Pedagogic Design – Two Key Influences

It is easy to make the case for the use of Learning Objectives as the basis of designing and planning learning – particularly online learning, where the technology can make use of the extra context-data in innovative, meaningful and structured ways.

Develop Your Own Online Pedagogy

Many institutions are outsourcing this core capability to external, third-party commercial online programme managers in the dream of a quick and easy solution to it. Which approach do you think will best stand the test of time?

Rich Content vs Content Rich

The content for an online course should be semantically enabled, consistent and efficient to produce and maintain.

Quick! How do we put this course online?

If you’re at all involved in higher or further education, in the last couple of weeks you’ll have heard the above question being asked numerous times and with increasing urgency. You may well have asked it yourself. The COVID-19 pandemic has meant face-to-face teaching needing to be replaced with online delivery, and from a standing […]

Keith Lumsden – an appreciation

Professor Keith Lumsden, founder and Academic Director of the Edinburgh Business School, has passed away at the age of 84. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, he went to Stanford University in California on a scholarship in 1959 and stayed to complete research into programmed learning techniques in higher education. Some of the most […]

APRIL 2019: WCAG 2.1 Improvements for University of London

CAPDM has been awarded new work to improve the generation of more accessible distance learning course materials for the University of London. Focusing on applying changes required by the latest WCAG 2.1 standard, which covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible, the goal is to make content more accessible to […]

Briefing Paper: using – private companies to develop or expand online programmes or courses

Laura Czerniewicz and Sukaina Walji at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town, recently published (Feb 2019) an interesting briefing paper on the issues to be thought about, and the implications of decisions made, in universities choosing an online programme manager or enabling company to work with. The […]

EdX Tweaks its Business Model

Interesting to read Lindsay McKenzie’s recent Inside HigherEd article about EdX, which more closely analyses the potential relationship between MOOCs and OPMs. For the record, CAPDM agrees that MOOCS should be open and free to all, and disagrees with the recent emergence of paywalls for assessment and retained access to courses. This article suggests EdX […]

Where next for FutureLearn and the OU?

I’ve been watching FutureLearn evolve over the past few years with great interest and if I’m honest, a touch of relief. As a Brit, it’s been my kind of MOOC provider – one with early “BBC levels” of production quality, and an increasingly interesting catalogue of simpler courses from around the world, that appealed more […]

General content standards for learning materials

I’ve recently been challenged to clarify what I mean by open standards for education content. There are indeed lots of open standards around: HTML, ePUB, ODT, PDF, MP3, MP4, SCORM, xAPI/Tin-Can or IMS Common Cartridge. They all tend to be used for very specific purposes, which is part of their value. The standards I was […]