Final Reflection on 531

There are three themes for my thoughts here at the end of the class:

--immediate changes in practice as a result of this course

--the promise for future application of lessons learned

--the disconnect between what this course promised and what it delivered.


First, as I have described on this blog and in our class discussions, I have been able to immediately implement some of the web 2.0 technologies we learned and used in this course. I started a regular Skype call with my undergraduate distance composition students. I also explored the virtual world for its applicability to my own organization's work in continuing medical education. And as a result of the exposure gained in this class, I began a collaboration with a company specializing in this kind of work, developed a program to apply virtual training to the oncology world, and responded to a request for proposals issued by one of my organization's funders.

This immediate application naturally leads to thoughts of future uses of some of the tech tools we used and learned about. In January I will start teaching my F2F university grant writing courses for the year (spring and summer semesters). I plan to integrate the Google Doc into my courses (and can't quite believe I haven't used it before!).

Despite the immediate and future applications of DE tech learned in this course, the great team of colleagues I worked with, and the attentive and enthusiastic guidance of PSU faculty, I have been extremely disappointed with what I call the disconnect between what the course title and even objectives promised and what it has turned out to be.

The course titles is "Course Design and Development in Distance Education."

The objective for the course was:

Participants should increase their knowledge regarding:
1. Organizing human and other resources needed for designing and delivering courses.
2. Issues arising from delivery in different learner contexts.
3. Principles and procedures for structuring and organizing content.
4. Issues in preparing for both package methods and interactive delivery methods.
5. Design and delivery of learner-instructor and learner-learner interaction.
6. Designing and implementing an evaluation and monitoring system.
7. Potential of Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning.


Frankly I expected a course in DE instructional design--that's what the title led me to believe and what the objectives (especially #3, 5 and 6) also led me to believe.

Unfortunately the course seemed to have spent so much time on objective #7 that it left out many of the other objectives. Did we discuss the issues mentioned in the other objectives? Yes. Did we have some course assignments and readings that addressed them? Yes.

But I do not feel that the course structure emphasized them enough nor required enough rigor and work and detail to truly allow for accomplishment of objectives 1-6.

So much of the information was vague, outdated, and "big picture" that I do not feel that I know any more about objectives 1-6 than when this course started. Did this course really teach me (or provide the opportunity for me to learn) how to design a DE course? NO.

I hope others' experiences were more positive and if anyone has time and is reading these last posts (!), I look forward to your comments.

Best wishes to all in the future and I hope to "see" you again.

Dierdre

More on Cost for DE (Unit 12)

I had actually read Chapter 4 of our text earlier in the semester, and found that it offered good information about cost issues for DE. I think getting a handle on fixed and variable costs is hugely important.


As I was finishing my paper for this course (since I have another I am working on too!), and writing the budget for my program, something else that became very clear to me was upfront costs versus ongoing costs. My program represents an expansion in an organization's (the Grant Professionals Association, a member organization for grant writer people like me) already existing DE, which would require significant development--up front costs. I was thinking about how I would justify this initial investment to my organization and so found myself budgeting out a couple years in the future. With the right tuition model, it seemed that the GPA could break even after 2 years and finally bring some real revenue in after 3 years. I wonder if many nonprofit organizations or even companies would be willing to get involved in that kind of investment. Of course I am advocating for it, but I just wonder what the real response would be.


This relates, it seems to me, to my post below about my grant submission for the Virtual Oncology Practice. As I said, the budget was about $675K and half was for the tech part. Funders are always looking at cost per learner. So if we have 2000 people complete the activity, then that amounts to $337.50 per person over the year--not too bad.

And while we are seeking grant support to get the project going, we are also seeing it as an investment. So if this request goes through and we get to do this project in 2011, then in 2012 we can get support to expand into more content areas. This would result in a lower budget, since the tech is built and would only need to be updated/expanded (but not started from scratch all over again). This might result in a budget of only $350K and with 2000 learners that's $175 per person. So over time the cost per person goes down, but that is only possible with the investment up front.

Organizations have to be willing to make the investment and take the time that goes into reducing costs and ultimately, eventually (hopefully!) result in cost savings. I think it's important, but hard.

Virtual Training Proposal - In!

