Elluminating Learn Central
Posted on July 6, 2009
Extended Learning Services (XLS) at The University of Montana provides access to live virtual classrooms through the Elluminate web conferencing system. These classrooms can be used to hold virtual office hours, discuss course content and/or facilitate collaborative work among students who cannot meet face-to-face. In a pilot study of the impact of a web conferencing tool on student perceptions of online learning, Koppelman and Vranken (2008) note that “students report better understanding of subject matter” and appreciate the “structure to study regularly”(196). (More on this later in the month).
As evidence points towards the effectiveness of a Web conferencing component in facilitating the learning outcomes of online courses, purchasing the license for these virtual classrooms is a worthwhile investment for XLS. However, with the development of a new social network called LearnCentral, it will now be possible to have free access to the system that previously cost thousands of dollars.
Why has Elluminate decided to give away access to its virtual rooms?
It could be “a call to action to help bring about positive change within the education community worldwide,” but on closer inspection, it appears to be more about the marketing:
“While LearnCentral and its resources are free, we hope that your use of Elluminate live eLearning and web collaboration will enable you to understand the benefits of using the technology and motivate you to promote the purchase and adoption of our products and services at a departmental, campus, or institutional level in your organization”.
Free access to Elluminate hinges on two points: Events must be public (open to all) and recorded. For most universities, these two requirements preclude their use. Universities make money from fee-paying individuals keen on accessing the content and expertise of instructors. Universities are also concerned that having the content permanently available in the public domain will reduce the demand for particular courses. While the ivory towers remain, therefore, Elluminate has found a way to market its product to an audience -educators- that has a major influence on its primary market–educational institutions.
In my opinion, LearnCentral has the potential to be one of the pivotal educational communities on the Internet, but the fact that it is underpinned by a strategic effort to sell more licenses takes a little sheen off its rhetoric:
“We believe that the power of community has the power to transform.”
Agreed, but the power to transform that arises spontaneously and is organized by the collective efforts of individuals is different to a transformation that is funded and supported by a special interest.
LearnCentral is still in its infancy. It offers a number of centralized services unavailable elsewhere on the web, and there are some extremely talented people working for the benefit of the network. I have already found a number of groups among the social network that will be useful. Please check them out, and see what you think, but be aware that a free room in this case is purchased at the expense of some fairly lofty ideals.
Robert
Citation: Koppelman, H. Vranken, H. (2008) Experiences with a Synchronous Virtual Classroom in Distance Education ITiCSE’08, June 30–July 2, 2008, Madrid, Spain.
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[...] is the original: Elluminating Learn Central Tagged as: discuss-course, engine, highlights-paid, hold-virtual, live-virtual, office-hours, real, [...]
Robert:
I’ve used my Elluminate email here to make sure I’m being up front about my association with LearnCentral–I’ve been hired as the social learning consultant at Elluminate, in large part because of my http://www.classroom20.com network.
I think there are two ways to look at LearnCentral. One would be, as you state, that it’s a marketing strategy. There’s no question that a commercial company, like Elluminate, that depends on revenue from its core products looks carefully at every project as part of its design to grow use and market share.
At the same time, I think we’re seeing opportunities for new levels of transparency and authenticity in business because of Web 2.0 that allow for a second perspective. I’d like to suggest that LearnCentral represents the kind of project where a company feels that by doing something “good” and significant–and by being open about about motives–that this work will reflect well on the company and that those who purchase their product will feel even better about doing so.
In order for Elluminate to provide a quality service, it needs to charge for its services and to make money. At the same time, we stand on the precipice of an amazing new world for educators, where the ability to connect with each other both asynchronously and synchronously holds the promise of bringing incredible opportunity and engagement for them in their careers and for their classrooms. So what contribution can Elluminate make that still supports its business model but also helps to encourage this historic change in communication? LearnCentral, we hope, is part of the answer to that question.
We’re imagining all of the educators who have specialty curricular interests, many or most of whom will not be part of an institution that has an account with Elluminate–but who, if given the opportunity to use Elluminate to gather or meet with other educators with the same interest, will be able to have the kind of rich sharing and co-discovery that has typically happened only at conferences. This “long tail” of interests, and their ability to gather together and work on them, could potentially be “mined” by someone as a source of revenue, but even that might hinder the incredible potential that exists right now. So the distinction between public, recordable sessions and private, fee-paying uses allows (we hope) for an incredible flowering of opportunity for educators while still (openly) preserving the financial value of Elluminate to its paying customers.
We don’t think this will impact the high-quality instruction opportunities available for educational institutions, as currently we see LearnCentral as a professional development tool. However, the concern is well-noted and will, I’m sure, be the subject of some discussion for us.
Hopefully, instead, the freedom to hold large public sessions will provide for the very “spontaneous” transformations you (and) we believe can be so powerful.
[...] more here: Elluminating Learn Central Tags: barron-green, content-and, discuss-course, elluminate, internet, koppelman, point, [...]
Thanks Steve for your thoughtful response. Elluminate has done a good deal of work in the past sponsoring events at Classroom 2.0 and Learning Times (to mention just two learning networks), and I am someone who has benefitted from these meetings. I also have to say that Elluminate is my preferred platform for hosting web-conferences, especially if it is available for free. And still, I can’t shake the feeling that forming a social network around Elluminate is aimed at exploiting the amazing new world that educators are starting to experience rather than being primarily altruistic. Let me add, though, that there are much more invasive ways to exploit Web 2.0, so Elluminate can be commended for developing a strategy that actually provides real value for those interested in professional development. If Elluminate’s sponsorship of LearnCentral ultimately produces powerful collaborations among colleagues worldwide, which it seems to be doing already, LearnCentral will not only become a powerful ancillary to the company’s business model, but from personal experience, a venue for making a difference in the lives of educators. I look forward to watching it grow.