The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Learning Experience Design

Introduction

I recently asked ChatGPT to list the five most influential instructional designers. 

ChatGPT, of course, is an artificial intelligence chatbot that has grabbed the attention of the world.  Locally, it was put to the test by University of Minnesota Law School. It answered questions from law school exams in several legal subject areas and when judged blindly, it earned a C+.  On every front, businesses and institutions are assessing opportunity – and risk. (New York City has blocked ChatGPT on school devices and networks*.)  Every news outlet is talking about it. Artificial intelligence has stepped off the silver screen and into our lives in a new way.

ChatGPT Lists 5 Influential Instructional Designers

I’ve asked ChatGPT several questions over the past two months.  But last evening, I turned its attention on instructional design and learning experience design.

So, I ask it:  who are the five most influential instructional designers.

Here was ChatGPT’s reply:

Influential Instructional Designers:

1. Richard Mayer – Known for his work on multimedia learning and cognitive theory of multimedia learning, Mayer has made significant contributions to the field of instructional design.
2. Clark Aldrich – A pioneer in the field of simulation-based learning, Aldrich has designed numerous training programs and simulations that are used widely in corporate and military settings.
3. Michael Allen – The founder of Allen Interactions, Allen has designed over 1,000 e-learning courses and is known for his work in instructional design and performance support.
4. Julie Dirksen – Dirksen is a leader in the field of user experience (UX) design for learning, and has written several influential books on instructional design and UX.
5. Will Thalheimer – A researcher and consultant, Thalheimer is known for his work on evidence-based instructional design and his writing on instructional design best practices.

The five designers listed are certainly influential. In our Learner Experience Design graduate courses at Metropolitan State University, we’ve included the writings and/or texts of Clark Aldrich, Michael Allen and Julie Dirksen.  In working with faculty, I’ve used research from both Richard Mayer and Will Thalheimer. 

And so, I liked its answer and my curiosity was piqued.  To explore further the role of AI in Learning Experience Design, I wondered if ChatGPT could provide content for a quick lesson on that very topic — Learning Experience Design. (It also gave me the opportunity to take the latest nightly build of LodeStar 10 on a little road test.)

The query produced interesting results.

Disclaimers

Before I show that content, a few admissions and disclaimers.  First, I’m not advocating for the use of AI in the instructional design process.  In the near future, I will certainly evaluate its utility.  Secondly, in my example I offered ChatGPT no directives.  I didn’t specify grade level, target audience, prerequisite knowledge, cultural or situational context.  I simply asked it to spit out information.

A further admission is that I’m very uneasy about the topic of artificial intelligence.  AI obviously presents both opportunity and challenge.  I have a dystopian dread over AI and yet I recognize the many opportunities that it presents.  I’ve long held out hope for truly adaptive learning systems that could individualize the scope and sequence of instruction for the benefit of learners.  Many systems have appeared on the market with ‘semantic’ engines that don’t quite measure up to a system that can learn from a students’ successes, missteps, preferences and confidence level, and make appropriate decisions. Adaptive Learning is one area that benefits tremendously from AI. 

The other thing I recognize is that the information that ChatGPT prints out is, at best, raw material for an instructional designer.  The design must include learning experiences that help students engage with the material, think critically, make decisions, make meaning, and make memory.

David Wiley blogs about this more eloquently in AI, Instructional Design, and OER – improving learning (opencontent.org).  Here is an excerpt from his blog:

“What distinguishes an educational resource from an informational resource is that the latter shows some intentional application of knowledge about how people learn. I have previously argued that the minimum amount of effort you could invest to convert an informational resource into an educational resource was to add practice with feedback. That simple sounding task quickly explodes in complexity as you consider the research on what form that practice should take, how long it should last, when it should be scheduled, what kind of feedback should be provided, whether the feedback should come immediately or after some delay, etc.”

                              David Wiley 

That leads to my biggest disclaimer.  Just for fun, I wanted to see what ChatGPT would produce and how I could use it in a project with minimum effort. 

David Wiley writes:

“LLMs will dramatically increase the speed of creating the informational resources that comprise the content infrastructure. Of course the drafts of these informational resources will need to be reviewed and improvements will need to be made – just as is the case with all first drafts – to insure accuracy and timeliness. But it appears that LLMs can get us 80% or so of the way to reasonable first drafts orders of magnitude faster, eliminating the majority of the expense involved in this part of the process.” 

I took the ChatGPT output and sprinkled in some activities.  The disclaimer is that these are not activities that any of the above authors would endorse.  The design is just a simple present-and-check.  But I would hazard to say its not unlike the content that gets pumped out by course mills.  It’s not unlike the content that one consumes to meet a compliance check or earn continuing professional education credit.  It’s not unlike most of the stuff out there that our 5 influential instructional designers decry. 

In doing this short exercise, I was reminded of David Thornburg’s often quoted “Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be.”  Perhaps, any instructional designer who can be replaced by an artificial intelligence chatbot deserves to be.  Or perhaps the real line of enquiry should be:  can a chatbot be trained to make decisions that imitate an instructional designer?  Can a chatbot be trained to pass the LXD equivalent of a Turing test? (See appendix A for what happened when I gave ChatGPT more information about the audience.)

But disclaimers aside, it is intriguing to me to view what ChatGPT produced. 

Rules of Engagement

Here were my rules when applying the content:

• Spend very little time (under two hours)
• Retain all of ChatGPT’s text – even if there were errors (example, Bloom’s Taxonomy was produced in 1956, not the sixties.)
• Format the content in different ways, including placing it in a time line
• Add videos or audio from external sources to supplement ChatGPT and provide some human connection.
• Return ChatGPT’s content to the engine and ask ChatGPT to create a final quiz from that content

You can see this for yourself by clicking on the following link and/or joining me on a screen-by-screen tour (not all screens shown).

Link to content: Learner Experience Design ChatGPT (lodestarlearning.github.io)

Screen by Screen Commentary

First, in my title screen, I give full credit to ChatGPT.

I asked ChatGPT to explain instructional design versus learning experience design.  I simply presented the information as a choice between two explanations: one that matched Learning Experience Design and the other that matched Instructional Design. ChatGPT provided the content; I added this little warm-up learner engagement.

LodeStar Question Widget

I added ChatGPT’s definition of What is Learning Experience Design.

I then added a video from YouTube so that we have an LXD person describe the characteristics of LXD.  This reinforces the information and humanizes it.

LodeStar Video Widget

I asked ChatGPT to list the important events in the history of Instructional Design.  It put out a list of events.  Interestingly, the earliest event was the publishing of Didactica Magna in 1600s. I took that information and presented it in an interactive timeline.

LodeStar Timeline Widget

ChatGPT output the importance of Learner’s Needs and Goals.  I added a video where the host really challenges his guests on how LXD designers actually translate goals and user research into meaningful experiences. 

ChatGPT output an explanation of instructional methodology.  I did a strike-through on key words and asked LodeStar to convert them into fill-in-blanks.  I then provided a randomized word list.   So rather than just reading, the learner has to think about the context and type in the appropriate word.

