July 27, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Fall 2002 Vol. 11 No. 3
The Transformation of Educational Publishing:
The Emergence and Growth of a Teacher-Centered, Learning-Object
Environment
By Louis C. Pugliese
Some people would have us believe that the technology itself is the answer to all of education’s ills. “Just get the distribution right,” they say, “and everyone will have access to the best learning materials.” The truth is that if technology alone appears to be the answer, then perhaps we’re not asking the right questions. But technology, while it provides a means of distribution unthinkable even a decade ago, must be combined with the right content in the right format and developed with close cooperation of the education community.
Next Generation E-learning Environments
The boom in e-learning on the Internet has, so far, been unable to significantly enhance our nation’s education and training infrastructure. Despite advances in technologies and adoption of digital content standards, the e-learning industry has largely failed to achieve the promise that innovative instructors and institutions, corporations, and government agencies had envisioned.
Why? Outmoded supply-oriented, text-based approaches to a “one-size-fits-all ” homogeneous learning model, proprietary technology solutions, linear telecourses and online courseware that characterize the current e-learning industry, have been expensive solutions which inhibit the academic achievement that new technology originally sought to support. Most important, these systems also take control out of the hands of teachers and prevent them and their institutions from locating,evaluating, selecting, acquiring, and aggregating Web-based learning objects. Reusable modules of digital information are the building blocks of e-learning content that learners access to achieve the promise of “anytime, anyplace, at-any-pace ” learning.
With significant enabling technologies and tools increasingly in place, decreased costs of storage and bandwidth, and student-to-computer ratios at an all- time low, the market is at a “tipping point ”— the front end of a dramatic inflection point in the market that is setting the stage for the transformation of publishing in the next decade. The education market is indeed poised for the development of a demand-oriented world where instructors and institutions can evaluate, buy, or sell digital learning content, products, and services with ease and security. In addition, growth in this next-generation learning environment will allow public television (PTV) producing stations, PTV program distributors, and commercial publishers to sell their content, thus avoiding the cost of direct contractual relationships with each buyer while assuring that their proprietary content will be securely distributed.
Learning Objects Defined
Let’s look closer at the concept of the “learning object.” An object is a generic term for reusable data or application chunks.
- Learning objects are chunks (core components)of data about curriculum,instruction,and
assessment objects.
- Curriculum objects will mean statements of expectation of what students
should know, value, and be able to do at target ages, similar to an Individual
Education Plan (IEP).
- Instructional objects will mean plans for student learning broken down
into the hierarchy of course, unit, lesson, activity, and assignment.
- Assessment objects are assignments broken down into specific items, each intended to trigger student work, which, in turn, is assessed by a scoring rubric, to produce a graded result.
Only by documenting definitions and relationships of key terms in commonly understood language can technical specification efforts such as the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), Instructional Management System (IMS), and others — known as SCORM, IEEE, LOM — be used for global learning efforts.*
* These terms reference content and technology interoperability standards; they are reference points designed to provide “information about information ” in order to help disparate technology and content systems talk to each other.
The Future of Content
According to Content Critical, a 2000 study by the University of California, Berkeley, printed content — books, magazines, newspapers, and other forms of commercial and institutional print — represents only 0.003 percent of all content published annually in the world. The vast majority of content in the world can be found on computer disks. That means that for every word in print there are 30,000 words published on computers, as well as rich resources of primary source pictures, text, and rich media.
Now, more than ever, content — and most important context facilitated by extensive connections to state-mandated learning objectives — is critical to the success of people and organizations. The cornerstone of Internet publishing is based in communication. The cornerstone of education is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time for the right end-user/learner experience. In order for these vast resources to be made available, and to be put in curricular context, a marketplace, a distributed architecture, and a content management system are needed where instructors, schools, and districts can evaluate, buy, or sell digital learning content. Today, more than ever, teachers are requiring content, contextualized to local required learning objectives, in order to reach a growing, more diverse classroom.
“Studies have shown that a quality document can
cost $4,000 to get ready for publication. Think about it. That report on your
desk probably cost more than the computer sitting beside it.”
