DE Practice Archives - Joanne Deitsch

Final OMDE 606 Reflections

Posted on April 17, 2015April 17, 2015 by Joanne Deitsch

Like every other semester of the MDE program, it seems like I’m registering for my class, blink my eyes and the course is over. This semester was no different.

In my past life as an IT professional, I learned that computers, since they are designed & created by infallible people, do not always behave as expected. During pre-week, I was under the incorrect impression that this course would reveal the immutable secrets of cost analysis. But cost drivers, just like computers, are not always easy to capture and explain. It should have come as no surprise to me that costing, a methodology created by infallible people, does not lend itself to easy execution or yield perfect results.

The projects and discussions did help me gain a better understanding of cost analysis. Again, Greville Rumble’s text and visit were invaluable resources. As to the final project, my group started strong and kept going strong. Meeting attendance was high, there were great conversations throughout and everyone was persistent in getting the deliverables together.

A final thought is from a CNBC article I found online during the course of the project. The American Bar Association has approved a blended law program offered by William Mitchell College of Law in Michigan (Landsman, 2015). While other programs have offered online offerings, this is the first online offering that has been approved by the bar (Landsman, 2015). Half of the program is in the classroom and half online (Landsman, 2015).

The motivation? One that is very common to any DE practitioner, increasing access and revenue:

“We were thinking of new ways to expand access to legal education. We saw technology becoming increasingly important to the practice of law,” [Greg Duhl] said. “With the decline of lawyers and law students, we were looking for new avenues to attract students” (Landsman, 2015, para. 5).

This quote confirms that the skills I am learning as part of MDE are skills that will be demand in the coming years.

REFERENCES

Landsman, S. (2015, April 5). Digital cracks the final frontier: Law school [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/id/102528663

Learning Success Redefined

Posted on April 10, 2015April 10, 2015 by Joanne Deitsch

“As one might expect, aligning training initiatives with strategic business initiatives is imperative” (Berge & Donaldson, 2008). This brought me back to Wick, Pollock, and Jefferson (2010) who write that “Business leaders want learning professionals…who understand their specific business, who can clearly and succinctly explain the business model of their company or division and its more important business drivers and challenges” (p. 31).

6Ds encompasses a set of tools and philosophy of partnering with business subject matter experts to develop effective learning solutions (Wick et al., 2010). 6Ds to me is like ADDIE on steroids. You are defining not just the learning solution. You are articulating the concrete outcomes that the business expects as well as how improved performance as part of participation will be measured (Wick et al., 2010). 6Ds also redefines participation to include not just the design/delivery of events or courses but also what should happen prior to and afterwards (Wick et al., 2010). Prior to participation in the training, we need involve the learner’s management and the learner’s themselves to set the stage for success. Afterward, we need to provide performance support tools to help learners take the training out of the classroom and apply it to their jobs (Wick et al., 2010). One final thought: “To date, companies around the world have been able to demonstrate that adding a transfer management system to a learning or development program enhances participants’ efforts to use what they learned, facilitates interactions with their managers, accelerates performance improvement, and increase the return on investment in the program” (Wick et al., 2010, pp. 189-190).

I hope this brief discussion of 6Ds inspires you to learn more at http://www.the6Ds.com.

REFERENCES

Berge, Z., & Donaldson, C. (2008). Cost-benefit of online learning. In W. J. Bramble, Panda, S. (Ed.), Economics of distance and online learning (pp. 205-224). London: Kogan Page.

Wick, C., Pollock, R., Jefferson, A. (2010). The six disciplines of breakthrough learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer

Traditional vs. Activity Based Costing

Posted on March 5, 2015March 5, 2015 by Joanne Deitsch

Costs are caused by products in traditional accounting while activities cause costs in activity based accounting (Rumble, 1997). Since the focus is on activity, the relative value of those activities in relation to the value they provide to customers can be identified (Rumble, 1997). Overheads are also brought under more scrutiny (Rumble, 1997).

Activity Based Costing (ABC) exposes the relationships between activities and resource consumption and profits (Cooper & Kaplan, 1991). The how and why of improvements are explained by ABC (Cooper & Kaplan, 1991). Profit analysis based on customer, product line, brands or regions are revealed though ABC (Cooper & Kaplan, 1991). The data that ABC can provide to organizational leaders should be used “as a guide to reprice products or customer transactions, to alter product and customer mix, or to perform activities more efficiently” (Cooper & Kaplan, 1991, p. 135).

Activity based costing was established in the late 20^th century (Wikipedia, 2015) and is the new kid on the block in contrast to traditional cost based accounting. It will take time for protocols and procedure to build up around Activity based costing as well as for it to earn its own place in the field of accountancy.

