E P I C   T H I N K I N G

Issue 25: December 2003

Welcome to a special festive edition of the monthly newsletter from Epic, with added seasonal highlights…

Regular features:

1. New white paper: Content and context in e-learning
2. Epic Think Tank: Blended learning design
3. Show report: Online Educa Berlin
4. Book reviews: Aldrich on simulations, Brandon Hall on custom content
5. News: The land of lost content

PLUS: Santa's Sack - special seasonal bonus items:

• Epic Christmas Quiz - win a bottle of champagne!
• Ring out the old, ring in the new - what's hot and what's not in learning
• Diary of 2004 events

1. Context is king

Content always has a context. And context can do everything to enhance – or to diminish – the knowledge it carries.

E-learning content is a medium like any other, like TV, books or film. We don’t write off the movies per se just because we regularly get subjected to turkeys (especially at this time of year). Similarly we shouldn’t write off e-learning every time we see an example of poor e-learning content. There is a regrettably widespread tendency in education and training to make generalisations about e-learning content that fail to take into account its true diversity, range, and in many cases richness.

In his latest new white paper Donald Clark, Epic addresses the subject of e-learning content (long a core field of excellence for Epic). He offers a taxonomy of e-learning content, describes how it functions within optimal blends of learning methods… and describes the fascinating new trend on the web to make more and more of the world’s learning content freely available online.

White Paper: Content and Context in e-learning

To get your free copy contact: marketing@epic.co.uk

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2. Blended learning design

When it first arrived, blended learning seemed like a great get-out clause for those who didn't feel 100% comfortable with the new world of online learning. Mix and match, duck and dive: 'We're all blended now, it's just the percentages of online to offline that vary'.

But as the practical realities of deploying blended learning begin to bite, it becomes more and more important to find a robust methodolgy for designing blends effectively.

This 12th Think Tank in our series examines key questions that face learning and development professionals in every organisation, public or private:

• Why is blended learning design different?
• What is involved in creating it, and who should be responsible?
• What skills and tools do they need, and how will they get them?

Read the full report

Key points, for those in a hurry:

• Greater choice in learning delivery methods leads to greater complexity, putting pressure on designers, trainers and learners alike
• No one criterion (e.g. learning styles, type of training) can determine rules for blend composition, factors such as maturity of e-learners also have to be taken into account
• Speed, scale and sustainability are the key drivers for blended learning design
• Circumstances will vary the extent to which blends can offer a 'multiplicity of paths towards a common goal' approach (supporting individual learning styles) - some blends will of necessity be strictly sequential
• The L&D function within organisations will organise itself to acquire the skills and tools needed for blended learning - building capability in most-used functions, outsourcing in specialist areas
• Blend creation requires the design team to be strongly focused on business improvement

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3. Destination Berlin! Online Educa Berlin, 3-5 December 2003

'The conference poster said "The Leading International E-learning Conference" (writes Donald Clark) and they may be right. US conferences such as Techlearn, Online Learning and ASTD pretend to be international but they're largely "Stars and Stripes" events. UK conferences are quite small and very British. With 1,428 paying delegates from 68 countries we had 145 from the UK, second only after the Netherlands. The mix also went way beyond Europe: there were plenty from Canada, India, Singapore, Australia …'

Donald Clark,Epic, bids a fairly fond goodbye to Berlin in his report from what is becoming one of the most important events in the international learning calendar.
Read the whole report

4a. Simulations and the future of learning
Jossey Bass Wiley, October 2003

Author: Clark Aldrich

Review by Stephen Walsh, consultant, Epic

We, at Epic, have been getting heavily involved in simulations (see our White paper on Simulations and e-learning) and found this text useful.

'If you care about how to do e-learning right, this book is indispensable. Part case study, part learning design manual, part one man's rage against the e-learning industry, it's crammed with practical information and manages to be a page-turner at the same time - not that Clark Aldrich has much time for page-turners...

'As founder of the e-learning practice at the highly influential Gartner Group, Aldrich met with practically every e-learning company in America. His conclusion? "So far, e-learning has made about the same contributions to learning as fast food has made to food".

'So Aldrich did the decent thing. He quit Gartner and threw himself into building an e-learning simulation that honoured the deal. This book tells the compelling and instructive story of what happened next...'

Stephen Walsh reviews an indispensible new addition to the e-learning literature.

Read this review

4b. Design of E-Learning Courses: Lessons from Custom Content Winners, Excellence in E-Learning Awards
brandon-hall.com, July 2003

Author: Jacques LeCavalier and the staff of brandon-hall.com

Review by Dr. Matthew Fox, Epic

'With the vast range of e-learning suppliers around in the US, how do you get a real sense of what is happening in that market? Brandon-Hall's Excellence in E-learning report is a great place to start...

