Cristian Duque, Author at eLearningInside News

Moodle Reaches 200 Million Users — Moodle 3.9, 4.0 Readying For The Next 200

Cristian Duque — Fri, 08 May 2020 11:50:50 +0000

It is to date the largest experiment in online learning in history. The Moodle project, launched over 20 years ago as a “prototype of a new web course development that uses constructionist referents to model engagement of the participants with course content and each other” is now the LMS of choice for 200 million users worldwide, dominant in K-12, Higher Ed, Corporate, Government and NGOs, the most popular in every country, and the first LMS experience for new learners today by far.

This post was first published by LMSPulse.

The open source LMS had been on steady growth in users for years, but clearly the conjuncture of school lockdowns and move to learning online gave them a definite push. Moodle CEO, Martin Dougiamas, indicated that thousands of additional new sites were registered, accounting for a considerable chunk of the over 151,000 sites on record.

moodle.net/stats

Searching for quick and cost effective alternatives, it is likely that small schools around the world have realized Moodle is the way to get started into online learning. Open Source LMS like Moodle or Sakai offer a unique form of flexibility, customization and personalization that proprietary software simply cannot match, and one that does not rely on the monetization of user data to remain sustainable. Anecdotally, Moodle Partners close to LMSPulse have confirmed an onrush of requests, particularly of free Moodle solutions, in the past couple months.

Other interesting developments include Spain becoming the number one Moodle country, overpowering the United States which led for most of Moodle’s history. Colombia is back to the top 10, giving more credence to the speculation of Spanish being the dominant Moodle language.

More MoodlePulse

Minor releases Moodle 3.8.3, 3.7.6 and 3.5.11 are scheduled for May 11, 2020. There is no indication that they are high priority but may bring fixes to some small issues you might have encountered.
The one you should definitely be looking forward is Moodle 3.9, coming up June 8. Highlights mentioned include further improvements on the H5P integration, MoodleNet, Participants filter, Accessibility and Safe Exam Browser.
For Moodle 4.0, coming up a year away, work is already underway. A UX survey is open for everyone with opinions on how the next generation of Moodle should look like.
A Mobile portal apps.moodle.com is up. It will allow you to learn more and register your site in case you want to bring back some or all the features you used to get for free. Read more about it here.
On location MoodleMoots are kind of up in the air, except perhaps for Stichting MoodleMoot Benelux this October. Several are planning on moving online. In fact, the originally planned as an “itinerant Moot,” MoodleMoot India 2020, was held to arguable success over BigBlueButton. On the forums, talk on reviving the “iMoot” is only gaining steam. Moodle held a series of live session for the impromptu “Learn Moodle” MOOC session, and Dougiamas suggested there would be an online MoodleMoot Global as early as July.
A specially disheartening Moot to see go online is the always surprising MountainMoot. But fear not, as the team that made this a beloved and fun experience is on the case for the virtual version.

This post was first published by LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Xin Wang, Unsplash.

The post Moodle Reaches 200 Million Users — Moodle 3.9, 4.0 Readying For The Next 200 appeared first on eLearningInside News.

The Future Of Moodle Is Confident, International And Entrepreneurial — Interview with Titus Learning Director, Seb Francis

Cristian Duque — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 16:01:10 +0000

For those acquainted with the swirls of UK’s open EdTech, Titus Learning‘s Seb Francis needs no introduction. Startup Ambassador —host of the Startup Secrets Podcast— and the youngest leader of any Moodle Partner out there, Seb is already a prominent name in one of the most frantic tech spaces today. But a far and wide conversation with Francis on Titus, Moodle, the UK and their collective futures underlines a confident and attuned voice. By defying conventional thinking, Titus Learning has earned recognition and respect among Moodle Partners. It was recognized with the first ever Moodle Appreciation Partner of the Year award at the first MoodleMoot Global. It secured interesting paths of growth in Europe and Asia —Titus is also a certified Moodle Partner in Hong Kong, the only one so far. And it was part of the first batch of premium Moodle Partners, with the first announcement of a major Moodle Workplace initiative.

This post was first published by LMSPulse.

To get started, I’m really interested about what made you get into the EdTech and the open source space?

My background has actually always been within EdTech.

I went to university for about three months in the UK. Then I dropped out. It wasn’t quite right for me. My first job from there was with a Moodle Partner, kind of a chance encounter to begin with. It wasn’t necessarily a straight path, but I stayed in there and it brought out a lot of my personal interest in IT and education. I started at a relatively low rank and worked my way up to working in kind of a more senior capacity. I worked with international clients and particularly international schools.

My manager at the time was Mike Bennett, the other co-founder of Titus. We were at a conference looking at the competition, at some of the frustrations that we had with the existing learning providers in the market. We wanted to do something different. We decided to develop a tailored option with customized platforms. We wanted to make sure that each Moodle solution we provided looked different.

By creating unique experiences, we realized we needed a big, big focus on training, support and consultancy. We felt that was lacking with a lot of other learning providers, where more or less they would just give you the system, but not the support needed to make the best of it.

That was basically it. We continued to focus on customized solutions for international schools, and after a few years, we built a client a global client base around the worlds: East Asia and Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Brunei. Of course, we also have customers in the UK and mainland Europe. We got certified as a Moodle Partner in September 2017, and we’re now a Moodle Certified Premium Partner in the UK and Hong Kong.

We have grown organically as a company, so we’ve never had to take any outside investment or give away equity. I think you can make better decisions from a business perspective this way, and also from an educational or pedagogical perspective.

Co-Founder and Director of Titus Learning Seb Francis.

How has your proximity to the startup scene influenced your history and the growth of Titus?

I’ve worked a lot with startups, especially Virgin Start Up. They work on early-stage startup, and they provided us with mentors and help for about 18 months. I was selected out of about 1,500 people and 10 of us became Virgin Startup Ambassadors. We then worked with other startups in helping promote Virgin and the work that was being done. I also run the Startup Secrets Podcast, where I interview anyone: From a really early stage entrepreneur, to those who have gone on to sell the company for hundreds of millions of pounds. And I’m currently in the process of creating and launching a new tequila. Obviously, Titus is the number one priority. But I think once you start a business, you soon start to see a few other opportunities as well.

How would you describe the relationships and attitudes of the startup community, and the venture capital in particular, towards open source technologies?

