Navigating this E-Learning Portal
- Please follow the sequential order of the yellow buttons or red links in the left panel of these web pages.
- Some of the navigation links will popup as a separate web page, i.e. "Collaboration Styles" and "Module 1". This design is to allow the tourist easy access back to the primary navigational window containing the yellow buttons.
- Even though there is a considerable amount of reading material provided with this portal, much of it will be left to the selection of the tourist. However, to answer some of the questions associated with the formative evaluation, some of the reading is necessary.
- The tourist should complete "Module 1" describing Document Authoring and Versioning (DAV), including downloading and configuring the necessary DAV software, and completing the DAV excercises, prior to entering the Blackboard CourseInfo (Bb) web course tools (wct) site.
- Entering the Bb site will..
- introduce the tourist to the second environment and second module of this elearning portal. However, at this time, only Module 1 has been completed.
- provide access to the primary evaluation instrument for Module 1 of this E-Learning Portal which is to be completed by the tourist.
- If you have problems navigating this portal, please to not hesitate to contact your tour guide (see the syllabus for details).
Background
Virtual collaboration is a BIG buzz word on the Internet. Commercial enterprise world wide is adopting this medium as a way of doing business at an exponential rate. Last year more than $20 billion dollars were expended on a combination of collaboration software and training for online collaboration. It is expected that by 2005 more than $50 billion will be expended . Virtual collaboration is currently being used by business for B2B (business-to-business) collaborations based on separate business communities. However, this mode of communication and interaction is being used for B2C (business-to-customer) transactions at an increasing rate. Much of the antipated increase of future expenditures for collaboration will be related to increases in B2C transactions. To get a better picture of where these types of transactions are going, go a google.com search for B2B and B2C, and browse around. I think you will get the impression that these virtual collaborations are getting to be BB (Big Business).
As academics, we have a variety of uses for virtual collaboration. One of the most popular uses of online collaboration in academia is the B2C variety where we use this medium to instruct students by distance education. There are numerous commercial products being use for this purpose such as Blackboard.com's CourseInfo and webct.com's WebCT (compare these two wct suites). However, faculty who are confident users of hypertext markup language and other tools necessary to create an online interface with students have been creating their own instructional tools. Educational institutions have focused their attention on the delivery of online information. This academically embraced mode of distance education (student-to-student and student-to-instructor collaboration) has often created a form of tunnel vision. Faculty and other administrative staff have not effectively extended the use of online collaboration tools which are a part of the e-learning software to the B2B form of interactions. The fact that this commercial software has the student and course stamp on it, I think, has inhibited the extended use of these tools. Also, administrations of academic institutions cannot justify expending large sums of money on customized virtual collaboration software and outside consultants. However, many of these institutions have every aspect of the expensive custom software in their suites of wct such as Bb or WebCT. It is the realization that collaboration for learning online is no different than collaboration for business/administration that has inspired much of the content of this learning portal. This will be a detailed translation of wct for B2B purposes, and a display of functional examples such as the MYS (MECCA Young Scholars) program displaying the administration of a joint summer high school enrichment program between two campuses. This description and use of wct for collaboration is being developed in the second module of this learning portal and is not yet complete.
Another important collaborative need in the world of academics is in the area of information creation. All of us work on joint documents. To collaborate on document preparation effectively there are several requirements. We need to have some form of communication. This usually means meetings. These meetings are often time consuming and sometimes not necessarily productive relative to the final objective of producing a functional document. Depending on how many are involved in the document production process, there may be multiple versions of the document circulating and causing mass confusion before the final product is published. We now have some new tools designed to alleviate some of this confusion. We can use the annotation utilities that come with word processing and this helps, but we still have multiple versions of the document being worked on by several people with no one really knowing the absolute state of the document at any real point in time. The evolution of the WebDAV protocol is rapidly changing this scenario, but few people currently know how to either implement or use this protocol. The major objective for Module 1 of this learning portal will be to address this lack of knowledge. Also an example of using WebDAV's file sharing ability to manage and deliver the output from shared scientific instrumentation will be presented.
The most important factor for learning to participate in virtual collaborations is "hands-on" practice. The modules associated with this learning portal will provided the online collaborator with ample opportunities to create their own collaborative relationships for practice or to actually start producing their own virtual groups and documents. Believe your tour guide when he tells you that this is a "you do" site rather than a "you read" only site even though a lot of reading material is provided.
