After getting a number of follow-up requests from the WebCT European Conference in Edinburgh, I decided to create a short Flash-movie which demonstrates the WebCT-Elgg integration.

The file can be found at:

http://www.aperto-elearning.com/files/elgg_demo.htm

The demo is best viewed on a 1024x768 or larger display, to minimize any scrolling.

For those interested, a PDF version of my presentation slides are also available for download from the conference site at:

http://gromit.webct.com/webct_europe_2006/Tu/Salari.pdf

Thanks to a note on Brian's blog, I attended a session by HP Researcher Scott Golder on his study of tags and social bookmarking on del.icio.us.

The talk was based on a paper which is due to appear in the Journal of Information Science.

Scott first gave background information on issues encountered when tags are defined by a community (ie. folksonomy vs. taxonomy):

• synonymy: using different tags for the same thing (tv vs. television)
  
• polysemy: a tag may have related senses (he gave the example of a window - either the hole in the wall, or the pane of glass)
  
• homonymy: a particular tag can mean different things, depending on context (eg. speaker, chair, apple)
  
• the 'basic level' problem: describing 'something' is related to the person's level of experience with that particular element. For example, a picture of a dog may be 'dog' to most people, but 'beagle' to a veterinarian.

In the analysis of the tags used to describe the bookmarks on del.icio.us, Scott found that they fell into 7 categories:

1. Identifying what or who it is about: topics of the bookmarked items. Tags consisted of common or proper nouns.
   
2. Identifying what it is: the kind of thing being bookmarked (eg. article, blog, book)
   
3. Identifying who owns it
   
4. Refining categories: these refine or qualify existing categories
   
5. Identifying qualities or characteristics: adjectives used according to the opinion of the bookmarker (eg. funny, scary)
   
6. Self Reference: identifying content in relation to the tagger (eg. mystuff, mycomments)
   
7. Task Organizing: information related to a task, used to group related information together (eg. jobsearch)

From this list, it can be seen that some tags are general, whereas others are very personal to the tagger and their experience. From an analysis of tag order, it appears to people use generally meaningful tags first (and these have the highest freqency across bookmarks), and more personal tags later. Therefore, analysis of the first few tags of a bookmark should give a good idea of the general topic of that link.

Scott also found that users' tag-lists varied greatly, and were not related to the number of bookmarks a particular user had. In one case, a user's number of tags increased steadily as their number of bookmarks increased, while another user's number of tags stayed level. This points to definite personal styles for tagging.

Another of his points related to usage of new tags. For example, I may have been doing some research on Africa, so I have tagged all of my bookmarks with that tag. However, a few months later, I decide that I need to be more specific, and add a country tag as well. This additional level of classification poses the following problems:

• I cannot search my old bookmarks for instances of the country tag
  
• Adding a country tag to my existing bookmarks (which could be in the hundreds) could be extremely onerous.

Finally, he found that tag proportions over time tend to be stable for a particular bookmark. This means that, after approx. 100 bookmarks for a particular URL, each tag's frequency is nearly a fixed proportion of the total frequency of all tags used. So for example, a particular URL may have the tag 'dog', which will have a frequency of 30% of all tags used for that bookmark, regardless of how many bookmarks are added and tagged for the URL.

The implication from this result is that "after a relatively small number of bookmarks, a nascent consensus seems to form, one that is not affected by the addition of further tags."

Some of the questions I am asking myself after the session are:

• Do I tag for myself or for others? In the case of bookmarking, it is mostly for myself, but what about tagging my blog entries - is it so I can find them more easily later and selectively filter, or do I tag to make it easier for others to find my information? And if I do tag for others, do I tag with a specific audience in mind, and does that intended audience then define to some degree the tags that I use?
  
• My own set of tags is evolving over time, based on my experiences. What is my responsibility for updating the tags of any previous content that I have tagged, should I decide to split a particular tag up into 2 or 3 different tags? On the one hand, the thought of inconsistency makes me uneasy. On the other hand, maybe I just have to accept the evolution of one's tag set, and consider the older tags as a snapshot of my state at that time.

How does an institution successfully increase and scale usage of social software across campus?

Any institution that has deployed a VLE for a number of years likely has a significant amount of usage by faculty and students (I can't recall the exact Gartner figures, but for North America, I believe around 50-60% of courses have some type of online presence.)

The good news about that number is that online learning is now mainstream. The bad news is that much of the online presence is very limited - maybe a syllabus, a couple of web pages, possibly some e-mail support. In other words, not very engaging.

Having all of these courses online now provides an opportunity to build on that user base, and to introduce them to new technologies, such as social and student-centered tools. As I wrote in a previous post, the first step is to make it as easy as possible to get started. If users are already in the VLE environment, that means automated sign-on and navigation between systems.

Once users are in the new system, what are they to do next?

Most social software is very flexible and unstructured, exactly the characteristics that make it so attractive in the first place. What then is the best way to expose students and faculty to these services?

