XplanaZine

An article this week about reduced giving by the public to universities drives home some realities that are affecting the development of the elearning technology space in Higher Education.

While giving for causes such as international affairs and religion was up, charitable donations to education were down by 3%.

First, the various state legislatures stopped giving as much to universities and colleges. Now the average Jane and Joe have jumped on the “cutting-back” bandwagon as well.

In seemingly unrelated news, a new report is out claiming that educational technology has failed to live up to its promises. While there are no real surprises in the report — traditional institutions and professors have not figured out how tomake elearning profitable as quickly and dramatically as they thought they could in 2000 — it is a good indicator of some trends in technology and attitudes in Higher Education. Robert Zemsky, an education professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the report’s authors, says that the elearning promise is real but that change will occur more slowly than some had believed.

The key to the real revolution, Zemsky thinks, is a common software tool or standardized format for creating online course enhancements. Someone “is going to provide the engine that standardizes,” Mr. Zemsky said. “And then this thing is going to start.”

Which brings us, almost, back to the first bit of news I mentioned. It’s no secret that universities and colleges have faced budget cutbacks and are having to make tough decisions. It is also known that technology initiatives have been one of the first things to be eliminated in many budget restructuring efforts.

This budget decision-making pressure has been exacerbated due to huge license fee increases for Learning Management Systems (LMS) over the past two years.

Universities and colleges face the prospect of having less money to spend while technology for education grows more expensive. And, as Zemsky points out, the big bang in online education can’t happen until some strong standard(s) emerge.

Thus, with the timing of a great Shakespearean actress, enters Sakai, a open-source educational portal that supports and promotes the converging standards of elearning in Higher Education. Ben Goldfein has a nice introductory article in this newsletter about Sakai, so I will forego a full specification. Suffice it to say that Sakai is a robust platform that will like change the business as usual approachto LMS platforms in Higher Education.

The reasons are related to the product price certainly — $0 versus $50-$200K per year — but also to staffing. Particularly at large public institutions, it is difficult to effect significant layoffs or staff reductions. If an IT departmetn has four developers and/or support people it must continue to craft strategies that utilize those people efficientl. In other words, when IT budgets are cut, the first thing that goes is the software budget. The people are often protected (staff members have a sort fo tenure as well) but have to be reassigned if the software they were supporting is removed from the budget.

Everyone is aware that Sakai is not really “free” (thus the asterisk in the title ofthis article). But it, like other emerging platforms, has no license cost and the people it takes to run it are already paid for. The bottom line? Many universities will begin migrating to Sakai and its offspring or cousins.

For publishers, this is good news, especially if your learning objects are already packaged according to SCORM standards. The proliferation of LMS platofrms in Higher Education will actually formalize the common standards and bring about the long-awaited elearning revolution. It will also mean that the comon complaint about WebCT and BlackBoard not playing nice together will become relatively moot.