E-Learning:
July 28th 2000
By Paul
Stacey
Silicon
Valley
It's
the dog days of summer and I'm in the heart of Silicon
Valley at Syllabus www.syllabus.com/syllabus2000/index.html
exploring new directions
in education technology. Being back in the Bay area has
unleashed flashbacks of the golden days when I was free
and on the road, living and sleeping in Golden Gate Park
with only a backpack on my back.
Over
the years San Francisco and the Bay area have remained a
port of call, source of inspiration, and checkpoint for
me. As a Canadian its great to periodically get directly
jacked in to the high tech innovations coming out of
Silicon Valley. I make my living implementing, extending
and helping others skillfully use those innovations.
My
high tech career in the 80's with Up & Running Systems (a Macintosh systems integrator) meant regular
pilgrimages to San Francisco for the January MacWorld at
the Moscone Centre. I fondly recall Sculley's visionary Knowledge
Navigator video, an awesome party thrown by Claris when
Bill Campbell was president, and Timothy Leary at the
Digital Art Be-In. Up & Running really did things
right with the Mini-MacWorld's we provided clients on
our return to Ottawa.
In
the 90's my career moved from personal computers to high
end workstations and system engineering. And now, in
July 2000, I'm in Silicon Valley again, on the leading
edge of e-learning.
Free
E-Learning
For
the last 3 or 4 months, in the spirit and idealism of
the 60's, I've been imagining a day when learning will
be free. These imaginings have been fueled by:
Follow
The Free
I
found Kevin Kelly's book "New Rules for the New Economy - 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected
World" well, radical. Rule #4 is Follow the Free. In Kelly's words "As
resource scarcity gives way to abundance, generosity
begets wealth. Following the free rehearses the
inevitable fall of prices, and takes advantage of the
only true scarcity: human attention... Each human has an
absolute limit of 24 hours per day to provide attention
to the millions of innovations and opportunities thrown
up by the economy. Giving stuff away captures human
attention, or mind share, which then leads to market
share."
If
we apply this rule to e-learning there ought to be free
e-learning. Free e-learning would be an incredible boon
to those seeking to enhance their skills &
knowledge. I decided to search and find out.
If
you really want "free" try the Webmonkey
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey.
Webmonkey is a web
developers resource site. You can get great tutorials
there on seven different web areas - authoring, design,
multimedia, e-business, programming, backend, and jobs. One
of the best things about this site is their sense of
humour.
Webmonkey is a good place to ask yourself;
"Would I mind taking learning with advertising in
it?" Personally, I have mixed feelings, but having
tried the
free e-learning available at webmonkey I'd have to say
it can be done. Its like TV, I'd rather there were no
ads but...
KnowledgeNet (www.knowledgenet.com)
has some excellent free
Information Technology e-learning. Click
Demos on the Main page and try the KnowledgeNet
Interactive demo. I particularly like their use of Macromedia Flash to add rich audio and animation
components to the e-learning.
Eloquent
http://209.157.169.126/solutions/index.htm
sees
themselves more in the corporate presentations and
communication business than e-learning but for those who
like traditional lecture as a mode of learning Eloquent
is great. I think Eloquent's web-based integration of
PowerPoint slides with speaker talking head and a
running text transcript is slick. I also like the way
the transcript of the lecture is searchable and can be
sped up or slowed down without affecting the auditory
pitch of the speakers voice. Speeding up lets you
shorten the viewing time of a presentation, if English
is your second language you can slow it down to a more
comprehensible speed. You must download the Eloquent
Presenter plug-in available at this link but once you do
try out some of the examples provided. The Executive
Briefing by Geoffrey Moore on ideas in his book Gorilla
Game is a good one to try. Eloquent
was recently named one of the Bay areas fastest growing
companies.
For
those of you who are trainers or teachers or educators
looking for free e-learning
I recommend the learning seminars provided by the Global
Educator's Network www.vu.vlei.com/GEN.
The Global Educators' Network is an international forum
that brings together communities of educators around the
planet. GEN seminars provide a powerful means for
sharing ideas and leveraging experience and expertise in
e-learning models and methods.
Free
E-Learning Business Models
In
thinking about e-learning business models, "free e-learning" presents a conundrum. How do you make
money if you give it away? How can "free" lead
to
commercial
value?
Talk of generosity, of information that wants to
be free, and of virtual communities is enough to make
any business person scoff at youthful new age
idealism.
But as Kevin Kelly points out, "The most popular
operating system for web server workstations is a
product called Linux, a Unix-compatible program that was
originally written by Linus Torvalds, and given away for
free.
Hundreds of software engineers volunteer their time and
expertise to refine and improve Linux, and to keep it
free. The engineers don't get paid in money, rather they
get better tools than they can buy, tools that can be easily
be tweaked by them for maximum performance, tools
superiour to what they can make alone, and tools that
increase in network value, since they are
given away."