LodeStar Fill-in-the-Blank Page Type

To supplement ChatGPT’s explanation of Technology and Tools, I added a podcast of instructors talking about the use of technology and tools in response to COVID.

LodeStar Audio Widget

In the Assessment and Feedback session I added a word problem related to calculating the volume of a cylinder (as an example).  The dimensions of the cylinder (radius and height) are randomly generated from a defined range.  Students can work on these problems all day and always get a new set when they refresh the lesson.

LodeStar Word Problem Widget

For User Experience and Interaction Design, ChatGPT spat out content and I added a slideshow viewer of three interesting designs.

LodeStar SlideViewer Widget

Finally, I gave back ChatGPT ‘s content and asked it to produce an assessment.  I then took the question stem and answer options and fed them into a Multiple Choice/Multiple Select Question Widget.

Most of the activities were assigned a point value.  I then added a report page to send this off to either a Learning Management System or a Learner Record Store (CMI5/xAPI).

LodeStar Report Page supports SCORM and CMI5/xApi reporting

Finally,

I submitted the content to Open AI’s text classifier so that it could determine whether or not the content was possibly AI-generated.

Here is the result:

*OpenAI announced the AI Text Classifier to help determine whether or not content was AI-generated

Conclusion

OpenAI already offers specific application programming interfaces (API) to its language processing engine. For example it offers auto completion in its Text Completion API. OpenAI is now inviting developers to its waiting list to use ChatGPT in new and existing applications. One can easily imagine the day when toolmakers will invoke the API commands in order to, in David Wiley’s words, “dramatically increase the speed of creating the informational resources that comprise the content infrastructure”.

We’ve just completed LodeStar 10 and continue to test it. We have no current plans to interface with AI but have been added to the waiting list by OpenAI to explore ChatGPT API capabilities. Who knows where that will lead? In the meantime, our focus is to help designers start with simple projects and then offer them more capability as their designs grow from simple present-and-checks to short simulations, story-telling, decision-making scenarios and CCAF (Context Challenge Activity Feedback) projects that the five influential instructional designers would endorse. As far as AI is concerned, we have a lot to learn about the role of AI in learning experience design. I would love to read your comments.

Doubtless, the course mills will go into overdrive on this technology. Caveat emptor.

Appendix A

In a second attempt I gave ChatGPT a little more information about the target audience.

Here is my prompt:

Write about Learning Experience Design for an audience of high school students who know very little about instructional design or cognitive science. Write at an eighth grade level.

Here is ChatGPT’s response:

Learning Experience Design is all about creating educational experiences that are engaging, effective, and enjoyable. It’s a field that combines ideas from instructional design and cognitive science to help people learn new things.

Think about it like this: have you ever taken a boring class where you couldn’t stay focused or retain information? That’s where Learning Experience Design comes in! The goal is to create lessons that grab your attention and make you remember what you’ve learned.

The designers use research from cognitive science to understand how people learn best. For example, they know that people remember information better when they’re actively engaged in the learning process, instead of just passively listening. They also understand that people remember information better when it’s presented in a way that makes sense to them and connects to their own experiences.

So, Learning Experience Design combines these ideas to create learning experiences that are tailored to the way people learn. This might include interactive activities, simulations, games, videos, and more. The goal is to make learning a fun and memorable experience that sticks with you, so you can use what you’ve learned in the future.

Overall, Learning Experience Design is a field that’s all about making learning better. If you’re interested in making education more exciting and effective, this might be a great field for you to explore!

When I asked ChatGPT to comment on the reading level of this example, it answered:

This content is appropriate for high school students or early college students.

When I applied the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level test, it scored 10.4. Just saying.

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Top Influences on the Development of LodeStar 10

Introduction

Modern web pages offer designers a rich palette of media types and standards to create engaging learning experiences. The web page has become an amazing success story.  It started as a battle ground of competing standards and self-interests and has arguably matured to become a meeting ground. 

If you aren’t on the bleeding edge, you’ll benefit from the convergence of standards. In CanIUse.com, browser support for many enabling technologies such as SVG and WebGL (explained later) shows up as green tiles across the table of browsers.  Green means these technologies are commonly supported, which is good news because learning experience designers can put these technologies to work.

caniuse.com by Alexis Deveria, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

Many of today’s eLearning projects are essentially webpage applications with additional standards that support communication to learning management systems or learner record stores. Many of the technologies that make the web interactive, responsive, accessible, and expressive are the same technologies used in eLearning applications.  Most of the major eLearning authoring systems are web page design systems for web pages that are hosted in learning management or content management systems.  There are many exceptions, of course, which include augmented reality systems, gaming engines and environments, and other virtual spaces that are not built on HTML5.  But let’s stay focused, for a moment, on the web.

For maturing standards, the web has become a place of agreement.  In the not-too-distant past, basic HTML markup and styling had to address the many differences between browsers and how they interpreted the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.  Even a technology that most of us take for granted, the audio file, was once unsupported by a single file format that every browser could play.  Designers had to choose both an audio format and a fallback format. Thankfully that has changed.  All browsers can now legally play the .mp3 file or the HTML5 Ogg Vorbis audio format.

caniuse.com by Alexis Deveria, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

Soon the .m4a audio file (AAC) will be supported by all browsers and offer even higher quality audio at less the data cost.

caniuse.com by Alexis Deveria, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

But audio is only the beginning.  All modern browsers (IE 11 excluded) support GIF, animated GIF, JPEG, PNG images, animated PNG, and motion video in the MPEG-4/H.264 video format. 

All browsers support the language features of the last major revision to JavaScript.  JavaScript is the code that makes the web interactive.  It is the code that makes eLearning projects interactive.  Standardization allows all of us to benefit from the interactions that eLearning authoring tools produce with less worry about browser and device differences.  (I emphasize less worry because there is always something to worry about.)

Interactive 3D has become a new frontier for eLearning.  All major browsers support WebGL, which is a method of generating 3D graphics using JavaScript and hardware acceleration.  In the early 90’s, when I first created 3D worlds, I needed an entire lab of computers dedicated to rendering three-dimensional meshes into an animation of three-dimensional images that we would transfer onto a laser disc.  Today, WebGL enables us to render a mesh into a rotatable, scalable image in real-time, all in a browser.  If you’re not familiar with WebGL, please read on.

In short, Learning Experience designers, instructors and trainers can now use audio, video, imagery, text, three-dimensional graphics, scalable vector graphics, math mark-up, interactivity, and logic to realize their grandest designs and create engaging experiences for their learners.

On the eve of LodeStar 10’s release, I am taking stock of these standards and other influences that had a strong bearing on where our product is headed.  Like all toolmakers, I am keeping an eye on effective strategies as well as emerging and maturing technologies and am imagining the opportunities for designers as we work to make these technologies practical and accessible.

Here is a list of standards and strategies that are central to LodeStar’s current development.

Scalable Vector Graphics

A lot of our development has focused on Scalable Vector Graphics.  SVG offers the designer many benefits.  Simple graphics such as the famous SVG tiger pictured here keep their sharpness regardless of the display size and the resolution. They are scalable.  They also offer more opportunity for accessibility.  Scaling can help learners with low vision.  The SVG title is readable by most screen readers. Also importantly, the SVG graphic is made up of individual elements whose properties can be changed by program code or user interaction.