I am reminded of two bits of information here - one from a few weeks ago, the other a few years old:

In Edinburgh, at the ePortfolio roundtable, one attendee described their University's experience with two systems. The first system was an 'empty shell model' which allowed students much flexibility in how they decided to use the features. The second was less flexible and provided more structure through the use of web forms. Students preferred the second system, which received significantly higher usage, because they simply did not know how to use the more flexible toolset.

My second example is from the early days of WebCT. Back then, when a new course was set up, the instructor simply saw a blank page when they logged on, along with some action buttons at the bottom of the screen. Again - the instructors had a lot of flexibility on how they decided to structure their courses, but most where overwhelmed with the choices and had no idea on how to begin.

As these tools are rolled out across a campus, some initial structure is inevitable, and there are a number of possibilities:

• 'soft structure', in the form of documentation, training and best practices. The issue here will be the ability to reach a significant number of users with existing resources.
  
• simplification or elimination of features - it may be possible to hide or disable some of the software features, to make users comfortable with a subset of functionality, and gradually re-introduce functionality in stages.
  
• templates and context - providing users with pre-populated content based on existing data, auto-populating communities that mirror academic structures, guiding users through the initial set-up steps online.

In all cases, the institution has a role in defining how these tools are to be used, and has the choice of suggesting vs enforcing. However, care must be taken that any enforcement of structure does not diminish the utility of the tools over current technologies.

Probably the most important point: users must be able to use these tools successfully in their initial attempts. It is much easier to introduce more complexity over time than to reverse a negative first impression created by an overly difficult system.

I am finally getting around to posting a summary of my experience at the WebCT European User Conference in Edinburgh last week. Blogging is obviously not yet second-nature to me - according to some feedback at the Northern Voice conference in February, it seems to take new bloggers a few months to get into a rhythm, so there is still hope for me.

Overall, the conference was a great experience (as all WebCT user events tend to be). The program is very user-driven, with many great presentations and insights from the participants. I particularly like the European event every year, as it brings together so many different cultures and voices, while still maintaining a cosy and manageable size (roughly 350 participants). The scheduling was also good, with decent breaks between sessions and at lunch to allow for unrushed interaction and discussion.

This was also my first event as a non-WebCT employee, so I spent a fair bit of time explaining what I was up to. Before the conference, I was actually not sure how my work would be received. I am certainly excited to be working on the Elgg integration, but would those in the WebCT world share that enthusiasm? Are people thinking about incorporating student-centered learning into their teaching practices? Is there an interest in using blogs, social linking, podcasting, or are these just buzzwords being bandied about by the early adopters?

The answer I received was a resounding 'yes'. I had a great turnout to my presentation, and approximately one third of the audience had experimented with blogging, podcasting or wikis in their teaching, which was very encouraging. I was also happy to see a diverse set of European countries represented in the audience (UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Eastern Europe, Finland, and possibly others I am now forgetting).

Many of the WebCT customers were interested in the integration with Elgg. Although Elgg itself was new to most of them, the idea of a seamless workflow from WebCT to a student-centered system was appealing.

In my presentation, I had contrasted the 'formal' learning of WebCT, and the 'informal' learning environment of Elgg. One member of the audience raised an interesting point: if these types of technologies are adopted by the institution, will they become more formal, or can they retain the loose structure which makes them such a good complement to the VLE?

I also attended an ePortfolio roundtable, which was quite enlightening, but I will post on that tomorrow.

There is an interesting discussion on Bill Fitzgerald's blog regarding the integration of three systems to form a cohesive learning environment: Moodle, Drupal, and Elgg.

The sample scenarios that Bill outlines in his post could also be applied to the WebCT-Elgg integration that I have been working on.

From a WebCT-customer perspective, I would make the following comments:

• many of the institutions running WebCT already have some type of portal system in place, so that infrastructure may overlap with the proposed Drupal use-case.
• one big issue at institutions is faculty-support. Many institutions are driving towards one main learning management system (be that Moodle, WebCT, Blackboard, Sakai, etc), so that the technology can be scaled across campus with existing resources. A few years ago, it would not have been uncommon to see installations of WebCT, Blackboard, Course In a Box, TopClass, all on the same campus, and all being supported to some degree. As usage on campus has been increasing, I have been seeing consolidation, and a move towards fewer systems.

I am not sure that institutions would roll out both Elgg and Drupal on a large scale (especially if a campus portal is already present) - not for technical reasons, but from a faculty support perspective. While I'm certainly an advocate for choice, the key is to successful scaling is to build upon successes over time. Spreading IT or Learning Technology staff over too many products means less personal help for faculty staff getting started using these new technologies, which in turn limits the ability to deploy widely on campus.

As I am sitting at YVR waiting for my flight to the UK for the WebCT European Conference, I am thinking about what differences there are globally in adopting the social technologies that I will be speaking about.

In my roles at WebCT, I was always fortunate to get feedback from a wide range of constituents, and there were certainly differences when comparing Australia, Far East, North America and Europe (unfortunately I did not have much interaction with Africa, Middle East and Latin- and South-American clients).

In particular, the Commonwealth countries (Canada, UK, Australia) were aligned with respect to their online programs, and the way they adapted to and used new technologies. Continental Europe tended to be more inwardly focused as countries, with local (and EU) products and technologies favoured over ones developed overseas.

