Testing is one of those tasks, like writing documentation, that most of us tend to avoid until abolutely necessary. good test process, however, should help to ensure that you deliver exactly what the client ordered, and allow you to prioritise fixing problems in the your system. Depending on the size of your project, and the number of interlinked systems, you may have a number of different stages of testing activity, such as: Unit testing - looking at each component part of one system. Unit link testing - looking at whether the "units" fit into their host system OK. Testlink is such a product. MORE >>

I've just spent a good day in a workshop with Jane Hart (of elearning Pick of the Day fame), as the first stage in a programme looking at the whole breadth of social learning systems and approaches. Jane is a very effective advocate of Elgg , the open source social networking and social publishing platform. She calls it a social-learning platform, and uses it as the base from which a whole load of activities are started, and to introduce the concepts involved in social learning. As I came home, I was pondering whether I would use Elgg for this purpose, or whether I'd use Moodle. Moodle. MORE >>

Michael Feldstein, in responding to a comment on his review of a Sakai book , made a statement that I wish I could agree with wholeheartedly: Teaching online is completely different. There is no stage. You have no captive audience. You have no ability to lean on your physical presence and stagecraft as a teacher. What you do have is the wide world that the student is immersed in, and the student’s imagination and initiative. So that’s what you use. There's nothing that can force a teacher, tutor or materials designer to try better pedagogical practices. MORE >>

But it's not a term that I'd really come across until late 2009. The term "learning ecosystem" seems to be popping up every couple of weeks at the moment. Now that may be because I'm leading a session on it at the Learning Technologies conference. So I'm just noticing it more. Before "learning ecosytem" becomes another buzzword like "blended learning", ie. meaning everything and anything we do in adult and corporate learning, perhaps we need to be quite clear in defining it. link]. www.ndma.gov.pk/Publications/Terminology_Disaster%20Risk%20Reduction.doc. Managers act as the gardener. MORE >>

A while back , I wrote about the importance of dialogue and feedback to ensure effective change. Far too often I come across people asking for "learning modules" which are intended to change behaviours or develop skills or knowledge, yet many times are purely about providing information, hints, tips, guidance etc. So what is it that makes an information module into a learning module? The secret ingredient is feedback. For simple changes that feedback could be given programmatically. through the learning module itself. For financial reasons this is usually minimised as much as possible. MORE >>