Yesterday I submitted a grant request to support my organization's "Virtual Oncology Practice". This will be an animated, simulated oncology office where physicians and nurses interact with simulated patients with non-small cell lung cancer and must make treatment decisions that are appropriate for them based on the type, status and progression of their disease.

The project, if funded, would begin development in January and launch live on the web in May. Then it would be up and live for the oncology community for one year. The budget is about $675,000 (more than half that is the pass-through cost for our tech partner who will create and run the simulation for us).

Aside from the fact that this would be a wonderful, innovative new way for my organization to provide in-depth education on a serious, serious disease (number one cause of cancer deaths in the US), I am extremely happy about this submission because it grew directly out of this course. If I were not taking this course and had not had the Second Life experience (good, bad, etc.), I would not have been prepared for this RFP and probably would not have championed this project to my senior management.

So thanks to you all and this course for having an immediate impact on my adult ed practice and my organization. And of course, if the project gets funded, then the impact will ripple out to several thousand oncology clinicians and the many thousands of patients they serve. And those are the people I am in all this for! :)

Interesting article on SL

I have been working on the proposal I have to submit tomorrow (just finished--now accounting must review!) for what we're calling the "Virtual Oncology Practice". It's a simulation for physicians who treat patients with lung cancer. I have been researching the use of simulation in under and grad-medical education so I can talk about it in the proposal slightly knowledgeably. Anyway, in my travels I found this article on Second Life in education.

The authors state that "The purpose of this study was to assess the value of Second Life among post-secondary instructors with experience using Second Life as an educational tool."

Just thought I'd pass along:

http://tomhoodcpa.typepad.com/files/second-life-education-1.pdf

Learner Support in DE -- Not in Higher Ed (Unit 11)

Chapter 9 of the text focuses on real student support concerns in higher education--library, counseling, and help desk.

This made me wonder about learner support outside of the higher ed realm.

In my organization, we have many DE programs on clinical topics. Physicians and nurses get continuing education credit for these activities and must have appropriate paperwork to document their completion of the activity (and passing of the post-test). These folks must submit this documentation at regular intervals to maintain their practice licenses.

Right now the type of learner support my organization provides is fairly basic--we provide the documentation participants need for their licensure and answer any questions they have. So far we don't do enough to provide support outside of "regular business hours" but I can imagine for a provider of a great deal of DE, this would be necessary. Other than that, there are not a lot of support services that we provide now or may need to provide.

What about others who are working in DE outside of higher ed? What type of learner support does your organization provide?

"Clearly Stated Objectives"? (Unit 10)

This past week we compared two DE courses using the objectives criteria in our “Delivering Digitally” text.

As I did this, I compared our current course to one done by my organization—a “self-contained” archived internet CME program. One of the questions for the comparison was whether the objectives were stated clearly.

It appears that most of us (so far) have declared that the objectives for our course comparisons were stated clearly, though there are quite a few who (like me) feel that the objective of “gain knowledge in…..” for ADTED 531 is pretty vague and perhaps unmeasurable. But several people answered that the objectives were stated clearly by a stating that the objectives were clearly displayed—emphasizing that the objectives were on the syllabus or were visible to the learner before the course.

I wrote about this in the discussion board, but as the week has gone on, I am thinking about what the statement/criterion of "clearly stated objectives" means.

So while the statements of objectives may be visible and prominent, I don’t think that’s the same as actually being “clearly stated.” Maybe I am being very literal here, but to me, “clearly stated” means that they make sense, are understandable, are logical, and are in fact measurable.

Here are some objectives for an activity that I am developing right now for my organization—it’s focused on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC):

Following this program, participants should be able to:
 Use histology to select the best treatment regimen for patients with NSCLC.
 Use gene mutation analysis to select the best treatment regimen for patients with NSCLC.
 Determine whether stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), minimally invasive surgery, or conventional open surgery is appropriate for their patients with early stage NSCLC.

These strike me as pretty clear and absolutely measurable—we will use pre-posttests, performance in the activity case studies, and post-activity evaluations and interviews to assess the effectiveness of the activity.

What are others’ thoughts on this? And perhaps you have some other objectives from your own practice settings to share.

