Currently there are over 10,000 students attending British Columbia’a Certified Offshore Schools. The offshore school market is continuously growing with new schools being accredited every year. DL International is a proposal to partner a BC Distributed Learning (DL) school with one or more of the seventeen BC offshore schools.

As the DL school will have the qualified staff and the infrastructure already in place, they could offer various services, including a variety of online courses, with minimal start-up cost. Conservative calculations of the return of investment are high.

Being the first DL school to form such partnerships ensures a piece of a growing market. The offshore schools’ benefit as these DL offerings would aid in increasing student enrollment. The DL school and School District would benefit from the increase in funding generated, ensuring the development of more online courses and the potential to hire more certified teachers.

Please email me at myles_ashley@hotmail.com for the full pitch.  Thank-you!

Thank-you everyone for your high level of participation in our  Informal Learning Environment.  We have been thrilled by the informal learning that has taken place there and our team has gained a lot of knowledge from the variety of responses and deep insights generated from the discussions.

Please view the interesting results of our Informal Learning poll and survey.

 Thank-you!

Sorry for my delayed post, I was in Bali, Indonesia for the last week and although I brought my laptop, I had very few opportunities for internet access, connecting (and a slow connection at that) when I was in the main city of Kuta.

First of all, great work Group 6! I really enjoyed learning about OSS. Since I was in Indonesia, I decided to focus on this country’s use of OSS.

 OSS is starting to becoming popular in Indonesia with more Indonesian people using this free software. The government is looking towards the development of OSS as a way to reduce the billions of dollars being spent on software from foreign vendors and as a major prevention against piracy. The biggest difficulties are that Internet access is limited (only the big cities, some universities don’t have internet), the high cost of computers and the language used in the software.

 The Open Source Contributors Group (OSCG) was founded is maintained by people at the Informatics Engineering Department, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia http://www.itb.ac.id/en/. Anyone can contribute in this open source software development and technology enhancement group by contributing his/her works, ideas, opinions, and/or suggestions.

 The following are some of the institutes’ students early projects: (see this report for more information)  

gx-admin

This is a generic web-based interface for UNIX system administration using any browser that supports tables and forms. gx-admin was designed to be generic and able to configure any kinds of UNIX text-based system files. The configuration for this application itself is on a text file that enables users to add as many configurations as possible. gx-admin consists of a simple web server and a number of CGI programs which directly update system files. The web server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and only use the standard perl modules.

Pegasus

An indexing web robot that can be used to index some defined urls, a range of IP addresses, or even the whole web. Pegasus can be executed with a web browser (for an interactive interface) or straightly from the shell with valid arguments. It will send a request for a HTML page, parse the HTML page, save some significant information and then follow all the links in that page and repeat the process ‘recursively’. Pegasus will store the information on a database with PostgreSQL as its Database Management System. The database can be used for various purposes, such as search engine’s database for a website, or a private database which can be used to search information offline. Pegasus was written in Perl version 5.

 RTSimula

This is a suite of programs that simulate the behavior of railroad hardware model. The simulator is truly real-time and intended to be used for the course of Real-time Programming. RTSimula currently consists of three different programs: the simulator – runs on Real-time Linux – doing the simulation by calculating some parameters provided by users, a monitor – runs on X-Window – drawing crude visualization of the trains and railways, and a simple controller program. The whole suite of programs (and the documentations) were written using OSS: Linux, Real-time Linux, and GTK+. All programs were written using C language.

 Unicorn

This is a subject guide that has a search engine for its main facility. The search engine was developed to search information on a database as a result from Pegasus’ indexing process. Unicorn uses various techniques to search through the database, such as simple search, exact phrase search, and a wildcard search. Users can also define the options for the search process, including the search sequence and a time range of the last-modified date from a page in the database. Unicorn was written in Perl version 5.

Finally, here is a short video (not in english) that is used to campaign for Indonesia to go open source. 

University of the People (UoPeople): http://www.uopeople.org/

The United Nations has launched the world’s first tuition-free, non-profit, global online University.

Market Focus:

Higher education courses in information and communications technology that are accessible to everyone around the world. Primarily targeting those who cannot afford the tuition fees from other institutes, or who don’t have access to higher education from where they live.

Types of Offerings:

Content and infrastructure for courses in two academic fields: Business Administration and Computer Science. Both offer 2-year and 4-year programs that are the recommended sequence to follow, but students may also chose to take individual courses from either of these programs as well as from a list of General Studies courses.

The University is not yet accredited and cannot confer any degrees.

Who is the buyer?:

Tuition is free, but the learner personally pays any fees. There is a “sliding scale” of fees for admissions ($15-50) and exams ($10-100), depending on the home country of each student. The University is sponsored by financial donations and volunteer time.

Global Markets:

The courses are offered globally, however an Internet connection is necessary. All materials are online texts, with no videos or content requiring broadband so slow Internet connections will work. All courses and texts are in English, so students must have the required level of English (must be able to complete a series of mandatory orientation courses).

