Blog posts

Somehow, the word lurker has become associated with pejorative connotations of people taking from communities without giving back, of not contributing, of being selfish and feeding off the hard work of others. They are the free riders. However, is that truly the case? Would we consider silent participants in a meeting or at presentations lurkers?

A lurker might very well be giving back by performing better at their jobs, by sharing insights with others in the context of their daily work by using the learning gleaned from lurking. This is especially true of communities in enterprises. Since the give back is asymmetric and happens in a different context, this goes unnoticed.

The problem with calling it “lurking” makes everyone think negative thoughts. Like our community is full of Peeping Tom’s or other people with nefarious intent. People who don’t talk <strong>are</strong> still participating and learning – just in some non-obvious ways.

Lurking als Lernen: <em>“Lurking is not a problem, as long as lurkers are learning because enough material is created and shared by nonlurkers.”</em> <a href="http://etcjournal.com/2011/04/19/connectivism/" target="_blank">(Claude Almansi)</a>

Thus Kirschner, Sweller and Clark's paper is an important reminder for us to not carry Problem Based Learning (PBL) to its extreme. That is, while it has its strengths, learners often need a more direct approach in order to build a solid foundations before being presented with PBL.

With the title blaring, “<em>Why Minimal Guidance during Instruction Does Not Work”</em> rather than, <em>“Why Minimal Guidance during Instruction Does Not Work for Novice Learners,” </em>the authors almost seem to ignore that PBL is a necessity in order to promote deeper levels of understanding.

The paper relies heavily on Cognitive Load Theory, yet we have to realize that it is still a theory rather than a law.

Thus, both the authors and the constructivism movement are guilty of jumping on theories before they are fully understood.

<p>This is only possible by concluding that the only time necessary to create e-learning is that which is physically required to manipulate the tools to translate content onto the screen. &nbsp;That thinking applied to my strawberry crop would go something like this: &nbsp;</p> <p>I want us to start having strawberries, and I think we would benefit from producing about six quarts. &nbsp;I see that over at Edwards Berry Patch it takes about 5 minutes to pick a quart of strawberries. &nbsp;So since we need six, you should be able to get them for us in about a half hour. &nbsp;</p> <p>It’s utterly ridiculous; it ignores the fact that it took a year’s worth of effort to make that strawberry production possible. </p>

<p id="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" ondblclick="" onkeydown="" onkeypress="" onkeyup="" onmousemove="" onmouseout="" onmouseover="" onmouseup="" title="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" lang="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}">The Multi-SCO tool is designed more specifically for LMSs in that it allows you to take two or more individual SCORM-compliant modules created in Captivate and package them all together into one big module for your LMS.&nbsp; The tool creates a new imsmanifest.xml file that lists all the component modules in the package so that the LMS can build it's own menu of links in its SCORM player. Users just click these links to launch each lesson module.&nbsp; Each lesson can have its own TOC if desired, but the menu of links in the SCORM player is all you get for a TOC that shows all modules.&nbsp; That's the way SCORM was originally designed to work.</p><p id="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" ondblclick="" onkeydown="" onkeypress="" onkeyup="" onmousemove="" onmouseout="" onmouseover="" onmouseup="" title="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" lang="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}">&nbsp;</p><p id="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" ondblclick="" onkeydown="" onkeypress="" onkeyup="" onmousemove="" onmouseout="" onmouseover="" onmouseup="" title="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}" lang="function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}">The Captivate Aggregator on the other hand was designed to take multiple Captivate published outputs and merge them together in a single large project with a hierarchical merged TOC that listed the contents of all projects.&nbsp; I don't believe the original intention of the Captivate team was for aggregated projects to be used in LMSs but some Captivate developers have managed to get this to work by setting up all the individual projects as SCORMs and then hacking the imsmanifest.xml file to fool the LMS into thinking this was a single large SCO.</p>

Although they may seem horribly fake, past research has suggested that we react to them in the same ways we react to a real person: studies have suggested that we tend to be more comfortable when the virtual personality shares our gender and ethnic background, just as we are when we work with living humans. Now, a new study on virtual training instructors extends that to show that people work best with virtual systems that measure progress the same way that they do.