What at least one university is looking for with regard to DE

I was cruising the job listings in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and found an interesting ad. I thought I'd share it here to show what at least one university is doing to help move toward more DE.

And the position is available at the University of the Sciences (in Philadelphia), if anyone's interested!



------------------------------------------
Position Title: Instructional DesignerDepartment: Academic Technology

Reports to: Executive Director of Academic Technology

Position summary: The Instructional Designer will provide instructional as well as program design expertise for the development and support of hybrid courses, online courses, and specialized educational programs. This position is responsible for managing the instructional development process, setting standards for assisting faculty in the design of online curriculum and instruction, development of learning resources, and retooling of courses and course segments for online delivery methods.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
--Develop and institute instructional and pedagogical policies for the creation and delivery of online courses.
--Collaborate with faculty on instructional design issues and manage online course development. --Train and support faculty in the use of the learning management system (Blackboard/Angel) with special attention to building quality online learning programs, and online learning best practices via face-to-face workshops, webinars, and self-study screencast modules.
--Develop curriculum guides for courses and/or program components. Provide design and production assistance and supervise student workers to help faculty in the development of online content.

Education and Experience: Bachelor's degree required (Master's degree preferred) in Instructional Technology, Educational Technology, Technical Communication, or related field 3-5 years of experience in online course and curriculum design in higher education. Experience incorporating technology in a classroom setting and working with university faculty Experience with graphic and multimedia authoring software is a plus.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities Required: Advanced knowledge of principle and practices of instructional design and e-learning; familiarity with multimedia and web design technology Excellent written and verbal communication skills; interpersonal skills; customer service orientation and ability to work in a team environment.

This position requires a highly motivated, take charge individual with a proven track record as a self-starter with excellent organizational skills.

Virtual Reality Getting Closer

As I have shared, my organization is working toward developing a virtual reality type of simulation program/course for oncologists. It's getting closer and I am in the process of preliminary program development as part of the proposal development process.

The grant request is due December 1, so I have loads of time.

We are in the nitty gritty details of the simulation company tech guy talking to my organization's IT people, figuring out who will host and bandwidth concerns, working out a Non-Disclosure Agreement (confidentiality agreement), developing a Master Services Agreement for if/when the project starts, developing the budget, determining clinical focus and content, etc. I am also researching simulation as training method so as to incorporate theoretical/research content in the proposal.

Fun! :)

Typical DE Program at Community College

I found an interesting report published in March 2010 by the Instructional Technology Council on DE in the Community College setting (wish I'd had it a few units ago!).


Of note, the report synthesized six years of survey data to say that the typical online program at a Community College:

1. Is the primary source for enrollment growth for its institution.

2. Does not offer enough classes to meet student demand.

3. Increases access to higher education.

4. Is attracting an increasing number of nontraditional (for DE - younger) students.

5. Reports to the academic side of the institution (dean or above).

6. Is under-staffed, working in cramped conditions, and has an inadequate budget.

7. Offers approximately 160 online classes/class sections each semester.

8. Has become a significant change-agent, prompting increased faculty training and professional development, rethinking how we teach, and providing a catalyst for integrating technology into instruction.

9. Often leads the institution in dealing with issues of assessment, design, rigor, course quality and learning.

10. Struggles to obtain understanding, acceptance and support from campus leaders, who often lack direct experience with this method of teaching and learning (sometimes a generational disconnect).

See link here:

http://www.itcnetwork.org/file.php?file=%2F1%2FITCAnnualSurvey2009Results.pdf

I thought the items above were interesting and perhaps may apply to other institutions, not just community colleges. I especially loved #6. :)

Let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks!

Learning objectives (Unit 9)

Learning objectives are something I work with in my professional setting all the time. All of my organization's continuing medical education activities must have objectives in order for us to offer credits to physicians and nurses.

And it is a huge pain in the neck for us! Our clinical writers who give the background information on the topic for the activity we're planning usually provide draft objectives. But they are typically not behavioral at all. The almost always start with "Understand...". If we were just concerned about simple accreditation of activities, it would not be a problem. But since every activity we do is funded by outside grants that I am responsible for, and the general CME environment is trying to change performance, not knowledge, these knowledge-based objectives are not appropriate. We always have to rewrite them but of course since we're not clinicians ourselves, we naturally have to get them reviewed again.

