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The Environment
The era of lifelong learning has arrived. Personal and professional needs for new knowledge and skills coupled with the rapid pace of change in
our global, knowledge-based economy have created accelerating needs for anytime learning. This is supported by new collaboration technologies and the connectivity of the World Wide Web. It's accelerated by our
evolving ability to create and distribute digital content, to teach and facilitate learning and collaboration online, and to work in distributed teams. All of these forces are coming together to create the
conditions for substantial training and education to be delivered online. Market needs and economics will make virtual learning a reality in academia and corporate training and the major mode of delivery for
corporate training and lifelong learning in the years ahead.
Market Needs a Solution
Over several generations, distance learning has evolved from correspondence courses to video and satellite broadcast models of remote learning. However, distance learning has never provided the quality
of learning available in the face-to-face environment of a traditional classroom. The connectivity of the Internet and a new generation of software applications make possible a new model of online learning, one
which provides significantly higher quality and flexibility and which is more appropriately labeled "distributed learning." Distributed learning uses a variety of technologies, learning methodologies,
on-line collaboration, and instructor facilitation to achieve applied learning results not possible from traditional education in a truly flexible, anytime/anywhere fashion. Two market segments have
begun the shift from traditional sametime/sameplace teaching methods to various methods of distributed learning: higher education and corporate education and training. These two areas have similar needs: to increase
the efficiency of preparing and facilitating courses while simultaneously shortening the time required to deploy them, all with regard to high quality learning and to cost-effectiveness. Academic institutions are
under pressure to create new revenue streams using their assets in course creation and teaching, while corporate training departments need access to a broad market in education materials and services - multimedia
content, course development and customization services, instruction, and infrastructure hosting. Both groups are already heavily involved in experiments and pilot projects. Distributed learning will
achieve its potential to radically alter the education delivery process only if technology is enhanced to make it a comprehensive solution. Distributed learning technology must:
1. - Become a platform for the three major modes of distributed learning: asynchronous collaborative, synchronous collaborative, and self-paced learning - a platform which flexibly supports the
integration of all three into a single environment. 2. - Provide scalable management and administration tools for creating and operating not only single courses, but course catalogs, enrollment and
registration, record-keeping, and scheduling - all the functions required to operate a campus or a training department in the real world. 3. - Support open standards so that all the activities of
course design, instruction, business management and campus administration can be shared among business partners - organizations that provide content, customization, hosting infrastructure, and other services
that constitute complete solutions.
Solution is LearningSpace(TM)
Lotus® is committed to distributed learning as a key component of a knowledge management strategy. This strategy is based on collaboration
technology, applications, and services to create and leverage knowledge, producing value for enterprises in innovation, responsiveness, productivity, and competency. Lotus and its parent company, IBM®, offer
many products and services that turn the insights of knowledge management into solutions. LearningSpace is one of these. LearningSpace is the product family and platform that integrates the Lotus vision
for solutions for anytime learning. LearningSpace Release 2.5, built on Lotus Domino (TM)
, already provides the market's best framework for asynchronous collaborative learning. The newest member of the LearningSpace family - the DataBeam Learning Server(TM) - is a leading product for synchronous collaborative learning.In the coming months, the
LearningSpace platform will evolve into an integrated family of products that will deliver the industry's premier distributed learning solution: A new release of LearningSpace - renamed ˇLearningSpace
Forum - will come to market with increased flexibility, enhanced tools for course design and inclusion of multimedia content, an improved interface, and integration with the other parts of the LearningSpace family.
LearningSpace Live (based on the DataBeam Learning Server and Lotus SametimeTM technology) will increase its instructional flexibility with support of live events such as audio/video conferencing,
whiteboarding, and application sharing. A combined product - LearningSpace Anytime - will provide the asynchronous and synchronous learning of both LearningSpace Forum and LearningSpace Live for the
most complete, flexible, and highest value online learning environment. The addition of LearningSpace Campus for managing and administering course catalogs, enrollment and registration processing,
implementing approval workflows for actions such as opening and closing courses, and providing links to external systems for billing and student record-keeping will provide broad scalability and a complete platform
for distributed learning. LearningSpace will support open standards for content metadata and student records, and it will be enhanced with tools for incorporating the output of streaming media servers
into courses. As part of our support for open standards, Lotus LearningSpace will continue to enhance its support for Internet standards by making all features and services accessible from a Web browser.
The Lotus LearningSpace Application Suite
The Lotus LearningSpace application suite is an innovative distributed learning tool developed at Lotus Institute. This suite of five
interconnected Notes databases provides a flexible, dynamic environment for developing, deploying and delivering courses as well as for supporting and augmenting classroom training. LearningSpace includes:
Schedule
A central module for participants to navigate through course materials. The Schedule may be developed and organized by time frames (days, weeks or months) as well as by modules for self-paced instruction. The Schedule links participants to readings, assignments and quizzes.
MediaCenter
A shared knowledge base with containers for articles and newsletters, chapters, abstracts and summaries, and multimedia, as well as access to external sources such as the World Wide Web and other content repositories.
CourseRoom
An interactive, facilitated environment for participants to have discussions among each other and with the instructor, to share information and to complete team tasks and assignments. The CourseRoom allows participants to work in teams and supports public and private discussions. The CourseRoom uniquely supports and enables collaborative learning that is both participant-to-participant and instructor-to-participant.
Profiles
A collection of participant descriptions that includes contact information, photographs, education and experience, and interests. This application allows students to create a "home page" of information about themselves.
Assessment Manager
An evaluation tool for the instructor to privately test and receive feedback on participant performance. Quizzes are posted in the Schedule and are e-mailed back into the Quiz, only accessible by the instructors. Instructors can review, grade and provide feedback to participants.
Examples
A corporation is looking to train a community of consultants on an enhanced consulting methodology. The consultants prefer to not be
"pulled out" of the field for training, and the corporation does not want to incur the costs associated with classroom training. The learning objectives for the consultants are focused on enhancing their
existing knowledge base. As a result, the corporation feels that consultants could learn the new methodology through a combination of individual learning and electronic team collaboration. The corporation decides to
deliver the course using LearningSpace. A university is looking to integrate distributed learning as an important component in their part-time executive education program. Students learn and interact
over the course of the program using a combination of media that is both synchronous and asynchronous such as classroom education, video conferencing, and LearningSpace. The combination of media provides a richer
and more flexible learning environment for part-time executives.
WorkFlow Solutions is developing the following Web course in LearningSpace:
Speech Recognition Training for Physicians - For more information, click: HERE Return to Top
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