'Brandon-Hall's view is that:

• organisations are cutting back on rich media delivery
• there is greater emphasis on higher impact but shorter learning interactions
• simulations are increasingly seen as the learning model of choice, with more cost-effective tools becoming available to develop them
• the use of story and narrative is becoming increasingly important
• the use of online 'human agents' to personalise learning is becoming more frequent'

Read this review

5. The land of lost content

Top US law professor and copyright expert Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University believes that as many as 98% of all the books in existence are denied public availability because although in copyright, they are permanently out of print - however the internet could hold an answer.

It's not so long ago that the internet was being criticised by the more serious seekers after knowledge for being 'one cell deep' and lacking serious content.

All that has changed. In this month's new white paper release, Context and Content in e-learning (see item 1 above) Donald Clark points to the dramatic explosion in free learning content now being made available on the web, from Project Guttenberg to the MIT OpenCourseWare project.

Increasingly tight copyright laws prevent many valuable texts from being made more accessible. Lobbying by publishers and media giants has led to no less than 11 extensions of the copyright period in 40 years, most recently with the Sonny Bono law (yes THAT Sonny Bono) extending the time before a work enters the public domain to 70 years after the author's death.

Well, we've all got to make a living. However one of the interesting facts thrown up by the movement to make the world's learning resources more accessible is the huge number of texts that fall into the category of 'out of print and copyrighted'. Lawrence Lessig, Law Professor at Stanford and chair of the Creative Commons project, calculates that a staggering 98% of ALL books are simply inaccessible for any amount of money as they lie in this no-man's land of IPR - protected by copyright, but uneconomical to publish (in the view of publishers, at least).

These texts have been called 'abandonware' or 'orphans'. Untangling the copyright issues is too messy for the publishers and they lie idle and electronically inaccessible. Lessig has helped put a bill before Congress recommending the active renewal of copyright every 50 years, a move which it is hoped will cut this particular Gordian knot.

In the meantime, why not spend this Christmas luxuriating in the wealth of free content that HAS made its way to the web, at the links below:

Other news this month:
Epic leads on framework for the Environment Agency

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Special seasonal bonus items:

1. Epic Christmas Quiz!
2. Ring out the old, ring in the new - what's hot and what's not in learning
3. Diary of 2004 events

1. Epic Christmas Quiz

It's been a funny old year (as they say). Many companies and organisations found their significant other in this year's round of frenzied M&A activity, and huge amounts of quality learning content started appearing online.
Prove that you've been paying attention at the back by answering all the following brain-teasing questions about this year's significant events in the learning world - and you could win a free bottle of champagne!

Answers on an email, please: feedback@epic.co.uk

Q: Who clicked and did the docent thing?

Q: Who walked down the aisle with the Network, only to baol out and form a new association (clue: the answer is NOT Kat Slater)

Q: Which canucks caused maximum confusion by diving in the pool?

Q: Who fueled speculation then proved themselves wider than wide?

Q: Which Indians bought a company from Roger the cowboy?

Q: Which University topped 3 million hits from the UK for its free courseware?

Q: Name the new shadow minister for 1. Education? 2. Health?

Q: Who announced the possibility of a project named 'Creative Archive' this year?

Q: What does 'wiki' mean?

If you think you know the answers hit the link below and drop us an email. The first entry to get answer all questions correctly will win a bottle of real champagne (we're not talking Asti Spumante here) to drink with your Christmas Dinner. Please remember to include your full name and company address in the email.

Send answers to: feedback@epic.co.uk

Closing date for submissions: Wednesday 17 December

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2. Ring out the old, ring in the new - what's hot and what's not in learning

As the new year creeps up on us and the old year slips away, we get ready to clear those tired old cliches out of our collective mental wardrobe. Donald Clark gives us the ins and outs of learning 2004…

OUT: attendance
IN: attainment

OUT: tyranny of time
IN: in your own time

OUT: single dominant form of delivery
IN: blended learning

OUT: collection
IN: connection

OUT: content
IN: context

OUT: duplication
IN: sharing

OUT: digital divide
IN: digital abundance

OUT: behaviorism
IN: motivation

OUT: offline assessment
IN: online assessment

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And Finally...

Epic would like to wish all its clients, partners, suppliers, shareholders, employees, ex-employees, friends and yes okay then, competitors… A very happy Christmas and a success-filled New Year!

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