This is just one example, but I'd be curious about how many people actually are in a position to write their own program's learning objectives.

Can you do this or is it up to the content experts? Or is it, as in my organization, a combination of the two?

My own story of development for DE (Unit 8)

The question of faculty development for DE is a vital one. As we are reading and reporting on the literature in this area this week, I can't help but remember back before I started teaching online and I could not even IMAGINE how it was done!

I was working at a university where I taught grant writing and a friend in the English department told me that they had an opening for an adjunct instructor for an online freshman comp class. This was 7 years ago and there were many fewer people around who had online experience and very few people who were willing to do it. I was at the time willing to take on any extra gig (single mom needed the money!). So I went to talk to one of the profs in the department. He told me some about the course but truly I could not even grasp how it would work. This was obvious to the prof so naturally I was not hired for that job!

Flash forward a couple years. Single mom still looking for extra gigs applies to a for-profit online university. I still could not imagine how it would all work, but then they put me through an excellent six week training program. It was extremely comprehensive and took me through it in (at times excruciating) detail.

Flash forward some more. I've been teaching online for 3.5 years and of course have been a purely online learner at PSU for two of those years. I have gained experience, perspective, and have received excellent feedback from the faculty development team at the university. As I posted in the discussion forum, my courses are monitored (without my knowledge) at least once a year, after which I receive a detailed report.

So for me, faculty development has been an ongoing experience--not just one workshop or even a 6 week course.

What about others and your experience? What has your development been like?

Great article on determining DE cost (Unit 6 and 7)

As I was reading for the Team B Google Doc/annotated bibliography we are building together, I found a great article about different cost models for distance education. The link is below--I highly recommend reading this since I think it addresses many of the questions people brought up related to the Unit 6 assignment.

As if there were any doubt, my enjoyment of this article confirms my budget/program geekhood. :)

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring131/crawford131.html

Feeling awesome about Transformation Theory

As I have mentioned before I believe, I am doing an independent study on Mezirow's transformational learning theory this semester. I know this blog is meant for our DE course but I am feeling so good I want to shout it from the rooftops (or blogspots--can you hear my barbaric yawp?!).

I am about done my annotated bibliography (paper is next) and I am feeling great! I have read so much and thought about this day in and day out for two months and I really feel like I KNOW this author and this theory--and this is the first time in this entire ADTED program that I have felt like I have truly mastered something.

It's been so interesting to see that the very same thoughts I had back in September when I first read Mezirow's core texts are the ones brought up again and again in the literature. And to see how M's own writing and concepts of his theory have changed is extremely interesting.

Anyway...it's not every day that our minds truly expand, so I am celebrating that tonight! :)

But it's my course! Or is it? (Unit 7)

Chapter 11 in our text "Delivering Digitally" gives what seems to me to be a fairly dispassionate description of the process of transitioning to distance/online education. And most of it seems pretty obvious--anyone who's gone through any organizational change could write the sentence that the process includes three phases: initial planning, startup, and changeover. Yes, of course.

More interesting to me was the question asked in our course information about what "teachers and administrators assume as part of their organizational culture", including who 'owns' the information that the teacher presents to learners.

This resonated with me because of an experience I've had with one of the universities where I teach as an adjunct asking me to develop my course into an online version. See, I think of it as "my" course. And in a way it is--it contains way more than simple content from a textbook or from other sources. It is based very much on my own experiences and the mini-internship component is built solely on my personal relationships with local non-profits who are willing to "host" grad students to write proposals for them.

But in a way it is not mine--yes, I developed the syllabus but it was approved by the faculty and is regulated by my department head every year. Yes, the course is based on my experience but is offered as an elective in a university degree program. And yes, I am paid to teach it every year.

If I, a yearly adjunct, feel the tug of "my" course, I can only imagine what others much more enmeshed in the academic life must feel when their institutions go in the direction of online DE. A major question is whether the development of a course means that the faculty will teach it, or whether a university might hire non-professors (like TAs or grad students etc.) to facilitate the course online.

From my position I can see a benefit to that, but I imagine that to a career-long resident of the academy, it might be tough to take.

