Why Use a Web Application to Develop Your Course?
Do you remember the days before we had word processors or spreadsheets? You’d probably have to be a least forty years old to have experienced the long sequential process of building outlines and notes in longhand to organize your ideas, and then paying a professional typist or a secretary to create the document. Think how differently you build a document today. You probably do our own typing, secure in the knowledge that it is easy to correct mistakes, change ideas, or rearrange content.
If you are younger than forty, think about trying to be an online journalist before Blogging and Wikis. The point is that these technologies have changed the creative process and stimulated an explosion in available content. With logistical barriers removed, everyone can potentially get in the game, (talented or not).
It might not seem like it sometimes with the initial flood of content, but certainly today we have many better written documents and much better financial analyses because of spreadsheet and word processor technologies, than we had in typewriter days. Gradually the quality of the content improves because the forces of the market and the selections made as well as instant feedback from stakeholders pushes the cream to the top and raises the standards.
The author believes that web based multimedia supporting course authoring applications, and open source collaboration tools will have similar effects on elearning, and will change how online courses are developed and deployed and who will develop them. This will give rise to another flood of content on every topic under the sun, with rich media and gamelike interactive learning exercises.
If you think that will be a bad thing, you are probably looking through the lens of an over forty educator . Much as “amateur” spreadsheet users were regarded dimly by the professional accountants, until their boundary pushing changed the way professionals worked, so present day educators often find it difficult to modify tried and true practices that have worked for decades.
It is easy to be sidetracked from the inevitability of what is happening by dwelling on some of the bad stuff that becomes available once anyone can have access to the medium and express themselves.
Let me carry the typewriter analogy through to course design. Today many subject matter experts and designers still work offline for their rich media interactive content, creating a paper course outline and then turn their notes or storyboards over to the only people who have the software licenses or the expertise to create web content. In this sequential process, timelines can be so long that it is not unheard of to build a course that is irrelevant by the time it is deployed, and is costly to update. Those who really understand the learning outcomes they are trying to achieve, have become hostages to the technicians who can use the web development software.
Today there are several applications available that allow a relatively non-technical subject matter expert to create rich media interactives using templates, and then publish these to the web. But not many SME’s use them, and still prefer to turn their ideas over to a full time “technical person”, even if that person is using template software.
Why? One reason is because desktop software licenses cost too much to provide them to everyone in an organization who might have something to contribute to the design process, so we give them to a few “technical “ experts, often in IT, and trust that these software experts will convert our ideas without any subject matter expertise.
Some desktop applications require extensive training, more time than a manager or a subject matter expert is willing to invest because it may be forgotten if the software isn’t used regularly. So we employ a specialist, who takes our content ideas, and re-emerges with them in an online format, which may or may not be what we envisioned, depending on the limitations of the authoring tool, the network environment, or the programmer.
A web application is different. Most of them have a licensing scheme that doesn’t limit authors, because there is nothing to install on the client side. So the authoring platform and the course are accessible to everyone on the team. They only need a web browser, no matter where they are. This means that everyone involved in a project can see and contribute to the content development. Regular online collaboration becomes easier, and creativity flourishes as the authors practice what they are preaching to online learners even as the course is being developed.
The economics are better because there is no need to buy an additional software license just because someone might occasionally want to change an image or update a movie or a narration or some text. Web applications also allow someone to work from their home, or from an internet café in Singapore, or on a laptop in the airport. Anwhere they can access the web.
The course that results often means that a minimal QA process will be required after the course is fully developed, because all the stakeholders were able to be involved all the way through. The course is usually much better as well, because ideas and opinions were brought to bear before it became too costly or time consuming to change things.
Web Applications lend themselves to working in a community, so online mentoring and support is more readily available, as well as shared reusable learning objects, and a perception that the project is visible and therefore controllable by those who have the most at stake.
There is never a need for constant downloading of updates with a web application. New features, security fixes and revisions all occur on the server and are invisible to the end user.
When content is changed with a web application authoring tool the change is instantly recorded on the server, so even if your computer crashes, or you lose your connection, everything is there when you log back in, there’s nothing to reinstall, because all you ever need is a browser.
As you can tell, I think web applications are going to become more popular and have lots of advantages, but what is the downside? Well a web application is subject to the limitations of bandwidth, and so the performance of an online authoring tool might be less than a really well designed desktop application if the connection to the internet is poor. However today’s web technologies allow performance levels that are hard to distinguish from desktop software on any reasonable bandwidth, and a variety of caching technologies can compensate for poor connectivity.
A number of companies, including Google think Web applications are here to stay and will only get better as more people begin to use them, and as connectivity improves and becomes more widely available.
If you want to try the myUdutu web application, it is free. Simply go to http://www.myudutu.com and sign up for a free user account.
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