The Edge: Getting The Most Out of E-Learning

Purdue uses data to help retain students

2006-02-24T14:20:00.000-05:00

Excellent Article from eSchoolNews:

Purdue uses data to help retain students

K-12 districts could take a page out of this playbook...

Officials analyze CMS information for early warning signs of failure
By Robert Brumfield, Assistant Editor, eSchool News
Purdue University officials are using data captured by the school's course management system (CMS) software to predict which students are in danger of failing or dropping out of school. Officials plan to use this information to develop an early-intervention system that will help retain students and keep them on track for graduating.
February 24, 2006—Like many universities, Purdue University in Indiana uses a course management system (CMS) to extend classroom instruction to the web.
Though the system can be, and is, used to conduct exclusively online classes, professors at Purdue more often use the scalable system to support and add value
to traditional classroom activities by offering further instruction, quizzes, discussion boards, and other materials for more than 2,300 courses.
But unlike their peers at most other schools, Purdue University officials are trying to use the regular reporting functions of their CMS to improve student retention, too. By measuring the amount of time students spend in web-based classroom activities and using other simple metrics provided through the software's basic functionality, Purdue officials believe they have identified the strongest indicators of student failure.
Officials have yet to turn their findings into a full-blown intervention program, but they're optimistic that one could be on the way.
About 90 percent of students at Purdue use the CMS in three or more classes, a number that Bart Collins, director of Purdue's digital content and instructional development center, called "extremely high" when compared with most other universities.
Collins said the university has analyzed some CMS student usage data from last year and has begun to examine the full range of usage data in the system. His department, in collaboration with Purdue's admissions department, is planning to develop automated triggers that alert faculty and students to brewing problems long before they otherwise would have been noticed.
"We're trying to see how useful these data are for helping understand student factors that are important to the university," Collins said. "Student retention is very important to universities."
Collins said the system has been good at measuring indicators that students are not working to complete their assignments. These data, he said, have proven especially useful as a predictor of student achievement when combined with student data already on hand that explain a student's academic history. Such pre-enrollment indicators include any information the university has about a student's scores on standardized tests, grades from high school and other previous institutions, and other information generally available to administrators.
The standard student data are combined with the observational data gathered through the course management system to identify a student's academic engagement relative to his or her peers. Though it might seem obvious that students who do their homework are more likely to achieve greater academic results than those who do not, administrators are excited about having some measurable--rather than anecdotal--way to account for that difference, thanks to observational figures pulled from the CMS.
"By virtue of having real-time data that ... function as an index of whether or not a student is really attending class" or doing what is required of him or her, the information can be measured to determine how likely students are to drop out, Collins said.
"Are they logging in? Are they doing the work that their teachers want? You can get a pretty good idea looking at usage patterns. We're learning how students are engaging the system relative to others in their class," he said.
Purdue's Collins said administrators, as well as students, stand to benefit from such a system. Any intervention system that helps retain graduates, he said, improves the university's standing--and that attracts more students.
"We want to make a good-faith effort to ensure the academic success of the students that come here. That is the primary motive. It doesn't help us for you to fail. We want you to be successful," Collin said. "If there are simple things to do to help ensure your success, to all of our benefit, then we would like to do them. It's often difficult until it is too late to know. You want to help the students when they need the help most."
He concluded: "Earlier [intervention] is better."

Links:
Purdue University www.purdue.edu

InfoSource: Integrating Technology and Education: www.howtomaster.com

Gloria's KinderBlog: What is Technology?

2006-01-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

Gloria's KinderBlog: What is Technology?

Great little poem on technology...

Technology Terminology by Gloria

I activate, operate, educate, and fascinate.
I hibernate, illustrate, calculate, and aggravate.
I enable you to see the world, travel the world, or hide from the world.
I let you communicate, participate, investigate, procrastinate.
I help you navigate, motivate, appreciate, coordinate,
I am your saving grace, database, change of pace, favorite place.
I am technology.

Online Hangouts for Teens

2006-01-27T09:39:00.000-05:00

MediaWise has just come out with a very helpful article about MySpace.com and other "online hangouts" that all parents and teachers should be aware of (or beware of, depending on your perspective).

