The University of Adelaide has a situational project underway. So what exactly is situational learning? I’ve not heard the term before! It seems to encompass all things Learning Designer cool - simulations, case studies, scenario based learning and online role plays.

The situational learning site has examples. The Mekong eSim  seems to be implemented entirely in Blackboard — at least thats what I can tell from the screen grabs.

You may also find Project EnRoLE of interest. EnRoLE as in Encouraging Roleplay based Learning Environments.

I have worked with learning applications and Learning Management Systems for the majority of my career. First I worked on an in-house LMS, called OLT that was developed, enhanced and maintained by QUT. It was a great experience - there is nothing like being able to access every bit of code and make the enhancements/customisations that your users require. When the transition was finally made to Blackboard, as a Developer I found it hard to work within its extension framework (Building blocks).  The mindset was different - you could plug in tools buts not interact with other tools. The only way to change terminology was via the language pack. Simple things like adding a field to a form were just not possible. My impression was that you had to adapt your institution to the LMS. …and this lead to me having a tainted view of commercial software and a general view that off-the-shelf can’t be customizable.

I have since moved on - still in edu land, but away from the LMS. I now have an opportunity to learn and implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I have spent the last few days reading and experimenting with the software. It has been a big eye opener for me. Dynamics CRM from the ground up has been built to be customised. The business world is not content to adapt their process to off-the-shelf software! I can’t help but think that learning management systems would be much more useful (educationally sound), if they allowed the 11 ways that Dynamics CRM can be customised. 11 is not enough, but its like 11 more than the LMS allows today!

…. and fingers crossed that Dynamics CRM will one day soon run in FireFox. So I guess thats 1 thing Dynamics CRM can learn from the LMS.

Some resolution seems finally to be on its way from the Blackboard Vs Desire2Learn patent infringement trial. The trial starts Feb 11, 2008 and will run for approximately 2 weeks.

Good luck Desire2Learn!

There was a time when all I spoke about was SVMs! That was a fun time and perhaps I should have continued my PHD and not gotten consumed by my day job (where I built a tool to translate content to the Blackboard XML import/export). Will I ever get over it????? Maybe if I complain more!!!

SVM’s are now easier than ever to use without having to implement the complex Mathematics yourself. Jeez — the Ruby and Python libs put SVMs at your fingertips. Check out this article on using SVM and Ruby to implement a SPAM filter. SVMs are great at complex classification eg document classification. This could be the most enlightening thing you read all year and the year is still young. Save yourself from the CRUD that is web development. Save yourself while you can!!!

Janison, an Australian company that builds Learning Management Systems will be teaming up with the University of Woollongong on an ARC grant to “create strategies and tools to help university teachers design effective online learning experiences“. Based on the previous output of the University of Woolongong (eg multimedia and learning design work), I look forward to the outcomes and tools. Its great to see new Australian developments in this space and competition is always a good thing. Educational Institutions need to take an active role in the design and development of learning tools instead of the rather passive installation and release of systems that look like they are from 1996.

I sadly encountered the XML Situps pic about a year and a half ago - It was funny but I could not laugh! You see I was knee deep in the middle of porting content from a proprietary (Coldfusion based LMS) to Blackboard via their IMS-CP format (a zip make up of a manifest/hierarchy and xml files for each tool/content type used in the course/unit). I still recall trying to port a Quiz with multiple choice questions to the IMS-QTI spec. Would you believe it if I told you that a single multiple choice question represented in the IMS-QTI xml format takes up 150 lines? Probably not!!!!!

So now I still think this is funny and I can finally laugh out loud: XML Situps!

Ok so Blackboard have launched a new site catering to extension developers called EduGarage. ….So why is it that when I read EduGarage, I actually think EduRage???????

Anyway the site looks good and I’m glad they went with Confluence and not Blackboard.

Finally got some time to take a look at the Facebook app catalogue. Lots of apps that have no use or would just get annoying. I did however come across CourseFeed that integrates with Blackboard to show course content, announcements and rosters.

… But your school/uni must be supported - there is a list of supported school which will hopefully grow.

Some useful features even if your school is not supported:

• Course Wall
• File storage
• Share Course posts (feeds) with other students
• Who’s Online - via Facebook Profile

Kinda best of Facebook social collab mixed with content from Blackboard. … So why is Blackboard not doing the social stuff be default! Why?

via Mfeldstein.com. ….so 2 Judges have now ruled that claims 1-35 are not valid….

I guess we’ll be seeing this more and more - Commercial LMS starting to package, support and enhance various open source products. In this case Angel has enhanced TiddlyWiki and released the enhancements back to the community. This is a step in a great direction and one that is at odds with edu patents. Blackboard already has Wiki and Blog support via the Learning Objects building blocks. I do feel that there is merit in integrating Blackboard with something like XWiki or Confluence - both of which have excellent plugin architectures. Confluence is commercial but is just too good to be ignored. Anyway more on plugin architectures later…