Presentation Slides for eLearning Forum Asia 2011

LMS is dead?

I am not so certain of the hype that is currently being generated by those who are championing the demise of learning management systems (LMS) because of the advent of Web 2.0 technologies. It is said that the use of Web 2.0 will create a more open and democratic personal learning environments (PLE) which will transfer the power of control back to the individual learners.

This may be true for adult learners working in the marketplace where learning largely occurs in informal settings and at the workplace. These adults would have the motivation and discipline to take up the responsibility to learn because it affects their work performance. Learning is not an option for them, but a necessity for personal development and professional advancement.

But for students who have just come out of their high schools, asking them to take up such responsibilities is almost like throwing them into the pool when they do not know how to swim. Some will make it, but many will not. Pushing them too hard may in the end lead to a revolt. 

We also need to think about the teachers. Are they ready for PLE? How are they to function in such environment? What skills do they need? Are they given the chance and time to develop such skills that would allow them to facilitate the PLEs? Barely have they gotten use to the idea of the LMS, now they have to learn how to share, tag, twitter, follow, blog, embed, subscribe  etc. Will they revolt too?

A proper transition is needed. LMSes are catching up too. Blogs, tags, subscription, journals are now making its way into the LMS environment. Perhaps, we could start off on this and allow the students and the teachers the time to be comfortable before moving them on to the next level. Give them time to change. Play too much the hype and the bubble may burst in the end. 

Lively

I am bought over by the potential of Lively to be used as an educational tool for enhancing greater participation from students to chat or discuss about their subjects of learning. I was never a believer in using Second Life for educational purposes largely due to its cumbersome application which uses a lot of bandwidth, at least in my personal experience. I am also put off by the fact that I had to open another application and interface to conduct my explorations in the virtual world. Lively gives me a new flexibility that I never had with Second Life. I am able to embed my virtual rooms or spaces into existing virtual learning environments simply by pasting the generated script to my web page or blog. In this way, I can encourage students to login to an existing VLE and make use of Lively to conduct educational activities within a virtual academic context which Second Life could not do. I am also interested in the 'lightness' of Lively which requires only a small and simple installation on our desktops. Another feature is its features of deciding on access rights which I could use to formulate open or close tutorial sessions. On top of that, I have the capability to archive all conversations for research, assessment or evaluation.