LodeStar displays SVG graphic

In the screenshot below, the tiger graphic is opened in an SVG editor in LodeStar.  The author has right-clicked on an eyeball and can now choose branch options based on selection, deselection, drag, hover over and hover out.  All of LodeStar’s branching options and script can be executed based on any of the above events.  For example, based on the click of an eye, things can happen: the eye color changes, an audio description plays, an overlay appears with a complete description of a tiger’s vision and so on.

With LodeStar, designers edit SVG graphics and add interactivity

Importing PowerPoint as SVG

We’ve never been huge fans of starting an eLearning Project as a PowerPoint.  That hasn’t changed, but LodeStar10 does support importing a single PowerPoint slide or an entire PowerPoint presentation as a series of SVG pages. 

PowerPoint supports exporting a slide or series of slides as SVG.

PowerPoint Presentation

LodeStar 10 adds support for importing a single SVG image or an entire folder of SVG images.  LodeStar interrogates each slide and looks for things like Base64-encoded images.  PowerPoint converts imported images to a long string of characters called Base64.  This is a great format for transporting images inside a single file but browsers tend to load and render Base64-encoded images very very slowly.  LodeStar detects the Base64 encoding and then translates the characters back into an image file that is loaded into the project. 

The result is that vector graphics are editable as SVG elements, and embedded images load and display quickly.  The designer can display the slide as is, edit elements and add branch options to elements.

Designer edits a PowerPoint slide in SVG editor

MathML

For a short while, all browsers supported the MathML markup language, enabling markup without the need for add-ons.

Rendered MathML in LodeStar HTML editor

But there have been setbacks. We’re looking forward to when MathML is once again available in all browsers. Given the likelihood of that, LodeStar continues to support MathML.

Support for MathML

MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) is supported by W3C as the preferred way of displaying mathematics on a web page or eLearning application. MathML describes structure and content of mathematical notation and provides for a higher level of accessibility than simply displaying an image.  Designers can quickly edit and manipulate the size of a MathML expression.  This is an improvement over taking a picture of an equation, for example, and pasting the image into a presentation.  In the past LodeStar automatically converted expressions into images or it used the MathJax library to convert expressions written in Latex to MathML.  But now we’re banking on full support for MathML in the near future.

SimpleSim

For years, LodeStar offered the Interviewer Page Type to support what we called decision-making scenarios and simple simulations.  We continue to offer that page type but have expanded the number of layout options for interactive decision-making. 

For starters, we added a new page type called the SimpleSim.  This page type supports graphics, interactive widgets, text and whatever else is needed to set the scene.  At center stage is the situational prompt and three decision options (as pictured below).   All of LodeStar’s branching options can be invoked based on the learner’s choice.   For example, the ‘Jump to Page’ branch option can bring up a scene that matches the choice and advances the narrative.   Branching options also allow us to add feedback, keep track of points, collect user responses and so forth.

To style the scene shown below, the author used a palette for the color scheme, added a header graphic through Tools>Themes, selected a layout style that set the window width and navigation at the top, and added a background graphic.   The use of palettes, themes, layouts and page types enables the author to control every aspect of this simple simulation, including the interactivity.

Look and feel is controlled by Layout, Theme, and Palette

CCAF

It’s no secret that we are huge fans of Dr. Michael Allen’s Context-Challenge-Activity-Feedback model.  In a project that was intended to improve employees’ social sales index (SSI) in LinkedIn, we set the context as a simulated LinkedIn.  For the challenge, the learner must improve the main character’s SSI score by providing the right advice and interacting with a simulated profile, notifications, messaging, etc. – just like LinkedIn!

LinkedIn Simulation

CCAF projects are not page turners or Present-and-Checks.  They can be quite advanced.  To support a more sophisticated interaction than the display of content and multiple-choice questions, LodeStar offers LodeStarScript, which can be written in the Execute Command branch option.

LodeStarScript enables designers to change the properties of graphics on the fly, including SVG graphics.  Properties can include color, position, image source, rotation, opacity, etc.  LodeStarScript offers the designer the power of conditional logic, loops, local and global scoped variables, and a long long list of functions.

In the simulation below, the learner can select a camera aperture and control exposure.  The effects of exposure are simulated with the simple change of the color and opacity properties of an SVG element.

Camera simulation with LodeStarScript

xAPI/CMI5

Megan Torrance, a veteran of learning design, authored a research paper sponsored by the Learning Guild.  I won’t steal her thunder and encourage you to read the paper for yourself, but I’ll cite two statistics from her research that tell the story of xAPI.

https://www.learningguild.com/insights/289/2022-the-state-of-xapi-adoption/?utm_campaign=researchAPI&utm_medium=link&utm_source=lspub%20

In a survey of 368 respondents, the majority of whom belong to organizations that create or purchase learning solutions, 44.9% of the respondents indicated that ‘We are interested in xAPI but have not used it at all.” 

Version 1.0 of xAPI was released way back in 2013, and yet 10 years later adoption is not widespread.

So what is xAPI, how does it relate to CMI5, and why are we so interested in it?  In short, xAPI and CMI5 are game changers.  They are not the same thing but they are close cousins.  An eLearning activity that uses CMI5 can generate an xAPI statement, which gets recorded in a Learner Record Store.  CMI5 can also tell the LMS whether the learner passed or failed. 

So, let me be a little more specific.

With these technologies, I can store my eLearning projects in my own repository — GitHub for example.  I can then import a very lean and simple file to the Learning Management System, which tells the LMS from where to launch the activity.  The LMS then passes to the activity learner information and a token for secure communication.

CMI5 uses xAPI technology but it also understands the vocabulary that LMSs require.  Pass/Fail.  Incomplete/Complete.  xAPI reports to a learner record store any statement that the designer has added to the eLearning activity.  ‘Learner has reached Level Two.  Learner completed a video.  Learner attempted Level Three four times.’  CMI5 can generate any kind of xAPI statement in the form of learner actions.  In addition, CMI5 can tell the LMS whether the learner passed and/or completed the module.

 But among the reasons why people don’t yet use it are:  lack of knowledge, lack of Learner Record Store, and LMS does not support it.

I am extremely fortunate in that our Learning Management System is Prolaera.  It is designed for the CPA industry.  Prolaera can import a CMI5 activity.  As a result, I can do the following:

1. Send a statement about the learner reaching Level 5 to the learner record store.

xAPI statement

2.

Read a list of learner experiences from the Learning Management System’s Learner Record Store. (the learner’s name has been erased from the screenshot).

Learner Record Store

From the screenshot above, you can see that we can report on any learner experience.  For example, the learner first experienced the results page with a score of 200 points.  We can also see that the learner passed, satisfied the requirements, completed the module and terminated the activity.  These are all terms that the Learning Management System understands.