Europe is certainly a hotbed of open source activity, with numerous products available in the LMS space (add to this the recent Open Source announcement from JISC). Someone mentioned to me that in some countries, budgets for capital purchases are handled separately from staffing, and it is often easier for universities to obtain funding for people than it is to buy products. I do not know whether this is an accurate representation (and I know that there are many, many factors to be considered), but it could influence the build vs. buy decision.

It will be interesting to follow the broader uptake in education of social networking, blogging, podcasting, etc, and whether the Open Source nature of many of the tools means a more rapid deployment in certain areas or types of environments.

The early adopters of these technologies certainly are present in all geographic areas, so in part their successes will play a key role in broadening usage.

It is good to see that open source solutions are generating some interest at the Blackboard user conference which kicks off next week in San Diego.

Matt Pittinsky's overview of the conference highlights a panel session on Open Source. A follow-up post mentions birds-of-a-feather sessions on Blogs, Podcasting, RSS and Wikis.

From my read of the information, Bb seems to recognize that open source e-learning can (and will) co-exist with commercial solutions on campus. The timing of the conference is unfortunate, as it overlaps completely with the WebCT European User conference which I will be attending. After all those years of wondering what goes on at a Bb event, this would have been my opportunity, but it's just not meant to be.

If anyone attends any of the open source sessions at Bb World 06, or sees any summaries posted, please do point them out to me.

I am very happy to announce that Curverider and Aperto are collaborating on an integration between the Open Source system Elgg and WebCT's product lines.

As is mentioned in the announcement, the collaboration brings together the robust eLearning framework of WebCT with the social networking and blogging tools provided by Elgg.

I am especially pleased that the integration demonstrates how innovation created in the Open Source world can be used in conjunction with products in the commercial space, to create a total solution which benefits the end user.

The integration provides a seamless transition for faculty and students as they navigate between Elgg and WebCT.

To me, the integration opens up a whole world of pedagogical possibilities - instructors can now easily take advantage of some really exciting emerging technologies:

• blogging
  
• podcasting
  
• social networking

Most importantly, Elgg allows instructors and institutions to operate outside the bounds of the individual course or section - learning groups can be created across multiple sections, multiple courses, and even across departments.

Over the coming weeks, I will be discussing how Elgg can be used effectively in conjunction with WebCT, and I would really like to hear from existing WebCT customers on what they are looking for.

I will also be demonstrating this integration at the WebCT European Users Conference in Edinburgh from Feb 27th to March 1st, so please track me down at the conference if you will be attending.

For the Elgg perspective, also have a look at annoucements on their site, and comments from Elgg's Dave Tosh.

Alan Levine makes a number of great points in one of his Latest
Blog posts, as he distills the discussions from the Northern Voice conference.

I think nearly everyone agrees that 'closed' blogs - ie. those which are limited to a single semester class - are bad, and the EduGlu
concept by D'Arcy Norman has a lot of merit if all the pieces can fit together.

The 'closed' blog option certainly would feel safe for the novice faculty and student, who have no experience with blogging. The EduGlu option gets all of the early adopters and tech-savvy folks excited about the possibilities.

So what about everyone else? To me, social software in education is still in the early-adopter phase. Faculty and students need to be shown a way to incorporate these technologies into their daily routines if we want the technology to be taken up more significantly.

How do you do this? Make it as easy as possible (from a workflow perspective as well as technologically) and clearly demonstrate the benefits. I also don't think we will get there in one go, and there won't be a one-solution-fits-all model. Some institutions will want to have a locally-hosted instance of their social software, while others will be happy with a hybrid or perhaps a completely outsourced solution.

One way to get more of the mainstream faculty exposed to social networking software is to harness those who already have a toe in the water of the elearning pond - in other words, the ones who are using some form of Learning Management System, be that open source (Sakai or Moodle) or commercial (Blackboard or WebCT).

By this, I don't mean to move the faculty off any of the above systems and completely into a social space, but instead show them how to use these tools in conjuction with what they are already used to. As they gain more experience and comfort with the new technologies, they could very well change how they teach and for example use a blog approach instead of their closed LMS discussion board.

This past weekend, I attended the Northern Voice Blogging conference in Vancouver. The conference consisted of 'Moosecamp' on Friday with informal sessions on various topics related to blogging, and then the main conference on Saturday.

I was particularly interested in the eLearning sessions, but was also keen to find out about other blogging initiatives.

Moosecamp on Friday kicked off with an Edublogger Hootenanny moderated by UBC's Brian Lamb (see here for notes.) Some of the main points that resonated for me were:

• Students should not be expected to have a different blog for each of their courses.
  
• Blogs should not just disappear after the semester has ended.
  
• How are teachers and students expected to interact with blogs - can they be expected to read 5 classes x 30 students = 150 blogs?

Saturday's eLearning session made some of the same points, but also raised issues relating to privacy, ownership of blog content, and location of blogs (university hosted vs. central service.)

All of the issues above are on my mind as I look at ways of tying these technologies into systems such as WebCT.