—Content Critical
The First Coordinated Effort
Advances in PC-based multimedia technology, plummeting costs in storage memory and networking infrastructures, Web communications tools, and e-learning software standards have created near universal adoption of technology-enabled learning models across K–16 institutions. Collaborative efforts between governmental, educational, and commercial enterprises to specify and adopt e-learning content metadata and interoperability standards (known as IMS 1 IEEE, 2 Dublin Core3, and SCORM4), and initiatives by the media and technology industries for specifying digital rights management standards (known as XMCL 5), are receiving industry-wide acceptance. Despite these successes, however, the e- learning industry remains ineffective because these technologies alone have not made it possible to achieve the promise that innovative instructors and institutions, corporations, and government agencies had envisioned. An environment does not yet exist where teachers can develop even the most rudimentary collections of basic learning materials tied to state standards and learning objectives. Simply put, the industry will soon reach the position of “empty pipes ” with no compelling objects for learning available.
Despite the advancement and growth of new technologies and the enthusiasm among publishing organizations who see a future in a wide variety of disaggregated intellectual property, the e-learning industry’s business models prevent market participants from effectively maximizing their return on investment or achieving educational value. Teachers and students need access to a wide array of e-learning content, but they cannot easily locate, evaluate, select, acquire, or aggregate rich media content from multiple proprietary sources. With standards and technology in place, and with dwindling supply-side economics of basal publishing, a more efficient and effective industry learning-object model is needed to connect consumers and suppliers and to stimulate the rapid growth and interchange of digital learning materials and related tools to make these materials useful in the classroom.
The Transformation of the Gutenberg World
The proprietary nature of today’s e-learning content solutions requires each vendor to invest in expensive direct-selling channels. Expensive product development, especially in outdated public television broadcast models, plus high marketing costs, have resulted in low-price/low-margin business scenarios. Virtually no PTV distributors and e-learning vendors are achieving a rate of return that supports a growing long-term business. Traditional education textbook publishers as well as newer direct-to-digital publishers have faced similar challenges in this market environment.
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onCourse: A National Solution
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It is envisioned that onCourse will be delivered through a variety of digital networks, including the Internet, enhanced television, wireless broadcasting, and other such broadband technologies developed to disseminate a wealth of learning objects, digital content, and services. It is the intention of the developers that onCourse will provide a powerful, customizable platform for local educational users and institutions to access content appropriate to and consistent with the educational needs and values of the local users. These services will help public broadcasting stations build value and more directly serve the educational stakeholders within their communities, while satisfying the competitive demands of national and local educational media and service providers. Through these services, onCourse can offer a highly customized, interactive experience grounded in standards and proven methodologies that distinguishes itself in the emerging digital education marketplace through the unique social capital and non-commercial, educational relationship that already exists between local educational and public broadcasting institutions. Over time, it is the intention of onCourse to develop business strategies that encompass research and development of services and products addressing both formal and informal educational needs. This might include content production relationships with public and private collaborators, formal as- |
However, initial market research suggests that onCourse targets two specific markets: teacher resources and adult distance learning. Specifically, public broadcasting can create a differentiated offering for teachers/community college professors (K –16) and administrators with high-quality digital materials and practical training that is linked to the use of those materials. Despite significant movement in the integration of technology into schools and curricula, e-learning has been unable to realize its potential to meet the challenge and the promise of technology-based programs. Proprietary solutions, typical in today’s education environment, have been expensive and inhibiting to the growth and maturation of Internet-enabled education and have largely failed to produce a tangible return on investment. In a world of “Jeffersonian-based content ” the lack of adequate content management systems prevents teachers and their institutions from locating, evaluating, selecting, acquiring, and aggregating Web-based learning objects. For more information, including a list of partners, access the onCourse Web site at: www.oncourse.org. • |
sessment
and certification of educational products by accredited institutions,
asset management services across a variety of broadband technology platforms,
user and institutional support systems and other collaborative opportunities
that develop through technological development and innovation.
Over the past two years, therefore, the nation’s public television stations have been preparing to make their programs and curriculum materials in science, math, and other topics available to schools across the country. The project — in cooperation with teachers and their school systems — is called onCourse and is designed to provide a wealth of learning objects, available over the Internet. (See “onCourse: A National Solution”.)
Reusable modules of digital information are the building blocks of e-learning content that learners access to achieve the promise of “anytime, anyplace, at-any- pace,” learning.
