So I'm starting to get a feeling here that there's a little something going on between the people selling eLearning and the people making eLearning as part of distance education. I'm also seeing a separation (as there always has been) between corporate training (now Learning and Development or L&D) and Academia.
I remember in the late 90's when we were first streaming video on the web, our company sold "virtual trade shows" where if you subscribed to a "channel" you could see live the presentations at a trade show. You could watch interviews with all the vendors, etc. This was sold as a cost effective way of "attending the conference" without having to pay for air-fare and hotel, etc.
A similar thing happened at the next company (this was the DOT COM boom remember) where they were a premiere company for training Cisco engineering. (The only company with more top level certified Cisco engineers was Cisco!) Anyway - in addition to in person instructor led training (ILT) you could now attend training online in an extended classroom format. Again - main costs savings were for the student - no hotel or air fare to pay.
An attractive aspect of this for both the trade show people and the Cisco training company was that they could easily add more "attendees" to the ledger. Even at reduced prices this was "found money". Everyone was happy.
So here's the deal. As we know - and has been a main point in this class - is that where there is any interaction between the teacher and a student whether it is real time, face to face, asynchronous or not, it drives up the variable cost per student. It is one of the main cost drivers.
In the case of the trade show example - this was not an issue. This was a passive experience and they had no mechanism for actually interacting with the trade show. (Though we did introduce a labor intensive process of letting people email questions, printing them out, and handing them to the presenter) Adding 100 or 1000 more attendees did not have a great impact on the cost of the trade show beyond provisioning additional bandwidth which was a fraction of the price of admission.
In the case of the Cisco training company, adding new students came at great cost. Not only did you need enough students to justify the expense of the equipment to provide video and synchronized computer feedback interface (where students could enter questions in chat, etc) class size was limited to the number of students an instructor could interact with effectively. Just like a traditional classroom.
We take this capability for granted now with our free tools where it is east for anyone familiar with their computer to share their desktop and chat with multiple people or even add video with a web cam. We have come a long way and cost have come way down. What has NOT changed is the number of students that a given teacher can effectively communicate with in real time.
Enter time shifting - asynchronous text based interaction between students and teacher.
It is CRITICAL to understand that while you get the incidental benefit of exposing the text transactions to the entire class simultaneously - this is a TIME INTENSIVE situation for the teacher and is there fore expensive with regard to adding more students.
So whats the point? What I took away from this is that you can discuss the merits and costs of any combination of technologies you want, but you need to keep your eye on how your selections affect the cost structure of whatever it is your planning. The relationship between the fixed costs and the variable costs in your situation. You have to be able to decide if you can afford the class you're planning (minimum N of students) and what the implications of adding new students will be to your costs.
This has been a departure for me from how I generally think about technology and teaching and learning.
I remember in the late 90's when we were first streaming video on the web, our company sold "virtual trade shows" where if you subscribed to a "channel" you could see live the presentations at a trade show. You could watch interviews with all the vendors, etc. This was sold as a cost effective way of "attending the conference" without having to pay for air-fare and hotel, etc.
A similar thing happened at the next company (this was the DOT COM boom remember) where they were a premiere company for training Cisco engineering. (The only company with more top level certified Cisco engineers was Cisco!) Anyway - in addition to in person instructor led training (ILT) you could now attend training online in an extended classroom format. Again - main costs savings were for the student - no hotel or air fare to pay.
An attractive aspect of this for both the trade show people and the Cisco training company was that they could easily add more "attendees" to the ledger. Even at reduced prices this was "found money". Everyone was happy.
So here's the deal. As we know - and has been a main point in this class - is that where there is any interaction between the teacher and a student whether it is real time, face to face, asynchronous or not, it drives up the variable cost per student. It is one of the main cost drivers.
In the case of the trade show example - this was not an issue. This was a passive experience and they had no mechanism for actually interacting with the trade show. (Though we did introduce a labor intensive process of letting people email questions, printing them out, and handing them to the presenter) Adding 100 or 1000 more attendees did not have a great impact on the cost of the trade show beyond provisioning additional bandwidth which was a fraction of the price of admission.
In the case of the Cisco training company, adding new students came at great cost. Not only did you need enough students to justify the expense of the equipment to provide video and synchronized computer feedback interface (where students could enter questions in chat, etc) class size was limited to the number of students an instructor could interact with effectively. Just like a traditional classroom.
We take this capability for granted now with our free tools where it is east for anyone familiar with their computer to share their desktop and chat with multiple people or even add video with a web cam. We have come a long way and cost have come way down. What has NOT changed is the number of students that a given teacher can effectively communicate with in real time.
Enter time shifting - asynchronous text based interaction between students and teacher.
It is CRITICAL to understand that while you get the incidental benefit of exposing the text transactions to the entire class simultaneously - this is a TIME INTENSIVE situation for the teacher and is there fore expensive with regard to adding more students.
So whats the point? What I took away from this is that you can discuss the merits and costs of any combination of technologies you want, but you need to keep your eye on how your selections affect the cost structure of whatever it is your planning. The relationship between the fixed costs and the variable costs in your situation. You have to be able to decide if you can afford the class you're planning (minimum N of students) and what the implications of adding new students will be to your costs.
This has been a departure for me from how I generally think about technology and teaching and learning.