HBS Working Knowledge: The Business of Education: An Interview with Derek Bok
HBS Working Knowledge: The Business of Education: An Interview with Derek Bok"Of course there are differences between producing products and teaching classes. But certainly part of the reason for the greater improvement in commercial products is the fact that professors in a university and those who administer universities are not constantly trying new methods of teaching and learning. They are not testing rigorously to see which new initiatives work better than others, discarding the ones that don't do so well and encouraging the wider use of those innovations that do seem to be effective."
innovation Add tag Permalink | Friday, September 05, 2003
Mopsos: Is there a practical use to SNA?
Mopsos: Is there a practical use to SNA?"I am under the impression that there are major obstacle to the use of Social Network Analysis in corporate settings... he #1 problem with SNA surveys is that you actually ask people to give names. The #2 problem is that there can be tens of thousands of names to process. Employees will necessarily feel uneasy, to say the least, about answering questions about who is knowledgeable about this, and who is meeting with whom.
Add tag Permalink | Friday, September 05, 2003
Training Magazine: The State of the E-Learning Market
Training Magazine: The State of the E-Learning MarketIn a way, however, bad times have helped e-learning... The direction is away from learning as an end to itself and toward its contribution to business performance. I think the downturn has encouraged the industry to reexamine itself."
Add tag Permalink | Friday, September 05, 2003
Simulative: Tough Times Tough Choices
Simulative: Tough Times, Tough ChoicesPlay the Governor and balance a state budget.
interactives Add tag Permalink | Thursday, September 04, 2003
Resource: Interactive Narratives
Resource: Interactive Narratives"Interactive narratives are informational and storytelling experiences designed and produced for the web. They leverage great design, visual journalism and rich-media content."
This somewhat validates one element in the classification!
narratives Add tag Permalink | Thursday, September 04, 2003
Resource: Sidebars
Resource: Sidebars"Published by the Learning Resources Unit of the British Columbia Institute of Technology to support and recognize innovative practice in distributed learning at BCIT, and in the greater educational community."
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, September 04, 2003
Clark MacLeod: Information Design: An Introduction
Clark MacLeod: Information Design: An Introduction"Information design is concerned with transforming data into information, making the complex easier to understand and to use. It is a rapidly growing discipline that draws on typography, graphic design, applied linguistics, applied psychology, applied ergonomics, computing, and other fields. It emerged as a response to people's need to understand and use such things as forms, legal documents, computer interfaces and technical information."
interface Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Guardian: Hard lessons from the big e-learning experiment
Guardian: Hard lessons from the big e-learning experiment"Organisations frequently made the mistake of blowing most of their budget, sometimes millions of pounds, on the technology, forgetting that the quality of the courses they put up there was just as important."
Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Syllabus: Designing the Space: A Conversation with William J. Mitchell
Syllabus: Designing the Space: A Conversation with William J. Mitchell"Over the last couple of decades there have been a lot of attempts to create high-tech educational spaces that have all sorts of technology built into them, like computers and video projectors
Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, September 02, 2003
HBR: A Blogger in Their Midst
The latest issue of Harvard Business Review carries this fictional case-study in blogging to explore "the question of whether a highly credible, but sometimes inaccurate and often indiscreet, online diarist is more of a liability than an asset to her employer."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, September 01, 2003
elearningpost: Interactive Visual Explainers
elearningpost: Interactive Visual Explainersinstructional design, ux, interactives Add tag Permalink | Monday, September 01, 2003
Peter J. Bogaards: The underlying thinking of how people learn, acquire knowledge, and understand
Peter J. Bogaards: The underlying thinking of how people learn, acquire knowledge, and understand"The field of instructional design and technology is also valuable to the UX community, providing theories and knowledge on important aspects of human behaviour and the role technology plays influencing that behaviour. Two theories on how people learn with (information) artifacts we design, 'instructionalism' versus 'constructionism', are directly germane and very valuable for the UX community."
instructional design, ux Add tag Permalink | Monday, September 01, 2003
Space Daily: Official inquiry accuses NASA managers over Columbia disaster
Space Daily: Official inquiry accuses NASA managers over Columbia disaster"The Board concludes that NASA's current organization does not provide effective checks and balances, does not have an independent safety program and has not demonstrated the characteristics of a learning organization."
