HE Day continued

Rest of conference blogging will probably be in note form - unless I get much free time - doubtful as I'm in sessions from 9 till 6 everyday, and with some one-to-one sessions with analysts as well! At least the sun has come out today.

Future of eLearning

Lots of Gartner survey data - 50% of courses delivered by elearning in some form – no increase over last year although increases noted in all previous years - has plateau been reached? Top two reasons for using eLearning are meeting student demand and pedagogical advantage – has moved to top. Previously top two were cost savings and generating revenue.

Another trend is OSS – huge increase – up to 35% now – 10% increase from last year.
But commercial software still used to deliver most courses ie lot of institutions trying out open source software - influenced by Blackboard/WebCT merger. Moodle being considered by 53% of institutions in EMEA compared to 23% in North America.

Have to consider changing students – growth in consumer devices, social software, virtual worlds, gaming. In 2000 the producers were in charge – controlled distribution, production, marketing. Not today – consumer are in charge – cheap production tools, multiple channels, new methods of discovery, viral and social networks.

Social networks -Myspace has 65m users with 1% yearly growth. Facebook has 28m users but 77% yearly growth. Can't ignore the gaming experiecce – look at what’s happening in online games. There are 77m World of Warcraft players - more than golf players!

Changing teaching – Is there a place for social software and virtual worlds in teaching?
Should social software/elearing platforms be combined?

Look at Peace Innovation on Facebook, a Stanford University course. You can see documents, videos, share files, and discuss the material. None of it delivered by the central IT service - so how can we add value? University of Mitchigan provides ther library search through Facebook, because that’s where their students are.

Virtual worlds - a demo of teaching applications in Second Life - Chemistry simulations, Genome island, Anatomical models, Clinical simulations.

Changing technology – change in sourcing options. Application overlap – course management systems, student information systems, library systems, CMS and repositories, CRM all have functionality which overlaps.

Notes to self! Must look at Second Life, ( should we buy an Island?), iGoogle (are our students using it?), RSS feeds to get info to students via Facebook etc (eg info from plasma screens, especaily PC availability).