Session Title: Breaking Out of the CMS: Civilizing the Open Internet Frontier for Learning
Resources: Download Slide Presentation
Time & Date: 11:00 A.M. – 11:45 A.M., Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Location: Rm. 182, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC)
Session Description: ETEC 522 is a course that focuses students on what it takes to launch a successful learning technology venture. The course provides an online immersion in the global learning technologies marketplace with particular emphasis on emerging markets for learning technologies in public and commercial domains. ETEC 522 is delivered in a case-study modality from a venture and market analysis perspective by exploring real-world learning enterprises spanning a range of application domains and market opportunities.
Our efforts as course designers and instructors have typically been in the service of finding ways to support student interaction within dynamic sites, and to attend to the developmental edge of the learning technology sector (which includes learning environments beyond vendor CMS platforms). Most recently, we used a WordPress multi-user environment weblog for course interactions (and previously, WebCT Vista, and CrowdTrust). Our session will also involve our students and will explore why we felt we needed to break out of the CMS. We will also focus on the dynamics of having student-generated content in the centre of the publication space of the course weblog. We’ll discuss some of the interesting tensions that arose between the rhetoric of personal learning spaces and the reality. And we will talk about the different types of student responses to the different spaces. Some students loved the challenge. Some hated it to the point of quitting the course. In between, there are a lot of interesting insights to draw out in our proposed panel session.
Conference Stream: Open, Connected, & Social
Session Format: Panel Discussion
Co-Presenter: Jeff Miller
Co-Presenter Bio: Jeff Miller is Senior Manager, Distance Learning for the Office of Learning Technology at UBC. He is an instructional designer with experience developing mixed-mode and distance education courses and programs. He also teaches in UBC’s Masters of Educational Technology.
Co-Presenter: David Porter
Co-Presenter Bio: David Porter is the Executive Director of BCcampus. As a long-time advocate for the benefits of adapting new technology to deliver educational opportunities, David is uniquely qualified to help BCcampus achieve its vision of connecting BC’s educators with students across the province. His extensive experience in the education and training fields has included working with both public and private sector organizations. He has also been a project manager for industry-based projects in Canada and the US, and has worked as a project leader and consultant for international projects. David arrived at BCcampus in 2003, with a mandate to create a web-based suite of services that BC’s 25 post-secondary institutions could use to enhance their online learning capabilities. The potential of online learning for the post-secondary world was something he recognized early in his career and championed through a series of projects with various groups, such as the NewMedia Innovation Centre, YouAchieve Inc., and the Open Learning Agency. David is also a sought-after speaker at national and international conferences exploring the challenges and opportunities of creating an online learning environment. After graduating from the University of Toronto, and time spent teaching at all levels, David earned a M.Ed., Curriculum and Instruction (Education and Technology) from Simon Fraser University. He is currently in an instructor and course author in the Masters of Education Technology (MET) program at the University of British
Columbia. He was a founding member of the Knowledge Management Community of Practice (Vancouver) and has authored numerous articles and papers on online learning development.
