Social eLearning Software Blog

As an organization at the forefront of the social eLearning movement we’re often asked what type of expenses an organization should plan on to implement a social learning strategy in tandem with the organization’s blended or eLearning offerings.

Clearly it’s a difficult question to address given the number of variables one would encounter.

Is course content readily available or does it need to be created?

How many courses? How many students? Is there technical expertise in house?

Do you wish to integrate with external networking sites? Do you wish to establish an embedded social network within your site for your students? Are you looking to add collaborative facilities and tools?

The variables are endless, and clearly with many products, the costs associated with integrating them into a platform can become quite large.

This is why we’ve created TOPYX, our fully hosted social eLearning software solution.

The TOPYX platform has built social learning tools that an organization simply enables and disables on their site. This includes Course / Student Communities resources with a wide range of collaborative tools. The communities are in fact a completely integrated social network for each individual course or class, whichever you prefer.

TOPYX also integrates a range of external social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Skype. Again, these can be easily enabled / disabled on your site based upon their applicability to your needs.

eCommerce is also embedded in the platform in case you wish to sell courses or ancillary material.

If one was to integrate the functionality built into TOPYX into a traditional Learning Management System (LMS), the costs in terms of people time and actual expense could be quite steep. If you combine that with the typical costs of the LMS itself, or the implementation and maintenance expense of an open source product, the costs becomes even larger.

Compare that TOPYX or TOPYX Lite, when all this is ready for you to use with a subscription costing as little as $499 (TOPYX Lite) or $999 (TOPYX) per month, with no per student or per course fees.

It’s an amazing value. Actually, it is the best value in eLearning software available today!

Feel free to have a look.

Join one of our upcoming webinars or take the TOPYX Test Drive.

Patrick Batty
Vice President, Academic Solutions
Interactyx Limited

patrick.batty@interactyx.com
www.interactyx.com

Over the last year, many people have asked me why we used components of Moodle to build a distinct eLearning product / service rather than just using Moodle in its native mode and offering a hosting and implementation service.

It’s a fair question, as Moodle offers a great deal of facility for those that have the ability, time, and / or funds to build out the platform to its fullest, to create a true social learning environment for their use. We really love a lot of the features, and have embraced many of them in our service.

However, we have also found many organizations, both academic and corporate, would prefer to have their staff work on their core competencies around training and education rather than spend the time necessary to do the wide variety of ancillary tasks and integrations many organizations require for an advanced eLearning / social learning platform.

As social learning becomes more prevalent, many organizations would like to integrate their platforms with both internal, in some cases external social networks like Facebook, or LinkedIn. Others would like connections with Twitter.

Some organisations would like to have a fully integrated eCommerce system. Others would like to have Single Sign On and integration with their authentication system.

All of this requires time and effort by your staff, or yourself to achieve. Sometimes its only a little, but in many cases, its a great deal of time and expense. The true cost, the opportunity cost, and time to market can be quite high in some instances.

This is why we’ve done what we’ve created TOPYX®, our social eLearning software solution.

We’ve created a platform that essentially offers all of this in a single, complete solution and you as an organization can simply enable or disable the components you see fit through simple administrative settings.

You can create course communities, enable whichever external social networks you see fit, or have a completely internal integrated social network, somewhat like a Facebook site for any or all of your courses, programs, content, and more. It’s all available in tandem with the course offerings you load into the system.

There’s no programming required, and no searching and mashing together various components. It is fully hosted, supported and customized to your brand.

Let’s face it, piecing together all of these components for a single organization could be a daunting and very expensive task whether you start with Moodle, or any of a number of proprietary commercial learning management systems.

Imagine integrating this at your institution.

It’s a little intimidating.

But that’s what we’ve done, and we’ve made it clean, easy and fast to implement.

You can establish any communities and community tools you wish to enable around your course content.   Communities can effectively become their own integrated social network for your students or community members. As well, if you wish to enable  integration with external social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or even Twitter, as an example, you can do so by simply selecting  whichever you choose in the administrative settings .

