mobile

Learning Portfolio Showcase at McMaster University

Posted on by Jon K.

The day surrounding the culmination of a significant portion of my work around the learning portfolio at McMaster this year was the Learning Portfolio showcase.

In the morning, Randy Bass gave a talk about where learning might be going – I’ve embedded it here to provide some context for how our university is framing the discussion.

As usual, Randy gave a great talk, this is my second (maybe even my third) time listening to Randy speak and it’s well worth the investment of time. In the afternoon, there was more discussion around the use of the Learning Portfolio – from potential employers, from faculty, from staff and from students. Below is a short overview of some of the things we’ve learned.

One of the  big things I’ve learned this year is that the tool we’re using (D2L’s ePortfolio tool) really dictates how things get done. It would be nice to have a timed reflection option (currently we use Quizzes for this process – and that’s got problems in and of itself), it would be nice to allow students to act as teachers in certain contexts – dictated by the instructor of the course. I know that the tool is getting an upgrade, but the upgrades can’t come soon enough. Once we can use the ePortfolio app (and that’s not D2L’s fault, we can’t use it because of the method of single-sign on that we use) that will change some contexts, but maybe not all.

With all the statements about student-centred learning, faculty are asking for the ability to simplify access to ePortfolio content. I can see some benefit in the K-12 market as well for this behaviour (as much as I don’t particularly like it). If faculty are to guide students in good reflection, they should be able to randomly select someone (maybe blindly select from a group of people).

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My Internet Vacation

Posted on by Jon K.

So for the last seven days I went on a vacation with the family. It was also an unintended vacation from the Internet, which really was an interesting exercise. I usually check e-mail, update the blog and do other miscellaneous tasks. I decided at the last minute to leave the laptop at home… and I didn’t miss it. Of course, I had over 200 e-mails to clear out yesterday between my three e-mail accounts (I know, I know, not that big a deal). I also did use my iPod Touch in the Orlando airport (thank you free wifi) an hour before the plane departed, and I did try out the iPad in the Apple Store in the Florida Mall (underwhelmed). There was a couple of times where I wanted the Disney World app (which tells you wait times, character locations and other information tidbits) or the weather forecast for the day, but ultimately, I didn’t require it. In fact the two Internet addicts I live with were jonesing for YouTube and Facebook more than I was missing e-mail, twitter and everything else I connect to on a daily basis. It was kind of pleasant not thinking for a while.

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User Experience (UX) and LMS Systems

Posted on by Jon K.

I was actually searching for something else, but found this Prezi presentation about User Experience and LMSs in a mobile environment. While the presentation suffers from what a lot of Prezi presentations suffer from, a motion sickness induced ala Blair Witch Project, and I’m still wondering what the hell Banksy has anything to do with it, the presentation is a good one content-wise. I’m left with one of the few things about PowerPoint that I do like, annotation in the notes panel.

Either way, the presentation brings up a couple of ideas that maybe one might take into consideration when designing spaces for mobile learning. While North America as a whole, and Canada in particular is lagging far behind other countries in cellphone use and 3G networking, LMSs seem to be even slower to ensure that their spaces are mobile friendly. Desire2Learn does a good job of this, and browsing our D2L based site through my mobile browser generally works pretty well. I can’t say the same for WebCT or Blackboard CE. I don’t know how much work I’d want  to do in a mobile platform, but a quick check of some areas and I’m happy enough. Which is where the presentation falls a bit short – it seems that it expects users to act as if they are in front of a laptop or desktop computer… which to state the obvious they aren’t. I certainly suspect that while they’ll have similar habits, their experience being different will dictate that they act differently in a mobile platform. I think this is an area that needs further investigation, but I’m glad some people are at least looking into the idea.

Repeatedly the presentation suggests that scrolling is bad. One of web designs enduring myths is that of the page fold, where people won’t scroll down or past the bottom barrier of the page. There’s a couple of articles that debunk this idea, coming down to the idea that you must have compelling content to get users to scroll. By default, even sometimes despite the content that is presented, e-learning sites have content that has a built in scroll factor for users. They may not read it, or learn from it, but they will scroll.

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