At Any Rate

Just downloaded the new Firefox 3.0. Let’s hope Mozilla sets the download world record today. While on the topic of open source, I recently came across a survey by CIO.com that said “more than half the respondents are using open-source applications.”

On the e-Learning side of the story, companies seem to be unsure about open-source solutions. But this could change very quickly. Open-source LMS and LCMS applications are getting better all the time, and they’re becoming surprisingly easy to use. I was quite impressed with how quickly I could get going on Moodle and how easy it was to start creating a course on ATutor. Apart from the initial cost savings, the big advantage is, of course, the ability to modify the code to suit your needs.

I believe synchronous e-Learning (also called virtual classroom) is not used as often as it should be, and open-source applications are beginning to give proprietary aps a run for their money. Try Dimdim (don’t be fooled by the name), and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Ultimately, the decision to go open will depend not only on price, but also on functionality, especially for large enterprises. The good news is that open-source learning technologies are much further ahead than most people imagine. Also open source is much more than just free software.

I’ve always been intrigued by how people can design instruction without understanding the target domain or subject matter. The conventional wisdom in most custom-content companies is to interview subject-matter experts (SME, mostly pronounced Smee, as in Captain Hook’s sidekick) to “acquire content” and then subject that content to ID — a most torturous and meaning-bending process.

Instructional Designers certainly cannot be experts in all the subjects that they deal with, but that doesn’t take away the responsibility to take the time and effort to understand the instructional domain. Imagine an architect designing a hospital without getting a deep understanding of how hospitals work.

I was reminded of this style of instructional design in discussing a recent project on spoken English training for the BPO market. The designers obviously had no idea of how language learning works, and the result was a shoddy piece of work. Now that English is a big training opportunity, expect to see lots of wonderfully packaged but poor-performing programs.

Language learning is a little more complicated than most other domains because “[l]anguage is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works.” That’s from Steven Pinker’s wonderful book The Language Instinct.

At any rate, if you’re going to be designing a language learning program, make sure you spend some time up front getting to know the fundamental principles of language learning. And Pinker’s book might just be the right place to start.

There, I have it at last … my personal blog and my first post.

I’ll be writing a bit about learning design, something I’ve done for about 17 years now. But because it’s about learning, I’m sure there will be a bit about life as well.

The title of the blog is inspired by a quote from Douglas Adams (spoken by Marvin, the robot) — “You live and learn. At any rate, you live.” I discovered Douglas Adams in college and his writing continues to amaze me.

Thanks Ajay, for helping me set up the blog. I’m just about discovering the wonders of WordPress.

At any rate, come back soon and let’s talk.