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with a TOPYX site. The options are limitless, and many who are under tight timeframes or budgetary restrictions are finding it a very prudent approach.

In a nutshell, it’s about delivering the most flexible, affordable, quick and easy to implement eLearning system we can possibly provide.

Learn more about TOPYX as a complete, affordable eLearning software solution.

Also, feel free to attend our free, live webinars covering important topics for today's online learning environment:

Extending Moodle with Social Learning
Tuesday, Mar. 9, 2010
2:00pm - 3:00pm ET
Register Here - Space is Limited

Social Learning for Executive Education
Thursday, Mar. 11, 2010
2:00pm - 3:00pm ET
Register Here - Space is Limited


Patrick Batty
Vice President, Academic Solutions
Interactyx Limited

patrick.batty@interactyx.com
www.interactyx.com

At Interactyx, we're always looking to enhance eLearning and mobile learning.  So, today I thought would be an appropriate time to review the newly announced iPad to see if we think it will become a significant tool in the corporate and academic eLearning world.

The iPad upon first blush certainly appears to be a compelling device. Like a bright, shiny new toy, it looks like something you like to grab hold of and play with a while.  I'm sure the lines on release day will be long and extensively covered in the press.

Before I go over thoughts about applicability to the eLearning and mLearning world, let's quickly review some facts from the iPad announcement.

• There will be multiple models of iPad with 16, 32, or 64 GB of memory (flash).
• The iPad has a 9.7 inch backlit LED multi-touch display.
• It is ½ inch thick and weighs in at 1.5 lbs.
• The base 16 GB basic model, available in US near the end of March 2010 and Europe in June.
• The base model will be priced at $499 in the US and has built in support of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
• The base 3G version will be priced at $629 with a monthly $15 for 250 MB or $50 for unlimited data and naturally will also support Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There are no contracts for the service. It's month by month with no long term commitments.
• Similar to the iPhone, all models have built in accelerometers.
• 3G models have locational awareness.
• Built in applications include Safari, iBooks, YouTube, email.
• Other applications are available such as Keynote, Pages, and Numbers as well as the approximate 130,000 different apps in the app store.

Its OS is based upon the iPhone OS, and naturally is using Safari as its browser. Safari, combined with the reasonably sized multi-touch display could open up new areas of applicability and utilization independent of one's industry.

Material and apps built for iPhone will apparently function just fine on the iPad, however the IPad SDK will also take advantage of additional features, so there may be a reason to modify existing apps.

So what about iPad for eLearning

The iPad is clearly being promoted as a media device with what appear to be elegant interfaces to save and review media including books, magazines, newspapers, and downloaded audio and video content.

Users will easily be able to view or listen to that material to their hearts content, and I expect that's probably the sweet spot for the device. Naturally, they'll be able to engage others with social networking tools and sites in a relatively portable platform, compared to a laptop or desktop. Not so portable compared to a smartphone.

As well, for eLearning purposes, clearly, based upon screen size alone the iPad appears to be a better choice than the iPhone or other smartphones such as Google's Android or RIM's various Blackberries. As much as those technologies were improvements over the past, who truly wants to watch course material on a 3 1/2 inch or smaller display. In a pinch, OK, but if I had my choice, I'd certainly prefer the larger display to avoid either reviewing material shrunk so small it's illegible, or to avoid nonstop scrolling to review a single page.

However the iPad does not support Flash. Whether purely a current limitation of Flash itself, or a strategic decision by Apple, Flash content will not play, nor has it been announced at this point. The blogosphere is abuzz about this lack of support, in a few cases positive, but in most cases negative. It was also a source of a few chuckles at the iPad launch when a section of the New York Times site being demonstrated did not load.

I won't enter the fray on whether I would prefer Flash or the pending HTML5. However I will say that a great deal of eLearning content as well as many eLearning tools are currently written in Flash or are fully dependent on Flash at this point. This certainly could slow down implementation in the eLearning world.