What do you think?

Free Costing Worksheet (Unit 6)

As I was looking for an article for our Google Doc annotated bibliography, I found an article entitled "Using a Web-based System to Estimate the Cost of Online Course Production" in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration.

Here's the link: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall123/gordon123.html

Due to our discussions about how to appropriately plan for distance education course costs, I thought this might be of interest to people.

Most notably, the authors provide free access to an early version of their work, an Excel spreadsheet that can help determine effort and costs for developing an online course.

Here's the link for that: http://preweb.clt.odu.edu/cost

It is not for the Excel faint of heart, but it could be a great asset. Enjoy!

Moving Ahead with a Virtual Learning Project

We just had a meeting with/presentation from the company I have been in talks with on creating a "virtual oncology practice" for continuing medical education. After a couple preliminary discussions, this meeting had our COO, our IT people, and our Sr. VP for clinical content there. They were all excited and enthusiastic about working on a project like this!

So I got the go ahead from my boss (our COO) and we are going to start some next steps: a formal proposal with cost estimates from the company, a confidentiality agreement, and a master services agreement. These are administrative items that we must complete before we start even thinking about content or program planning.

This will all take some time and we won't get this going until mid-2011 I imagine--we have to get agreements done, plan the program and most importantly, raise the money to do it. But I am excited to be pursuing this and frankly think I wouldn't have been disposed to a positive response to this if it weren't for this course.

So thanks, ADTED 531! :)

Unit 6 Assignment (Unit 6)

Let's face it, the assignment for Unit 6 was tough!

I don't know about everyone else, but the main challenge for me was figuring out what our esteemed group of instructors actually wanted from us--a proposal? a list of bullet points? a set of references? what?

Another aspect of the challenge (for me anyway) was that frankly the class to this point has had a fairly light workload--my brain had been lulled into a state of ease! :)

After stumbling for several days and spending my energy in what I came to see was several wrong directions, and with input from faculty (thanks to everyone who asked questions that prompted the email!), it finally clicked that I was supposed to write a budget. D'oh!

I am OK with budgeting since I do it all the time for work. All the educational programs we do are funded by grants and of course every grant proposal must have a budget to let the funders know what we will do with the money they give.

How about you all? How was this assignment for you?

Why Make the Transition to DE? (Unit 5)

As I was reading chapter 11 in "Delivering Digitally", I was struck by the list on page 192 about what an institution wants to accomplish by moving to DE from F2F. The reasons listed were:

• reduce costs
• enhance reputation
• improve learning
• promote offerings
• generate income through selling software

(Inglis, Ling, and Joosten, 2002)

What seemed to be missing was related to the resource issues we're looking at Unit 6: an increase in market share. Perhaps the authors meant this when they said "promote offerings" but if so, it's not very clear. It seems to me that many institutions believe that DE will help them increase enrollment/revenue/market share.

Another way to look at this is to see that nowhere on the list from the text is the idea of increasing access (again, may have been implied in "promote offerings" but this is unclear).

I have shared with some folks who were in previous classes with me that one of the local universities where I teach as an adjunct had asked me before to adapt my course from a F2F class to an online course. One of the reasons (at least told to me) was that the university was opening a campus in a smaller city about 1.5 hours away and that having my course as a DE class would allow students at that campus to take it, without a long commute.

This makes sense but we can see that in this case even the issue of access relates to the idea of revenue generation. Opening another campus I am sure was seen as a way to tap into a market that the university must have deemed could support it--otherwise why spend all the money that goes into this?

So while we're thinking about all the resources that go into creating a DE course and program, I think it's important to realize that most organizations (whether for- or non-profit) need to see some sort of return in order to justify the resource investment.

Let's hope that improving learning and meeting students' needs are seen as valid returns. But underlying all of it is revenue (in most situations, any way). And I don't mean to demonize this--institutions must have revenue to operate, I understand.

I know in my other practice setting (of my day job managing CME), a huge reason we have done more and more DE programming is the availability of funding.

What about your organizations or companies? If you're doing DE, why?