It may take time but CMI5/xAPI will eventually be widely adopted.  These standards are incredibly important to the advancement of eLearning.  It begins with awareness. The more designers learn about it, the more they can encourage their learning management system vendors to support it.  In the meantime, we are ready for it!

3D

Glen Fox’s Littlest Tokyo is a great example of what is possible with Three Dimensional objects viewed jn a browser.  The object is beautifully detailed with a running streetcar animation as an integral part of the 3D object.

Littlest Toyko, by Glen Fox

Designers will be able to use free tools like Blender, TinkerCAD, Sketchup or even their smartphones to produce 3D meshes.  

Smartphones like iPhone 12 come equipped with LIDAR.  LIDAR emits a laser pulse that reflects off of solid surfaces and returns to a sensor on the smartphone.  The round-trip duration is noted. From that, the software can accurately position the solid surface in three-dimensional space. LIDAR has been available in specialty instruments for a long time but for designers to be able to use this technology practically, the software needed to improve.

In whatever way the 3D model gets created (3D graphics software, downloaded from a warehouse, generated by LIDAR) it can then be loaded into a viewer and manipulated (scaled, rotated, navigated) by the learner.  Imagine vital organs or historical places or complicated machines as manipulable objects. 

Currently, we’re working on a loader and viewer for 3D Models.  The first LodeStar 10 release won’t include a 3D model viewer, but we’ll introduce it later in a minor release.

In the meantime, we do support photospheres.  Photospheres use the same underlying technology: WebGL. WebGL enables hardware-accelerated physics and image processing and rendering onto the HTML5 canvas.  The hardware is a dedicated processor called the Graphical Processing Unit or GPU.

The photosphere that appears in the screenshot shows a distorted view of an art gallery.  The first art gallery image (shown below) was produced in Blender.  The second art gallery image was taken with an iPhone at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona.

Photosphere created in Blender

Photosphere created in iPhone

The image appears distorted – in fact, spherical.

Once in LodeStar, the designer can add images, markers, and hotspots to the photosphere.  All of these things get correctly positioned on the sphere.

In the LodeStar editor below, I am adding Lawren Harris’ paintings to the gallery as well as hotspots.  A hotspot click takes the learner to another room in the gallery.  A click on the painting brings up an image overlay.  A click on the video graphic starts a video. 

LodeStar editor adds interactivity to Photosphere

The end result:

Interactive Art Gallery on the Group of Seven

Conclusion

2023 marks the twentieth anniversary of LodeStar Learning.  We filed with the Minnesota Secretary of State on March 11, 2003.  I’m pleased that LodeStar has adapted to all of the technology changes over the years.  LodeStar began as code embedded in Lotus’ LearningSpace.  It then enabled instructors to create rich learning activities in ActionScript and Flash.  In 2013, LodeStar Learning pivoted to a whole new generation of software that used HTML5.  LodeStar10 continues that progression and harnesses the power of HTML5, SVG, 3D and so much more to help designers create great learning experiences.

Short Sims

Introduction

Some of us aren’t content with simply presenting information in a linear fashion in an online course.  We have dozens of words to express what we wish to achieve: interactive, game-like, thought-provoking, challenging, problem-based….   We are also hard-pressed to find the time or the budget or the design that will fulfill our highest aspirations for eLearning. 

It’s easy to get discouraged – but occasionally we’re offered a strategy that works within our budget and time constraints.  One such strategy is the basis of  Clark Aldrich’s recent book, “Short Sims” (Aldrich, C. (2020). Short sims: A game changer. Boca Raton: CRC Press.)  

In his book, Clark Aldrich discusses the methodology of the short simulation.  He begins by lauding the virtues of interactivity.  Interactivity allows learners to experiment, customize their experience, role-play, make decisions and apply skills. He writes that game-like interactivity is expensive to build.  We all recognize that.  Short Sims, on the other hand, can be built in the “same time frame as linear content”.  Short Sims engage students in making decisions, doing things, meeting challenges, solving problems, learning from mistakes and so forth.  Essentially Short Sims offer us a strategy – a methodology – to do things differently and more effectively.

The hook comes from this excerpt: 

“From a pedagogical perspective, the more interactivity the better.  Connecting user action with feedback has long been proven to be critical for most neuron connections”. 

Aldrich, 2020

Aldrich credits the Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology for that insight.  But again, in Aldrich’s words, “game-like interactivity is expensive to build.  It is time-consuming.”  Aldrich offers a new Short Sim methodology as an antidote to linear-style presentation — the death-by-PowerPoint approach.

Short Sims

                Show, not tell

                Engage learners quickly and are re-playable

                Are quick to build and easy to update

Short Sims square with the Context-Challenge-Activity-Feedback model that we’ve heard so much about from Dr. Michael Allen, Ethan Edwards and the designers at Allen Interactions.  They are a solution to M. David Merrill’s lament that so much learning material is shovelware.  ShortSims are not shovelware.  They are a cost-effective means of engaging students.

Quite frankly, the LodeStar eLearning authoring tool was made for the Short Sim.  Instructors have used LodeStar for years to produce Short Sims but never used that term.  We called them Simple Sims, which sometimes included decision-making scenarios, interactive case studies, problem-based learning and levelled challenges.  We solved the same problem.  We made it easy for instructors to create Short Sims quickly. 

Our design methodology has a lot in common with Aldrich’s methodology as described in his book.   The following ten points outline our approach to creating a simple decision-making scenario, which, in our view, is one form of Simple Sim.  To avoid mischaracterizing Aldrich’s methodology, I’ll use our own terms in this outline.

1. Select Challenge
2. Pick Context
3. Determine the Happy Path
4. Determine Distractors
5. Pick a setting – background graphic
6. Choose a character set
7. Produce the Happy Path
8. Add the Distractors
9. Add Branches
10. Add Randomness                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Select Challenge

Selecting the right problem and the right scope is, in itself, a challenge for the instructor or trainer.  Straightforward processes that present clear consequences for each decision are easy to simulate.   Processes like strategic planning that are influenced by dozens of variables are much more difficult.   The Short Sim methodology itself would be good candidate for a Short Sim.  Another example would be the backwards design method of instructional design.  In my early days at Metro State, a decade ago, we discussed the backwards design approach with instructors.   We then used a Short Sim to rehearse instructors on the key questions to ask during each phase of the backwards design process.  We based a lot of our thinking on Dee Fink’s “Creating Significant Learning Experiences” and  Grant Wiggins’ “Understanding By Design”.  Our objective was to help instructors design with the end in mind.  In Backwards Design, outcomes and assessments come before the development of activities.   The Short Sim did the trick.  Planning instruction is complicated business.  A simple and short simulation is not, in itself, transformative.  But we just wanted assurance that instructors understood the basic principles of backward design by the decisions they made.

Pick Context

In the Backwards Design example, a dean asks an instructor to design an online class to help K12 teachers use educational technology in their classrooms.  So, in this context, the learner is playing the role of online course designer.  The learner is challenged to make the right decisions at the right time.  If the learner holds off on designing activities until completing an analysis, defining outcomes and creating assessments, then the learner succeeds in the challenge.