A frequently hear the complaint that "integrating technology in the classroom" is so difficult because students don't have access to the internet. Though, without a doubt, not all students have access, still when you consider "Most of MySpace's almost 50 million users are under the age of 22." you have to know they are getting access somewhere.

As a 10th grander in Minneapolis put it ""If you weren't on MySpace, where would you make friends?"

Hmmm... makes you think.

Web-based Professional Development Strategies

2005-08-12T16:37:00.000-04:00

This article outlining the benefits of web-based professional development is so good there is nothing to add to it.

So, here you go: http://www.cord.org/web-based-professional-development-strategies/.

Teaching Kids How To Make Money

2005-02-03T13:00:00.000-05:00

How do you teach a child to make money anyway?

Best-selling author, educator, investor and entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki has come up with some solid answers.

Through The Foundation for Financial Literacy, Cashflow Technologies, is providing K-12 teachers with some powerful tools (free of charge to education institutions) for teaching young people the concepts of earned, passive and portfolio income.

Visit the Rich Kid, Smart Kid web site for free access to online and downloadable learning games, as well as classroom resources: http://www.richkidsmartkid.com, or click on the banner below:

Could the Quality of Your District Website Impact Funding?

2005-02-02T10:29:00.000-05:00

A new study by public relations assistant professor Pat Swann of Utica College indicates that most public school district web sites just aren't "making the grade".

The study evaluated the content and interactivity of 137 New York K-12 school district web sites and found that most are:

Hard to navigate
Full of obsolete information
Do not tailor information for specific audiences such as parents, volunteers, or students.

Particularly neglected were journalists - a critical audience for any organization that relies on taxpayer support. Only about 5 percent of district web sites attempted to package information for reporters, and none of them had an online press room.

Some of the suggestions the study makes for improving communication with the people who matter most are:

Include an e-mail link or "Contact Us" staff directory button on at least the home page, if not in the footer of each and every page on the web site.
Tailor site messages and content for "key publics", such as: students, parents, teachers and staff members, alumni, community residents, prospective employees, journalists, and volunteers.
Provide useable information for the media.
Use consistent navigational features: "home" buttons, search engines, site maps, etc. make a user's experience more welcoming and productive.
Minimize use of "off-site" links. Although they may be cool or useful they may simply take people away from your site and discourage relationship-building.
"Students should be treated as a public with unique informational needs..." (Hello, grant money!!) Opportunities should be in place for students to access academic support services (tutoring, homework hotlines, homework assignments, notes, etc.)

If you haven't figured it out yet many federal grants are depedent and/or strengthened by involving parent, the community and integrating technology into student learning on a continuous basis. Your quality of your district web site is a clear message of the level of your district's commitment to preparing children for the 21st century.

For access to the full study go to http://www.utica.edu/college/typology.

Freeze Out Spyware For Good!

2005-01-20T13:30:00.000-05:00

This is at least the second time I've heard a story like this so I should probably pass it along to all the techie-types.

I was on the phone with the IT Director of a K-12 school district the other day who was so incredibly amped by the solution he had recently implemented against spyware he could hardly sit still. We had been trying to get together on the phone for about five months and simply could never connect because he was spending about 70% of his time dealing with emergency spyware issues all over the district.

The solution to his problem was a software program called Deep Freeze. Apparently, this program records a kind of "golden image" of a computer's original configuration and resets it to that with every startup. From their website:

"Deep Freeze instantly protects and preserves original computer configurations.
Completely invulnerable to hacking, Deep Freeze makes computing environments
easier to manage and maintain. Each restart eradicates all changes and resets
the computer to its original state, right down to the last byte."

That's got to save a lot of gray hairs.

Visit their web site for more information: http://www.faronics.com/

How to Save Millions in Teacher Turnover Costs

2004-11-03T10:38:00.000-05:00

In an era of ever-shrinking budgets and appropriately persistent pressure to increase student achievement administrators are beginning to look at ways to reduce teacher turnover as a means of dealing effectively with both of these issues.

