Blogs as an e-learning resource: some reflections

As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader of The E-learning Curve Blog, I haven’t been corresponding with my usual regularity; this isn’t a case of blog fade, but rather is because of unusually heavy work commitments.

It’s uncomfortable for me not to be able to correspond, as I’m serious about my commitment to the activity, and in my view it’s a great discipline to set yourself a target of writing 500-1000 words a day of publishable material. Much as in my daily attempts to run or go to the gym, I believe that if you can find a good reason not to undertake this task, sooner or later you’ll find a bad excuse, and then the whole thing falls apart.

Even though I have not had the time to blog, I have been keeping an eye on my blog stats, and I’m pleased (even gratified) to find that the number of hits on my blog has not reduced by any significant margin.

Interesting.

What can this suggest? Intuitively, I would consider that if a blog isn’t updated frequently, then access and usage would drop off over time, but this doesn’t seem to have been the case.

Based on my blogs metrics, the number of hits via RSS – the daily feed – have gone down: obviously if I’m not posting regularly, the RSS doesn’t update, and subscribers have no new content to access. The other useful metric – number of hits through searches – has increased to the degree that it’s actually compensating for the fall-off in RSS-based or return viewers.

This suggests to me that an appreciable number of people are using my blog as an information-, knowledge- and learning resource, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the core value of my blog, and it’s certainly the reason that I subscribe to the blogs I read on a regular basis. I tend to write in what I call part-works and occasional series. For example, I will take a topic, such as open-source software for learning, and undertake a multi-part exploration of the topic over a period of time (usually about two weeks or so). This, I feel, enables me to cover a subject in some depth, but without overloading the reader with too much information in any given blog post.

In my occasional series posts, I will return to a particular theme over time. I find that this approach is especially useful when discussing new or fast-changing stories like elearning and the current recession.

It seems that what has emerged over the last year or so is that I have created an archive of material that addresses the needs and concerns of a significant number of other learning and development professionals. Hopefully I have also managed to challenge some preconceptions about the e-learning industry, and inspire others to enter into a dialogue with me about the nature of our profession, with the ultimate aim of enhancing the role of elearning as an means to educate.

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Blogs and Podcasts, the Viking way

Not so much a post about e-learning today, but more about how Web 2.0 technology is being used to share information in the most extreme environments and circumstances.

If you're a regular reader of the E-Learning Curve Blog, you'll know that I include archaeology and the study of ancient cultures among my personal interests. Recently I posted on the 2008 Stonehenge dig, and today I'd like to talk about the return voyage of the Viking longship Havhingsten fra Glendalough (Sea Stallion from Glendalough) from Dublin, Ireland to Roskilde, Denmark.

The Sea Stallion is a Danish reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, one of the Skuldelev ships. According to tree ring dating, the original ship was built near Dublin circa 1042.

The original ship was built with oak from Glendalough, Wicklow, Ireland, hence the ship's name. The reconstruction was built at the shipyard of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde from 2000 to 2004.

In the Summer of 2007, the longship made the voyage from Denmark to Dublin - a journey of exceptional endurance on the part of the boat and the crew, and fraught with a certain amount of danger, given the lousy weather we had in Northern Europe last year.

If you saw these lads coming 1,000 years ago, it was time to pack up and leave... quick!

After wintering in the Collins' Barracks site of the National Museum of Ireland, the Sea Stallion is due to set sail for for her home port today.

Thanks to Web 2.0 information sharing tools and technology, you (and I) can share the journey with the crew via their daily blog and video podcasts, play a Viking Attack game, as well as follow the voyage via Google Maps live GPS tracking as the boat and her crew as they make their journey back across the North Sea to Denmark.

Bon voyage...

Towards a Definition of E-learning

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been building a theoretical and conceptual framework for how I approach e-learning, beginning with an interpretation of a general theoretical view about how learners learn, through the multifaceted approaches of constructivism and begun to place this in the context of learning in organisations and even touched on how organisational entities corporately enhance their business intelligence. In this next section, I will define some of the key terms relevant to the development of an effective approach to non-formal learning.

“E-learning” means different things to different people. When you consider that you can call the discipline “e-learning”, “elearning” or even “eLearning”, it’s no surprise that there is a range of definitions of the subject, as “we prefer to define things according to how we use them” (Morrison, 2004, p.4). Clark and Mayer (2003) consider the “how, why and what” of e-learning: that the “e” in e-learning refers to the “how” - the course is digitised so that it can be stored. The “learning” refers to the “what” - the course includes content and ways to help people learn it, and the “why” - that the purpose is to help learners achieve educational goals or to help organisations build skills related to improve job performance (pp.13-14). The assumptions in their definition are telling: note the use of the term “course” and references to organisational skill-building – there is an inherent, unspoken claim on e-learning (what ever that is!) to be part of the corporate, human resources development arena. Now consider Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, published only three years later. In the e-learning context, a quick scan through a text’s table of contents, introduction, or index will usually orient the reader to the author’s perspective on what they think e-learning is: not in this text. The very first point Richardson makes is that “this may look like a book about technology, but it’s really a book about …connections” (p.vii). With a nod to Jonassen, the author discusses “cool tools”, “collaborations and conversations” and “creatively motivating students to learn more deeply” using a teaching and learning “toolbox” (p.9). He’s obviously talking about e-learning, but does not see the need to define what it is. So, e-learning has become a common if imprecise term used to refer to technology-enhanced learning. The two views described above signify the breadth and the richness of the terrain that e-learning encompasses, and I contend highlight its importance of the context of learning.

References:

Clark, R. C. & Mayer R. (2003) e-learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer

Morrison, D. (2004) E-Learning Strategies: how to get implementation and delivery right first time, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press