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Keynote Speakers
"Crowd Teaching"
by Professor Jon Dron, Athabasca University, Canada
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Abstract
If the crowd is wise, could it become a teacher? As one of
the roles of a teacher is to guide us to relevant learning
resources, the simple answer is 'yes' - many of us turn
first to Google or Wikipedia or somesuch crowd-enhanced or
crowd-generated system when we wish to learn something
new. Similarly there is a wealth of technologically
augmented social systems from forums to blogs to
newsgroups that can help us with feedback and support
without the aid of a single teacher or focussed learning
group. However, just because the crowd can teach doesn't
mean that it can teach well. The inevitable corollary of
the wisdom of the crowd is the stupidity of the mob. This
talk will explore approaches to both using and designing
social software that can help to reduce the likelihood of
mob stupidity and will delve into a diverse range of
issues such as getting pedagogical value out of social
navigation & recommendation, the significance of
trust-building, achieving a helpful balance of top-down &
bottom-up control and technical standards & models needed
to help the mob become wise.
Bio
Jon Dron is an associate professor in the
School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca
University, Canada as well as being a part-time senior
lecturer at the Centre for Learning and Teaching,
University of Brighton, UK. He is the author of Control &
Constraint in E-Learning: Choosing When to Choose, which
explores and describes fundamental principles of design
for educational social software. His doctoral thesis was
on self-organization in networked learning environments,
and he holds a Postgraduate Certificate in teaching and
learning in higher education, a Master's Degree in
information systems and a BA in philosophy. He is a
National Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy,
UK. He has published over 50 refereed articles on the
subject of e-learning, and written a number of social
applications for education. He was once a professional
musician.
"Designing Effective E-learning User Interfaces"
by Dr. David Guralnick, Kaleidoscope Learning, USA |
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Abstract
The user interface course is, of , a crucial part of a
user's experience with any piece of software. For
e-learning sites, interface design is particularly
critical, as the learning effectiveness and interface
design are substantially
intertwined. The focus on the need for highly-usable
interfaces in corporate e-learning has had an unexpected
negative effect on the quality of e-learning sites: in
their zeal to ensure that learners are never confused by
an interface, designers have tended to design simplistic
products that do not result in the learners actually
learning the needed skills. I suggest in this talk that
e-learning sites can involve complex tasks for the learner
yet still be intuitive and easy to use, if designers
follow an interface design process that is determined by
how people learn and the tasks they need to perform in the
program. This is in contrast to other approaches which
view the interface design process as separate from the
learning design. In this session, I will describe an
approach to e-learning interface design that focuses on
the goals, audience, and learning, and explore examples
and program demonstrations that reflect the success of
this approach.
Bio
David Guralnick holds a Ph.D. in computer
science from Northwestern University, where his work
synthesized concepts from the fields of computer science,
instructional design, and cognitive psychology. Dr.
Guralnick’s past work includes the design and development
of the first learn-by-doing simulation for corporate
training use, as well as the first e-learning-specific
authoring tool. Over the past 20 years, he has designed
and developed simulation-based training applications,
electronic performance-support systems, and specialized
authoring tools which allow non-technical people, such as
writers and trainers, to build e-learning sites. The
cornerstone of
Dr. Guralnick's design philosophy is the concept of
content-driven, goal-driven design - using the
information and the needs of the end-users, rather than
the technology, to lead the design process.
Dr. Guralnick is president of New York-based Kaleidoscope
Learning and is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia
University. His work has been featured in Wired magazine,
Training magazine (as an Editor’s Choice), and the Wall
Street Journal, and he is the recipient of numerous
e-learning design awards. He is also chair of the
e-learning group for the New York chapter of ASTD, the
American Society for Training and Development, chair of
the International Conference on E-Learning in the
Workplace, and president of the International E-Learning
Association.
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