XplanaZine

We’ve been talking all week about digital content in education and how we will arrive at a future where content is easy to create, store in a coherent fashion, and distribute (Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 of this series). In non-jargon terms, that translates to a teacher being able to create any kind of a worksheet exercise or demonstration, filing it where they and the rest of the world be able to find it with ease, and then being able to get that file on any education software system out there.

The last part of that equation, the distribution, is the Holy Grail of the digital content solution in education.

The evolution of learning content created or used by teachers might be divided up into these stages (arriving at the present):

• Drawings in the dirt
• Drawings on a chalkboard
• Distributed worksheets on paper
• Exercises created on proprietary educational platforms for use in networked classrooms or laboratories
• Activities and assessments created and placed on individual Web sites
• Activities and assessments created and in LMS platforms

As a teacher I have created thousands of worksheets, practice exams, and critical thinking problems for students. Some of these are in analog (read “paper”) files, others are on my hard drive, and still others exist independently in BlackBoard or WebCT with courses I have created there. Like most teachers, I have worked at multiple institutions and been asked to use different Web-based teaching solutions.

Now, I’m fairly efficient when it comes to all of this, and I actually have the technical skills to create my work in multiple formats so that they can move with some ease from system to system. But the ease of distribution is tied directly to my skill set. For most teachers, that means they have no real distribution options as their technical knowledge is not adequate for the task.

In other words, we are currently at place where demand for content is great and where teachers are not lagging behind as much when it comes to being open to working digitally. The problem is that teachers are busy and don’t have an inordinate amount of time to learn new technology or new workflow processes. Besides, they got into this gig because they liked their area of expertise and because they wanted to share it with others. Unfortunately, our current lack of adequate content distribution technologies forces teachers to spend too much time on technology and new processes if they want to play in the digital space.

What we are looking for is something that feels familiar to teachers, that seems as familiar as creating a worksheet by hand, giving to an aid to make copies, and then filing it in a sensible place for use again next year. To that image, we want to add the ability to make those same materials available, in that same filing system, everywhere we happen to go without any work on our part. Moving still further, we want that material to automatically make itself available in any new format that is required in the future, again without any work on our part.

We want to create content once (or have it created for us), have ubiquitous access to it, and be able to distribute it anywhere and on any technology platform without having to do anything ourselves. In this way, we don’t have to know or think about anything except our subject matter area and our students — the core of our teaching mission. Taking one final step, we want this ability to be shared by everyone and we want the rest of the work, when appropriate, to have access to all of this content as well.

The good news is that we’re not as far from this “distribution paradise” as you might think. Current LMS platforms (BlackBoard, WebCT, Angel), as much as I might complain about them, have dome much to help. All of the major players are putting in learning object repositories (LORs) that allow teachers to store their materials. These systems also offer authoring tools and the ability to export content for use outside in other places.

The bad news we are still a good ways from prime time. The authoring tools in LMS platforms are generally weak. The LORs are still immature. And the only a few have survived the horrors of exporting and reusing content from one of these systems.

More good news, however, is found in the growing popularity and importance of external LORs. Resources like MERLOT and CAREO allow teachers to store their content and share it easily with others. Unfortunately, these libraries still lack authoring tools and the adequate export features needed for the coming future.

The Gap

It’s hard to say what the specific technological solution will be (LMS or LOR), but the requirements are clear. We need a system that allows us to author, store, search for, and distribute our content to any other platform automatically. So, when I create a quiz or a tutorial in this system, I should be able to call it up at a later date, select what system I want to send it to, and push a button. At that point, voilà, all the work has been done and I didn’t have to know anything other than how to teach the subjunctive.

While the pieces have not been put together yet, most of them do exist and we are making progress. We should get there within the next three years and I can’t wait (more time to spend with my wife and kids). For now, here is the gap as I see it.

• Complete acceptance of existing standards by all educational software platforms. Until all the platforms we want to use content on share the same standards it will be difficult to achieve our export dream;
• Adherence to authoring standards by all educational authoring tools. We need the content we create to match the platforms on which we plan to store it;
• Proper import and export tools in existing LORs;
• Universal taxonomies for LORs and LMS platforms that ensure all content being in the same place (virtually) regardless of the physical system on which it is stored.