I’m honored to announce that I’ve been asked by Tom Abeles to guest edit a special issue of On the Horizon on the topic of distributed learning environments. The goal of the issue is to create a conversation representing a full spectrum of perspectives on the growing trend toward incorporating disparate tools and environments to create a learning environment rather than using a monolithic LMS. Obviously, this covers a wide swath of territory, ranging from integrating individual tools into a unified LMS all the way to incorporating a multiple SaaS sites developed and hosted by different people and aggregated into a PLE (or not). I’m looking for common threads about real-world experiences, goals, and challenges. Who is doing what now and why? What are the real-world paths to change in universities? What are the challenges?
All to often these sorts of conversations are segregated into groups, e.g., the incrementalists don’t socialize with the revolutionaries, the implementors don’t socialize with the theorists, etc. My hope is that we can get past those divisions and start identifying common ground where immediate experimentation and collaboration can move forward. I’d also like the issue to give anyone in a university who is thinking about these issues an accessible and multi-faceted overview.
I’m looking for the following types of contributors:
- Teachers or students who can share constructive feedback based on first-hand experience in a distributed learning environment
- Application developers who can talk about user experience, data integration, or other challenges that they have dealt with when integrating two or more teaching and learning tools
- University administrators or policy makers who can described what they learned through their experience making institutional decisions about potential distributed learning environment projects
I’ve been asked by a couple of potential contributors whether the articles will be available in an open access repository. While On the Horizon is not itself open access, it has a fairly liberal copyright policy that allows authors to republish their work. I am going to encourage participants to do so in some sort of organized form. (I’ll work out the details collaboratively with the group of authors once they are selected, but my current inclination is the publish the articles as a collection in Connexions.)
Please pass this information on to anyone who you think might be interested in contributing. If there are any questions, feel free to email me: michael dot feldstein at oracle dot com.
Here’s the full text of the call for papers:
Call for Papers
On the Horizon
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/oth.htm
Special Issue on Distributed Learning Environments
Contacts:
Special Issue Editor: Michael Feldstein: michael.feldstein@oracle.com
Editor: Tom Abeles, tabeles@gmail.com
Purpose: This issue will explore emerging models for supporting online learning and the transition from the current LMS environments. The issue will cover current real-world implementations and models under development based on anticipated technology development and institutional change.
Background
For over a decade, the monolithic Learning Management System (LMS) has dominated education’s online learning environment. During that time, both online and blended education have grown explosively, to the point where they are mainstream and vital components of the educational offerings provided by many universities today. The LMS appears to have been one enabler of that success.
However, the LMS model is being challenged by more distributed models of learning environments, ranging from incremental enhancements such as allowing students from one institution to move into another institution’s LMS via Shibboleth, to implementing more radically decentralized models where information from disparate learning tools is aggregated for each learner in a Personal Learning Environment (PLE). At the same time, we see LMS platforms evolve to support a wide range of mature and developing interoperability standards, ranging from RSS to IMS Tool Interoperability (TI) to Java Content Repository (JCR). All of these trends suggest that the dominant model for education online learning environments is about to change.
But how will it change? What are the institutional, pedagogical, technological, and generational forces that will decisively narrow the world of future possibilities into the smaller world of probabilities? In this issue, we will examine the question of how online learning environments and institutions of higher education are likely to co-evolve over the next five years. Papers on any facet of this question are welcome. Preference will be given to those that are grounded in some real-world implementation experience and/or a cogent theory of organizational change.
Proposals
Length: 100- to 200-word abstract
Other Requirements: Please include references to any writing or other presentations you have made on the topic. (References are not included in the word count.)
Due Date: April 1st, 2008
Notice of Acceptance: May 1st, 2008
Blog Posts
As an intermediate step between acceptance of the proposal and publication of the final paper, authors will be expected to publish a blog post describing their paper topic on e-Literate and will also be expected to respond to reader comments and to each other’s posts.
Length: 250-500 words
Due Date: Exactly publication schedule to be announced, but authors should be prepared to have their posts ready for publication by June 1st, 2008.
Full Articles
Format: Up to 5,000 words plus abstract, keywords, footnotes and references. Essay form submitted as a Microsoft-compatible attachment. Links to the web are encouraged.
Draft Due: September 1st, 2008
Final Feedback Provided: November 1st, 2008
Final Draft Due: January 15th, 2009
Contacts:
Dr. Tom P. Abeles, editor
On the Horizon
612 823 3154
Michael Feldstein, guest editor
Oracle Corporation
818-817-2925
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