Future of Learning with Rich Media Internet Applications and Social Operating Systems

2008-09-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

Future of Learning with Rich Media Internet Applications and Social Operating Systems

1) In Learning focused organizations, a Learner to benefit continuously, content creation must speed up and gap between subject matter experts, instructional designers, and software developers must be bridged and reduced. This means businesses must optimize business process around content development; simultaneously, technology must support easier and faster content creation and content produced must be authenticated in time for learners benefit from it.
2) This is the birth of User Generated and Rapidly Developed Content for Learning and knowledge, authenticated by Subject Matter Experts within a system designed by Instructional Designers and Software Developers.
3) Instructional designers will rather manage business logic of User Generated Content or find ways for Rapid Development of content using or recognizing their existing digital assets i.e Images, Pictures, Sound, Video, Power Point ,PDF , Word and Other Doc types. Combine this with Blogs, comments; ratings and feedback. New Technology will support semi-structured growth of this content. New jargon for this is Social Operating Systems; here, organization of network will be around people rather than content thus creating collective intelligence
4) Advances in search technology will allow learners to find exactly what they need thus creating a just in-time learning (knowledge) experience –informal or just in time learning
5) Growth of grassroots Video has brought a paradigm shift in how we learn. Today, teens learn how to tie a tie using a video (free). This is another part of high impact User Generated or Rapidly Developed Content. I am calling it high impact because there is no replacement of Learning through seeing, it is just one step behind compared to learning via doing it yourself (simulations, games etc) or actually performing it. We may be more fascinated by simulation as technology but Video as of today is very cost effective and clearly a winner when comparing cost of capturing video using inexpensive cell phone or digital camera as compared to developing and using simulation software
6) An authoring solution using Video can consume these videos (generated by inexpensive tools) and convert them to an (animated) Interactive Rich Media Production. This will utilize inexpensive videos and convert them into high impact learning experience in a very cost effective way
7) Furthermore, extensive tracking and behavior analysis of video on the web, now much easier to implement using new technologies like Microsoft Silverlight 2, will allow applications to collect extensive behavioral data and allow instructional designers and developers to align development and business processes for best results in learning and knowledge delivery

How we plan to solve this problem at Softech Worldwide using UltraLearn.com:-
We at Softech Worldwide (www.softechww.com) are following above steps to develop such a solution and have successfully implemented a large portion of the vision described above in our newly launched SaaS and Enterprise Solution, www.UltraLearn.com .

UltraLearn.com is offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) or Enterprise solution and uses Browser plug-in Microsoft Silverlight 2 to Transform Video into a searchable Interactive Rich Media (animated) product (called Mashups ) for accelerated training, learning and knowledge.

Other features include Synchronize video with power point, pdf word or other presentations; combine, audio, video images for creative expression, add polls, surveys and branching quizzes, evaluate effectiveness with tracking, analytics and reports.

Ability to add voice overlays and close captioning allows UltraLearn to translate existing videos to any language.

Currently delivery method is internet ( SaaS Model) or Intranet (Enterprise Model) , however, we are working on future releases that will allow users of UltraLearn.com to burn and distribute end product on DVDs .

Release for searchable video synced with PowerPoint is due at the end of September 2008.

Currently, UltraLearn.com allows you to convert a Video into Rich Media Experience and mix it with other digital assets, add polls, surveys and quizzes and extensively track user behaviors. Few tracking reports are available now and more reports are being built. Reports are based on Kirkpatrick’s model of evaluation.

An organization can sign up as tenant in SaaS Model at UltraLearn.com. Each tenant’s data and user base is private. If deployed in Enterprise model, a tenant can also be configured as an organization unit.

Once a video has been converted into a Rich Media Experience (called a mashup) , it can be assigned to a target user bases within the privacy of your tenancy. The process of assignment is called Campaigns.

Users receive email inviting them to watch a Mashup ( Rich Media Production), clicking on email brings them to UltraLearn.com, they either register at UltraLearn.com for the first time or if already registered, taken to their desktops where all such knowledge/learning material is available for them to view. If they are visiting for the first time, they are asked to some basic and specific information setup by the tenant. An example of such information may be a store id, or a location id where an employee/ associate belongs. This helps in reporting. Tenant can configure this information for their needs.

One other important aspect of the Rich Media Mashups is that we store references to the original Digital assets (Video, audio, images) and play them back in sequence configured at the time of designing the mashup ( Rich Media Presentation) . This allows to reference a digital asset stored anywhere in the world, on the internet or within your private network in your organization’s intranet without making a copy. This does not duplicate content, allows original source to be modified to reflect updates in mashup and furthermore secures content.

MS Silverlight 2 also support Digital Rights Management, therefore in future, once we have tested and tweaked this feature of the application, a user will only be allowed to watch a Rich Media Production (mashup ) composed of content that the user is authorized to watch. The user may be prompted to provide additional credentials before allowed to view content. Obviously, DRM will allow control over who can watch which content. This will allow protection for digital content creators. We however have not tested DRM, although during development we have taken care of al ll these issues.

We are also integrating this system with Microsoft CRM 4, allowing users of the application to find lot of this information within their outlook. Future releases may integrate with other CRM and salesforce.com etc.

We all are very excited and working 12-14 hours a day for the last one year to develop this solution.
Hopefully we are bringing a good solution to the market and will be able to address some real world business problems. Suggestions from the experts are always welcome.

Regards
Nadeem Khan
President – Softech Worldwide LLC
Vidizmo.com
UltraLearn.com
Softech Worldwide LLC

Learning using Rich Media Internet Applications and Social Operating Systems

Future of Learning with Rich Media Internet Applications and Social Operating Systems