Goodbye *.swf hello student cheating

Adobe's business shift to focusing on producing development tools for HTML5 is fantastic. I believe there are a lot of champions and promoters of HTML5, but few realize for something like this to be fully applied and improved we need leaders like Adobe to provide us with the development environments where we can create our media without being concerned with something like writing Javascript Canvas Code.

There's just one small thing that's been on my mind however, something we've taken for granted. The SWF File format provided us with a 'reasonable' amount of security in terms of hiding answers to questions. It's far from secure, all you need is the ability to download the file, decompile it, and root through the source. However, this process for students is more cumbersome than actually just learning the material, not to mention technology that they're probably not familiar with.

As we move towards a Javascript, XML, HTML system for providing Assessments, we may find that increasingly web sophisticated students will find it easier to access answers to questions. You may not realize how quickly a determined student could root through your client side code, but any web familiar individual looking for a quick grade will find it quite easy to exploit your unsecured method of storing answers.

Tools like Quizmaker, or Captivate have provided us a fantastic way to create portable Learning Objects. Now, for reasons of security we may be forced into using our Learning Management System's proprietary Assessment Engine, limiting the shelf life and portability of our content.

Understanding a learners motivation and percieved importance of the content in designing course navigation.

A major discussion at the e-learning guild linkedin group has been around hiding a 'next' button with the intention of making the user complete some activity before being allowed to move on. The idea here is that users will be forced into focusing on the material rather than skipping through.

Lots of ideas for this have been brought up such as multiple choice questions, true / false, a timer, drag drop, and so on. Obviously whatever learning exercise that fits the content best will work in getting the user to stop for a second and take in the content. Do we need to do this? My opinion is that this technique should be used when we perceive our target learners motivation for the content to be low.

What situations fit this scenario:

• Internal Training for new company policies.
  
• Courses with no certification, or penalty for incompletion BUT the user is being forced to take.
  
• Online courses with multiple attempts at assessments where a user is more likely to attempt trial and error to get the completion. (I call this the 'Mastermind Learner')
  
• Courses with dry content that fail to engage the user
  

What situations do not fit:

• Courses that the user has willingly enrolled in
  
• Courses with a high cost/penalty to the user
  
• Courses that have been written and developed to engage the user through audio, video, animation, and well written content.
  

Not all courses have exciting topics, not all courses will have users that wanted to take them, and not all courses will be full of multimedia. It is the development teams responsibility understand a learner's motivation and more importantly their "Perceived Importance of the Content", and then implement a navigation strategy that fits the users willingness to absorb the material.

iPhone for education case study

Great Article discussing Abilene Christian University's implementation of the iPhone to enhance education.

In class the iPhone allows for anonymous student polling and quizzing. It also connects students with class notes or access to web resources so that students can look up anything they are not fulling understanding as they listen to the lecture.

Outside of class the iPhone has apps to "turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades".

It's ideas like this that really make me believe that the iPhone/iTouch is the next Personal Computer. What we have now is a smaller portable processor, with its own platform for application development, and constantly connected to the network. I would not be surprised that in five years, you'll walk into work or school, throw your iWhatever on your desk, turn on your wireless Monitors, start navigating using your wireless mouse and keyboard and when you're done pick up you iDevice and walk away.

Is your infrastructure planning for the future?

Staying Motivated

How do you stay motivated as someone involved with eLearning?

Educators in a traditional setting get to face their students every day. It may be difficult to be teacher of the year all the time, but it must help to be able to see the direct and immediate impact of your job on the faces of your learners.

So how do we in the eLearning field get that kind of reward?

How about using Course forums, allow your students to have conversations by posing an interesting question. Watching your students interact should provide you with a positive view into how your work is impacting these learners.

If and when able, communicate to your students, be proactive and don't always wait for an email. Remember students can be shy on the Internet as well, reach out and get feedback from them through direct communication.

Integrate excellent student work back into the course. If your course has assignments, and a student has provided a terrific submission, with their permission you could post this for future students to see. Soon your course might even have it's own 'hall of fame' that students should strive for!

What methods do you use to stay interested and engaged with your users?

Google announces OS

"[t]he operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be."

I doubt this is very surprising to people, but it is certainly noteworthy. In my previous post I talked about the movement of the users applications from their desktop to their browsers, which is essentially what the Google Chrome Operating System is designed to do.

"We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web."

What do I think the most important things learning professionals should be thinking about right now?

• With a new wave of cheap Netbooks, and a focus on the web as a platform, in class educators should be thinking about ways to blend their lessons with real time online activity. For example, real time surveys in class, or the movement to online textbooks - "Students, turn to Video 7"



• Along with being a backer of HTML 5, Google has been doing it's best to get the most out of our web browsers, check this video out if you haven't seen it yet:
  
  

Pretty nifty stuff!

What are you afraid of?

This is probably a good thing:

German teacher loses court battle against rate-your-teacher website

I can understand both sides here, but I believe that a low ranking from a biased student who failed the course would be offset from a biased student who aced the course. Eventually - given a large enough number of reviewers - a true evaluation of that teacher will come out.

I can remember even as early as grade 6 having a teacher who loaded on the homework, was very strict, and even though all students despised him/her, most were quick to agree that he/she was a great teacher. Students recognize when a teacher is passionate about their job and when they care about pushing students to their potentials.

Anyways, I bring this case up as I feel that Online education (especially those attempting to market a product) should embrace rating systems as well, either through their own LMS or through third party sites. While most departments of eLearning products will create surveys for their own internal feedback, they should instead strive to create a recognized quality learning experience that is rated publicly by their users. The current and new generations expect to see user ratings, and when a learning product has a five star rating with "76 learners rated this product" it will have a stronger affect on their decision then having a stock photograph with a quote from 'Billy'...not that there's anything wrong with that.

Don't be afraid to show what users think of your products. Earn some gold stars. Plus user ranking is so web 2.0!

Thoughts on Digital Textbooks

Top ten reasons for Academic Publishers to move to Online Textbooks, from a student's point of view without any care for development costs:

1. Embedded audio and video.


2. Randomly generated practice quizzes/exams from a giant pool of questions that are constantly updated


3. Accessible from a Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, laptop, Japan, a toaster...


4. A lower cost that is Semester Subscription based


5. A dynamically created Study Calender, where the student enters what topics they need to read and by when, and the web textbook will create a schedule, track progress, and email alerts if the student falls behind


6. Games and Simulations!


7. Teachers can build their own learning path from the books content. This way students don't have to worry if they are studying the right material or not


8. Fixes and Updates to the content are made on the fly so students always have the most up to date version


9. Chat room for online Study Groups, or Event Posting for live study groups


10. No more sore backs from lousy heavy books

Stay Classy Webernet.