With no platform for disaggregation, digitization, metadata tagging, and distribution in place, publishers have set up their own shops on the Web, hoping that teachers and learners will purchase their content in the future. With significant industry movement toward a learning-object publishing economy, onCourse will seek to create the first real platform where K – 12 institutions and supply-side vendors, starting with PTV affiliates and distributors, can achieve the potential that Web-based e-learning promises. This new model will be designed, n the long run, to support a marketplace of services designed to provide effective and efficient distribution of a wide array of standards-based digital learning objects and simple management tools that can be integrated with a variety of standards-based learner management systems.
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Book Describes Learning Objects According to Wiley, learning objects “...may provide the foundation for an adaptive, generative, scalable learning architecture ...[wherein both ] teaching and learning as we know them are certain to be revolutionized”(Wiley, p. 20). Like David Wiley, other scholars — David Merrill, Michael J. Hannafin, Brenda Bannan-Ritland, and Andrew S. Gibbons — present a range of ideas that include constructivist thought, cognitive theory, and a taxonomy of learning objects. Mimi Recker (and others) discuss “collaborative filtering”— providing context-sensitive discovery and recommendation of appropriate learning objects to the right person at the right time. Read an excerpt from the book at http://reusability.org/read/. Order this 298-page softbound book for $29.95US from AIT 's online catalog at www.ait.net. |
Editor
David A.Wiley has brought together educational experts who define the
term “learning objects” in his book, The Instructional
Use of Learning Objects, published by the Agency for Instructional
Technology (The foundation for the development of an effective learning-object model designed for e-learning distribution must meet the following key functional requirements:
- Enable school-oriented distribution by providing an efficient and effective
mechanism for teachers, learners, and institutions to locate, evaluate,
select, acquire, aggregate, and manipulate digital content from the full
range of publishing sources.
- Empower teachers to create solutions by providing them with tools to
assemble customized solutions, and/or the opportunity to access and even
purchase preconfigured packages from distributors and/or peer teachers —
comprised of virtually unlimited combinations of content, enabling software,
and services in a single, customized teacher-facing portal access site to
enable content collection transaction.
- Provide security in rights protection in order to track effectively and
accurately usage and origination of digital content, and protect intellectual
property rights by providing an easy-to-use means for the access and purchase
of learning objects from multiple vendors.
- Create a standard platform that allows supply-side content owners to maximize
their market opportunity and more readily achieve the critical mass needed
for reaching commerce goals and return-on-investment objectives, and an
opportunity to transition easily to a new learning-object based business
model.
- Develop a common learning-object vernacular — Standardized digital content
metadata tagging and indexing by learning objectives tied to individual
state standards as well as content evaluation and “peer review ” systems.
In addition, metadata tagging standards need to interoperate with other
common technology and content interoperability standards such as SCORM,
IMS, and others.
- Provide open access to a wide variety of content optimized for effective
instruction by teachers by providing them with access to the broadest array
of network-based e-learning materials, with the ability to evaluate, select,
integrate, and easily purchase content via a single payment transaction.
- Provide authentication and authorization services — Management of persistent,
controlled access to content and related technologies based on intellectual
property use rights granted by the owner and purchased by the consumer.
- Provide exchange services — Extensive exchange forums to make collections, supported by turnkey lesson plans, that allow school, district, regional, and national peer sharing across education resources. Exchanges require a quality control review system and an extensive rights management and tracking system (mentioned above) in order to consistently audit usage among all educator/consumers who offer collections across the school network. Exchanges promote a “Build Once — Use Many ” environment to create and exchange teacher-created resources contextualized to actual classroom conditions.
The cornerstone of education is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time for the right end- user/learner experience.
Technology alone will not meet the promise of quality education in the 21st century, of course. It still requires the considerable gifts that talented teachers, dedicated administrators, and involved parents give our nation’s students every day in the classroom and at home. But by working closely with the education community and focusing our efforts on creating a viable teacher-centered, learning-object environment, we can make the promise and potential of education technology come true, creating a powerful tool for learning.
Louis
C. Pugliese is CEO of onCourse, < www.oncourse.org
> a nonprofit digital education service provided by America's 350 public television
stations to the nation's teachers, parents, classroom students, and lifelong
learners. He has more than 17 years' experience in executive management, marketing,
and business development and was most recently the CEO of Blackboard, Inc.,
an online learning platform for the education market. Mr. Pugliese serves
on the Board for the Software Information Industry Association and is a member
of the Commission on Technology and Adult Learning and George W. Bush's National
IT Steering Committee. He and his family reside in Oak Hill, Virginia.