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Course Management Systems and Learning Tools - Where Are We at the End of 2002?

with guest expert Charles Kerns of Stanford University

November 7, 2002

Audio
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Transcript

A couple of years ago, you might have heard someone say, "Let's wait a couple of years and see who's left." Well, it's been a couple of years. What now? Where are we? Who's left? Where are they going? What are institutions doing? What still doesn't work well? How can you fix it? Are there good open source alternatives? Do they fit with commercial packages?

Howard Strauss and Judith Boettcher interviewed our distinguished guest expert - and asked your questions, emailed in ahead of time and during the Tech Talk, to expert@cren.net.

Guest Expert

kernsCharles Kerns is the Education Technology Manager for the CourseWork Project at Stanford University. For the past two years he has been working to develop an open source course management system in conjunction with the Open Knowledge Initiative. He is an educational interaction designer who was Assistant Director at the Stanford Learning Lab and Senior Research Scientist at Apple's Multimedia Lab. He has spent the past twenty years designing, developing, and evaluating different types of technology-supported learning activities.

Co-Hosts

cohosts Howard Strauss (above, left), Manager of Technology, Strategy, and Outreach at Princeton University, is Tech Talk's Technology Anchor.
Judith Boettcher is CREN's Executive Director.

Together, Judith and Howard will ask the really tough questions—and relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.

Background & Resources

Archived CREN Tech Talks provide great background and are useful as reference resources. They include archived streaming audio, a transcript of each event, and the event Web document with links to related items. Especially pertinent to this Tech Talk are:

Laura Sederberg of the California State University-Chico sent in this resource during the live event: a Rubric for Online Instruction from Chico's Committee for the Evaluation of Exemplary Online Courses./ Our guest expert, Charles Kerns, has graciously provided the following lists of related resources:�

OKI and CMS's Related to the OKI Project Open Knowledge Initiative. "The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) is defining an open and extensible architecture for learning technology specifically targeted to the needs of the higher education community."

CourseWork "is Stanford University's course Web site development and distribution system."

University of Michigan's CompreHensive collaborativE Framework (CHEF) initiative has as its goal, the development of a flexible environment for supporting distance learning and collaborative work, and doing research on distance learning and collaborative work."

Learning Management System from MIT"

Listings of CMS's

This site was built to assist higher education in using a more rational decision making process to review the many options for a course management system, originally developed by British Columbia's Centre for Curriculum, Transfer & Technology and Bruce Landon.

Survey of Course and Test Delivery / Management Systems for Distance Learning compiled by Thelma Looms. Sites found: 160.

223 plates-formes e-formation, plates-formes eLearning: M�me que dix-huit d'entre elles, et non des moindres, sont en code ouvert (Open Source) et souvent gratuites

Learning Tools not in CMS's (Research and Commercial)

Knowledge Forum is based on over 15 years of research at the University of Toronto Cognitive Science Department. Early research focused on K-12 classrooms, but has expanded to include business, healthcare, and university settings � wherever knowledge-building communities reside.

A Swiki is a collaborative website (or CoWeb, which is easier to say :-). Any page can be edited by anyone. A Collaborative and Multimedia Interactive Learning Environment (CaMILE) is a Web-based collaboration tool for use by students to encourage learning: It prompts students to identify the kind of notes they are contributing to the collaboration and suggests things to say in notes of those kinds. The goal is to encourage metacognition in students.

WebGuide is a web-based application to support collaborative knowledge building. It explores the use of perspectives and negotiation.

Belvedere is designed to help support problem-based collaborative learning scenarios with evidence and concept maps. Software for constructing and reflecting on diagrams of one's ideas. more

The ChemSense Knowledge Building Environment (KBE) supports the sharing, viewing, and editing of a variety of chemistry representations./ Manila turns the Web into an easy and powerful multi-user writing environment that's accessible to anyone who knows how to use a browser. Think of Manila as Content Management for the Rest of Us.

Anyone who wants to set up a group activity simply: Adds a folder for the activity; Drags and drops people into it from the People folder; Drags and drops resources into it from their Resource folder (web pages, documents etc.); Defines a group task if required; Adds subactivities.

Talk in your own voice to other people represented as fantastic lip-synching avatars. Travel through breathtaking 3D worlds and experience life as an avatar.

Create interactive virtual worlds, modifiable simulations, training demos.

Epsilen Portfolios (http://epsilen.com) is a new software environment developed at the CyberLab. The software is intended for extensive beta testing with the ePortConsortium.

The Portfolio Tool will allow students to collect and display a variety of objects (papers, videos, computer programs, etc.) that illustrate their accomplishments throughout their university careers. (Tied in to the UW Catalyst Project which provides CMS functionality.)

Is your campus doing special things with Course Management Systems?