OLT Thoughts

I know I am bit late to post. I tend to agree with most of what everyone else says about the OLT pitch and Michelle Lamberson, so I will attempt to write something unique.

I didn’t feel that the video really did anything for Michelle Lamberson’s credibility. I felt that she seemed knowledgeable, but I didn’t really feel that I knew who she was from the video. I decided to search for more information. I found the following:

Michelle Lamberson is the Director, Learning Technology at The University of British Columbia. Her role, and the role of the Office of Learning Technology, is to provide campus-wide coordination and facilitation, linking units that are integrating technology to improve teaching and learning. Ongoing projects within UBC’s OLT include electronic portfolios, social software (weblogs, wikis), learning objects, understanding the impact of enterprise course management system use and web-enablement of scientific instrumentation. In addition to her learning technology role, she is currently teaching an online geology course. Michelle returned to UBC from WebCT in 2002, where she had worked for three years in a variety of roles related to training, event planning and best practice use of the system. Prior to that, she was the Faculty of Science EdTech Coordinator and geology lecturer at UBC. Michelle’s discipline area is Geology, receiving her degrees from UBC (PhD, 1993), Penn State (MS, 1987) and Boston University (BA, 1981). (http://www.educause.edu/Community/MemDir/Profiles/MichelleNLamberson/42203)

From this description, I would argue that Michelle Lamberson does have credibility. However, part of pitch is being able to sell yourself and an idea. I am not sure this was accomplished with this video.

Michelle Lamberson seems to have a clear concept of the role of OLT. She stresses that the OLT came from meetings with various UBC stakeholders who took part in a strategic planning process. Their objective is to collaborate learning technologies and create common ground between faculties. Interestingly, I took a course with Mark Bullen who seems to have a very different view of the conception of OLT. At the same time that the OLT was created, the Department of Distance Education and Technology was restructuring and planning to decentralize to the faculties. The creation of this office speaks to the central ‘hub’ that would support faculty initiatives; however, its arrival did not clearly address the issues of the duplication of support for LT in multiple central units. With DE&T and other central units, there was a need to remove duplication and create one group to facilitate

The cost efficiencies and need to create a consistent experience for learners was crucial. The concept was simple and necessary. It would be very easy to sell a pitch to remove redundancies to faculty heads and anyone involved in financial decisions.