For those not familiar with the Open Education movement or Open Education Repositories (OER), please see my earlier post on Open Education. This entry applies Clay Christensen's theory of "jobs to do" marketing and explores some challenges and opportunities for OER repositories using that perspective. Both of these entries are based upon ongoing discussions in the Open Education Practice and Potential course in Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education, and I'm grateful to my classmates as well as instructors Brandon Muramatsu and Vijay Kumar for exploring these topics.
I'm currently enrolled in a hybrid classroom/online course called Open Education Practice and Potential in Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education. The course is taught by Vijay Kumar, Senior Associate Dean and Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (bio) and Brandon Muramatsu, Senior IT Consultant in the same MIT office. Both are incredibly accomplished learning technologists dedicated to the "Open Education" movement -- a movement aimed at improving education access and quality by enabling educators to develop, use, re-use, and share digital learning resources. Although the class isn't over yet and I'm by no means fully educated on this expansive topic, I thought I'd make an attempt to describe this movement and detail just a few of its components that challenge the conventional educational content landscape.
I recently attended a NERCOMP event on Mobile Learning in Higher Education. NERCOMP - the NorthEast Regional Computing Program -- is an EDUCAUSE affiliate. The "day of discovery" was hosted by Kristin Lofblad Sullivan, Manager of Instructional Technology at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.
The textbook landscape is changing so rapidly that it's hard to
pinpoint current state in order to benchmark it against possible
evolutionary paths. But in general we who deal in fairly-priced,
atomized pieces of content have long benefited from an industry that
welded content to the ultimate unwieldy platform - the overpriced,
bloated textbook -- and then embarked on a forced-upgrade revision
cycle that ultimately drew Congressional wrath. But that industry is
fast-reforming and the reforms are worth noting for both consumers and
competitors alike. Here's a brief recap of some of the activity.
We've been researching the Millennials for some work we're doing related to designing engaging, interactive products for eLearning. As familiar as this subject is to many of us involved in the design and delivery of educational content, it's still powerful to review the truly unique nature of this generation of learners. Here's a few summary points and then pointers to more resources that we found especially helpful.
This year my employer, Harvard Business Publishing, published Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads. Authored by Harvard Business School professors Srikant Dakar and David Garvin and research associate Patrick Cullen, the book provides "an in depth look at the current state of business education and a blueprint for the future". It identifies eight essential business needs for the future that today's schools fail to teach sufficiently and ultimately illustrates "a diverse set of approaches for responding to these challenges, including: radically redesigning curricula, offering greater customization, linking knowledge to application through experiential learning, and more". Sounds great, but I was really disappointed at how little simulations-- or any eLearning products, platforms, or tools -- are mentioned in the book.
I recently attended a forum entitled "Technology and the Future of Higher Education" with Diana Oblinger, CEO of EDUCAUSE. The seminar was part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Askwith Forum series. Many of us involved in educational technology have been familiar with Ms. Oblinger's writings -- she was one of the first to articulate the evolving learning styles of Gen X'ers and Milennials and was also an early advocate of games and learning. She was formerly Vice President for Information Resources and the Chief Information Officer for the University of North Carolina system, Executive Director of Higher Education for Microsoft, and IBM Director of the Institute for Academic Technology. She was also on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia and at Michigan State University and an associate dean at the University of Missouri. Her presentation (and this blog entry) was based in part on the recent EDUCAUSE report "The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus".
It's budget planning time for us again, which in our educational publishing environment means we get to try and make the case for incorporating new technologies into our product development and distribution plans. And the time of year means that any survey of emerging technologies invariably surfaces the annual eLearning prediction lists. These lists are frustrating. As an educational technologist, the list of tools and technologies is exciting -- the options for exploring and assisting learning in new ways is evolving at an unbelievable pace. But as a publisher I find myself using a much more practical lens -- partially due to the perspective of the part of the industry we occupy, but also due to understanding the real world constraints that cause me to temper some of the hype. Here's a review of some of the prediction lists and some immediate reactions.
It's an exciting time for consumers of digital content as a variety of eReader and eBook formats and channels are becoming available -- the market is clearly growing (although perhaps not yet cannibalizing print). That makes it a challenging time for content providers and publishers since there is obviously no one standard or channel or device for reaching content consumers. Here's a high-level snapshot overview of some of the key players at this time -- this will quickly change but hopefully the details should provide some insights that endure for a bit longer.
This post is divided into:
Technical Formats
Content Creation Tools
Content Conversion Vendors
Hardware Device-Based eReaders/Channels
Software-Based eReaders/Channels
Additional Resources
In reality these categories can quickly become blurred -- Kindle is simultaneously a device and a format and has its own channel. So you'll see some names repeat across categories. But approaching it from this perspective is helpful and is one of the only ways you can maintain some clarity when exploring this complicated environment.