And
of course even in the eighties we had shareware. The
shareware model is pretty straight forward. Thousands of
software applications written for all kinds of uses are
available on the net for free. Download whatever software
you
want, try it out, and if you like it send some money to
the author. A naive business model? Dozens of
entrepreneurs have become millionaires using it.
Mircrosoft
gives away its Internet Explorer web browser. Netscape
also gives away its browser, as well as its source code.
And of course, Sun gave away Java free, sending its
stock up and creating a whole industry around Java
application development. Pricing a product as free leads
to auxiliary services costing money.
Have
any of the e-learning providers adopted free e-learning
as a business model?
I
think the best current example is notHarvard.com
(www.notharvard.com).
NotHarvard.com calls their business model eduCommerce.
EduCommerce is the use of free online education to
create closer client relationships, build stronger
brands, and increase revenues - a kind of e-learning
meets e-CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
proposition.
Specifically,
notHarvard.com creates and designs turnkey,
client-based, online learning centres that feature free
classes taught by experts. The idea is for clients to
build compelling educational content that gives their
customers a reason to visit often and stay on-site
longer. The client has a chance to build brand and
create a more intimate relationship with its customers,
while marketing goods and services in a permission-based
environment.
In
January of this year, notHarvard.com launched
Metrowerks' (a Motorola company) online university,
CodeWarriorU.com (www.codewarrioru.com)
. To date, the site has over 25,000 students. In
addition to teaching CodeWarriorU students how to
program in C++ and gain other valuable skills, the
university site is driving revenue by giving users a
context in which they can both learn about the product
and make purchases when appropriate.
Building
a Free E-Learning Course
I
just finished an e-learning course called DWeb -
Designing Web Based Training. This course was 100%
on-line. I never met the instructor or my fellow
learners face to face. Participants included learners in
South Africa and
someone in Smithers, B.C. The goal of DWeb is to design
your own on-line course. Learning outcomes include a
concept map and instructional design template
of an e-learning course. I designed a course I call
"Experiencing E-Learning" with the intent of
having it be a free course. I thought it might be
interesting to publish the concept map and instructional
design template and invite anyone interested, to
collaborate with me in creating it.
The
Concept Map for "Experiencing E-Learning" can
be found at www.techbc.com/FreeMap.htm,
and a text based description at www.techbc.com/FreeElearn.htm.
If you are interested in freely collaborating on the
creation of this course with me let me know via e-mail: stacey@techbc.ca
OK,
well now that I've shared my homework with you...
Try
E-Learning Yourself
If you got this far and you haven't
followed any of the links, now's a good time to explore.
It's the dog days of summer for you too and I'm hoping
that those
of you who have been wondering what e-learning is like
will actually take the time to try some out. Set aside
30 minutes, kick the tires and take e-learning for a
test drive so to speak.
In
Conclusion
I
am a bit surprised at the companies and organizations
featured in this exploration of free e-learning. Kelly
sees his "Follow The Free" rule as
bi-directional. "If one way to increase product
value is to make products free,
them many things now free may contain potential value
not yet perceived. We can anticipate the eruption of new
wealth on the frontier, by tracking down the free."
If that is true perhaps one of the e-learning providers
featured will emerge as a major player in the new
e-learning economy.
End
Notes
A
search on the phrase "free e-learning"
generated 5680 hits on Yahoo.
As fate would have it this
article on "free e-learning" was written in a
Santa Clara Marriott hotel room facing, of all places,
Freedom Circle road. That I should find myself on
Freedom road while writing about free e-learning was
bewitching.
For
a more traditional perspective on pricing e-learning you
might want to consider the Price of E-Learning? survey
currently being conducted by the Masie Centre, http://geyser.masie.com/ss/wsb.dll/1/july2000.htm.
This survey explores issues related to price comparing a
traditional classroom course with an e-learning version
of the same thing. Would you pay more or less for
the
e-learning version? What are the parameters of an
e-learning course that add value and hence increase
price?
Stuart
Skorman, founder and CEO of e-learning portal
HungryMinds.com was a no show as the Opening Keynote for
Syllabus. Word has it he is getting out
of
the education technology and learning space. Even
e-learning has dotcom casualties in the market
shakedown.
Several of my previous columns (see Archives
link at the end of this column), tracked DigitalThink (Nasdaq:
DTHK). On July 6 DigitalThink announced
the purchase of Arista Knowledge Systems, a web-based
learning management provider. They followed that
announcement with another, on their alliance with EDS
that could result in revenues of $150 million for the
company. Investors excited by these two deals drove
DigitalThink's stock up nearly 50 percent to 51 7/8 from
a close of 35 on July 5. Oh yes, there are also dotcom
successes.
Paul
Stacey is the Director of Corporate Education and
Training at the Technical University of British
Columbia, a long time education professional in the high
tech private sector, and an e-learner.
Contact: Paul
Stacey
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