Social Learning: Choose Your Own Adventure
A guest post by Douglas McConatha, Ph.D, one of the co-creators of the WebStudy LMS. I bn usin Twitter N my soc classes 4 a year & IMHO Twitter is Gr8 N th Classrm I’m sure some of you are … Read More »
A Holiday LMS Story
We’re getting in the spirit of the season at WebStudy. So, we took a holiday favorite and adapted it into an ed tech parable. Click the image below to read full-size. Enjoy, and share with your colleagues!
Social Learning — Cutting Edge Technology or Hype?
You would be hard-pressed to read anything on higher educational technology these days without seeing a mention of social media in learning. Social learning is the latest buzzword, and that was certainly evident at EduCause2011, which I attended two weeks … Read More »
Introducing “Focus on Learning”
You may remember a previous post in which I mentioned we were a proud sponsor of Focus on Learning: A Learning College Reader, from the League for Innovation in the Community College. Well, after a lot of careful development, the … Read More »
Nice to have? Or part of a strategic direction?
I allowed myself the weekend to ponder all that EduCause 2011 had to offer, whether it was the latest implementation of mobile apps, business intelligence, social media, or learner analytics. Every session on educational technology seem to start with polling … Read More »
Free and Easy? First impressions of OpenClass
In the last week since Pearson’s announcement of its new OpenClass LMS, I have been thinking about open source and proprietary LMS in terms of my first impressions of this new player. These impressions were confirmed yesterday as I walked … Read More »
Evolution of the LMS
According to a recent article in the New York Times, educational technology is big business. Sales of computer software to schools for classroom use were $1.89 billion in 2010. Spending on hardware is more difficult to measure, researchers say, but … Read More »
Achieving the Dream: Too Soon to Tell
In a recent article at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jennifer Gonzalez discusses a study that shows that “Achieving the Dream” is not producing the expected gains in student achievement. Though the results may seem disappointing, the lack of change is not surprising and certainly does not spell failure for community college students. Continue reading
Open Source is Old News
Having no license fees, institutions of higher learning are gravitating to “open source” as a potential way to gain more features and functions (IT departments) and offset the escalating license fees and costly LMS upgrades (administration). But wait just a minute, where’s the faculty in all this? Do they need all the “bells and whistles?” And, although open source LMS might claim to be “free,” because there are no licensing costs involved, clearly, there are costs associated with installing, maintaining and supporting it. And that never stops! Free is worth what you pay for it. After being a service provider to the higher education industry for 12+ years, I’ve seen many good intentions go sour. The open source concept is one. Continue reading
Make Your Job Easier with Intelligent Tutoring
Let’s face it: educators do a lot of exceptional work for a pretty average salary. Tools like intelligent tutoring help lighten the instructor’s load while enhancing student learning. Continue reading