It’s an interesting situation. From a commercial side, it might seem odd that in our revenue models we have to “hitch off” a percentage to support a software that is free. But I think VC’s views on open source software aren’t all tainted. They understand the importance of making the software development process sustainable.

Currently, Moodle Partners can have quite different sizes and goals. We’ve obviously got great aspirations, and our growth plan is to be one of one of the biggest Partners out there. But right now, we benefit from being able to stand on a world-class software, without which we would not be able to create new value.

Open source demands a new way of thinking about the technology business. One that many people would only appreciate if it ceased to exist. Unfortunately, many people still don’t, and as a result they don’t care about it because it isn’t always the most lucrative. Some even claim there is no inherent value in an open source company since there is no IP. But I think in many ways models like us are still novel to some. From a business model perspective, we can still deliver on product, revenue, and innovation.

From Titus’ perspective, we balance the amount of support we give to the open source world with how we develop and protect our own innovation. But at the end of the day, we stick with open source because it’s proven. Moodle is production ready, tried and tested. The customer base is proven.

You do risk being dependent upon the provider of the open source technology. There’s always the possibility they decide to change their direction, strategy, products, or target users. But I believe the program continues to work because the mutual benefits to strengthen our partnerships are proven too.

Do you feel comfortable with the relationship you have with Moodle HQ?

Yeah, absolutely. We have been partners for over two years now.

Part of it is just a trust thing. It is something you become aware of that goes beyond the contractual elements, which are also in place. Then there are the logistics of it: Moodle needs to convince dozens of people around the world, thousands of customers, employees, millions of users, that it is reliable and trustworthy. What they have accomplished in terms of their reliability for a whole open source ecosystem is impressive and worth kept building on.

Many partners, Titus including, are moving firmly into the corporate learning space, which is expected to become more valuable than education. We are aware Moodle Workplace is likely to bring some changes to the relationships with us and other partners. There will be frustrations. I am pleased by the fact that in the past 12 to 18 months Moodle has brought in a lot of really experienced new people onboard. As long as we retain the good relationships, I’m sure we can sail forward.

It would seem that Moodle’s recognition to Titus as Appreciation Partner of the Year speaks precisely to your efforts on sustainable relationships…

Yeah, of course. To receive the award, one recognition among the eight given that night, among the near 90 partners around the world, was brilliant.

The Appreciation Award in particular was given to the partner who put the most effort and had the most impact with newer initiatives from Moodle executives. The kind of reasoning behind the Appreciation award will change each year.

We’ve built up a huge pipeline of potential clients for Moodle Workplace. We have been some of the most active in the trials, we even have involved customers and we expect they will bring tens of thousands of users to Moodle Workplace early on.

It was also really good to receive the award in the atmosphere of a Global Moot. To meet partners, developers and experiences from 20, 25 countries was exceptional. And it was also great to meet so many members of the Moodle HQ team in one place, since they are based all over the world. The next one is only set to grow more, and are considering joining in as a sponsor.

Sounds awesome. Going back home, how would you describe the UK LMS space and the relationships with the other partners? Only the UK and the U.S. have 6 partners, it suggests a fairly high level of competitiveness.

The relationship is quite good too. Obviously, at certain times we are competition and we’re going up against one another. And when we do that, we want to win and we feel that we’re better than the other partners in terms of what we do and what we deliver. I envision Titus to be Moodle Partner of choice. I want us to be the one with the fastest growing rate of sales, and the one who does the best job both in sales and market as well as development.

But personally, I think it’s very important that we get on well with everyone. Everyone shares ideas, whether things are going well, or not so well. Sometimes we can collaborate, or refer opportunities to partners who specialize in a different sector. Everyone has a unique strength. We have a stronghold on international schools, and we’re also doing an increasing amount of content creation.

So overall, good relationships are at the core of what we are doing.

Aside from good relationships, what are Titus priorities going forward?

In terms of content, we want to leverage Moodle’s partnerships, especially that with Premium Integrator GO1. But we also have a great in-house content development team with expertise on interactive content and Articulate Storyline specifically. We even have our own video production department.

So we’re certainly looking to get video content made with our clients, although most of it will be for their internal use. We expect custom content development to help bolster our sales and become even more profitable over the next few years.

Aside from content, are there any other topics or trends you believe will become relevant in 2020?

There is obviously a growing interest in Mobile learning. Mobile learning is pretty much part of the deal now. We expect better mobile experiences and the Moodle apps to get better, maybe less reliant on the regular Moodle version. Not every learning experience is fit for mobile though, so the push is going to happen at different paces. But mobile learning is going to be a gateway for other ideas, especially involving personalization and artificial intelligence.

In terms of AI and virtual assistance, we are currently at a “listening” stage, looking at how it is implemented. Would they be used in picking content, or modifying parts of it? Then we should also assess how learners would adapt to them.

One particular area of interest at Titus is the use of chatbots for reporting and analytics. One of our developers, Farham Karmali, was the first to showcase a basic version of a Moodle chatbot in 2017. Since then we’ve had customers asking about its availability. In this sense, I think innovation in AI, chatbots and machine learning will come from two sources: You have the innovators, the developers that produce the software and features; then you also have the demand from the market. For now, all I can say is that we are having an increasing number of conversations on the issue.

This post was first published by LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Chuttersnap, Unsplash.

The post The Future Of Moodle Is Confident, International And Entrepreneurial — Interview with Titus Learning Director, Seb Francis appeared first on eLearningInside News.

The ‘Zoombombing’ Saga Is Just Beginning — And The Heroic Open Source Video Conferencing Alternatives

Cristian Duque — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 16:14:38 +0000

Zoom found itself as the instant savior, and immediately after, the villain, in our new working and learning arrangements. If found itself pray of the short-lived optimism of the markets —achieving a $35 billion capitalization, on paper as valuable as Xiaomi, Activision or Nissan— after becoming synonymous with virtual classrooms and meetings. Numerous concerns and cybersecurity risks have cropped up. But are they merited?

This article was first published by LMSPulse.

What are the accusations?

Indiscriminate collection of private data

The free version of Zoom is being used to collect unreasonable amounts of personal user information. Security researcher and policy analyst Bruce Schneier pointed out that the user policy entitled Zoom to use this information for basically any kind of commercial purpose, including selling it to third parties. On top of it, the Facebook app used to collect all sorts of information about the computer and telemetry data. Before the software was updated, this would happen whether the user had a Facebook account or not. (This still happens if the user hasn’t updated Zoom recently.) Similar data collection and sharing is known with LinkedIn and Windows applications. Some users have also reporting stumbling upon lots of personal information from other users from the app, with little effort.