More than just infrastructure (Unit 5)

Something that leaped out at me in Chapter 6 of "Delivering Digitally" was part of the ITAP case study. While the chapter is about infrastructure, I found it notable that the case study said, "The ITAP project leaders recognized that in order to achieve their aims they needed to address issues of cultural and structural change" (p.98).

This resonated with me because from what I have experienced, infrastructure change comes about and is successful only to the extent that "cultural and structural change" (of an institution, an organization, a company, a group, even a class) can happen.

The issues of infrastructure are ones that my own organization has been dealing with for about two years now (at least educational infrastructure, anyway). With funding getting tighter and tighter, it has been harder to raise money for some of the types of educational programs we have done for several years now and which have been very successful. Many of my colleagues and I had been urging (politely of course!) our CEO that we could do more of this type of work in house (that we had the expertise and just needed some of the hard tech that the chapter points outs as needs--servers, etc.). Although he never came out and said so, I don't think he believed us.

But here we are two years later, and after pushing for and achieving some cultural change (small-scale pilot projects demonstrating success which I believe increased confidence) and some structural change (a couple of my colleagues and I are in higher-level positions now), we are now working toward some infrastructure change!

Has anyone else seen this dynamic at work? Can you share any examples? Or are there other dynamics that could be at work in situations like this? What do you think?

Virtual World Learning Update

I met with the CEO of Tandem Learning yesterday and am exploring the possibility of creating a virtual learning world as a form of continuing medical education for my organization. The meeting was fascinating! I saw demos and examples--really great!

The next step is a bigger meeting/demo with all my organization's senior management and clinical experts, but I am confident they will like what they see.

I wanted to share with you all one example that was shared with me: a "virtual territory" training for pharmaceutical sales reps which involves scenario-based decision making.

Check this out:
http://www.tandem-learning.com/Tandem%20Learning%20Demos/Virtual%20Territory%20Demo.wmv

Please share any thoughts or reactions you have! I may not respond immediately as I am traveling for work through Saturday, but I look forward to your comments.


Dierdre

Emotions in Distance Learning (Unit 4)

This week in class we've been discussing characteristics of adult distance learners. In our class discussion forum I shared thoughts on the notion that adults are more internally motivated than externally. I shared how I have seen internal and external motivations intertwined, sometimes almost symbiotically so, in the adults in my online undergraduate composition courses.

I don't meant to repeat this, but I am finding that some additional reading I am doing is resonating with this whole set of thoughts. In "Facilitating Transformative Learning: Engaging Emotions in an Online Context" (2009), authors Dirkx and Smith look at transformative learning in distance education and examine the role of emotions in the process.

When I read the Dirkx and Smith piece (a book chapter--see reference below), I saw that when I talked about the intertwining of motivations, I had not explicitly linked motivation to emotion. Now it's clear to me that this can be the case--external motivators can be linked to the internal motivation of emotional states that a person may want to achieve or avoid.

What's especially interesting here is that I don't know that we usually think of distance education as a setting for emotion or an emotional life. Or at least I don't think I have thought of it that way--what about you?

And yet when I take the time to actually think about the learner and what kind of emotional response a learner may have to distance education, and I think about my own experience, I realize that I am constantly navigating the emotional lives of (some of) my students. They often share amazing, emotional, quite personal things with me and with the class. So for at least my students, there is absolutely an emotional aspect of the distance education experience they are living (since they are often coming back to school as older adults or after negative academic experiences in the past).


What do you think about emotions and the emotional life in distance education?





Reference (again sorry--cannot keep the APA formatting here):

Dirkx, J. & Smith, R. (2009). Facilitating transformative learning: Engaging emotions in an online context. In J. Mezirow & E. Taylor, Eds., Transformative learning in practice (pp. 57-66). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Virtual World Learning--Progress! (Unit 3)

We've all been talking/blogging/posting/Skyping about second life and virtual worlds and their role/value/function in distance education. And I have shared (with a few people I think), how I have been thinking about this sort of format for continung medical education (my day job). I thought I was ahead of the curve on this one, but.....apparently not! :)

Today when I got into the office I had an email from a colleague at the medical education office of a pharma company that provides grants to my organization. The goal was to introduce me to a person and a company that---yes, you guessed it--does virtual world training! It was as if this person had my office bugged (or was recording my keystrokes) because I had not shared these thoughts with anyone except you, my classmates, and my staff.