REFERENCES

Cooper, R., & Kaplan, R. S. (1991). Profit priorities from activity-based costing. Harvard Business Review, 69(3), 130-135. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/magazine

Rumble, G. (1997). The costs and economics of open and distance learning [Adobe Digital Editions Version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Wikipedia. (2015, February 26). Activity-based costing [Web Page]. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity-based_costing

Social Discount Rate

Posted on February 22, 2015February 22, 2015 by Joanne Deitsch

Reading the course notes about social discount rate was confusing to me. So I went back to the Rumble text to seek more clarity: “The social discount rate acts in must the same way as the opportunity cost in private enterprise. An opportunity cost is the value of that which must be given up to acquire or achieve something” (Rumble, 1997).

Approach for including the opportunity cost in deprecation per Rumble (1997):

Determine the replacement value of the item
Determine the useful life of the item
Divide the replacement value of the item by the number of years of life to obtain the cost of depreciation for each year of use
Multiply the undepreciated portion by the interest rate to obtain the opportunity cost of having resources invested in the undepreciated portion of the item
Add the annual cost of the depreciation and the annual interest foregone on the remaining investment to obtain the annual cost

So I went back to the example from the course notes to double check how this works using Rumble’s approach. The course example is a computer that cost $2000 and is depreciated over 5 years. The simple depreciation is $2000/5 = $400.

Determine the replacement value of the item: $2000
Determine the useful life of the item: 5 years
Divide the replacement value of the item by the number of years of life to obtain the cost of depreciation for each year of use: $2000/5 = $400
Multiply the undepreciated portion by the interest rate to obtain the opportunity cost of having resources invested in the undepreciated portion of the item:
Year 1: ($1600 *.05) = $80
Year 2: ($1200 * .05) = $60
Year 3: ($800 * .05) = $40
Year 4: ($400 * .05) = $20
Year 5: ($0 * .05) = $0
Add the annual cost of the depreciation and the annual interest foregone on the remaining investment to obtain the annual cost
Year 1: ($1600 *.05) = $400 + $80 = $480
Year 2: ($1200 * .05) = $400 + $60 = $460
Year 3: ($800 * .05) = $400 + $40 = $440
Year 4: ($400 * .05) = $4000 + $20 = $420
Year 5: ($0 * .05) = $400 + $0 = $400

Going back to the Rumble definition, the total social discount rate or the amount that is given up by the organization in order to own the computer is $2200. This does not jibe with the course notes which has the total at $2,415.

REFERENCES

Rumble, G. (1997). The costs and economics of open and distance learning [Adobe Digital Editions Version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Top 5 Things I Learned from my Mastectomy

Posted on October 17, 2014October 17, 2014 by Joanne Deitsch

Image courtesy of the National Breast Cancer Foundation

October is breast cancer awareness month. I am not a survivor of breast cancer. I am not a victim of breast cancer. I am a breast cancer conqueror. In honor of this month, my October blogs are sharing lessons I learned from my mastectomy.

If you are a woman who has never had a mammogram, please visit http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-cancer-awareness-month to create your early detection plan. A mammogram saved my life. A mammogram may save yours.

Digital Footprints

Posted on July 4, 2013January 10, 2014 by Joanne Deitsch

Courtesy of http://www.123rf.com/

Proud mothers get footprints of their babies’ immortalized using plaster. When we walk along the beach our footprints can be washed away with the incoming tide.

What of the digital footprints students leave behind in the form of blogs? In reality these digital footprints are more of the plaster type of footprint casts while their authors might see them as more of footprints in the sand, created once and never used again.

What is to prevent a future employer or worse, an identify thief, to find out about you through the blogs you leave behind? There is no security or password protection on these sites. Your name and personal details, if you share them, are all parts of a puzzle that identify thieves may use against you (Goodridge, 2009). Yet, we put them on our blogs for the entire world to see.

Pang (2009) gave examples of student blogs in his article. They were all still available even though some of the posts were from 2006. Perusing these blogs showed typical college students. However, photos of one lifting a glass of alcohol, which was shown on one these blog sites, might not give a future employer the most favorable impression of a candidate seeking a job.

Pang (2009) discusses how blogs allow students to become capable of taking charge of their own learning and to develop into independent lifelong learners. Personally, I did not find evidence in his article to support these claims. Especially the last claim, a claim that is certainly not provable given the short length of the study which was a single college semester.

Will these digital footprints yield the results that Pang so optimistically describes? Or will they be like footprints in the sand – forgotten by the people who created them in their quest of moving forward and never to be used again? Or will they be footprints in plaster, where others can harvest information maybe even for malicious purposes? Only time will tell.

