Technology

information & communication technology

Beyond the LMS

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Continuing my theme of process before technology, here is a post from Godfrey Parkin on elearning and the ubiquitous LMS:

Our move from classroom learning to e-learning was less like a move from pony-express to e-mail, than it was from pony-express to bicycle courier.
 
Learning software vendors still doggedly pursue their vision of reusable learning objects that integrate via a central standards-conformant LMS. Meanwhile, trainers who really want to encourage experience-sharing and dynamic learner-created content are scrambling to understand blogging, RSS, and peer-to-peer networks.



Many LMS vendors don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t ?¢‚Ǩ?ìget?¢‚Ǩ¬ù learning. Can it really be that they don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t ?¢‚Ǩ?ìget?¢‚Ǩ¬ù the internet either? Are they so afraid of being non-intermediated that they will fight real progress every step of the way or are they about to help us evolve?

Terror in the Ad World

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The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) talks about the new marketplace of the Internet, where customers no longer want to be considered as markets but as individuals. Some people in business regard this kind of idea as much too radical, and stick to more traditional perspectives of markets – just read any business plan. From Laudably/Renewal, I came across this reference to a Wired magazine interview (reported by David Kirkpatrick of Fortune) with Jeff Bezos of Amazon, where he discusses the value of TV advertising:

Bezos explained why Amazon doesn’t advertise on TV. It tried television advertising in two markets as a test not long ago but that didn’t drive enough additional sales to justify the costs. He said the company concluded it was better to use that money to continue driving prices lower and increase free shipping.

He doesn’t worry people won’t find out when Amazon offers something desirable. "Word of mouth is becoming more powerful," he said. "If you offer a great service people find out about it. We’re getting information perfection on the Internet." He predicted that for all businesses, the amount of money spent on marketing and advertising will decline while the amount spent developing better products or services will increase as a result. "If the successful recipe is spending 70% of your money shouting about your service and 30% producing a better service, over the next 20 years that will reverse."



"Is that a bad thing for print magazines that depend on advertising?" Anderson asked nervously. Bezos did not console him. "Terror would be a helpful response," he said cheerfully. I shifted uncomfortably in my own seat.

Amazon is proving that marketing ain’t what it used to be, and the new Medium has obsolesced the darlings of the broadcast model – marketing & advertising. Not everyone gets it yet, but eBay, Amazon and Google do. The rest will eventually catch on or die. I think that the same goes for small business. Don’t spend your time with hit or miss marketing of your wares at trade shows. Focus on better products and services, and then let the ‘Net effect take over. It may take some time to reach the Connectors, but when you do, you will be ready with good products and services, not just marketing hype.

 

“The Bottleneck is at the Top of the Bottle”

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Jay Cross is at TechLearn 2004 and his observations are a real sign of the times. Two comments (as well as the title of this post) particularly resonated with me.

On Learning Management Systems:

Many LMS’s are used as CMS’s (compliance measurement systems). They are cover-your-ass systems to track your honest effort.

On eLearning:

“Your future is not in eLearning. eLearning is a delivery system. Your future is in making your organization strong, profitable, resilient, successful.”

Organisations that are singularly focused on purchasing the best LMS should give their heads a shake. The delivery system should be a no-brainer, once you have figured out all the important things. Start with the link between individual performance and organisational effectiveness, and then figure out what role learning has in improving performance for that particular work environment.

In 1998, few people were talking about performance. Times are changing.

 

Plus ça change …

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Rick Bruner, of Business Blog Consulting, notes that enterprise vendors, like Canada’s own OpenText are moving into the bloggging space to sell their products. I have the same question as Rick though; ” … but I don’t understand why any company would pay $50,000 and $150,000, according to the article, for blog software ...” It seems to be that the hype cycle around blogging is growing, and companies will spend a lot of money on “blog” software without first doing their homework. Like learning management systems (LMS) and later learning content management systems (LCMS), some organisations will spend a significant amount on “enterprise blog applications” only to find out that it’s not so much the technology as the processes and implementation that are really important.

My advice is stick to the open source (e.g. Drupal) or ASP’s (e.g. TypePad) for your blogging pilot projects. After a good test period you can decide whether to adopt a platform, modify an OSS one, or purchase an enterprise version for big bucks. With so many low cost options for blogging, there is an existing solution for most organisational requirements.

eLearning without Cash

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Ismael Pena Lopez has a post on ICTlogy on how to develop elearning at no cost ($) for non-profit organisations. His premise is that there are three main components to elearning – human resources, content and technology. Ismael says that you can develop a programme using e-Volunteers, an open source LMS and freely available content. Of course there is still a lot of sweat equity necessary, but a non-profit could develop some pretty good programmes using volunteers and a simple but robust technology platform, like wikipedia has done, where the content experts do not get a nickel.