An incredibly compelling article by Dr. Harry K. Wong pegs the cost of losing a teacher at a conservative $50,000!

He goes on to say:

Each year, some 200,000 new teachers are hired. In urban schools, up to
17% of those teachers will leave after one year, and about 50% in all schools
will leave within five years.

Run the numbers on that and it becomes apparent that collectively urban schools are losing $1.7 billion each year and $5 billion over the first five years.

Documenting specific case studies he illustrates how a small investment in a New Teacher Induction Program can keep teachers around and pay for itself by many, many times.

He astutely points out that "Mentoring Is Not Induction" and details the "Elements of a Successful Induction Program"

When considering the options and costs of Induction and other Professional Development programs, e-Learning provides a very attractive solution.

See Dr. Wong's full article here: Save Millions - Train and Support New Teachers

How Are You Going To Get There If You Don't Know Where You're Going?

2004-09-21T09:41:00.000-04:00

Many of us have heard the old adage:

"Fail to plan,... plan to fail."

One of the keys to a successful e-learning program is to know ahead of time how you will define a successful program. How you define that for your organization will depend on what's important to your organization. For example:

A school district's cost for professional development for it's staff and faculty may normally be $50 per hour (once all costs are considered, i.e.: travel, teacher time, instructor time, etc.) So, if the district is able to reduce it's per hour cost to a specific target "cost per hour" then it may be able to deem it's e-learning intiative "successful".
Suppose a health care organization is experiencing an extraordinarily high turnover rate of 70% among new employees in one of it's departments. A "successful e-learning inititative" for them may mean measurably reducing the turnover rate (and it's attendant costs) to an acceptable level. Perhaps a simple, online pre-screening system would do the trick.

The key is to know what you want your result to be so that you can create the plan and expectations that will get you there.

Savings Through Learning Management: Does Your Organization Really Need a LMS?

2004-09-02T13:38:00.000-04:00

http://www.toytrunkrailroad.com/TTR990628.asp

In speaking with a Hospital Administrator recently he mentioned being under constant pressure to “do more and more with less and less”. I’m willing to bet he’s not alone.

Many industries, from health care to finance and banking; from manufacturing to transportation are experiencing the same pressures due to a legislative changes, a slowly recovering economy, technological advancement, global competition and other causes. The fact is, it’s a new world. All the time!

Here are just a few of the many ways an LMS (Learning Management System) can help your organization leverage scarce resources into savings, improved organizational efficiency and increased productivity:

Relieve administrative burdens: A well-designed LMS provides a way to automate enrollment in all training whether web-based or instructor-led (classroom style). The system handles wait-listing, tracks attendance, prints certificates, etc. instead of a valuable employee.
Effectively measure results and ROI: A good LMS instantly compiles training data in real-time providing detailed reporting on test scores, course completion, etc. Your staff doesn’t have to spend days assimilating and entering the data manually. It also means that measurement of Return on Investment has never been easier or more accurate.
Instantly deliver consistent, targeted, customized training organization-wide: Today’s superior LMS comes with an integrated, easy-to-use, Content Authoring Tool. Combined with the LMS itself you have the means to instantly deliver consistent, targeted, custom training and assessment to any particular employee, customer, department or location, or the entire organization and track the results. Some practical applications include new hire orientations, training on new products or business processes, annual reviews, and virtually anything else you can imagine.

Boosting Human Capital ROI with E-Learning

2004-08-30T09:32:00.000-04:00

http://www.toytrunkrailroad.com/TTR000619.asp

“Taken together, …career development and succession planning… represent the single greatest impact… on the financial performance of an organization.”

- Deloitte & Touche Human Capital ROI Study,
Creating shareholder value through people

A study conducted in 2002 by Deloitte & Touche demonstrated that an organization’s human capital practices “may account for as much as 43% of the difference between a company’s market–to-book value and its’ competitors’.”

Notwithstanding the fact that no two organizations are the same, they were able to identify that “…a small set of human capital practices are universally valuable in driving financial success.” Those practices are Managing talent, Rewarding performance and Communicating strategically.