REFERENCES

Goodridge, E. (2009). Steps to prevent identity theft, and what to do if it happens [Article]. Retrieved July 4, 2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/your-money/identity-theft/02idtheftprimer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Pang, L. (2009). Application of blogs to support reflective learning journals. Retrieved May 21, 2009, from http://deoracle.org/online-pedagogy/teaching-strategies/application-of-blogs.html

The Torah, Shovels and OER

Posted on June 26, 2013January 10, 2014 by Joanne Deitsch

Used with permission from Microsoft

Does every single student come out of a class in possession of the knowledge and skills the teacher tried to share? In other words, is the teacher a successful sharer? If so, then the teacher is a successful educator. If attempts at sharing fail, then the teacher is a poor educator. Education is sharing. Education is about being open (Wiley, 2010, p. 16)

When my husband and I met and fell in love, we embarked on a journey of discovery – discovery of each other and our lives prior to meeting each other. He told me a story about his great-grandfather helping tutor him for his Bar Mitzvah. A Bar Mitvah is a ceremony that shows to their community that a Hebrew child has studied God’s Laws and is ready to be responsible for their own actions. In the community’s eyes and in God’s eyes that the child is an ignorant child no longer but an adult. One of the sayings he shared with me from his great-grandfather is that “The Torah is not a shovel.”

A Rabbi would not treat his religious practices of training young people about the Torah for a wage. This could degrade his religious practice, a practice that a Rabbi is called to, a practice he would do for free, and a practice that is a pleasure as it could make someone else’s life better.

It would reduce the word of God to a chore, a job, like being a ditch digger. The Torah is handled with awe, joy and reverence. A shovel is a tool that is used to dig dirt and handled with care only given to the wielder, not the tool.

I was reminded of the phrase that “The Torah is not a shovel” when reading David Wiley’s Openness as Catalyst for an Educational Reformation. David reminds us why we considered being educators in the first place. We had something we were called to, a practice we would willingly do for free, and a practice that is a pleasure as it could make someone else’s life better. “If our primary interest is facilitating student learning, then education is our field” (Wiley, 2010, p. 18).

One of the definitions of the word Rabbi is teacher (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rabbi). Maybe the lesson that will be taught in the future is that “An educational practice is not a shovel.”

REFERENCES

Wiley, D. (2010). Openness as catalyst for an educational reformation. EDUCAUSE Review, 45(4), 14–20. Retrieved October 3, 2011, from http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/OpennessasCatalystforanEducati/209246

One more Barrier to Mobile Learning

Posted on June 24, 2013January 10, 2014 by Joanne Deitsch

MY SCARIEST HELP DESK MEMORY

One of my scariest help desk memories was when I was told we were no longer providing laptops to our clients. Instead, our clients would use their own computers to access our new data entry applications that were web-based rather than the previous applications that had to be installed on a computer’s hard drive.

It was a scary for me because now we would support every internet browser running on every piece of computer hardware configured in every way known to man. The reason you see the word standardization so much in computer literature is because IT folks like to know what they’re dealing with. What are the hardware specifications? Will the software work on our hardware platform(s)? How does the software work? What are the known problems with the hardware, software, and their integration?

FLASHBACK

I flashed back to that memory when I read in McGreal and Elliott (2008) that the educational possibilities are unlimited and that learning can be universally accessible due the possibilities afforded by mobile technology. While there was a lot of excitement expressed, there was not very much concrete evidence of the exact uses of this technology for educational purposes in McGreal and Elliott (2008).

Bates and Sangra (2011) discuss two uses – 1) RSS feeds to mobile phones 2) Student data collection via real-time polling, interviews, photos and video for project work, post to class web site. However, mobile devices are not a crucial element for learners to enjoy most of these uses. Many of the same thing could be done on their computer. It is more convenient to do these activities on an iPad, iPhone or a Droid that the learner carries with them. But if learners don’t own an iPad, iPhone or Droid, but do own a PC or laptop, they would not be excluded from every opportunity.

SCREEN SIZES

While mobile learning sounds incredible, great, the next big thing in online education the actual implementation appears to still be in its infancy (Bates & Sangra, 2011). For me, the crucial question is how are we going to accommodate the various screen sizes that the plethora of mobile devices boasts? There is no standardization as every company is scrambling to find the ideal size that is cost effective while being not too large and not too small!

Waingankar (2011) talks of developing web pages for mobile devices and feels that the “worst … challenge posed [is] by the fact that there is no standard screen size or resolution that you can take for granted.” There’s that standardization thing again. It is hard to design when there is no standard!