Zoom changed the policies on March 29, along with a series of blog posts and public statements. The changes clarify that there is no personal data selling at this point, but it is still being collected.

‘Zoombombing’: Strangers showing up in the middle of online classroom

Related convenience, as well to the lax security practices, malicious actors are able to try and find access to Zoom rooms and meetings where anyone with the link can join, speak and share their screen. You could even get ahold of “zWarDial,” an app that tries to guess unsecure Zoom rooms at random with a reported 4% success rate. Developed by “white hat” researchers (aka good guys), it allowed to collect key data about the meeting and in some cases personal information supplied by the host.

The level of trolling and abuse this feature allows has only human imagination at the limit. More serious argument deem this a boon for industrial espionage operations which make the China connections —see below— all the more worrisome.

Zoom’s initial reaction was deflection. It framed the sharing of Zoom links on social media akin to sharing a password with the world. Upon further pressure and journalistic denounces, it made some UI updates.

To sum up: “Zoom is not suited for secrets.”

Malwar-y: Governments and Federal Agents denounce, discourage, disable Zoom

Zoom had to change some some of its functionality after concerns over too invasive practices that attempted to supersede the user’s deliberate permission. This included the installation process on Mac computers, considered for many “too smooth for comfort” —or plain shady— and access to information from other apps, like in the case of contacts and calendar data mentioned earlier.

Do Zoom engineers even know what encryption means?

There are glaring loopholes in the Zoom application itself, some benign, some downright dangerous.

Zoom’s official statements (PDF) on the encryption protocols used do not match those obtained by researchers. Zoom’s actual protocols are nearly obsolete. Seems anecdotal, but it can also allude to “bad security decisions, sloppy coding mistakes, and random software vulnerabilities.”
Zoom’s security holes can and have been taken advantage of by malicious actors, which can collect personal information and even record using the user’s camera, without their knowledge, let alone permission.
It previously claimed to feature end-to-end encryption, meaning not even Zoom engineers could access the content being transmitted. But if that were true, it means even if an actor manages to grab private recordings —which has been documented, repeatedly—, the content itself could not be accessed. Evidence shows this is not the case.
Here are more details on Zoom’s encryption issues by a Columbia C.S. Professor. And as a bonus, let Tux illustrate why Zoom’s ECB encryption is so faulty.

The company has promised to upgrade the security, and appears to have done so. Research is not conclusive.

The China situation, and the unknown unknowns

Not meaning to get political, so take it for what it’s worth: Zoom operates a team of over 700 engineers in the country (under 3 different company names), known for the invasive online surveillance practices of its government. It has admitted to have rerouted traffic through the country, which surprises given the “Great Firewall,” and furthering suspicion, to date unproven, of cooperation with Beijing officials. Zoom Founder and CEO, Eric S. Yuan, is a Chinese American, born and raised in the Shandong Province.

As of this writing, several agencies, governments and security researchers continue to look into Zoom’s issues. New and unexpected ones are likely to arise. How damning are they? They have proven to cause at least some dismay for users, local bans and a class action lawsuit in the U.S. is on the works. Are they exclusive to Zoom? In all likelihood, they are not. Schneier again: “Zoom is a security and privacy disaster, but until now had managed to avoid public accountability because it was relatively obscure. Now that it’s in the spotlight, it’s all coming out.” (Not that researchers were not onto Zoom earlier.) In other words, whoever becomes Zoom’s heir is likely to be the next target of scrutiny, and new loopholes or even “privacy disasters” should surprise no one.

Personal protection measures against Zoom-like apps

Aside from the glaring loopholes, the issue of online security always touches on the “company V the user” conundrum. There is an unavoidable trade-off between a hassle-free user experience and security measures. Zoom has been proactive enough to produce all kinds of guides and instructional content for best security practices. Will these be acceptable for users? Impossible to say for now.

As for the common practices you should consider, on Zoom or most live meeting apps, here are some of the most common, varying on the amount of hassle involved and effectiveness. Note that these will help with the “Zoombombing” but might do little with the rest of the issues, known and unknown.

Consider disabling screen sharing, microphone access and chat by default.
Require passwords. (Note that it is very likely that someone at Zoom still gets to access those.)
Require user sign-ups. (Might provide an unreasonable amount of personal data to Zoom and third parties.)
Use “waiting areas” to verify who can join a room and in which capacity. (Zoom’s own “Waiting Room,” however, seems vulnerable.)
Disable “Join before host”
Disable chat windows
Some apps offer personal rooms as well as general-purpose, often temporary rooms. Whenever possible, go for the latter.
If all else fails, complain about it loudly. (@Zoom_US)

Open source, ‘Zoombombing’-free alternatives

Admittedly, these alternatives may not feel as comfortable as Zoom. Which by now you might have come to appreciate as a good thing. Furthermore, you are able to install them on your own server and make sure your data isn’t hosted in someone else’s computer. You may even be able to find them as “open containers.”

JITSI

jitsi.org

Get your own server or the apps, which offer more or less the same level of features as Zoom, with what it’s perhaps it’s “killer feature”: End-to-end encryption. Furthermore, it does not require any form of user ID. While its cloud service collects general performance data (“Crashlytics”), the server-based comes without any form of analytics features or libraries.

Apache OpenMeetings

openmeetings.apache.org

A browser-based, fairly simple and lightweight solution built with security in mind. A Moodle plugin is available.

BigBlueButton

bigbluebutton.org

An open elearning favorite that needs little introduction. Install it on your server and connect it with your LMS.

This article was first published by LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Visuals, Unsplash.

The post The ‘Zoombombing’ Saga Is Just Beginning — And The Heroic Open Source Video Conferencing Alternatives appeared first on eLearningInside News.

Fortnite Virtual Classroom? Online Learning Experiences Your Students Will Want To ‘Streambrag’ About

Cristian Duque — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 15:26:58 +0000

Let’s give a definitive answer to the question that’s on everyones’s mind: Can Fortnite teach a full K-12 curriculum for you?

This article was originally published by LMSPulse.

On a serious note, here is some academic discussion on the merits of Fortnite in education, both as a representative of the videogame and esports spaces, and on its own special merits:

What Do Experts Have to Say About Fortnite?