My experience with elearning implementation is that most of the costs are incurred by adding administrative controls, like reports and tracking. Reducing administrative control would lessen the demands on the e-Volunteers and you would be left with your hosting costs. This could work fairly well, especially if the volunteers had a simple way to contribute to content development, mentoring, assessment, etc. I am sure that a lot of content and learning specialists in the world would help out with elearning programmes, like The Campus for Peace, if there was an easy mechanism to do so. It could be like a virtual Peace Corps. The key, I believe, is to lower the barriers to becoming a virtual volunteer and ensuring the fewest intermediaries are involved.

By the way, is anyone interested in volunteering to develop elearning programmes on wildlife and environmental education?

Update: And now via ICTlogy comes Blogger Corps, matching bloggers with activists and non-profit groups who want to blog and need help getting started.

Everything you wanted to know about Open Source …

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The MOST workshop took place yesterday in Moncton. The presentations went as scheduled, though mine was cut from the end. You can get some of it from my post on OS Business Models. Steve has posted his comments on the sessions, and I agree with most of them, unfortunately. It was a pretty diverse group, and I know that some people (including me) got lost in a few of the technical discussions. Steve has also identified a need for a simple explanation of Open Source:

Given some time I’m going to produce an "Everything you want to know about Open Source", 15 minute and 10 slide presentation that anyone can download to keep themselves on track. CC’d etc. Note the "want" in "want to know".

I believe that Steve has set a challenge. I will do the same, and share it. Any one else want to join in? Once the pitch is developed- so that my mother can understand it – then perhaps someone may be interested in creating an animation, ?ɬ† la Creative Commons. I’ll post my work in progress.

Update: Steve has started the discussion here.

Open Source Software Business Models

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In preparation for the MOST Workshop in Moncton tomorrow, I thought I’d provide some links to business models that are being used with open source software (OSS).

At the KMDI conference this Summer, Matt Asay described three business models for OSS (Commodity, Brand & Service, Pragmatic) .

John Koenig, in the IT Manager’s Journal discusses seven business strategies for OSS:

  1. The Optimization Strategy (where one layer of a software stack is “modular and conformable,” allowing adjacent software layers to be “optimized.”)
  2. The Dual License Strategy (offering free use of software with some limitations, or alternatively offering for a fee commercial distribution rights and a larger set of features.)
  3. The Consulting Strategy (reduce or remove licensing costs and sell services)
  4. The Subscription Strategy (selling OSS maintenance on a yearly basis)
  5. The Patronage Strategy (where original equipment manufacturers support OSS in order to create an environment for other products and services)
  6. The Hosted Strategy (using OSS to provide your services, e.g. Google)
  7. The Embedded Strategy (using OSS in hardware to increase market acceptance)

The Open Source Initiative states that there are “at least four known business models for making money with open source”:

  1. Support Sellers (otherwise known as “Give Away the Recipe, Open A Restaurant”): In this model, you (effectively) give away the software product, but sell distribution, branding, and after-sale service.
  2. Loss Leader: In this model, you give away open-source as a loss-leader and market positioner for closed software.
  3. Widget Frosting: In this model, a hardware company (for which software is a necessary adjunct but strictly a cost rather than profit center) goes open-source in order to get better drivers and interface tools cheaper.
  4. Accessorizing: Selling accessories – books, compatible hardware, complete systems with open-source software pre-installed.

Frank Hecker, has added to these four models with:

  1. “Brand Licensing,” in which a company charges other companies for the right to use its brand names and trademarks in creating derivative products.
  2. “Sell It, Free It,” where a company’s software products start out their product life cycle as traditional commercial products and then are continually converted to open-source products when appropriate.
  3. “Software Franchising,” a combination of several of the preceding models (in particular “Brand Licensing” and “Support Sellers”) in which a company authorizes others to use its brand names and trademarks in creating associated organizations doing custom software development in particular geographic areas or vertical markets, and supplies franchises with training and related services in exchange for franchise fees of some sort.

Much of what is written about OSS is from the perspective of those who develop and support the software. I think that a greater potential, especially for small businesses, is to use OSS in order to significantly reduce costs. With Mancomm, we reduced costs for a pilot project by using open source. The client saved about $1M over previous estimates. The same approach is used by another of my partners, PSI, to keep costs down and focus on developing the right models before investing in any new technology. In each case, the client does not incur license fees and can even decide not to implement after a pilot project and not worry about getting a return on the license fees. OSS is lower risk, especially for test and pilot projects, thereby encouraging innovation.