The company is Tandem Learning. Here's a link to their site:

http://www.tandem-learning.com/

Now I just learned about them today, so I cannot say anything about what they do. But I can tell you that I am working to schedule a meeting with their CEO so she can present to my organization and we can figure out if we can work together.

It's so great when the streams of this course and my work life meld together! :)

Budgets, Costs and DE (Unit 3)

A colleague in the class asked about the cost associated with my computer mediated instruction program example from the main discussion board. The program cost $75,000 which in my world of CME and a national program to educate thousands of people over a one year time span is not very expensive at all (in fact it's positively cheap!). I responded with a few more details on what was included in the budget, and this made me think even more about this issue.

I deal with budgets all the time in my "day job" where I am responsible for creating and costing out new and recurring programs, then obtaining the grant funding to run the programs. This means that I take for granted many concepts that I realize not everyone may have experience with. The issue of budget is especially important in DE since there is the assumption that DE is automatically cheaper than F2F education. Chapter 4 in the text Delivering Digitally (not required reading but I read it anyway since I deal with these issues all the time) talked about how to identify whether a DE course will provide savings or not. One of the main issues is fixed costs versus variable costs. If the fixed costs are high and the variable costs are low, then there is likely to be savings from DE (scalability). If the variable costs are high, then savings from DE are less likely.

This makes sense to me and illustrates my own organization's DE example I used in the class discussion board. Yes, the fixed costs are fairly high (highly educated staff and expert faculty equal high content development costs), but the variable costs are extremely low. It costs no more to have 1,000 people complete this activity than it does to have 100 people complete it (there's the scalability). So this DE actually gets cheaper the more people participate in it. And this is the point I made about the funders of this activity. They are looking at the high initial cost of $75K across the 1,000 and likely many more participants (likely more since we reached 560 completers in one month).

My colleague pointed out that $75K is a lot of money say for a program to train K-12 educators. So the challenge here is to think of fixed and variable costs again. How do they compare? Once we know that, THEN we will know if $75K is "a lot of money" or not. Of course for regular people, yes $75K is a lot of money--no argument from me on that! But we're talking about organizations and institutions and far-ranging DE programs. And in that context, we cannot automatically assume that $75K is a lot.

This issue of cost is the "hidden world" of DE (or any E!)--and an important issue in course design too. For institutions to invest in DE, then they surely want to design courses/programs that minimize the variable costs in order to recoup their investment and cover costs, and if a for-profit institution, then bring in some margin too.

Please share your thoughts and experience on these costs and budget issues.

Week 3: Theoretical and Tacit Knowledge (Unit 2)

I’ve been thinking a lot about Inglis, Ling, and Joosten’s differentiation between theoretical knowledge and tacit knowledge. The authors also describe “action-oriented learning” as a way to gain tacit knowledge. This is not any sort of earth shattering revelation, but it’s making me think hard about how the difference gets woven into the tapestry of adult education practice.


I see it every day in my “day job” of managing and overseeing the development, fundraising and compliance for my employer’s continuing medical education (CME) programs and activities. Physicians need to have a lot of theoretical knowledge as background, but of course they must then use it as experts. The authors describe experts as those who “act appropriately in all situations they encounter in working in the field, including novel situations”. So they must have both theoretical and tacit knowledge.

Some questions this raises then are:

• how do we teach both types of knowledge?
• how do we do this in a distance setting?

These are not rhetorical questions—my own organization is trying to figure this out right now. I am responsible for working the clinical experts to figure out how we can do this. Lots of ideas come up but we have rejected many!

Aside from my main employer, I have had experience teaching both theoretical and tacit knowledge through action learning in my grant writing course which involves an internship in which students partner with a nonprofit to write a real grant proposal. In class and the readings from the text, students are getting the theoretical knowledge. In the internship experience, students get practice acting as experts working with the nonprofit.

My specific class could be easily adapted to a distance setting. The nonprofits where students intern do not have to be in any one place—the same issues and concerns will arise no matter where they are. Students could develop theoretical knowledge also through reading and class discussion on discussion boards.

But what about other content areas? How are both theoretical and tacit knowledge developed? And how would this work in distance settings?