Rick Marlatt for the Journal of Education argues that Fortnite’s open environment is fertile ground for explorations on “multiliteracies”: Social and communal, digital and even reading comprehension. The full article includes considerations for school-based implementation. (Paywalled, contact the author or us for a copy)

A team from Texas Tech and Baylor finds a reciprocate link between Fortnite and social motivation on student athletes, with a strong element of “social connection fulfillment.” It also warns about its propensity for “addictive tendencies.” Check out the full research for qualitative experiences from students. (Open access, PDF)

This Swedish Master thesis explores the participative element of the game development roadmap and the sentiments of “ownership” between user\player\learner and the system. (Open access)

Can Fortnite teach history? While this 3-year study (paywalled) offers no visible answers, it’s the perfect segway to introduce Assassin’s Creed (never mind the title 😬) and its Discovery Mode. It was built after popular request, given the thorough research going into the development of the game. An educational-only version is available as Discovery Tour: Ancient Egypt

And can Fortnite make you a better teacher? No harm in trying! Marlatt continues his research, this time on “critical discourse analysis” to hypothesize on the pedagogical advantages of teachers adopting their students’ specialized vocabulary. Paywalled)

E3 2018 Fortnite cosplayers. Wikimedia Commons.

This proposal is a Fortnite-inspired LARPing\gamification for P.E. (Open access, in Spanish, abstract in English)

A study presented at the XX International Conference on Human Computer Interaction last June reveals that some 74% of Gen-Z Fortnite players do so at least partially during school time, including underage children. The game is PG-13. (Paywalled)

Speaking of parental ratings, don’t miss Common Sense Media’s Fortnite guide for adults, and the Common Sense Media critic and users review.

And check out Vicky Davis, aka CoolCatTeacher’s podcast interview with Mike Washburn, member of the educator advisory board for Fortnite.

Gaming and Online Learning

If you are involved in K-12 education, but missed the announcement by Epic Games (partly owned by Tencent) to commit $100 million USD towards Fortnite-based eSports competitions, you might want to pay closer attention. The massive videogame hit tells a story of meteoric popularity rise, in that it took years to light up the sky overnight. Fortnite will, in all likelihood, join the Paris 2024 Summer games, as eSports are in talks to become a new Olympic discipline.

eSports have coalesced as an entertainment industry in its own right, with viewership records broken each passing year, a growing pool of celebrity “e-thletes,” and increased commitments by advertisers, as well as broadcasting networks. They also enjoy a special familiarity among the digital natives —often synonymous with “Gen Zers” or “Zoomers”—, who increasingly get their driver’s licenses and soon will join the workforce in droves. If gaming skills are what makes people stand out, then everything you need to succeed is literally at your fingertips. The way skills are acknowledged by peers, and the systematically recording (and live-streaming on Twitch) of practice, could have important lessons about motivation for elearning professionales.

eSports Pros’ Ideas Worthy of the eLearning Pros’ Attention

Teamwork is imperative. The most popular mode in eSports is “battle royale,” where teams must ensure their survival at the other teams’ expense. Just like any battle, defensive and offensive tactics matter, but there are also game-specific considerations about resource procurement and management, which demand specialization within the team. Over time, team cohesion is essential, and in turn this helps validate individual players. If anyone makes a mistake, acknowledgment and willingness to improve beats blame and rejection every time.

A rich setting matters as much as the goal. As hard as it can be to accept, a paradoxical fact of the educator’s life holds true here: The less obvious a learning is happening, the more engaging and ultimately effective learning can be. In any case, at the end of the day video games have elements of thrill, comedy, drama, and just plain fun. Students join a game, have the time of their lives, and as a result their dexterity, spatial processing, planning, resourcefulness, and other game-specific skills are increased. What’s not to like?

Openness for everyone to create their essential story. As a result, specialization in a rich environment creates new opportunities to shine. Besides its colossal appeal, Fortnite has spawned another frequency of pop culture waves thanks to the dancing moves of the characters.

And, of course, welcome #streambragging. Gameplay streaming sites like Twitch show that players don’t have to feel like they are superstars to showcase their abilities, and just a little encouragement is all it takes to keep them going. And as a nice bonus, their progress is meticulously recorded for posterity. If you don’t livestream on your own Twitch, I hope your grandchildren will still remember you.

This article was originally published by LMSPulse.

Featured image: Hello I’m Nik, Unsplash.

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Fend Off Facebook: What To Look Out For As Students Go Fully Online

Cristian Duque — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 15:01:52 +0000

Get ready for your learners to spend a lot more time in front of their screens. This may lead to effects on their well-being. For many reasons, you might find yourself wanting to keep Facebook at bay.

An experiment reported in one of the world’s most reputable economic journal sheds some light on desirable practices as young people are required to spend even more time online, and by themselves. By focusing on the effects of limited access to social media, the experiment is also reasonable advice for all.

An Experiment in Deactivating Facebook

In “The Welfare Effects of Social Media,” research published this month in the American Economic Review, Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer and Matthew Gentzkow deactivated Facebook for 1,670 people for 8 weeks, ending on the U.S. presidential election day of 2016. They were recruited, of course, through a Facebook ad.

The first step in the process was to determine the people’s “willingness-to-accept,” or WTA, a monetary sum in exchange for deactivating Facebook. This serves as a way, though imperfect, to quantify the “value” of Facebook on an individual level. The sample was made with those setting a WTA of $102 USD or lower. The median WTA was $180 and the average $100, exceeding values from previous studies. This means people deem Facebook either highly valuable or addictive. Then, the group was split into two, determined at random: One third was given the $102, the rest got $0 for the first 4 weeks. For the remaining weeks, they were offered another sum, this time a random value between $0 and $170.

How People Spent Their Time Off the Platform

The researchers then asked respondents to report how they spent their time. Twitter became the de facto social media substitution by the sample. But interestingly enough, Twitter came second to “non-screen alone time.” “TV alone time” and “Friends and family time” came 3^rd and 4^th.

Regarding mental and emotional well-being, the researchers report “positive but not significant” effects. They are in line with previous research suggesting the negative effects of Facebook on subjective well-being, but with smaller impact than previous studies. There was also no noticeable difference for more active Facebook users than “lurkers.” But not all feelings from Facebook deactivation were positive: After “Life satisfaction,” “Anxiety” came second, then “Happiness” tied with “Depression” followed by “Boredom.”