Development of the Market:

There is huge potential for the development and growth of this University. The UoPeople plan to apply for accreditation which will open the doors to more opportunities for the students, as well as higher enrollment. Many more courses and programs can be developed and offered (I personally would like to to some on Environmental Sustainability) and courses in other languages could be offered.

Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning:

I believe that the UoPeople is not necessarily displacing other forms of learning, but offering a much needed alternative to ensure that everyone has equal opportunities for higher education.

Froguts is an interactive simulation program offering 3D virtual dissections and biology lessons.

See the demo.

Market Focus

This program would be beneficial for middle schools, high schools and higher education. It could be used in schools, for home schooled students, or any student wanting an additional, alternative method of learning.

Types of Offerings

The main offering of this program is content. Lessons are system based and integrate anatomy, physiology and ecology through interactive simulations. The online dissections can eliminate the need for actual animal dissections.

Who is the buyer?

The buyer could include School Districts, Principals, Technology Coordinators, Curriculum Coordinators, teachers, students, and/or parents. In CUBE terms: “learning bought centrally”, “learning bought for learner”, or “learner buys personally”.

Global Markets

The software requires a computer (PC or Mac) and requires the internet for the inital activation. As far as I could see it is only offered in English so the market for this product are wired anglophone countries such as Canada, USA, Australia, UK, Ireland, and NZ.

Devlopment of the Market

The market imports content and infrastructure and supports export oriented learning technologies and substitution of imports.

Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

This program works with a well-developed learning system but also can be viewed as a substitute to dissections for reasons of costs, animal rights, and the environment.

Here is a pitch in which the co-founders of http://hungryhouse.co.uk, Shane Lake and Tony Charles, enter the ‘Dragon’s Den’ in an attempt to convince five investors to invest!  Part 1 is mostly the pitch and a few questions, Part 2 is a continuation of the questions, and they get grilled!

I have decided to compare and comment on two very different pitches: Ramona’s from Ingenia and Ted’s from UBC.

Ramonacame across and a capable and confident speaker. The pitch was well-paced and easy to listen to and follow. Her credentials are high and she seems to have a strong team working with her. I found it interesting that due to the competitive Canadian and US markets and a decrease in spending, Ingenia has shifted their focus oversees to Vietnam. I do see that there is a need in Vietnam (and other countries in South East Asia) for e-learning programs, and I believe the market there is ready, I just wasn’t convinced from this pitch that Ingenia was the one to do it. Although they have already partnered with Vietnamese software firm, they admitted to not having much experience in Vietnam. Their goal, however, is clear: they want to establish themselves as a major learning services provider in Vietnam.

I was wondering who would be creating the curriculum for these courses as I believe that there are many cultural differences that must be considered when developing courses for another country. As an EVA I am intrigued by their idea, but I would definitely need to know more information about exactly how they are going to carry out this plan. I wanted to know more about the company and what they are doing in Canada so I found their website and noticed that they have since acquired many more Canadian clients.

http://www.ingenia-consulting.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14&Itemid=1

I also noticed this update:

August 2009– Ingenia is pleased and proud to be involved with the 2010 Winter Olympics. The City of Vancouver has awarded Ingenia with a contract to design and develop classroom training for over 200 protocol officers.

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Ted Dodds is clearly an intrapreneur who has been continually asking the question: “Where is the better business in this?”  Ted is extremely capable and he displayed confidence in what UBC has already accomplished and the level of success they hope to achieve in the future.  I was very engaged throughout the interview.

There is clearly a huge amount of support for the continuously developed e-learning strategy. The five Vice Presidents, faculty members of UBC, and members of the community work together to evolve and give voice to this strategy. This has been done through various methods such as an annual town hall meeting, conferences, meetings and monthly newsletters.

 This model is obviously feasible and has already shown a high level of success. There continues to be a demand for e-learning from the community and the innovators or “partners” are working within the various faculties in order to assist and develop the most up-to-date resources available.

Looking towards the future, Open Source software and a Community Source system connected with other universities are being discussed. Their destination is clear, with the objective being to making the best decisions for the faculties and the University, while continuing to raise the bar. I think many Universities could learn from what UBC has achieved so far in e-learning. As an EVA I would definitely support this kind of project at my University.

Hello everyone, my name is Ashley Jones.

I completed a Biology degree and then went on to complete a year-long internship to obtain my teachers certificate. Soon after I took off to teach for a year in a small town in Costa Rica where I developed a passion for surfing and cooking with hot chili peppers!

Upon returning to Canada, I taught at a Secondary Distributive Learning School in Victoria, BC for three years. The courses I taught and developed were all online for the students to access, while I was available at the school for drop-in help, tutorials and to supervise test writing.

This year, my husband took a year-long job in Australia so I am fortunate to be able to complete my Masters while in beautiful Perth! I am very excited for this course, and although I don’t have any formal business education, I have always been an innovative thinker and I would love to start my own e-learning business one day.

I look forward to getting to know you all as we go through this course!