Another missing feature is an integrated camera. Naturally this would be important for asynchronous classroom discussions / meetings. However, I'm not too concerned about this. I believe there will either Apple or 3^rd party add-ons that will rectify this quickly. For that matter I assume you could connect a webcam via USB.

However,  another nit is the lack of built in USB or an SD card slot. You'll need one of a few adapters or the dock connector to use these features or attach devices like a webcam via USB.  Is the brief case or purse getting a little heavier now?  Do you still have your cell phone with you too?

Another drawback for eLearning and purely from my viewing the initial demonstration, was the appearance of a lack of multi-tasking capability. This may also be a hindrance. Quite often someone wants to working on a document or some other material as they are reviewing eLearning content or sessions.

Summary

I believe that the iPad is progress, however not the panacea for eLearning. Did we expect a perfect tool? Probably not. Maybe just hoped.

It appears  Apple has struck a significant blow to Amazon's Kindle with an aggressive pricing structure that matches that of the Kindle DX, yet with a full colour screen and functionality that significantly exceeds that of an e-reader. I also expect Amazon to respond shortly with new pricing structures and a color version. A little competition is always good.

The iPad's reasonably large, vibrant display certainly are a step up from smartphones for visual content, and for me personally, a step up from a Kindle as well.

Whereas I see the applicability of the iPad for some eLearning situations, I believe the lack of Flash support at this point will keep it as somewhat of a niche player. It doesn't appear to be able to fully replace a pc, laptop, or Mac a number of scenarios, however, if remote viewing and reviewing of (non Flash) content is the key it certainly looks like a capable tool in that respect.

That said, I respect what Apple has done and remain hopeful that the iPad deficiencies are rectified soon.

Feel free to let me know what you think.

Also, you are welcome to attend one of our free, live webinars below discussing the benefits of social learning:

Social Learning for Executive Education
Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010
2:00pm - 3:00pm ET
Register Here - Space is Limited

Patrick Batty
Vice President, Academic Solutions
Interactyx Limited

patrick.batty@interactyx.com
www.interactyx.com

Clearly this has been a tremendous year of growth for Twitter.

Current valuation estimates of the company are in the order of $1 billion, and users are expected to reach 250 million over the next few years.

As an eLearning provider, on a daily basis, we are talking to schools that looking at using it both for themselves as well as possibly having their students use it in some fashion.

Campus Technology recently reported, http://www.campustechnology.com/Home.aspx from a recent Faculty Focus http://www.facultyfocus.com/ survey that of 1,958 higher education professionals 30.7% are using twitter currently and another 20.6% reported that there was a reasonable chance they’d start using it in the coming year.

Of those that currently use it, 7.2 percent use it as a part of instruction frequently, and an additional 9.4 percent use it in instruction occasionally. I believe that is a relatively high adoption rate given the time that twitter has been in the market.

Depending on your particular academic sector you may also see appropriate uses for your students. I have opinions, but this week rather than taking the platform, I’d to see what everyone else thinks.

As well as Twitter, sites like Facebook often are used for school sites, events and groups. Possibly even course specific groups could be established and offer additional value.

In my blog this week, I’d like to pose three questions:

1) Does Twitter have a place in Education? If so, where and how do you think it could be used for maximum benefit.

2) What other social networking tools / sites do you feel most relevant in an academic environment?

3) Do you see value in blending Social Networking with eLearning?

To establish context, please indicate which area of education you are referring to. i.e. Higher ED, K-12, Corporate etc.

I very much look forward to your thoughts.

Also, you are welcome to attend our free, live webinar to learn more about how the classroom is being redefined:

Social Learning Around the Classroom
Thursday, Jan. 28, 2009
2:00pm - 3:00pm ET
Register Here - Space is Limited

Moodle has been a tremendous boon for schools and associations looking to pull away from the grips of enterprise LMS vendors over the last few years.