On sample demographics, 57% were female, 68% white, 52% were under 30, 51% had college education or higher, and 60% had an annual income of $50,000 USD or higher. These more or less mirror both the overall Facebook user and U.S. citizen demographics.

Other Results

Other outcomes of the research included:

“Facebook-free” people freed on average 60 minutes per day. While some of this time was instead spent on other social media or online activity, the majority of people devoted the bulk of their “freed” time offline, watching TV or with friends and family.
News consumption through Facebook was not replaced, so this groups spent 15 minutes less getting news.
People ended up being less knowledgeable about news and politics and less “politically polarized,” but this did not appear to affect their turnout on election day. They actually were slightly more likely to open political emails.

Following up with the research, those in the “Facebook-free” group spent 22% on average less time on Facebook several weeks after the deactivation, although some people found the social media site more favorably after the deactivation.

5 percent never opened Facebook again.

Read the research here (complimentary PDF)

Featured Image: Thought Catalog, Unsplash.

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Live Video Should Not Be Your Default Online Learning Experience

Cristian Duque — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 11:32:24 +0000

Like many foreigners working as teachers in China, James left the country for the holiday season in late December last year. Little did he know his temporary stay in Manila, with nothing but a smartphone next to him, would become indefinite.

This post was originally published by LMSPulse.

The Guangzhou school he works for suggested he set up an online learning environment, where the 50-strong classroom he tackles on a regular basis would now have to be “crammed” into a virtual live classroom.

Little did we know his story would be about a month ahead of the curve. At the time of writing, millions of teachers —literally— all over the world scramble to build “lifelike” virtual classrooms, and like James a few weeks ago, feel dismayed at the proposition.

Working Fast to Maintain Instructional Continuity

For those who are only now starting to tackle, James is one of several examples of how things can play out. And flash-forward to the present, he is also exemplary of the thousands of people who not only have made it happen, but who are working tirelessly at helping others make it happen. Perhaps the first big realization a first-time online teacher has is about the magnitude of the community and infrastructure ready to help them transition.

So how did they made it happen? Not with an LMS, for sure. At least not at first.

Left to their own recourse, Chinese teachers summoned the power of social media. The omnipresent WeChat became the Swiss Army knife. For those with a rudimentary acquaintance of the LMS, WeChat can do it all, with no learning curve, and better: Share files, record video, collaborate through chat. As the height of the lockdown in China hit during the New Year celebrations, many students found themselves in their provinces with limited internet access, often exclusively through smartphones.

James’ school did have an LMS in place, and his class already had some level of acquaintance with it. But a lot of his colleagues did not. As classes were announced to resume, a few weeks time would barely give first-time users the basic understanding of the LMS language enough to equip them with the skills needed to set up courses, built with sections, activities and assessments. But his school wasn’t finished. Days away from reopening, James was expected to set up a live web conferencing room in the LMS to cram his students again. A monumental task for James, someone familiar with the complexities of setting up a web server with multiple CPUs for the web conference tool and integrate it into the LMS —BigBlueButton in Moodle in this case.

Web conferencing isn’t a bad idea, per se.

Some of the advice James got sound disheartening at first. In reality, it’s tough love.

«It is not inherently and always a bad idea, it is more that it is frequently not essential and is always demanding in terms of resources.»

Part of the problem is convincing the school officials that the solution they had in mind —broadcast a class from a phone, 6 hours a day, 3 days a week for at least 2 months— was demanding, exhausting, and downright ineffective.

But the principals’ image is one shared widely by people in education at all levels, including teacher for whom it is a nightmare. WeChat might have played a role in making live video streaming second nature in Chinese society.

You can’t flatten the learning curve while you’re rushing to “flatten the curve.”

In James’ case, Moodle was partially the answer. In emergency situations, you simply cannot develop a “community of practice” framework that provides alignment to several learning interventions taking place in Moodle, dutifully assessed and possibly tracked with the help of a predictive analytics engine. It appears that this round was won by Google Classroom and other “point-and-shoot” EdTech. Whether this jolt would represent a push towards more comprehensive experiences or not, it still remains to be seen.

Do you need a PhD to run an online course? No. Would you be able to craft a comprehensive learning experience within the day with free tools? Also no. The recipe for success is simple: Do as much as you can, ask for help anywhere you can get it, be resourceful, and be realistic.

Other key discoveries

If a dozen students or more do make it into your live online classroom, lesson #1 will likely be “Mute Button Etiquette.”
The fact that Moodle is an email-based system seems harmless, but it makes it alien for young students asked to jump into it in masse.
Most schools, especially in the West, likely have “Business Continuity Plans,” covering natural disasters, but likely not permanent lockdowns or community quarantines. It seems like the perfect time to review those.

This post was originally published by LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Tirza van Dijk, Unsplash.

The post Live Video Should Not Be Your Default Online Learning Experience appeared first on eLearningInside News.

Could Your LMS Use A Little User Testing Love?

Cristian Duque — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 15:46:26 +0000

So you are in the planning team of a new brand LMS. Exciting! Whether it’s a brand new LMS, a radical upgrade, or an inevitable switch, it’s always a good idea to consider how regular users are using and perceiving it.

This article first appeared on LMSPulse.

This is the point of “User Testing,” a dependable tool in the User Experience (UX) Design process. Also one that becomes an afterthought, if it’s considered at all. This is particularly striking in the design process of LMS and elearning apps and systems.

Sometimes you just can’t help but wonder: Has a student ever been consulted?

Part of the problem is that the current literature on usability is the limited supply of studies focusing on students, online learners and similar roles. What little academic output exist, it focuses on theoretical frameworks and plans rather than evidence. Not that theory isn’t valuable, it is perhaps the most needed part of the equation in elearning usability testing. Without a strong candidate, the testing has no better choice than to adhere to the original goals of a usability test: Higher clicks, lower bounce rates, more conversions, more purchases, more valuable shopping carts. Are those the kind of things we’re looking to optimize in a learning experience? We are still at a primitive stage where no commonly accepted framework exists, let alone a systematic gathering of comparable evidence.

For the “edtechpreneurial” minds out there, this may scream opportunity.

What is User Testing? A quick overview of the process

Before you start, it is recommended to keep your “Core Value Proposition” front and center. Aside from elearning, Usability Tests are fairly standardized by now. It is still a good idea to make sure the goals embedded in your system have some degree of coordination with your core message.