Without question, e-learning provides the most cost-effective, most accessible and speediest way to implement two of those practices for organizations of any size. Those two practices are Managing talent and Communicating strategically.

Allow me to expound on the delicious possibilities of just one of these:

Managing talent

The Deloitte & Touche study goes on to say:

“In higher performing companies, all managers – from the top executives to the front-line supervisors – focus on three key practices:

· Identifying critical jobs and potential replacements for these jobs
· Identifying top performers and targeting them for retention, succession planning and career development
· Providing employees with multiple opportunities to develop their careers with the company

Taken together, these three career development and succession planning practices represent the single greatest impact that human capital practices can have on the financial performance of an organization.”

In fact, the numbers show that companies whose managers focus on these three key practices have a 19% to 38% higher market-to-book value versus their competitors.

Calculating ROI of Potential E-Learning Solutions

According to a Business Week article (March 1, 1999), Interim Services and Louis Harris and Associates conducted a survey that measured the cost of not mentoring employees and providing poor training. The article stated:

"Among employees who say their company offers poor training, 41% plan to leave within a year, vs. only 12% of those who rate opportunities excellent. High turnover isn't cheap. The survey pegs the cost of losing a typical worker at $50,000."

So, let’s imagine a hypothetical situation with numbers much more conservative than those above. Suppose your organization has 150 employees. Further suppose that only 20% plan to leave within a year and let’s say your cost of losing a typical worker is only half of what the survey above indicates, say $25,000:

Estimated Cost of Turnover
· 150 employees at 20% turnover = 30 terminations in a year
· Cash costs of termination is $25,000 per employee
· Total turnover cash costs per year: $750,000
· Note: These numbers do not take into account cost of loss of productivity, loss of sales and ramp-up costs for new hires.

Let’s say that you decide that it is not acceptable to needlessly lose $750,000 plus this year and therefore design a plan to retain your people. This plan calls for you to purchase a series of web-based, career development courses targeted to give your people the skills to be proficient in many different company positions and prepare your best people to take positions of leadership. In this case we’ll estimate high on the cost side:

Retention Solution Costs
· Web-based, soft skills training for all employees = $20,000
· LMS (Learning Management System) for tracking results of training = $10,000
· Total Cost of Solution per Employee = $200

Finally, let us assume that the implementation of this solution resulted in a 50% reduction in turnover:

Estimate ROI
· Turnover cost savings: 50% of $750,000 = $375,000
· ROI = ($375,000 - $30,000) / $30,000 = 1,150% Return on Investment

I’d say that’s a little better than your average mutual fund!

The potential return on web-based training is undeniable. Even in a worst case scenario if your solution retained only two employees, at a cost of $25,000 per employee lost, you’ve more than paid for the investment. Where the rubber really meets the road is when you consider that the true long-term effects on the value of the organization as a whole may be astronomical.

Choosing the Best Online Training Content for Your Oganization

2004-08-30T08:22:00.000-04:00

http://www.toytrunkrailroad.com/TTR010219.asp

Sometimes in life you have to take the good with the bad. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case when you are choosing online training content. A little forethought can help assure that you get the most “bang for your buck.”

Your challenge is three-fold:

1. Choose training content that imparts the skills that will assist your organization in achieving goals.

2. Make sure the content chosen is usable and accessible to the greatest number of students.

3. Confirm that the content can be delivered quickly and efficiently.

Some suggestions on what to look for from a study done by The E-Learning Competency Centre may be helpful to you in evaluating content:

• Completeness: cover what is needed in sufficient breadth and depth.
• Clarity: easy to understand.
• Appropriateness: up to date and credible.
• Effective Chunking: doesn’t try to fit too much all on one page or in one lesson.
• Navigation: simple, easy to see where you are, the less scrolling the better.
• Technology: takes available bandwidth into account, SCORM compliant, deals with multimedia easily.
• Technical Assistance: Do I need special hardware? What support is included?
• Learning Aids: Can I find what I need, when I need it?
• Use of Media: Graphics and audio add to the training, not take away.
• Assessment: Prescriptive testing capabilities can save lots of time normally wasted reviewing already familiar material unnecessarily.