Selecting and organizing the material

If you're like most instructors, you love your subject and the idea of sharing information gives you great satisfaction. However, you have probably noticed that it's easy to overload your students, or to give them materials in a way that tends to confuse them. How can you avoid overloading and confusing your students?

One of the most effective ways to do so is to make sure that you base your selections of instructional materials on course outcomes and on the learning objectives for each unit. Keep in mind what you'd like your students to be able to do after they complete the course. What is the basic, enduring knowledge they will take with them after the course is over? What kind of fundamental change do you want to occur in terms of the student's abilities? What kind of new skills will they be able to perform?

Once you answer these questions, you will have a list of learning outcomes. Keep them in mind as you select the instructional material you wish to use in your course.

It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that connects your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments you will use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like them to perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll present the materials.

It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that connects your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments you will use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like them to perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll present the materials.

Using forums to present your material

We'll start with an approach that is very easy to implement, which is ideal if you're just getting started and need a solution that would be good for all kinds of e-learning, including mobile learning and guided independent study.

pTools today announced the completion of a significant deployment of pTools Content Management Software (CMS) for the new Pensions Board online learning service. 

Available to pension scheme trustees (of which there are more than 200,000) and anyone working in the pension’s industry, the service provides training free of charge in an easy to use, self-managed environment. The new initiative was designed to respond to new legislation which, from 1st February, requires all pension scheme trustees to undertake training at least once every two years.

The system includes extensive user management and learning content management features driven by the core pTools content management engine.  pTools worked with The Pensions Board and pensions industry partners to deliver the technology behind the online learning solution that is easy to use, intuitive and capable of being updated to reflect a continuously evolving regulatory environment.

Staffordshire University is taking part in a pilot study to explore the issues and benefits involved in making its ‘stock’ of learning content freely available.

The project, made possible by the use of Giunti Labs’ HarvestRoad Hive digital repository (DR) allied to the Blackboard virtual learning environment (VLE), is one of seven such projects being funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) – a Government-funded body which supports education and research by promoting innovation in new technologies and by the central support of information and communications technology (ICT) services.

The project involving Staffordshire University involves making some 700 ‘credits’ of learning materials  available in various forms, including video, ‘hardcopy’ notes and so on. These materials, originally kept within the Blackboard VLE, or learning management system, have been migrated to Giunti Labs’ DR; then federated to the JISC repository (known as JORAM Open) and made available to learners via RSS feed alerts.

Professor Mark Stiles, the University’s Head of Learning Development and Innovation, and a member of the board of directors of the IMS Global Learning Consortium, explained: “We bought Giunti Labs’ HarvestRoad Hive – in 2006 – because we wanted flexibility in how we used our learning content. We already had the Blackboard VLE but we wanted to use the content on this system in other ways.

Giunti Labs, a leading global vendor of learning content management solutions (learn eXact LCMS) and digital repository platforms (HarvestRoad Hive), has officially opened its newest office in Atlanta. The office houses part of the Giunti Labs’ growing number of staff, who are accommodating the increased demand for Giunti Labs’ eLearning products in North America.

The new office marks not only an important milestone in Giunti Labs’ North American presence, but also demonstrates its commitment to providing state-of-the-art educational technology products and services to a broad range of clients in the corporate, public and educational sectors.

“During the last year, Giunti Labs has experienced a strong growth in North America,” commented José Grade, president of Giunti Labs. “We have a growing number of large clients. To be able to fulfil the growing market needs, we have enlisted some important recruits and, consequently have opened this new office in Atlanta.”

Anthony Suess, Director of Solution Deployment, Giunti Labs North America, commented: “Organizations in North America are increasingly realizing the tremendous value of an investment in their employees and their continual professional development. During the past few years the market has reached a level of maturity that has sparked a strong demand for elearning solutions. 

Sakai represents a Collaboration and Learning environment that helps to manage users, courses, instructors, and facilities. Sakai comes loaded with a spectrum of tools such as assessment, grading, and messaging, which help readers to improve their coursework using features that support and enhance teaching and learning.

Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide is a new book from Packt and is the officially endorsed guide for Sakai. Written by members of the core Sakai team, this book teaches users how to use Sakai, and helps teachers and trainers to design online courses for teaching and collaboration between students.

The reader is introduced to a brief history and an overview of Sakai. As users progress through the book they will start working on a demonstration version of Sakai and create their first course or project site using the concepts in this book. The book also covers a section devoted to working on the Administration Workplace. With the help of ten real-world situations to strengthen the concepts, users will understand the difference between running a demonstration version of Sakai and what is needed to maintain production systems.

Through this book, teachers and developers will learn to design a great online learning experience by exploring the existing technologies and tools, and learning how to use them to their best effect. They will be able to visualize and understand Sakai’s potential to support hundreds of thousands of students by using web services to connect to other systems. They will also be taught the best practices to avoid common errors and pitfalls.

Giunti Labs will deliver a post-event workshop on new generation online, mobile and virtual learning content production and management at EdNET in Chicago, USA, on 16th September.

Giunti Labs, the leading learning and mobile content management solution provider, is running an invitational half-day seminar on innovative and creative solutions for new generation educational content production, sharing and management. The seminar – which takes place from 8.30am to 12.30pm on Wednesday 16th September at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - is part of the EdNET 2009 conference (13 – 16 September), being held in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Participation to the half day workshops is free for event attendees and external invited interested parties on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. To reserve a place at this workshop, contact Minna Leikas, Giunti Labs’ marketing manager at m.leikas@giuntilabs.com.

The workshop will introduce new generation, state-of-the-art learning content production and management standards, such as IMS Common Content Cartdrige and OKI OSIDs Open DR Access and Federation Services, as well as showcase Giunti Labs’ engagement into world-leading research & development initiatives and real cases of LCMS and DR deployments worldwide.

I opened my copy of Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development
by William Rice with a high expectation that it would be an informative
and practical reference text. Why? I was about to upgrade to Moodle
1.9. Did it meet my expectations? 

Now read on...

Using
open source software can be a daunting experience, regardless of your
technical or business experience, and this text's purpose is to shorten
users' path to competency in the application. Broadly speaking, the
text covers four Moodle-related activities:

• Installing and configuring Moodle 1.9
• E-Learning course development and delivery
• E-Learning course management
• Moodle administration and maintenance

The author assumes zero previous knowledge of the application, and begins by describing Moodle’s Social-Constructionist
approach to learning, before bringing the reader on a whistle-stop tour
of Moodle 1.9’s features and functionality– a very good idea indeed, as
this goes some way to providing an understanding of why Moodle 1.9
looks and works the way it does for newcomers, acts as a pertinent
reminder for experienced Moodlers, and sets the context for the course
creation sections later in the book.