As an EdTech company, your Core Value Proposition (CVP) should help you become a part of the learner’s journey towards educational achievement. Keep this in mind when you determine the goals and expected outcomes of your test.

The Process

Define your desired outcomes. It can be a little tricky to differentiate between your elearning goals and those of your learners. Often they intersect. Likely, both learner and elearning designers want to increase skills.
Have a hypothesis, i.e. a guiding “theory of change.” I cannot stress this enough. Set an expectation, however basic, of how you expect the process to play out, how long it will take, levels of achievement and satisfaction from the experience, etc. Otherwise you risk to see everything as a victory. This is also important for low-budget scenarios: Unless your results show a significant deviation from your expectations, you might want to find the testing results successful, and your experience requiring no further changes. (In other words: Pick your battles.)
Design the test. In general terms, there are 3 phases in a test, listed below. You don’t require a literal laboratory as long as you keep close attention to the factors (that is, the variables) that you want to take into account. Just as important is to define a preliminary idea (that is, a hypothesis) of how the outcomes will turn out.
Perform the test: Here are the 3 phases mentioned:
- “User Story“: It will help you analyze your experience in terms of your CVP. By solving the user problem directly or indirectly, not only you can get insight about the usability of your system, but whether or not it provides an experience aligned to your values. The richer the amount of details from the user, all the better; but too many means a cumbersome form to fill out.
- “Task Center“: Define key tasks commonly performed by the respective user. There are different types, but for now you can focus on two kinds of tasks: Action and Information gathering. Set clear conditions that define the accomplishment of a task. Experts recommend taking advantage of screen and voice recording during the task, and encourage the tester to “think out loud” as they figure the system out. While modern devices make recording increasingly plausible, this could lead to user behaving in ordinary ways.
- “Assessment“: In the final phase, the ultimate goal is to stack up outcomes and opinions against your hypothesis. As earlier, there is a balance between data volume and drudge. In principle, don’t ask for information for which you don’t have a hypothesis.
Test more than once, and as soon as possible after each change. Strongly related to step 2. First rounds of testing should really be considered as baseline, and subsequent ones should be performed after key changes. It is recommended that, if at all possible, first and second training take place between simple and major changes. (Ideally only one change.)

Did the wave collapsed into a particle already? Why and what to consider in an LMS User Testing

They say you modify what you measure. But things may change regardless of whether you measure them or not. Human being do anyway. Furthermore, in learning contexts, it is in the learner’s nature to be continuously measured, either by another human, a technology, or themselves. (Most often, by a mix of everything.) While lab settings try to “isolate” external forces in order to understand the “variables” that are the focus of the research, it can often be not only expensive, but the resulting data is likely to produce inapplicable results.

Fortunately, unlike an online store or a news website, testing and measurement are explicit part of the deal in elearning systems and applications. The right experimental framework can produce data from naturally occurring interactions, in ways that allow for analysis through controlled variables. For statistics and data science enthusiast, this is the field of Bayesian inference. With ample and diverse enough data it is possible to examine the effects of “treatments” (changes on the application) in everyday use, no need of lab work.

In short, user testing would be best thought of as an extension of the regular assessment components of an online experience. It does involve removing binary ideas of “pass” or “fail,” as the focus shifts towards a successful system, rather than a successful student. Of course, student success cannot be guaranteed by a system alone.

This article first appeared on LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Taras Shypka, Unsplash.

The post Could Your LMS Use A Little User Testing Love? appeared first on eLearningInside News.

Contained, Open Source Environments Compatible With Everything? What Elearning Professionals Should Know About Docker

Cristian Duque — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 15:11:18 +0000

In just a couple of years, Docker, an open source platform to improve the development of applications, has taken the virtual world by storm. It has changed approaches to software development among companies large and small, especially those oriented towards experimenting with interoperability and vendor freedom. This time the early adopters’ bets paid off.

This article was originally published by LMSPulse.

The key attribute of Docker is virtualization, which is the art of embedding a system within another, in order to protect the apps in the contained system from incompatibilities. While fairly popular, virtualization used to be a difficult task to set up, it ate up a lot of computational resources and it made applications run much slower. With the snap of a finger —a couple thousand lines of code built over the course of 3-4 years, to be precise— Docker took care of all these issues.

It popularized the concept of containers, “buckets” of technologies clearly separated from the system and server that hosts them, but easy to connect to one another. Many took that idea to heart and this is how we got “Orchestration,” another virtuous discipline, where every module of an application that can be built separately goes to another bucket, no matter how “micro” its “services” are. Kubernetes, perhaps the most popular container orchestration manager out there, is also open source and it’s often seen mention in public next to Docker.

In short, it means you can split your LMS into several buckets working separate but neatly in tandem. Or that your LMS is one instrument in the institutional or enterprise technological orchestra, and your job is to conduct a triumphal EdTech symphony.

So what is Docker, and how would affect your learning? Let’s take a look.

The Docker Engine is where the magic happens. It is fully open source, with fast rising popularity.

#Docker ranked #1 most wanted platform, #2 most loved platform, and #3 most broadly used platform in the @StackOverflow 2019 Developer survey from nearly 90,000 #developers. Reply here and tell us why you want, love or use Docker for a chance to win a FREE #DockerCon ticket! pic.twitter.com/wca3nvYnng

— Docker: Build 39X Faster (@Docker) April 19, 2019

In the latest annual developers survey by top coders portal StackOverflow, Docker came in third as the favorite platform, after Linux and Windows and above mainstream technologies such as Android and AWS. 77.8% of developers “love” Docker, and it is the number one answer when the question is which new technology you would like to master next.

Docker is in a privileged position among robust and highly dependable technologies: Linux and AWS. Linux, the open source operating system, has not only raving fans but factions, which come into conflict a little too often. Docker is a peace emissar who also simplifies setting up the app built on your favorite Linux “distro” on AWS. Use of Docker is related of course to Kubernetes, but also to the PostgreSQL database engine and the team communications app Slack.

For educators, the greatest benefit of Docker is that you can forget it’s there.

That or any supporting machinery including an Operating System. By delivering the same experience on any kind of infrastructure, all you need is to focus on performance and cost in order to choose a vendor. If you ever feel like changing providers, or radically altering your whole infrastructure, you can begin by replicating your current “image” (the Docker container including your LMS or learning platform) and trying out any kinds of modifications, without fear of compromising any real resource. And if you do get a breakthrough, adding them to your production image is relatively simple.