Determine the Happy Path

The happy path is all the right decisions in the right order.  Situational Analysis -> Learner Outcomes -> Assessments -> Activities -> Transfer.  It is all of the right answers with no distractors.  It’s like creating a multiple choice test with only one option: the correct answer.

Determine Distractors

Now come the distractors.  What are the common pitfalls to Backward Design?  What might tempt the learner to go astray.  If we were designing a Short Sim on the Short Sim methodology, the pits and snares might be what Aldrich calls the Time Sucks:  choosing the wrong authoring tool, too many decision-makers on the project, custom art, and so on.  The learner might be tempted with “the medium is the message.  Invest in the medium.  Commission a graphic artist to create a compelling interface.”  The point of Short Sims is to not invest heavily in artwork or graphic design.  The focus is more on describing the context, presenting choices to the learner, and showing the consequence of learner choices.

Pick a Setting

A background photo helps to set the context.  Images that display settings without people can be found on sites like Pexels, Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain section of stock image services and, of course, on stock image sites. Because one image often suffices in a short sim, authors can snap their own photos and not waste too much time.

Alternatively, vector artwork can serve as an effective background.  Vector art can be found and  downloaded from such sites as https://publicdomainvectors.org/.    (LodeStar Learning doesn’t endorse any of these sites – but we have used them all.)

In either case, if the scene is relevant to the learning context and not just a vain attempt to gamify, it might actually contribute to content retention and recall. 

Choose a character set

A popular approach to Short Sims is the use of cutout characters with different poses and expressions.  Cutout characters can be photo-realistic images with transparent backgrounds or illustrations.  To see examples, please google ‘elearning interactive case studies’, select ‘images’ and you’ll see thousands of examples.  Despite their popularity, finding cutout characters cheaply can be frustrating.  Several authoring tools offer a built-in catalog of characters.  These tools tend to be expensive.  Many stock photo sites offer character packs but usually one must subscribe to these sites for a monthly charge.  Some sites offer pay-as-you-go services, meaning that you pay for the character pack once, without signing on to a monthly subscription.  The character pack can be as cheap as $4.  One such site is eLearning Templates for Course Developers – eLearningchips.  A complete character pack purchased from eLearningChips with more than 137 poses costs as little as $54. No subscription.  No additional fee.  (Again, we’re not endorsing eLearningChips, but we have used their service.)

Produce the Happy Path

With the LodeStar authoring tool, we had several options for producing the Happy Path.  We used the ActivityMaker template and, after the title page, added a sequence of Interview Pages.  The ActivityMaker template offers a range of page types. The Interview Page is one of them.  In an Interview Page, we dropped in a character and filled in the best choice.  We didn’t concern ourselves with the distractors (the wrong options) quite yet.  Again, we were focused on the Happy Path.

Here is the author view:

Authoring a short sim happy path

Here is what the student sees:

A short sim happy path

Add the distractors

Once we sorted out the happy path – a sequence of perfect, well-informed choices, we thought about the pits and snares—the problems and challenges.

In our course design example, a common problem is that we think too early about the content–that is, what topics should the course cover.  We anticipated those problems when designing our Short Sim.  If a learner unwittingly falls into our trap, we have the opportunity of providing feedback. It’s a teachable moment.

A short sim

An alternative to the Interview Page type is the Text Page.  In a text page, we can add images and widgets.  These give us a bit more flexibility than the Interview Page Type.  On a Text page, we can add an image (left or right aligned), then a Text Layout Widget.  Here you can see the page with image and the Text Layout widget.  The image was composed in our SVG editor. 

Authoring View

Here is what the student sees.

Student View of a LodeStar Activity

Add Branches

In one sense, a branch is a place where we get sent based on our decisions.  If this were a customer service sim and we made poor choices, the customer would appear more and more irritated and ultimately we lose his or her business.  Programmatically, the place where we get sent is a page that shows an irate customer and choices that represent a difficult situation.  The branches could lead us down a path of destruction but we may also have the opportunity of winning back the customer’s trust with a string of good decisions. 

Branching adds variety to the sim.  It gives us a customized experience or allows us safely to ‘test’ bad choices.

Branching can also be viewed as the consequence of a decision or choice.  In LodeStar, branch options include going to the next page, last page or jumping to a page.  They also include bringing up a web resource, adding an instructive overlay, setting a variable value, etc.  It could also mean the execution of a script or series of commands to make a lot of things happen simultaneously, such as setting a variable (that tracks our failings), sending us down a path, changing the image of a happy customer to an unhappy one, showing feedback, marking the choice with red, and more.

It’s probably most effective to show the learners the natural consequence of their decisions–an unhappy customer for example.  As designers, we might also need to be explicit and display feedback, or introduce a coach who provides feedback.  As Clark Aldrich writes, the sign of a good Short Sim is one that is played over and over again.  Branching helps us make the sim a different experience each time.

LodeStar Branching options

Add Randomness (optional)

Randomness might be difficult to achieve and should, therefore, be considered optional.

Randomness is more than randomizing distractors.  (Randomizing distractors happens automatically on an Interview Page.  It’s done through a simple checkbox in a Text Layout widget.)  More sophisticated randomness might include a randomly generated sum of money, or a randomly selected path or scene, or randomly generated assets that are assigned to the learner.  It might be a randomly generated length of fuse that represents the customer’s patience.   In our course design example, it might be randomly generated student characteristics that include age, gender, and subject interest.  That level of randomness is best achieved with the help of LodeStar’s scripting language and is best left to its own article.

Conclusion

Short Sims represent a level of interactivity that goes beyond the linear presentation of information.  They have the potential of promoting learner retention and application.  With the right tool (and there are plenty),  everyone can build short simulations.  One tool, LodeStar, was designed from the very start with the short simulation and the intrepid instructor in mind.  Short Sims may vary in sophistication and design but, in any form, they cause learners to think and to see the consequence of their actions.  The short sim is a strategy that is doable and repeatable within our budgets and time constraints.  Make it happen in your world!

Seven Steps That Will Change How You Share eLearning

Introduction:

These steps might not rise to the level of the seven articles of the US Constitution but, hype aside, these seven steps will change how you store, version control, publish, and share your work with the eLearning community.  If you attempt these seven steps, you might get frustrated and even fail at first.   But, if you persist,  in time, you will become comfortable with the process and never do things the ‘old’ way again.

The Problem

Traditionally, instructors have worked on interactive learning activities and then published them to learning management systems like Moodle, BrightSpace and Blackboard.  The project sitting on the instructor’s hard drive lacks an easy-to-retrieve back up and the project uploaded to the  learning management system remains siloed.

By siloed, I mean that when the instructor wishes to share the project with a broader audience or register the project in learning object repositories like Merlot, OER Commons and Curriki , the problem becomes even greater.  Normally, you can’t share your project that is sitting in an LMS with an Open Educational Resources (OER) repository.  If you wish to publish to an OER repository, you must solve a number of problems:

Where does the project get stored? 

Most OER repositories are referential.  They don’t store; they reference material that is stored on the web somewhere outside the repository.  As an instructor who wishes to share with a larger community, you need a website.

How does the project get backed up? 