Let’s look at two mobile devices. The screen size of my Samsung Galaxy Exhibit is in the neighborhood of 3” x 2” or 7cm x 5cm. Apple iPads generally have a screen size in the neighborhood of 9” x 7” or 23cm x 18cm. So, the bad thing is that the screen on my Droid is not as big as an iPad screen. Something that is readable on an iPad will most likely be unreadable on my Droid. Sure, I can expand the screen and use my finger to swish back and forth. But it doesn’t make for a great user experience or a great learning experience. In those situations, I abandon my Droid and open my laptop which has an approximate screen size of 12” x 7.5” or 30.5cm x 19cm.

ONE MORE BARRIER

I’ve taken the liberty of putting in bold barriers listed by Bates and Sangra (2011) :

The real potential of mobile learning is just over the horizon, waiting for the next stage of technology integration that will include low cost, wide-band connections, new interfaces (perhaps including voice recognition), software applications that are better suited for study purposes, and above all new designs for teaching that enable the unique advantages of mobile learning to be better exploited (p. 39).

I humbly submit the lack of standardized screen sizes as another barrier to adoption of mobile devices for use as an educational tool. Schools will most likely have to adopt the suggestion that Waingankar (2011) posts on his blog to limit the devices that can be supported.

REFERENCES

Bates, A. W., & Sangra, A. (2011). Recent developments in technology and education. Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning (pp. 25-51). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, An Imprint of Wiley.

McGreal R. & Elliott, M. (2008). Technologies of Online Learning (E-learning). In T. Anderson. (Ed.), Theory and practice of online learning (Second Edition). (pp. 143-165). Retrieved January 24, 2010 from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/06_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Waingankar, Sankalp. (2011, February 9). Tackling the screen resolution challenge on mobile devices [Blog post]. Retrieved http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/webmaster/tackling-the-screen-resolution-challenge-on-mobile-devices/126

From Wisconsin to the World: Thank You Charles Wedemeyer!

Posted on June 20, 2013January 10, 2014 by Joanne Deitsch

Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives

Charles Wedemeyer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1911 (Burton, 2010). In the 1930s Wedemeyer was a public school teacher and then principal of the Steuben Junior High School (Burton, 2010). During World War II, Wedemeyer created instructional techniques to benefit sailors who were operating in adverse learning conditions (Burton, 2010). “From this instrumental experience, Wedemeyer developed a theoretical framework for learning, using innovative communication technologies [that were] adapted for non-traditional learners” (Burton, 2010, p. 28).

The United States Army Institute pioneered computerized marking of assignments, 24-hour phone in counseling [Exhibit A], and use of tutorial groups[Exhibit B] (Moore & Kearsley, 2012). These were ideas which Wedemeyer adopted while in his position as the director of correspondence instruction at the University of Wisconsin (Moore & Kearsley, 2012).

The Articulated Instructional Media (AIM) project developed by Wedemeyer was the first test of the course team model to develop educational courses [Exhibit C] (Moore & Kearsley, 2012). Other innovations included counseling [Exhibit A], guidance [Exhibit D], and learning centers [Exhibit B] (Burton, 2010). This project attracted the interest of educational reformers in members of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s government (Burton, 2010). The planning committee visited Wisconsin in 1967 for further study of this project. Soon after, Wedemeyer was invited to London for further discussions (Moore & Kearsely, 2012). 1n 1969, Wedemeyer spent several months in the house of Walter Perry to assist in developing OU UK (Moore & Kearsely, 2012). “Almost the entire educational geography of an open educational system was identified in the AIM experiment” (Wedemeyer, 1982, p. 24).

So what relevance does Wedemeyer’s work have today in 2013 to a graduate student at UMUC? A graduate student, such as myself, has access a support systems 24 hours a day [Exhibit A]. I get to benefit from educational resources that are the effort of many different educators and specialists [Exhibit C]. I have a graduate advisor who helps guide me through the program [Exhibit D]. Now, I don’t have access to regional student centers but there are “250,000 students … supported by centres in the UK, Ireland and Europe” (http://www.open.ac.uk/about/main/) [Exhibit B].

Think for a minute about all the people who benefited from Wedemeyer’s influence as a public school teacher, as a principal, as a Naval instructor, at the University of Wisconsin, at all the OUs today! This blog just shares a few highlights of this amazing man’s contributions to education and education at a distance. Let me join all of them is saying Thank You, Charles Wedemeyer!

REFERENCES

Burton, G. (2010). Opening the great gate at “the palace of learning”: Charles A. Wedemeyer’s pioneering role as champion of the independent learner. Vitae Scholasticae, 27(1), 26-42. Retrieved from http://www.isebio.org/

Moore, M.G., & Kearsley, G. (2012). The historical context. In Distance education: A systems view of online learning (3rd ed., pp. 23-44). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth CengageLearning.

Wedemeyer, C. A. (1982). The birth of the Open University, a postscript. Teaching at a Distance, 21, pp. 21-27.