Install, configure and deploy your LMS or elearning platform once in Docker, now you can make copies by the snap of your finger.

The simple principles of container are enough to play them out in all sorts of crazy and twisted ways. How many containers can you orchestrate and still claim they are part of one app? Now we’re venturing into ideas like “Swarms.” Or linked one another through APIs to create simple, light and fast applications that can summon all kinds of features and data in a blink. Switch them on and off at will for a highly meticulous management of resources.

The Docker Hub is another enormous reason to love the tool. With more than 2 million images, you might not even need to build your own container as chances are someone else thought of making it. We’re used to look at GitHub for code samples we could, ehm, learn from into our own environments. Now with Docker, we can just grab a whole solution, often enterprise-ready to go just by invoking it on your command line.

Wanna know more?

As an end user: Not much to see

If your organization’s LMS or educational tools are running on a container, you might not even notice. Probably a case of the “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all” truism. That’s assuming Docker was used right, of course. It is technology, after all. The probabilities of things going horribly wrong are never zero.

As a customer or procurement officer: Whet your appetite

Docker is a method to provide a reliable LMS experience. It might not be time yet to request a container orchestration on an RFP. But think fondly of a solutions provider who is working or at least trying these new approaches out, as the are expected to continue gaining relevance, and might provide a series of benefits and controls to your learning experience down the line.

As a developer of anything between a microservice and and LMS…

The ecosystem of containers and Docker-related services is booming. (Which isn’t always great but fear not—see the next section.)

Formidable Moodler Dan Poltawski created moodle-docker, designed to make Moodle testing duties (with Behat and Selenium) more agile. Meet fellow Moodle Orchestrators in this forum discussion.
There’s loads of Moodle Dockers already, on GitHub and on hub.docker.com, the container’s own open source repository. In our jobs report for October 2018 we saw the job listing including Docker on the skill set.
There are several Sakai Dockers as well and a few Canvas LMS. Docker aroused plenty of interest at the latest Sakai’s mothership conference, Open Apereo 2019. What an amazing coincidence: The presenter and main developer of a Docker image for Sakai is named Matthew Buckett.

Fighting the good fight

The more I learn about Docker, the more I am convinced that its just not easily the best open source innovation of the decade. (That’s far from an unpopular statement.)

The idea for Docker was first pitched by Solomon Hykes in 2010. The first version would be ready 3 years later. It didn’t take long for the enterprise software to adopt it and make it their own. IBM (now owner of the largest Open Source company in history, Red Hat), Amazon and more recently Microsoft have become the largest contributors to the core Docker codebase. But the company is aware of potential deals with the devil.

In November last year, Hykes announced what would become the next stage in Docker’s path. It was accompanied by a press release on the securing of $35 million USD in additional investment. After a few years making sure developers from all corners were able to run Docker on their machines, large companies helped popularized it, often by creating supporting tools to speed up workflows. Which is good but always potentially problematic, as Docker CEO, Scott Johnston, argues: “[A]explosion of choices” brings “new potential threats of lock-in.” Part of the new direction of Docker is making sure whatever proprietary tool makes your work with Docker easier, is something you can find in Docker already. So you no longer have to consider, you know, sell your soul to the company store.

Docker is a game changer for providers of LMS hosting and support. The dream of cloud agnosticism is here.

This article was originally published by LMSPulse.

The post Contained, Open Source Environments Compatible With Everything? What Elearning Professionals Should Know About Docker appeared first on eLearningInside News.

Get Started With Mobile-First Learning In 2020 (But First: Do You Need To?)

Cristian Duque — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 12:24:01 +0000

The decade started with off-the-charts mobile penetration around the world. In industrialized countries, almost everyone owns a phone. So many own two or more that the rates were over 100%. Within a few years, Asia and Latin America would follow suit.

This article first appeared on LMSPulse.

Mobile enjoyed one of the common drives of human innovation: Constraint. You could not rely on its battery life or connectivity, but mostly you could not count on having the proper functionality. One by one, the limitations were shaved off, to an almost extravagant extent.

But if once again it has been the industrialized world that has led the push for better mobile experiences, they (once again) fell prey to industrialized assumptions about humans. The most practical one is the unforeseen rise of the “mobile native,” along with the “mobile only” generation. While a growing number of people are born with a silver mirror on their hand, many people who spent their early years and even part of adulthood without the constant experience of a computer in front of them are still out there.

Design like nobody’s watching or has ever watched a desktop computer

So if you are looking for a one-word answer: Yes. Design for mobile first. Not only it would ensure your learning will be accessible to a majority of learners, it is also an invitation to innovate from constraint. A growing sentiment among modern instructional design speaks to the need to innovate through pedagogy and educational thought.

Conflating tech features, from VR to IoT or the buzzword of the season, with EdTech progress, faces lots of risks for the industry. Not the least of which a tendency for the general public and media to cry wolf for the entire sector anytime a face recognition app pops up in a classroom, or a mostly transactional announcement arouses widespread fears over the use of personal data a company has had in store for years. If you’re afraid of data privacy, you should have been 5 years ago. Furthermore, you should be hundreds of times more scared of Big Tech than “Big-ish” EdTech.

Other factors to account for

If you want a longer answer, the reality is that how much mobile you incorporate is a function of several factors unique to your context:

What are the basic characteristics of your community of users? Be careful here. There is a tendency to believe that since mobile technology grows more sophisticated every quarter, less savvy people benefit from older tech. In reality, newer designs are intended to be easier to use by more people, including the missing adult learners who are not yet online.
What is the current mix of device access, and how is it expected to evolve in the future? The first part of the answer can be found through a basic Google Analytics or Tag Manager setup. For the second part, it might be worth running some internal surveys and supplementing them with geographical and industry forecasts.
Is your learning experience exclusively design for one type of medium? There’s a growing number of solutions and LMS integrations for almost any subject that can be taught. STEM education apps are on the rise and have even made it to the humanitarian development mainstream. But there is a critical few subjects where a keyboard is a must. Funnily enough, coding is a perfect example. Sure, you can complement your teaching with mobile quizzes and flashcards, but with today’s technology you will have a hard time making coders without keyboards and IDEs.