You need some sort of backup solution.

How does the project get versioned?

You need a version control system.  With a version control system you can revert changes,  create different versions of the same project, and much more.

How does the project get shared with other instructors? 

You must use DropBox, Google Drive, or OneDrive.  But none of these systems allows you to publish directly from their shared drives.  Creating websites from DropBox, Google Drive and OneDrive is disallowed.

One solution doesn’t address all of these problems.  You need a combination of things — or, you need GitHub.

Introducing GitHub

GitHub offers you a place to store, secure, version-control, publish and share your project with others.

GitHub allows you to publish your projects through the web and, optionally, share your project for collaboration with other instructors.

In GitHub,  you can store anything that you can create with tools like LodeStar, including learning activities, geolocation stories, interactive fiction, interactive case studies, WebQuests and eBooks – all for a nominal subscription fee payable to GitHub.

Collaboration

For more advanced users, you can invite collaborators to your project.  With the GitHub Pro plan, you can keep your authoring files private but still publish the project as a website for your students, colleagues, and OER repositories to see.   That means that your project files stay private and the public only sees the end result (the HTML).  You can keep your authoring files private and invite collaborators to help you work on the project.

What is GitHub?

GitHub has traditionally been a place for computer programmers to store, secure, manage and share versions of their code.  It has been the place for openly sharing code.

The very mechanisms that enable programmers to share their code will enable  instructors to publish their projects to the internet, and secure, store, backup and, optionally, share their work with other collaborators.   By default, under the GitHub Pro plan, projects are secure and private.  The instructor then has control over whether or not the project is published to the internet as a website.

Technically, GitHub is an open-source repository hosting service, which means cloud storage for code. That code can include projects created in LodeStar.  GitHub hosts your project and  keeps track of the various changes made to every submission or, in technical speak, commit. The service is able to do this by using git, a popular revision control system.

So GitHub is both powerful and sort of geeky sounding.  But, if instructors follow some very basic steps, they will harness the power of GitHub to store, publish, and optionally share their projects just like any computer programmer.

So how do I get started?

LodeStar 8.0 build 4 and later support GitHub.  This build is now available.

In  broad terms, you create projects such as Interactive Case Studies in LodeStar.  Each project is matched with a GitHub local repository (folder).   As the project is being developed, you export the project to the local GitHub repository.   You use GitHub Desktop to commit the project to a master and then push the project to the repository in the cloud.    When you’re ready, you publish your project to the web.

It looks like this:

Getting Started in Seven Steps

Step 1. Install and sign into GitHub Desktop

Download GitHub Desktop from https://desktop.github.com/

GitHub Desktop supports both Windows and Mac.

Launch GitHub Desktop and follow the initial welcome screen to sign into your GitHub account. You’ll see a “Configure Git” step, where you can set your name and email address.   Be very careful with selecting a name.  The name will appear in the web address for your projects.

Step 2. Create a new local repository

You’ll see a “Let’s get started!” view, where you will see some options, including create a new repository, or add an existing repository.

Select ‘Create a New Repository on your Hard Drive’

Remember our diagram?  You first create a local repository on your hard drive and then push the contents of that repository to the cloud.

Fill out the fields:

• “Name” defines the name of your repository both locally and on GitHub in the cloud.
• “Description” is an optional field that you can use to provide more information about the purpose of your project.
• “Local path” sets the location of your repository on your computer. By default, GitHub Desktop creates a GitHub folder inside your Documents folder to store your repositories, but you can choose any location on your computer. Do not choose a LodeStar directory.   You will want to keep LodeStar projects and your repositories separate until you are ready to export.  Write down the location of the local repository.  You will need to point LodeStar to that repository in a latter step.
• Your new local repository will be a folder inside the chosen location. For example, if you name your repository myEBook, a folder named myEBook is created inside the folder you selected for your local path.
• Don’t worry about more advanced topics like Readme files, licensing and the ‘Ignoring files’ selection. Let’s stick to the basics.

Click Create repository.

When you have been working with GitHub for a while, you can add a new repository by selecting the ‘Add drop down menu’ to the right of the current repository.

So that you can follow along, I will create a repository for the web version of the Arles Geolocation Story that I’ve written about in past blogs.

Here is what the dialog box looks like.  I’ll click on ‘Create Repository’ to create the folder.

Side note. Understand GitHub Desktop

Below the menu is a bar that shows the current state of your repository in GitHub Desktop:

Current repository shows the name of the repository you’re working on. You can click Current repository to switch to a different repository in GitHub Desktop.   Pictured below is the repository I was working on before transferring my Arles project to a repository.

In the screen shot above, I am working on a project named ‘CRM’.  That is the current repository that is selected.

If I clicked on the words ‘Current repository’, this is what I would see:

The Arles in the listing is my Arles mobile app.  What I am about to demonstrate is the creation of a repository for my Arles Web app.   In the list are all my projects that are matched to their own local repositories.   If I wanted to work with a different local repository like Composter, I would click on its title  to make it the current local repository.

Side note.  Ignore the concept of Branch right now.

Branches is a term used in versioning systems like Git. This has nothing do with LodeStar branches.  Essentially you can clone your project and make independent changes to the clone (the branch) and the original.   For now, our current branch will always be master.  If you choose to become more skillful at using GitHub, you can learn all about branches and forks and pull requests.  But you don’t need to go there.  Making changes to the current branch labeled ‘master’ is sufficient.

Step 3.  Publish Repository – but not quite yet

You will see Publish repository button on the right, but let’s leave that alone for a while.

You are done with the initial set up.  Now, we’ll get into the regular flow of exporting a project and then pushing the local repository to the cloud.

 

Step 4. Set up a LodeStar project to export to the local repository

You will need LodeStar 8.0 Build 4 or later for this step.

Open an existing LodeStar project or start a new one.  Once you are in the project, select Tools > Repository Option.

In the screenshot below, I chose the directory that I created in Step Two: Create a new local repository.  In my case it is c:\git\Arles-Web but more typically it will be [username]/Documents/Git/repository name.

By selecting the repository directory, you are associating the LodeStar project with this repository.  Click on the ‘Save Repository Directory’ button.

Please note: Each project is associated with its own repository directory.

Step 5: Work on your LodeStar Project then Export it to the Repository

You do not need to complete your project before exporting it to the repository.  Exporting to the repository, then pushing the changes to the cloud will serve as a backup of your project.  At this point, no one will see it but you.

Once you have done some work on your project, then select Export > Repository.

Fill in the fields and click on ‘Create Export’.

You are essentially copying your project to the local repository associated with this project.

Disregard the exports directory that you see in the dialog above.  That is a more advanced topic.  The destination is the Repository Directory. You will see a confirmation that you are exporting to the repository directory in the following dialog.

After the export, go to GitHub desktop.

Step 6:  View the Changes in GitHub Desktop

The Changes view in GitHub Desktop will now show all of the files in your LodeStar project.

I’m not displaying all of the files in the screenshot above.  There are 189 of them.