It’s also been a nice entry point for those wishing to dabble in elearning for the first time.

While it has both is fans as well as its detractors, it clearly has its place.

That said, we feel there is significant room for improvement in a number of areas especially in the Social or Informal Learning side.

Clearly, Moodle Forums Wikis, Projects and Chat are good avenues for collaboration or discussion.

We decided to extend that however, to make a much more contemporary experience for the students both in functionality as well as in the general user interface.

We’ve integrated a number of external social networks into the platform, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter. Our clients can enable / disable whichever ones they chose, and the students can use any of the enabled sites to extend discussions with authorized peers.

Very shortly we’ll be significantly extending this functionality even further by establishing fully integrated social networks around a course. They’ll be somewhat similar to LinkedIn or Facebook itself however be completely internal and limited to the students and instructors of a particular course.

Moodle Themes are fine for some, but we’ve significantly modified the user interface. We’ve made it much cleaner and easier to navigate using a mac-like like format and even integrated an optional iphone like cover-flow for catalogues and course material.

We feel we’ve made tremendous progress so far, and in the next few months a great deal more.

Clearly, not everyone can invest the time and effort to do this with their Moodle site. Unless everyone works for free at your organisation, you’d probably have to invest many hundreds of thousands of dollars to do what we’ve done. (We know this one from experience.)

If you’d like to see what we’ve done, feel free to join our upcoming, free webinar.

Whether you are looking for a solution, or simply looking for ideas about what you can do with your own site, you’re most welcome to attend.

We’d also love to hear from you about what other extensions you feel world enhance your learners experience. See more about what TOPYX has to offer at www.interactyx.com.

Patrick Batty
Vice President, Academic Solutions
Interactyx Limited

patrick.batty@interactyx.com
www.interactyx.com

Moodle has gained many users over the last few years as universities, colleges, departments and institutions look at trimming their budgets. Clearly many schools simply are saying NO to the high fees charged by Blackboard or other traditional learning management systems.

Have you ever calculated the true cost of an “Open Source” project?

At our company, we’ve reviewed a few open source components for our own products, including some aspects of Moodle and Boonex. In certain areas, the integration of these has been highly successful and in other areas not as much.

As a vendor of an eLearning platform, we must assess the value of the component for our clients and the cost / benefit of its integration into the product in the same manner that any other organisation would assess similar issues.

Included in the costs are initial assessment time, initial development time and expense and ongoing time and expense of maintaining the component.

I assume most organizations do the same in most projects, however, in some ways it appears that “Open Source” gets a bit of a free ride with many organisations. It seems that the almost religious fervour of the open source movement allows companies to ignore development and implementation time and effort (and the true costs associated with these) both at initial implementation and on an ongoing basis through the lifecycle of the system.

In terms of eLearning specifically, it may be absolute hard costs in terms of salary, benefits and other expenses for personnel that will assemble, implement and update the open source solution. In some organizations it may also be in terms of opportunity costs related to other activities those personnel could be performing rather than constructing and maintaining the eLearning implementation.

Consideration should also be given to ongoing upgrades, enhancements, accountability for the solution, speed to market of your project etc. Risk should also be considered. If a vendor’s solution is proven to fully meet your needs, does it not incur less risk that a solution your organisation needs to assemble and maintain?

I’ll openly admit my bias, but I feel, in many cases a vendor based solution can offer more value than an open source solution. Choosing a quality vendor with a quality, affordable offering may be more appropriate for your organisation than constructing and maintaining an open source solution yourself.

Do you feel strongly one way or the other? Have you had successes with open source? Have you had failures? Does anyone calculate the true costs?

Let me know your thoughts.

Also, please feel free to join our upcoming free, live webinar:

We are going to cover a lot of ground in the webinar, but if you would like to discuss your unique eLearning needs, feel free to contact me at patrick.batty@interactyx.com.

Patrick Batty
Vice President, Academic Solutions
Interactyx Limited

patrick.batty@interactyx.com
www.interactyx.com