On Obsolescence

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I had previously made some remarks on the Standing Committee on Canadian heritage and its narrow, corporatist views on copyright, especially for education. Concerns about Canada’s adoption of regulations that will thwart due process over copyright disputes are resurfacing in a variety of sources. See Will Pate’s post for an overview of the issue and links. Mark Federman has further commented, from the perspective of one aspect of McLuhan’s laws of media* – obsolescence:

When something is obsolesced, it is obsolesced until it is retrieved in a new form by a new medium some time in the future. The aluminum-disk-covered-with-plastic industry is one such example that is trying to hold onto its market dominance by fiat, when new forces have pushed it aside. It’s not clear to me that they have actually noticed what’s really going on. Certainly, all the lawsuits launched against its customers won’t help the recording industry a bit if they cannot entice new artists to subscribe to their business model, one, ironically, that seems to defy current audience tastes. And now, artist-control and wide distribution have a powerful ally.

The way that some legislators and business "leaders" talk about the Internet and copyright reminds me of the Generals during the Great War who refused to believe that new technologies had changed warfare, and continued to send millions of men to be slaughtered against dug-in machine guns. If you think that copyright is an important issue, then please take a look at the various petitions for yourself.
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* McLuhan’s laws of media are presented as a series of questions or probes:

Enhancement. What does the medium enhance, extend, enlarge or intensify?

Obsolescence. What does the new medium make obsolete? When an old medium enters its obsolescence phase, it becomes more ubiquitous, often changing from a utilitarian to a recreational role (e.g. fountain pens).

Reversal. When something is extended beyond the limits of its potential, its characteristics are often reversed. For example, cars which promote greater freedom, when multiplied to the extreme, can result in gridlock.

Retrieval. What medium, that was previously rendered obsolete, does the old medium retrieve from the past? This is usually something from the distant past.

E-learning for Non-profits

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Isoph is an organisation that works with non-profits to develop online learning programs. It also offers an LMS, called Isoph Blue. A recent survey, in conjunction with The Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network looked at the adoption of e-learning among non-profits. Some of the initial results from the 697 respondents are:

  • Over 50% of total respondents are either using e-learning or plan to within 12 months.
  • Of respondents with budgets over $10 million, 66% are currently using e-learning.
  • 61.4% expect to increase resources for e-learning in the next year.
  • Organizations are using e-learning for a wide variety of purposes:
    • 67% use e-learning for staff training.
    • 52% use e-learning for public workshops.
    • 34% use e-learning for volunteer training.

Go to the Isoph website for more resources and information for non-profits.

Update: The full report (11 page PDF) is now available from Isoph. Nothing earth-shattering in this report but some interesting stats on barriers to adoption, "What are the three biggest barriers for your organization in developing e-learning?" Highest responses included: Staff Time; Expertise, and Concern for Effectiveness.

Academic Freedom Goes Boink

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James Farmer is an educational technology consultant for an [unnamed] university. James has provided me with some good advice on ed tech and blogging from time to time. As an internal consultant, he is keeping abreast of technological and pedagogical advances in order to better serve his clients (faculty and students). James has been looking at blogs, wikis and other technologies that are not currently being used by his university, and has written about his observations on his blog. James’ blog is a great resource for those working in higher education. Recently he received some feedback from his supervisor:

Last Tuesday I received a memorandum from a manager cc?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d by am exec. director instructing me to cease supporting and promoting weblogging, wikis or any other technology not officially supported by the University. The basic reason given being that I have, anecdotally, not used the CMS (this isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t true, I always use it) and that ?¢‚ǨÀúcommentary?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ on the issue of CMSs (quoted I think from this blog or another I set up for a course) is unacceptable. A set-up for disciplinary action should I not follow instructions.

I think that this is a case of universities and private corporations being too closely linked. There is a growing interest in open source educational software, which is just as good, if not better, than many of the proprietary systems. Therefore, it is getting more and more difficult to justify the huge license fees for these proprietary systems, so we are seeing some heavy-handed reaction to pro-OSS comments. By the way, most blogs and wikis are built on open source software.

Please take the time to read the whole article, as well as the comments, and post your own if you feel so inclined.

Update: James has posted more on what has transpired, which seems to be moving in a positive direction for his job – "In relation to my job, after some further communication it now seems like I may be able to continue to pursue this area as part of my ?¢‚ǨÀúprofessional research interest?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢, which is great if a little unwieldy (as each project I enter into is now going to have to have research / publication outcomes, gulp), but the objection to promotion and support within the University remains the same." – as well as some additional ethical questions.