In future exports, only the files that have changed will be listed.  The Changes view shows changes you’ve made to files in your current branch but haven’t committed to your local repository. At the bottom, you’ll also notice a box with “Summary” and “Description” text boxes and a ‘Commit to master’ button.

Type in a sentence for ‘Summary’, and a detailed explanation in ‘Description’.  Your first commit might be labelled as ‘Initial Commit’.  You can repeat that in the description or be more descriptive about the project.

Initially there are 189 files in this project, which includes all of the data files, html, css, scripts, audio files, and imagery that LodeStar manages in a project.

Again, fill in the summary and description.

Click on the ‘Commit to master’ button.   This commits the files to the master branch in the local repository.  I know that I haven’t explained the concept of ‘master’,  but just know that, for our purposes, committing to the master is a good and necessary thing.

After all of the changes are processed, click on the Publish Repository button to send a copy of your local repository to the cloud.

You will see this dialog:

Review the name and description.  Keep the code private.  That means we are keeping the cloud version of this project private.   If you subscribe to GitHub at the Pro level, you can keep your repository private, but still publish to the web.  You cannot do this with the free version.   You must make your repository public in order to publish your web page.

Please note:  If you make your repository public, anyone can copy your project to their own.

 The Pro plan allows you to have your cake and eat it too.  You can keep your repository private, but still publish your project to the web.  In other words you can create a website from your private repository.  Specifically, you can create a public website from the master branch of your private repository.

You can create a private repository with the free plan, and then, when you are ready, upgrade the free plan to the pro plan.  (I’ll show you how at the end of this article.)   At the time of this writing, the Pro Plan is $4 per month.

Step 7:  Publish the index.html page

The index.html page is the launch page for your project.  It is currently private.

To see your project in the cloud.  Click on the ‘View on GitHub’ button as seen below.

This is what you will see when you get to the cloud:

Pictured above is the typical appearance of a GitHub project in the cloud repository.  It is starting to look really geeky and spooky, but don’t worry.  It’s just heads on stakes.  Ignore everything for now.  Click on Settings. Just focus on ‘Settings’.

In Settings, scroll down until you see GitHub Pages.   If you are on the Pro plan, you can now select ‘master-branch’ as the source for your GitHub Pages.  This means that Github will publish the index.html file that LodeStar automatically committed to master.  Remember, ‘master’ is good. If you’re not on the Pro plan, we’ll show you how to upgrade at the end of this article.

The publication takes a while for the first time.  The message reads:

Your site is ready to be published at https://bbilyk1234.github.io/Arles-Web/

Update:  the location is now

https://lodestarlearning.github.io/Arles-Web/index.html

 

Once the site is ready, the message will change.   The site will be slo-o-o-w the first time you access it, but that will change once Github caches your files for quicker access.

How to upgrade from GitHub Free to GitHub Pro

At the time of this writing, GitHub Pro users are billed $4 per month.   With GitHub Free you can create private repositories but not publish them to the web.  You can publish public repositories, but your project can then be copied by any subscriber to GitHub.

To upgrade, log in to GitHub in the cloud at:

https://github.com

Click on the rightmost menu.  See the arrow on the far right in the picture below.  Then select ‘Settings’.

Select Billing from the menu on the left, then click on the green Upgrade button.   GitHub Pro is likely all that you need.  It enables you to keep your project repositories private, but still publish them to the web.

Uploading Changes

Once you’ve committed a project and uploaded it to the cloud repository, you are bound to make changes.

In my example, after I uploaded the Arles-Web project, I decided to add a link to the mobile app version.

After making changes to your project, do the following:

1. Export to the Repository again.

• Open GitHub Desktop and make your project the current Repository.  I’ll make Arles-Web the current repository.  View the changes but be patient.  It might take a couple of minutes to place the changes in the repository.  The list of changed files will update.

• Fill in the summary and description for this commit. You do this to describe every commit.

• Click on Commit to master.
• Now here is a new step! Click on Push origin either at the top or by clicking on the blue button.  Both are pictured below.  Technically, this is called pushing the commit to the origin.  But, basically you are copying the changed files in the local repository to the cloud repository.  If you published your project to the web in a previous step, your changes will be almost instantly published to the web.

Conclusion

Seven steps will change your life.  At least it will change your approach to sharing eLearning.  You will be in control of your work like you never have before.  You will be able to safely back up your files, version control them, keep them private, publish them, share them with other instructors – all in one amazing platform, GitHub.

Once you are confident that you have mastered the basic steps, you can read dozens of articles and see dozens of YouTube tutorials on how to do the fancy stuff in GitHub.  Remember, however, that if you accomplish the seven steps, you’ve accomplished a lot.  Those seven steps alone will change how you work and interact with the eLearning community.

 

Open Educational Resources: An Alternative to Publisher Platforms

Introduction

One could easily vilify the textbook publishers and their online learning platforms.  In higher ed, we hear the student complaints.  They pay tuition with the expectation that faculty will help them build competence and credentials.  They trust the instructor to select or write  appropriate content, design support activities that help students understand and apply the skills, elicit performance, provide feedback and so on.  They are placing their trust in the instructor and their trust in the institution.  When students perceive that instructors have transferred that responsibility to textbook publishers, they make comments like “Why am I not paying the publisher directly?”

But my intent is not to vilify publishers.  They have obviously responded to a strong demand and need for their platforms and resources. In many cases, instructors don’t have the time, dedication or wherewithal to develop courses.  They don’t have time to create the content, develop the activities and assessments and still be engaged in the course discussions and in providing constructive feedback to their students. In some cases, they concede that they couldn’t match the publishers’ course material and the quality of their offerings even if they wanted to.  After all, how many faculty write their own textbook?

Rather, this post recognizes the challenges that constrain faculty and offers an alternative to publisher platforms.  Chances are good that you follow this blog because you are concerned about making your online courses better.  You choose to be in ‘control’ of your course.  The publishers may be broadening their reach to include your discipline – but you wish to select content carefully, add activities and assessments and continually improve your course based on student feedback.  Your student feedback. And yet you are faced with constraints on your time and, perhaps, lack of support.

Textbook Publisher Platforms

You stand in stark contrast to the current trend in education. For better or for worse, higher education is ceding control to the textbook publishers.  The publishers are developing new business models that include online learning platforms, online courseware, adaptive learning, and digital books, all of which, they claim, improve quality, reduce costs and provide a more stable revenue stream to them in the form of subscriptions.

All of these platforms are not alike.  The offerings are on a continuum from supplemental resources to pre-made courseware to integrations with university learning management systems to full-blown adaptive learning platforms with supplemental instructor resources and more.

Textbook publishers carefully vet their content and do the best job possible without knowing the specifics of your students and the context of their learning.  At the very least, the courses are well-organized. When publishers are in complete control, the outcomes match the readings and activities. Errors, inconsistencies and incongruities are exposed and eventually removed.  (When publishers are in partial control, misalignment occurs between the publisher materials and, for example, dated faculty-generated quizzes.)

In 2014, Slate published an article titled “College in a Box” that explored an emerging state of affairs related to textbook giants and online college courses. The article described two college students who were separated by 600 miles attending different colleges but taking the same course, produced by a major publisher. The students read the same online textbook, watched the same media, and completed the same assessments with little interaction with their professors. The students were generally happy with the courses, received good grades, got assistance in the form of well-produced videos and, presumably, progressed toward graduation.