In summary, all things being equal, beginning your learning design process with an eye on mobile, or even through the mobile lens, is increasingly a sensible practice. But as it becomes clear with every form of learning and UX experience, it will always stand to benefit from getting to know your real users a little deeper.

This article first appeared on LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Clem Onojeghuo, Unsplash.

The post Get Started With Mobile-First Learning In 2020 (But First: Do You Need To?) appeared first on eLearningInside News.

What Elearning Professionals Need To Know About Information Architecture (IA)

Cristian Duque — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 14:58:53 +0000

As our age grows more reliant on data, questions about how ever growing records of information are stored, organized and secure are taken more seriously. And I mean Weapons of Mass Destruction-level seriously. The global information architecture is a growing concern in a digital arms race, often including actual arms. But you don’t have to go nuclear geopolitics to be affected. The internal information organization of a website, for example, can influence how search engines make sense of it, therefore affecting its ranking in results pages. Humanitarian efforts are also direct beneficiaries of sensible and optimized access to structured information, as the international response to the 2019 Novel CoronaVirus 2019 illustrates, in real time.

In summary: It’s high time you start thinking about learning and organizations as information flows.

In fact: Isn’t learning a way to organize information into one’s brain?

The post first appeared on LMSPulse.

Why does Information need an Architecture?

It can be akin to how people move around in a building. Architecture is the practice of making the flow frictionless and pleasant. It also requires some preconditions. For starters, its design and process must:

optimizes resources
is sustainable
is easy to communicate to others
reflects your core value proposition.

Moving this idea into the information space, swapping buildings with platforms and apps, and people with data, it should become clear how important it is to address issues pertaining to Information Architecture to educational technology. It surely is easy enough to fire a development framework to plug an interface into a database. But will this fast-and-loose design be able to withstand a surge of users, development teams and multiple leadership directions? In short: Is your Information Architecture (IA) an asset for growth and learner success, or a liability?

It is not a theoretical question. It highlights the complexity of the software development and marketing process. It is the main reason why videos, demos and trials may not suffice for a sound procurement decision. From an organizational perspective, it is at the core of operational efficiency. Just like architecture, makeshift operations without regards to the “well-being” of its inhabitants (human and informational) can severely limit the potential for growth, or curtail it outright. For Open Source organizations, giving unrestricted access for everyone to an inscrutable structure is, in the most gentle way to put it, a missed opportunity.

Information Architecture (IA) has another vector of importance. It determines the way in which information from a learner, or user, is captured by the system or organization. The implication is simple. IA has a role in the design of a database as meaningful as in the UI\UX. Given how common it is for both worlds to barely interact in the development of modern applications, it is worth wondering if we are heading towards an Information Architecture crisis. Or if it has been artificially kept at bay thanks to growing computer power, and soon 5G.

And in EdTech, as it is the case of any organization, it bears wondering if the current way in which information flows –in, within and out– serves the purposes of the actual users it is aimed to serve; and if it does so according to the values, mission and vision enshrined on its statements. Great IA also has legal, privacy and ethical benefits.

The structure is the message: How IA affects different areas of a learning organization

From and IA point of view, success depends on the efficiency and sustainability of information capture and flow. This has clear implications on the structure of an organization, and the software development process. Or it should anyway. While the questions often become domain-specific, there are some common starters:

How do we ensure we capture the right information from humans and other external source?
How do we preserve it for history?
How do we draw insight from it?
How do we secure it?

On the learning organization units, processes and systems

Systems like Enterprise Resource Planners (ERPs) continue to evolve, at least in part by answering these questions. Different areas of an organization have seen the rise of different systems, from sales and marketing to HR and Accounting. (For schools, there is the SIS.) In this sense, the soundness of a platform’s AI cannot be measured by its internal consistency alone, but how effectively it flows across areas.

At the end of the day, the IA of the systems, and the areas themselves, exist with one focus at hand: To enhance decision making. This underscores the need for a leadership that makes the most of its overall IA to refine the quality and speed of decisions. Managerial approaches like Balanced Scorecard emphasized the role of these areas by naming them Supporting Business Units, or SBUs. Among them, the most critical SBU for effective IA practices is the Chief Information Office.

Shahadat Raman, Unsplash.

The CIO or equivalent role must ensure efficient flow of relevant and high-quality operations between SBUs and with CEO. But it is the latter who bears a more important role, which for now we can define as “Culture”: The core message, as well as its formats and the frequency in which it is reinforced.

On the learner experience

A vast body of literature deals with the relationship between usability and IA. In its ideal form, the way information is displayed to the user must reflect the hierarchies and relationships built at the database level. Introducing design elements usually leads to introduce new terminology (Schemes, Contexts, Taxonomies, Metadata) which we will avoid here. Their definitions can be easy to find from reputable sources.

It is at the UX level, which needs both appealing interfaces and well-performing code, where we see the positive effects of great IA in all its glory. The opposite is also true.

Organizations and hierarchies. Does the visual representation of information display (content) and request (input fields) reflect the structure and relations of the database?
Labeling: Are the interface and the database flexible and adaptable to a broad set of experiences that encourage a diversity of use?
Navigation: Whenever different sets of interrelated information display and request are not possible on the same page, how easy and efficient is it to arrive from one page to another? Furthermore, how can pages maximize the amount of information sets displayed without affecting UX?
Search\Queries: How to minimize the time it takes for a system to provide the user the information they are looking for?

On the architecture of learning applications, Open LMS in particular

For the “agglutinating” role that LMS are meant to play in the new Open EdTech Ecosystem paradigm, IA plays an even larger and more urgent role. Arguable, open source software have the advantage to influence the global evolution of the way we “speak” AI. Or at least the opportunity.

In any case, both open and proprietary software alike can join a global effort for unified IA standards. Organizations like W3C and learning-specific IMS Global provide some starting steps and basic tools. A lot of efforts are still needed to internalize messages regarding the value of IA focus, especially from top-down initiatives.

Next steps

Understandably, it takes more than one article to underscore the importance of AI in user experience, operational effectiveness, growth and global geopolitics. At least, we hope it sparks conversations regarding the operations and the development processes of EdTech development companies; and the considerations software procurement departments need to make to ensure a sustainably effective purchase.

The post first appeared on LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Tetiana Lazunova, iStock.

The post What Elearning Professionals Need To Know About Information Architecture (IA) appeared first on eLearningInside News.