.

Some of the more cutting edge work being done by Medbiquitous members is aimed at point-of-care learning—actually providing physicians with critical knowledge while they are in the process of actively caring for patients—and virtual patient education based on interactive computer programs that simulate real life clinical scenarios. Progress in each of these areas can be tracked on their respective Working Group pages and also in MELD the E-learning Discourse community that Medbiquitous has deployed to support its broader
efforts. Visitors to the MELD site will find a range of great resources, many of which are applicable outside of healthcare e-learning scenarios. In general, both Medbiquitous and MELD provide a great example of a sector seizing the opportunity that Web-based learning presents and managing its own destiny.

JTC
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