Publishers have long had tremendous influence over a course. This isn’t new.  In my first year of teaching, our department assembled and planned curriculum. The curriculum plan was based almost entirely on the table of contents of the adopted text.  (As a young teacher, I heard how the textbook purchasing power of California and Texas dictated the content of the textbooks for everyone. Today control has shifted from the state to the districts and textbooks are not required to meet 100% of the state standards.) In recent history, publishers have become more sophisticated at producing online courseware. Today, students pay fees to access publisher course material, which include activities and assessments. Undoubtedly, in many cases, the publisher content and collateral is much better produced than the homespun online course.

I can’t even begin to address the societal implications of this development. Slate asks “Why are universities buying ready-made frozen meals instead of cooking up their own educational fare?” The suggestion, obviously, is that textbook online course sites are the ready-made frozen meals. The benefit to universities is that the cost of course development is passed directly to the student. Rather than a university compensating faculty with stipends or release time to develop online courses, students pay a fee to publishers. Research will eventually disclose to us the full cost of abrogating the instructor’s role in course development. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t account for the unique situational factors of the class.  And other concerns surface. Will publishers’ courses eventually end-run colleges and universities? After all, don’t employers in some sectors care about competence over degrees? Finally, what role does the instructor play? Is the instructor replaceable by a person of lesser rank and cost?

In the end, I believe that economics will win out. Publishers are putting to use all of the great developments in the last few years at a speed and economy of scale that most mid-sized universities cannot match. I am thinking about adaptive learning, rich interactions and even Open Educational Resources (OER). Their systems are improving; their design is improving. They lessen the load on instructors and shift the cost to the student.

But even in the industrial revolution, certain guilds of manual artisans survived.  That’s how I picture the online instructor who designs his or her own course:  An artisan.  I think of the positive aspects of a course crafted with care, compassion and skill.

Today, conferences such as OLC Innovate convene educators who share their views on online learning, emerging technologies, and best practices. OLC Innovate celebrates instructors who post their intellectual property to repositories like Merlot.org and participate in editorial groups.  It is a homespun, cottage industry – but it is vibrant.

I anticipate that dedicated artisan instructors will prevail. They will continue to participate in membership groups and conferences of like-minded people. They will embrace a raft of tools to help them communicate with students, motivate, collaborate, challenge, and assess.

They’ll embrace digital stories, eBooks, simulations, videos, and whatever they need to engage students.

Fortunately, exceptional support for the artisan comes in the form of the open education movement. For some, Open Educational Resources (OER) may represent a significant alternative to publisher platforms.

image credit:  Wikimedia Commons

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources are typically open textbooks, software, web pages, learning activities, simulations, case studies, quiz banks and media that are available to faculty and to students for free. Typically, they are licensed under Creative Commons, which means, in all cases, that you must provide the author attribution.  The debate about what constitutes “open” gets more complex when you ask the question “Can I change the resource and adapt it to my own needs.  Can I offer the new ‘derivative’ product to another professor?”  Some would argue that ‘open’ requires the ability to revise, remix, reuse, and redistribute.

Others are content with a narrower definition.  The Hewlett Foundation, an ardent supporter, defines OER as

“teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.”

Today, university systems are bootstrapping OER in a number of ways. They are utilizing open source repositories like Islandora and Equella. They are paying faculty to review open resources and participate in editorial teams for such altruistic efforts as Merlot.org, a curated repository used all over the world. Universities house and support a network of OER repositories, the breadth of which is evident in this Google Map: http://maps.repository66.org/

In my experience, the bane of OER was in the search and discovery of resources that closely matched our course learning outcomes. It required patience – and busy faculty quickly became disillusioned.

Today, search and discovery are easier.  A number of federated search tools have been developed and made available through such organizations as Merlot.org, Creative Commons and even the federal Department of Education.

Recently, I learned of something that suggested better times to come.  A colleague at the Minnesota State System Office introduced me to Intellus Learning.

Intellus Learning is a subscription-based platform that makes it easy to find high quality OER content.  Instructors find content aligned to their objectives, embed that content into their learning management system and monitor student usage.  Intellus searches across many OER repositories, saving instructors considerable time.  I’ve only trialed this tool, but I can imagine a new breed of software that makes it easy to discover, explore and mash-up open resources. My searches returned materials from OpenStax (open textbooks), EBSCO, YouTube, OER Commons and dozens of other places. I conducted the same search using no-cost publicly available search tools and came up short in comparison. The exception was Merlot, which provided me with a useful listing of resources.

Again, in my experience, the single-most deterrent to the use of OER is the time wasted in search of materials that truly align to the course outcomes. OER has the potential of leveling the playing field.  If instructors can find quality content, free-of-charge and aligned to outcomes, then the majority of their time can be dedicated to designing interactions between students, between students and their instructor, and between students and the content.  In short, instructors would have more time to address the cognitive and social needs of their students.

In contrast, I’ve observed too many instructors burning up their time in producing text content.  The acts of writing, finding and organizing content challenge instructors.  It is a lot of work – and yet, only the beginning of the effort.  Instructors complete the marathon, only to find themselves at the starting line of another.  Organizing content isn’t the end of it. What about motivating students, establishing relevance, developing clearly understood expectations and syllabi and other course documents? What about the stumbling points in the curriculum and the prerequisite skills and the recall of prior knowledge and the assessments and discussions and capstone projects?  How about usability and analyzing whether or not the activities promoted or impeded the outcomes?

OER can help lessen the load on instructors  – but, as a community, we need to uncover a process that makes it easy to find OER and, in the future, align activities to OER content.

One example of alignment is that of LearningPod with OpenStax. For example, OpenStax offers an introductory text on biology. LearningPod offers a test bank that is matched to that open text book.

Many for-profit entities are leveraging OER faster than universities.  Adaptive Learning Vendors (Knewton, CogBooks and Acrobatiq) are using OER in their content delivery systems.  Their value-added is in the learning paths they have generated, the mapping of prerequisite skills to targeted learning outcomes, decision-making algorithms, and the analytics that are generated on time-on-task, confidence and performance.

Conclusion

OER matched with activities, discussions, and assessments are an effective strategy for busy instructors who wish to maintain control over their courses.

Large higher ed systems like SUNY and Minnesota State have the opportunity to incentivize faculty to develop, share and evaluate resources.   In the past, such efforts were too small in scope and scale to succeed.  Times are changing.   Today, we are achieving a critical mass in many content areas.  We need mechanisms (application programming interfaces, import tools, discovery standards, metadata standards, package exchange notification services, etc.) to align and integrate the types of activities that this web journal is dedicated to:  case studies, decision making scenarios, leveled challenges, geolocation-aware activities, simulations, games, and stuff that will help students understand, apply and synthesize the content.

In short, we need the option to take charge of our courses and help students succeed.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on Open Educational Resources.  Successes?  Great resources?  Concerns? Please register and share!