I would love to hear from others your thoughts on this.

Links to Mezirow Reading (Unit 1)

This fall, while I am taking ADTED 531, I am also working on an independent study on Mezirow and transformation theory in adult education. I have been fascinated by this theory since I first read about it.

Last week I was reading A Critical Theory of Adult Learning and Education (Mezirow, 1981) and was struck by part of this article, Mezirow's "charter for andragogy", and how many of its concepts were similar to points Dr. Moore made in his two audio podcasts on the characteristics of DE. I don't think it matters whether one accepts the term 'andragogy' and how it might have been meant at the time.

Mezirow says that adult education "must be defined as an organized and sustained effort to assist adults to learn in a way that enhances their capability to function as self-directed learners" (sic, italics his).

Mezirow then lists some things that adult education must do. Here are some of the things adult ed. must do (according to Mezirow) that resonated with Dr. Moore's points:

• progressively decrease the learner's dependency on the educator
• help the learner understand how to use learning resources--especially the experience of others, including the educator, and how to engage others in reciprocal learning relationships
• assist the learner to define his/her learning needs
• assist learners to assume responsibility for defining their learning objectives, planning their own learning program and evaluating their progress
• foster learner decision making

There are additional points that relate to adult education in general and that Mezirow puts forth in relation to transformation theory.

But the five items above clearly relate to Dr. Moore's points about learners being a "manager" of their own learning, a characteristic of distance education as he describes it.

I previously read Tait's chapter in the 1999 book "The Convergence of Distance and Conventional Education: Patterns of Flexibility for the Individual Learner". While Tait was sounding a warning about this convergence and its consequences for the DE learners, I think the larger point made right there in the title--that traditional and distance education are merging--was prescient and is coming true.

This I think is one of the lessons of the link between Dr. Moore's comments on DE and Mezirow's discussion of adult education in general.

What do you think?


If you want to check these texts out, here are the citations (sorry I cannot get them to format correctly per APA guidelines):


Mezirow, J. (1981). A critical theory of adult learning and education. Adult Education Quarterly, 32, 3-24.


Tait, A. (1999). The convergence of distance and conventional education. In Tait, Alan and Roger Mills (Eds.), The convergence of distance and conventional education: patterns of flexibility
for the individual learner (pp. 17-38). New York: Routledge.

End of Week 1

I am here at the computer exhausted from attending a midnight release event for Halo Reach, a video game my teenage son is extremely excited about!

We made it through our first week of ADTED 531--lots of setting things up. I appreciated what Will posted on the course web site:

The course is not primarily about technology, but about the ways in which educational and training systems can apply technology to offer better quality programs, to a wider constituency at lower costs.

In a course about distance education delivered at a distance, the teaching and learning processes employed are themselves valuable resources for understanding the teaching-learning and administrative issues.

This emphasis on applying technology to adult education is what I am looking forward to. I have a good amount of experience teaching adults through DE. Most of my past experience has involved a course web site (through systems like Angel and Blackboard) where I post materials, student submit assignments, and where my students participate in class discussion just as we do.

Despite this experience, I have never used any of the technologies we have started setting up this week. Even at this early juncture I can see how some of these could be useful. I could see adding a blog or having students use them. I absolutely love the Google docs function (I have used it for work but never a course) and of course can understand the value of adding video and audio through podcasts to a course package (wherever it is housed). And since sometimes I have groups working on projects together, I can see the value of Skype for group interaction at a distance. The one thing so far that I am really not sure about is the use of Second Life. I am reserving judgement on that one!

Overall, the first week was a good introduction, and now I am looking forward to delving more into the substance.

How about you?

Hello Everyone!

This is the first week of ADTED 531 and I am very excited to learn about the "web 2.0" technologies we will use in this course. But I must confess that when I mentioned this to my 16 year old son, he laughed at my use of the term 'web 2.0'. Apparently that struck him as old-fashioned. I gather that acknowledging a web 1.0 is what made me sound old (Oh Mom, that is so 2002).

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well with this first week. I have uploaded some material from a class I had this past summer, EDTEC 449, which taught me a lot about using video and other media for instruction.

Take care,
Dierdre