Add tag Permalink | Friday, August 29, 2003
MIT Tech Review: WhereWare
MIT Tech Review: WhereWare"Soon, hardware and software that track your location will be providing directions, offering shopping discounts, and aiding rescue workers
Add tag Permalink | Friday, August 29, 2003
BBC: Computer game ‘boosts hearing’
BBC: Computer game 'boosts hearing'"A simple computer game can dramatically improve children's listening skills by teaching them to distinguish between sounds, new research suggests. The game is said to boost children's hearing by the equivalent of two years in just a few weeks."
Add tag Permalink | Friday, August 29, 2003
Information Week: The Need To Know
Information Week: The Need To Know"Half of companies in InformationWeek Research's second-quarter Priorities survey list knowledge management as a top technology priority. What they're doing is toning down the pie-in-the-sky initiatives of yesteryear into simpler, more-focused business strategies, enabled by less-obtrusive technologies that leverage, above all, search and collaboration."
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Boxes and Arrows: Synonym Rings and Authority Files
Boxes and Arrows: Synonym Rings and Authority Files"In part 3 of the continuing series on controlled vocabularies and faceted classification, the authors explain synonym rings and authority files and how their use can bridge the gap between natural language and complex controlled vocabularies (taxonomies and thesauri)."
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Optimize: Should You Be A Chief Creativity Officer?
Optimize: Should You Be A Chief Creativity Officer?"Creativity is the ability to get ideas and to be flexible and open to your environment. Innovation, on the other hand, is the application of creativity. It's trying to change the world, whether it's a little world or a big world, or simply a change in your office. Change and action come from the act of innovating. So innovation is one of those things that gets into the world and the world accepts. Creativity doesn't necessarily mean you have to innovate, but it's from creativity that ideas are born before you can begin to think of innovation."
innovation Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Cooper: The Origin of Personas
Cooper: The Origin of Personas"Had personas been developed in the laboratory, the full story of how they came to be would have been published long ago, but since their use developed over many years in both my practice as a software inventor and architectural consultant and the consulting work of Cooper designers, that is not the case. Since Inmates was published, many people have asked for the history of Cooper personas, and here it is."
personas Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Useit: Usability 101
Useit: Usability 101 Usability has five quality components:- Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
- Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
- Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
- Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
- Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
usability Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, August 26, 2003
BBC: Hi-tech tome takes on paperbacks
BBC: Hi-tech tome takes on paperbacks"Researchers at Hewlett Packard have developed a prototype electronic book which can hold a whole library on a device no bigger than a paperback."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, August 25, 2003
Intelligent Enterprise: Sharing Leads to Abundance
Intelligent Enterprise: Sharing Leads to AbundanceDon Tapscott: "I am struck by the excellent work in this area by Roger L. Martin, dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He argues that managers should think of knowledge work as falling into three categories: procedural, heuristic, and executive. These categories are important because they help us better understand the actual content of work, and thereby the extent of transparency and knowledge the worker needs."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, August 25, 2003
IBM: Gray matter matters: Preserving critical knowledge in the 21st century
IBM: Gray matter matters: Preserving critical knowledge in the 21st century"Changes in workforce demographics, labor migration patterns and economic conditions are causing organizations to face the challenge of retaining critical knowledge that is departing the organization. This paper probes the knowledge retention crisis that faces many organizations today, providing insights into driving trends and guidance on the actions organizations can take to tackle this issue."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, August 25, 2003
Darwin: Are You Looking in All the Wrong Places?
Darwin: Are You Looking in All the Wrong Places?"It does a large corporation little good to work in different industries if it cannot move and recombine the ideas, objects and people it finds in one that might be valuable in another. Sure, top-level executives can back different divisions like so many racehorses, but the synergies available from such a diverse set of experiences are often lost in the process. By the same token, a company's employees can share everything they know with one another, but if all they know are the same customers, the same products and the same manufacturing practices, then those interactions lose much of their value. In these cases, a strong organizational memory can be a detriment because it traps firms in the past."
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, August 21, 2003
NY Times Interactive: A Heavy Toll
NY Times Interactive: A Heavy TollAnother fantastic effort from NY Times. This interactive explores how overfishing has changed the world's oceans. Notice how they've used a single image to create the illusion of a movie, and how the narration holds the entire piece together.